Sexual interaction in action: consent and agency in the sexual communications of early adolescents and adults

A feminist debate is still raging in sexualities literature and popular culture: is sex dangerous or empowering for women and other marginalized people? This dissertation applies an agency-within-constraint framework to examine actors’ capacity to practice sexual agency within oppressive institutions or interactions. To do this, I use electronic and in-person sexual communications to examine how adolescents and adults, belonging to different sex communities, act on their sexual needs and desires while navigating systems of constraint. This dissertation utilizes radical and liberal feminist frameworks to critique violence and male dominance while treating women and girls as sexual agents. First, I find that the ability to successfully negotiate sex is intimately tied to the sexual scripts and communities that a person is embedded in. Importantly, sexual agency can grow through exposure to new scripts. Next, I find that sexual coercion and consent can exist simultaneously within sexual interactions. I argue that consenting to sex, even unwanted sex, is an expression of sexual agency. Finally, I find that cybercommunications can put young people at risk for sexual harassment and violence but also facilitate sexual learning and agency. Young people develop their sexual identities, in part, through low-risk, consensual sharing of sexual content. These findings suggest that victimization and agency are not mutually exclusive and have important implications for theory and advocacy. Monolithic definitions of consent and violence leave room for dire misinterpretations of “nonnormative” sexual practices and erase the nuances common in everyday sexual interactions.