Sexual Drama, Peer Publics and The Transition to Adulthood

• In Event: 306 - Section on Sociology of Sexualities Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 17. Youth Sexualities

Abstract

Young women’s sexualities are subject to a nexus of external, internal, and interpersonal control. Yet girls themselves take part in the regulation of other girls’ sexualities by engaging in strategies they often call “drama” (Marwick & boyd 2014): slut shaming, sexual labeling, gossip and rumor spreading. Analysis of interviews with 54 young women reveals that sexual drama is a resource that evolves in both form and function as young women transition between institutional settings. Sexuality shifts from being an element of girls’ lives conceptualized as public in high school to private in college. Young women explain heterosexual sex is not yet considered “normal” for high school girls, the perceived lack of commonality heightens the publicity of girls’ sexual actions. Sexual drama is thus a powerful social currency that maps onto the closed network structure, tight status hierarchies, limited sex education, and restrictive gender norms that make up US high schools. Yet when describing how drama evolves between high school and college, young women tell liberation stories. Sex is something girls are now are expected to take part in, and talk about with their peers fluidly. They explain that attitudes about sex shift between educational settings: from something girls are expected to do for others (if at all) in high school, to something they’re expected to do for themselves in college. However, as their narratives indicate, “liberation” has many constraints, and the “privacy” that college may provide does not uniformly grant acceptance or sexual agency to all.

Author

• Sarah Ann Miller, University of Massachusetts-Amherst