Louisa Allen

Girls Want Sex, Boys Want Love: Resisting Dominant Discourses of (Hetero) Sexuality

Based on empirical research with 17-19 year olds, this article explores young peoples understandings of themselves as sexual in relation to dominant discourse of (hetero)sexuality. It is concerned with providing empirical evidence of resistance in young peoples constitution of their sexual subjectivities. The research findings suggest that young people generally draw upon dominant discourses of (hetero)sexuality in their talk about themselves as sexual. However some took up subject positions that involved more resistant conceptions of the sexual self. For some young people this took the form of simultaneously accommodating and resisting subject positions offered by traditional discourses of (hetero)sexuality. It is argued that the potential to take up more resistant subject positions was partly contingent upon young peoples location in contexts that offered access to, or opened space for, other ways of constituting themselves as sexual.

Managing masculinity: young men's identity work in focus groups

Displays of hegemonic masculinity within research contexts are often perceived to inhibit the collection of ‘good’ data and present a problem which the researcher must overcome. Instead of being seen as hindering the research process, this article takes such moments as ‘data’, which provide first hand insights into the way male sexuality is made within focus group settings. This environment is seen as constitutive of male sexual subjectivities in the way that it provides a public forum for young mens presentation of self. Through their talk about sexuality young men engage in the management of their own sexual identities, fashioning these through what they reveal and conceal about their sexual selves. In order to meet the objective of the focus group and discuss sexuality ‘seriously’ yet also preserve masculine identity, young men deploy discursive constructions in complex ways. Such demands render the maintenance of an identity which conforms to traditional constructions of masculinity precarious, so that constant slippage between projections of ‘hard’ and ‘softer’ versions of male sexuality occur.

“Sensitive and Real Macho All at the Same Time”: Young Heterosexual Men and Romance

What is the place of romance in young mens lives? Do young men enact a romantic masculinity? This article examines young mens experience of romance and what investments they have in romantic identity. Drawing on a New Zealand—based sample of seventeen-to nineteen-year-olds, the author investigates the way in which romantic masculinity is evoked during seventeen focus-group discussions. The article explores whether romantic masculinity offers a new form of masculinity in New Zealand and to what extent it departs from hegemonic practices of “hard” masculinity. Its potential as a nonhegemonic form of masculinity that challenges oppressive heterosexual relations is also analyzed. It is argued that the particular expression of romantic masculinity evidenced in this research no longer constitutes a subordinate form of masculinity in New Zealand. Instead, “doing romance” is theorized as being reconfigured within the operation of hegemonic masculinity in a way that highlights the flexibility and stability of these practices of power.

Young people's ‘agency’ in sexuality research using visual methods

This paper seeks to explore how we might understand young peoples agency in sexuality research using visual methods. It is concerned with troubling the perception that power is held by the adult researcher and denied to youthful participants who simply submit to their authority. Rather than attempting to cast moments of young peoples agency as examples where the relations of ruling are reversed, this paper endeavours to tease out the nuances inherent in young peoples agency. This examination is undertaken in relation to selected episodes from research investigating the sexual culture of secondary schools using photo-diary and photo-elicitation methods. To elucidate the mechanisms of young peoples agency, Butlers and Davies’ work on the process of subjectification is drawn upon. Using a post-structural theoretical framework, it is argued that young peoples agency involves a simultaneous mastery and submission, which is a consequence of the process of subjecthood.

‘Pleasure has no passport’: re-visiting the potential of pleasure in sexuality education

The idea that pleasure might form a part of sexuality education is no longer a ‘new’ idea in the field of sexuality studies. In this paper we examine how originally conceived notions of pleasure have been ‘put to work’ and theoretically ‘taken up’ in relation to sexuality and education. It is our contention that because of the nature of discourse and varying cultural and political contexts, pleasure has been operationalised in ways we did not intend or foresee. Throughout this discussion we seek to discern the discursive limits of visions of pleasure to illuminate their normalising potential. Drawing on Foucaults thoughts about pleasure as having ‘no passport’ and queer theoretical understandings of this concept, we argue for a re-conceptualisation of the potential of pleasure in sexuality education. In particular we identify the need for wedging open spaces for the possibility of ethical pleasures, in forms that are not heteronormatively pre-conceived or mandatory.

Doing ‘it’ differently: relinquishing the disease and pregnancy prevention focus in sexuality education

Despite policy provision enabling sexuality education to address more than disease and pregnancy prevention, this focus continues to permeate many school programmes. This paper problematises the danger prevention emphasis in sexuality education, examines schools investment in it and asks how useful it is. The ways this kind of sexuality education may inhibit the reduction of ‘negative’ sexual outcomes and fail to support young peoples sexual well‐being is explored. Suggesting sexuality education might be conceptualisxed without this danger prevention emphasis necessitates an exploration of what might replace it. Foucaults work around an ethics of pleasure is drawn on as one example of how the objectives of sexuality education might be re‐envisaged.

‘Caught in the act’: ethics committee review and researching the sexual culture of schools

This article explores ethics committee review as part of a system of government directing the behaviour of researchers and possibilities of research. Drawing on the work of Halse and Honey (2007) it argues ethics committees represent one of the governing practices of an institutional discourse of ethical research. This discourse has constitutive effects for researcher identities that are ‘ethical’ and what in practice might represent ‘ethical’ research. This analysis is undertaken with reference to visual research with youth about ‘the sexual culture of schools’. How ethics review constituted this research as ‘risky’ and young people as ‘irresponsible’ and ‘recalcitrant’ is examined. These discursive practices undermined a youth-centred methodology committed to valuing the agency and competency of youth and left the researcher feeling she had acted ‘unethically’ towards participants. These effects demonstrate a paradox whereby compliance with ethics review can produce what this process seeks to prevent, ‘unethical’ researchers and research.

‘It's not who they are it's what they are like’: re‐conceptualising sexuality education's ‘best educator’ debate

Those who teach sexuality education are integral to the success of programmes that positively foster young people as sexual subjects. Knowing what makes an effective educator is therefore crucial for developing and delivering programmes that are successful in this respect. Starting from the premise that effective sexuality education meets the needs and interests of young people, this paper considers who young people think make the best educators and why. Findings are drawn from questionnaire and focus group data. Peer educators were named most frequently in questionnaire findings as the best people to teach about sexuality at school. Reasons for naming them were the same as for selecting other educator categories as ‘best’. Interpreting this finding in conjunction with focus group data suggests participants valued particular educator ‘qualities’ more than ‘who’ the educator was. An argument for problematising the perceived relationship between educator identity and teaching effectiveness in sexuality education is made.

‘Snapped’: researching the sexual cultures of schools using visual methods

Visual methods are often marginalised in educational research and have not been employed to collect information about sexuality at school. This paper examines the viability and effectiveness of conducting research about the ‘sexual cultures’ of schools in New Zealand using photo‐diaries and photo‐elicitation. ‘Effectiveness’ is judged by what the visual methodologies literature purports are the benefits of these methods. These advantages include providing participants with greater autonomy over what and how data is collected. The paper argues it is feasible to employ visual methods to research sexuality in schools. Such methods offer participants alternative means of recounting their stories, can help illuminate an esoteric object of investigation like ‘sexual cultures’ and engage participants less likely to volunteer for sexuality research. The use of visual methods is not without challenges however. Securing ethics approval and school participation along with problems with camera retrieval and protecting participant agency were some difficulties encountered in the current study. For those wishing to pursue less conventional research methodologies in educational settings, this discussion highlights potential benefits and struggles.

''Looking at the Real Thing'': Young men, pornography, and sexuality education

This article examines the sexually explicit comments and references to pornography in young mens answers to a survey about sexuality education. Instead of viewing these remarks as simply impertinent and therefore discountable, I argue that they offer insights into the constitution of masculine identity and an erotic deficit in sexuality education. Many of these comments make requests for the inclusion of enfleshed (female) bodies in sexuality programmes and the use of pornographic materials (i.e. videos, magazines). These responses can be seen to represent a challenge to school authority in the way they are laden with “shock” value and push at the discursive limits of “sexual respectability”. In a school environment that seeks to deny the sexual and contain student sexuality, these statements symbolise an assertion of young mens sexual agency. Young mens remarks also offer a critique of sexuality education that is de-eroticised and which denies them as positive and legitimate sexual subjects. The implications of these comments for how sexuality education might be conceptualised are considered.