Who and What Sex is For: Young Women’s Accounts of Sex and Sexual Violence during Adolescence

• In Event: Sociology of Sex and Gender Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 16. Gender and Sexual Violence

Abstract

Teen girls are exposed to various contradictory, and often inaccurate, messages about sex and sexuality, and they also face some of the highest rates of sexual violence. Reflecting cultural anxieties about teen sexuality and social discomfort with discussions about sexual violence, scholarly work on teen girls’ experiences with sex and sexual violence is not exhaustive: for a demographic so vulnerable to sexual violence, researchers face ethical and logistical data collection constraints that can hinder the scope of sexual violence research. This paper explores how young women conceptualize their experiences of sexual violence during their teenage years, and how said experiences impact their sexual identity formation and relationship to (hetero)sexuality. Through my analysis of semistructured in-depth interviews with 18-20 year old young women, I illustrate how heterosexuality acts as a driving force for young women’s conceptualizations of who and what sex is for, both by reinforcing and naturalizing violence, as well as coloring their experiences through the normative lens of heterosexuality. I describe three modes of post-sexual violence sexuality exploration, which I term hypersexual, anti-sexual, and complacent-sexual. Each route demonstrates how the institution of heterosexuality shapes women’s experiences of sex, violence, and self.

Author

• Gracia Mae Dodds, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor