Sharing Sexual Images of the Gendered Self: Empowering, Disempowering, or Somewhere In-between?

• In Event: 2242 - Let's Talk About Sex

Abstract

Recent technological developments have expanded the ways in which we create, view, and share images of the body. As part of this trend, an increasing number of people engage in sexting, the sharing of sexually explicit digital images of their bodies and sometimes the bodies of others. Scholars in the fields of medicine, psychology, and criminology have begun to study the prevalence of sexting among adolescents and young adults and the risks associated with this behavior. However, a gap remains in our understanding of why young people send images and how their motivations are related to gender and sexuality beliefs. This article investigates young people’s motivations for sending sexually explicit images of the self among women and men college students by analyzing data from 917 women and men’s responses to an online survey of university undergraduates. I use logistic regression to analyze the relationship between gender and respondents’ motivations related to ideas of sexual empowerment and disempowerment. Preliminary results suggest that women may experience greater pressures to share as well as greater rewards that fit within existing gender and sexuality beliefs.

Author

• Morgan Johnstonbaugh, University of Arizona