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Background: A high number of non-consensual sexual experiences happen in heavy drinking contexts, pointing to the importance of investigating how young people make meaning of their alcohol intoxicated sexual interactions. In analyzing that, researchers have used the concept of 'sexual agency', to describe how young people often draw on a neoliberal discourse, which emphasizes freedom, choice and individual responsibility to make meaning of their alcohol intoxicated sexual interactions. The aim of this paper is to argue for the applicability of a more situational understanding of sexual agency, such as Cahill's (2016), when investigating young people's alcohol intoxicated sexual experiences. Methods: 30 qualitative interviews were conducted with young Danes (aged 19-25) on their alcohol intoxicated sexual encounters. Results: A narrative analytical approach revealed that participants draw on three types of narratives on sexual encounters which emphasized: 1) The pleasurable experiences and a large degree of agency 2) The ambivalent experiences of agency and 3) The out-of-control sexual experiences. Conclusions: The results highlight the situational and varied nature of sexual agency in sexual encounters and that discourses on gender, sexuality and alcohol intoxication influence the participants' construction of agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present investigation is part of the Social Networks and Agency Project (SNAP), an 18-month longitudinal mixed methods study following adolescents located in New South Wales, Australia. The SNAP study aims to understand how online and offline social networks impact the development of sexual agency over time. This paper presents an analysis of the second interview time point in the SNAP study. Fifty adolescents (aged 14–17) completed a semi-structured interview either face-to-face or via Skype about their romantic relationships, including where they get their sexual health information and how they flirt (both online and offline). Interviews were transcribed and analyzed using a grounded theory approach. The core theme was: Young people clearly demonstrate emerging sexual agency. The three characterizing themes were: (1) Young people have complex schemas about flirting, dating, and entering romantic and sexual relationships; (2) Young people have high literacy in social media, traditional media and pornography; and (3) Peers influence most aspects of developing sexual agency, including sex and relationship attitudes. We discuss possible methods to utilize adolescents' social networks in facilitating the development of sexual agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has indicated that intersex people face specific challenges in their sexual development, including uncertainties or confusion about their gender, a negative genital self-image, and hesitance to engage in romantic and sexual relationships. However, in-depth knowledge regarding a central period in this development, adolescence, is missing. In our qualitative study, we explore which factors influence the relational and sexual development of intersex youth and what elements contribute to positive development. We interviewed eighteen intersex persons aged 18–38. We identified three main themes: (1) intersex experiences, (2) the described sexual and relational life course, and (3) factors influencing a positive development. Our findings show that intersex youth face many obstacles in their relational and sexual development, many of which are related to healthcare. However, their life stories also illuminate how healthcare professionals, as well as parents, friends, partners, teachers, and others, can make a substantial difference in intersex lives by breaking normative, binary thinking on sex and gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While restrictive norms on premarital sexuality are not exclusive for Muslims, most of the research on premarital sexuality is on Muslim women, while young men are virtually absent. This Dutch study also includes young people of other religious backgrounds and young men. It discusses how the 55 young people who were interviewed experience and navigate the virginity imperative and norm of sex segregation. The deeply religious young people experience virginity as a deep moral value. Others do not subscribe to the virginity imperative, but neither do they openly rebel. Many young women have had secret sexual relationships. While young men are believed to enjoy more sexual liberties, our male participants also felt monitored in their love life. These young people refrain from openly rebelling, because they do not want to disgrace their parents. By taking responsibility for their parents' well-being in their sexual choices, they demonstrate a relational sexual agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to explore young women's experiences of pornography and how they believe pornography has affected both themselves and other adolescents in terms of sexuality and sexual experiences. Seven young women aged 17–18 years were interviewed and their narratives were analyzed through thematic analysis. The results show that the participants' pornography consumption has at times evoked feelings of shame in relation to their official feminist stance. Moreover, they all report experiences of being pressured to adopt a "supporting role" in sex and to perform in line with a narrow pornographic script, thus compromising their wish to enjoy sex and enact sexual agency. It is also evident how the participants have struggled to navigate through the conflicting positions that are available within a postfeminist culture, for instance in relation to feminism, heterosexual gender norms, and the strong ideal of being an "agent" in sex. In the pursuit of young women's healthy sexual development, the results highlight the need for safe female venues, a relational understanding of agency, cultural change rather than individualized responsibility, porn literacy training, and the advancement of broader sexual scripts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Survival sex is the exchange of sex for material goods required for survival (i.e., shelter, food, drugs). Because this exchange occurs under conditions of deprivation, there is a power imbalance that limits the ability to freely consent to sex or to exercise sexual agency. This review aimed to examine the consent and sexual agency implications of survival sex and to identify which factors push people into greater levels of deprivation and vulnerability to engage in survival sex. We searched six databases and included 21 articles that discussed the sexual consent or sexual agency implications of survival sex and synthesized the study findings via qualitative analysis. We identified three themes as they relate to the consent or sexual agency implications of survival sex—power, coercion, and sexual agency—and five themes we called push factors into greater vulnerability to survival sex—hunger, patriarchy, poverty, substance use, and insecure housing. Each factor has the effect of limiting people's capacity to consent to sex by creating a coercive environment that limits their power to exercise sexual agency. We found that women are at particular risk to be coerced into survival sex by other people or circumstances of deprivation. Our findings suggest that survival sex is often nonconsensual sex. In contrast to traditional approaches that consider survival sex a risk factor for sexual health, we discuss policy and advocacy efforts and apply a human rights perspective that considers how survival sex is a violation of personhood and autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there is much attention paid to the connection between social boundaries and consent, the relationship between consent literacy and sexual agency has not yet been explored. This qualitative analysis, which is part of a larger mixed-methods study, sought to explore the relationship between consent literacy and sexual agency in young people. Participants (n = 18) were recruited from nonprofit organizations and were asked to complete a 30–40 minutes semi-structured interview and two questionnaires. Through our grounded theory approach to the analysis of the interviews, we identified three overarching themes and several sub-themes. The main themes were as follows: (1) Young people develop a broad understanding of sexual agency and consent through various social and environmental influences; (2) Most of consent is conceptualized through non-verbal cues ("vibes"), prior communication, and past experience with the person; (3) There are notable differences in demonstrable sexual agency between males and females and non-binary individuals, and between individuals participating in heterosexual versus queer sex acts in establishing and negotiating consent. These results provide preliminary evidence that sexual agency and consent literacy share similarities as they are being used in practice during sexual interactions. Further research is needed to deepen our understanding of how these constructs are related in order to improve levels of consent literacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on key theoretical debates on childhood and youth sexuality in tandem with primary data, the article builds upon and advances existing narratives regarding the tensions surrounding gender, pressure and sexting behaviours among young people. Ultimately, the article illustrates a number of gendered pressures which exist when young people engage in sexting, including a prevailing culture of sexism and exposure to a very prevalent sexual double standard. The range and diversity of gendered pressures present thus raises important questions regarding "appropriate" interventions. Consequently, the author argues for a gender sensitive approach at both policy and practice level. In doing so, the article provides new insights on the complexity of gender roles and thus presents a more nuanced understanding of sexting among young people than previous narratives have suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sexual agency is a fundamental dimension of sexual subjectivity and well-being. Research and theory suggest that it functions in the service of both protection from harm and enabling sexual pleasure. However, sexual agency can be difficult for women to navigate in a social landscape in which femininity ideologies remain powerful social forces, operating in racialized ways. We examined how embodiment, sexual desire, and entitlement to sexual pleasure were associated with sexual agency in the service of protection (i.e., condom use and refusing unwanted sex) and pleasure (i.e., asking for what one wants from a sexual partner) for Black and White heterosexual college women using path analysis and path invariance testing. We found that across race, women's embodiment was associated with greater comfort with their sexual desire, which in turn was associated with greater entitlement to sexual pleasure and sexual agency in service of both pleasure and protection. While Black and White women evidenced similar levels of both forms of agency, Black participants' agency in the service of protection was unrelated to their entitlement to sexual pleasure. We discuss these findings in light of racialized discourses of women's sexuality and the importance of understanding sexual desire as anchored in the body and enabling young women's sexual agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to explore the sexual agency of young people over age 16 labelled as having an intellectual disability. We argue that 30 years of inclusive education have failed to address the question of sexuality education and agency for individuals with an intellectual disability. Contextualising the failure of contemporary sexuality education within schools, and drawing on concepts of subjectivity, the article deconstructs the presumed normalcy of able-bodied sexuality to highlight the inappropriateness of sex education for young people labelled with an intellectual disability. Using Crip theory, it illustrates how the intersectionality between 'abled-bodied-ness' and' 'heteronormativity' converges to lead to the invisibility of individuals with intellectual disability, therefore reinforcing social exclusion from sex and sexuality as a key aspect of citizenship, specifically, the right to a safe and pleasurable sex life. An argument is made for a critical, andragogical approach to sexuality education offering a new paradigm for developing sexuality education to facilitate the sexual agency of individuals with intellectual disability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The complexity of young people's strategic negotiation of sexual agency constitutes a challenge for professionals working in the area of sexuality education. This paper explores how comprehensive sexuality education can support young people to develop sexual agency in all its forms: embodied, bonded, narrative and moral. A first step is to base sexuality education on the recognition of the connectedness of young people to different people and to different sexual cultures. This implies that comprehensive sexuality education should provide the tools that can help young people in the process of taking up a position, forming an identity and embodying a sexual self within their own social and cultural context. Moreover, comprehensive sexuality education should not only be aimed at empowering individuals, but should also address different sexual cultures, gender norms and other social norms, to stimulate critical consciousness and collective agency, and thereby create an environment that enables and supports young people's agency and diminishes inequality and restrictive norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Responding to previous scholars’ call to explore the complexities of child sexual abuse (CSA), this article presents narratives of CSA and scrutinizes a binary construction underpinning this discourse of CSA, namely, the positioning of children as powerless and adults as powerful. The narratives belong to three Indonesian young people who have had sexual interactions with adults when they were children. The findings demonstrate how this binary positioning has been both drawn upon and resisted in the ways participants understand their sexual experiences. This article contributes to the existing literature by providing analyses of some vignettes of everyday experiences of how children might be constituted as sexual subjects, including their capability to exercise agency, perform resistance, and negotiate ethics. The implications of the findings are discussed in relation to how the recognition of children as sexual subjects and their sexual agency might be beneficial for parents, educators, and counselors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectification theorists argue that repeated exposure to sexually objectifying media content leads to higher levels of self-objectification. Although consequences of self-objectification for women’s sexual health and sexual agency have been proposed, efforts to test these connections have been infrequent and have yielded inconsistent results. We used structural equation modeling to test connections between exposure to three media genres (women’s magazines, lifestyle reality TV, and situation comedies), self-sexualization, and four dimensions of sexual agency among 754 heterosexual and bisexual undergraduate women aged 16–23 (M = 18.5). Our assessments of sexual agency focused on sexual assertiveness, condom use self-efficacy, sexual affect, and alcohol use to feel sexual. Findings confirmed our expectations. More frequent consumption of women’s magazines, lifestyle reality TV programs, and situation comedies each predicted greater self-sexualization, which in turn predicted greater use of alcohol to feel sexual, less condom use self-efficacy, and more negative sexual affect. We discuss implications for women’s sexual well-being and for research on media sexualization. We also offer suggestions for practitioners, parents, and educators to disrupt the associations among media use, self-sexualization, and diminished sexual agency. Online slides for instructors who want to use this article for teaching are available on PWQ’s website athttp://journals.sagepub.com/page/pwq/suppl/index [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past two decades, comprehensive sexuality education has increasingly been recognised as a measure that positively impacts on the sexual behaviour of young people in Africa. Despite this, and a political call to scale-up the use of comprehensive sexuality education in schools in South Africa, learners with disabilities continue to be left behind. Besides contending with negative hegemonic constructs of disabled sexualities, educators of learners with disabilities lack skills and resources to teach sexuality in accessible formats. Based on this premise, a comprehensive sexuality education approach - Breaking the Silence - was developed and piloted to assist educators of learners with disabilities to provide access to comprehensive sexuality education in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. This article presents results from the formative evaluation of this pilot work and discusses educators' perceptions of their learners with intellectual disabilities' sexual knowledge, agency and behaviour after implementing the approach. Although educators appeared to situate learners with intellectual disabilities as sexual agents, their implementation of the approach was dependent on the cognitive ability of learners, and discourses of culture, gender and protection from violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses how South African Indian teenage men and women conceptualise desire, sex and love, their resistance to and accommodation of gender inequalities within relationship dynamics. It calls attention to a reconceptualisation of childhoods that extends agency to sexuality beyond a preoccupation with sexual danger. By focusing on the diversity of sexual meanings, attention is given to the plurality of childhood sexual experiences among South African Indian teenagers. Finally, the article argues that deeper insight into teenage pleasure and power can sharpen interventions that promote healthy teenage sexualities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This journal edition explores the complex relationship between disability and sexuality for people receiving informal care provided from a family member or partner. Rarely does academic literature explore the personal experience, identity and the private relationships of disabled people, particularly within the context of care. As such both scholars and social workers have largely undermined disabled people's ability to control their own lives; including their sexual identity and intimate relationships within care settings. Within this paper I argue that the extent to which sexual agency can be exercised is influenced by intersecting parts of people's lives, such as having independence and supportive social networks. This paper will explore the complexities of personal relationships amongst disabled people receiving informal care, examining the limitations to intimacy and wider social life. Informal care can be extremely disempowering for both carers and those being cared for, often regulating their lives through the imposition of routine and structure, leaving little room for spontaneity. Therefore, for some disabled people and their carers this regulation and control of everyday life can have a significant impact on personal relationships, self-esteem and independence. Using case studies based on face-to-face interviews, this paper will explore the impact of informal care on personal relationships of people with a range of physical, mental and learning impairments. I propose that academia and social care professionals can learn from the personal experiences of the active disabled voice within research, particularly in relation to exploring intersectionality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young women's sexuality traditionally has been marked along a gendered moralist continuum of sexual activity, ranging from virtuous (virgins) to licentious (sluts). However, this one-dimensional model cannot easily accommodate substantive changes in the norms that influence girls' sexualities. Contemporary scholarship generated across the Anglophone West includes many signs that such a shift has occurred, ushered in by the cultural and ideological suffusion of neoliberalism. I enlist interdisciplinary and international evidence of neoliberalism's influence on constructions of girls' sexuality to argue that in the U.S., girls are now judged on their adherence not only to gendered moralist norms, but also to a neoliberal script of sexual agency. In addition to reviewing conceptual and empirical grounds for this claim, I consider the multidimensional normative field created by the intersection of this Agency Line with the long-standing Virgin-Slut Continuum. The primacy of agency within neoliberal discourse seems to legitimize women's sexual autonomy and its subjective nature may permit them some control over their position above the Agency Line. But upon critical inspection it becomes clear that young women remain confined to a prescribed normative space that divides them from one another, compels self-blame, and predicates their worth on cultural appraisals of their sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How young women negotiate sexual agency in first sex is contingent upon the specific social construction of female and male sexuality and the sexual double standards in a particular local context. Within Philippine Roman Catholicism, a strong religious moral discourse equates virginity with a woman’s honor, making first sex or virginity loss a source of shame. This has implications for women’s experiences of sexual agency. We report on research in which a group of eight young Filipina women wrote their memories of first sex and collectively analyzed these memories. Using thematic analysis, we derived five themes about why they engaged in first sex: (1) “giving in,” (2) “nadala” or “carried away,” (3) love, (4) self-expression, and (5) coercion. Avoiding sexual agency in giving in and nadala is linked to the experience of pain, loss, and shame. Recognizing sexual agency by articulating first sex as a need for sexual self-expression is tied to the experience of pleasure. The absence of sexual agency is seen in the experience of coercion and subsequent trauma. Despite variations in these women’s constructions of first sex, each can be seen as ways of preserving a woman’s social status and maintaining a “good girl” position. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: In South Africa, both HIV and gender-based violence are highly prevalent. Gender inequalities give men considerable relational power over young women, particularly in circumstances of poverty and where sex is materially rewarded. Young women are often described as victims of men, but this inadequately explains women’s observed sexual agency. This paper takes a different approach. We use qualitative interviews and ethnographic observation among 16 young women from the rural Eastern Cape to explore ways young women construct their femininities and exercise agency. The data were collected as part of an evaluation of Stepping Stones, which is a participatory behavioural intervention for HIV prevention that seeks to be gender transformative. Agency was most notable in particular stages of the dating ‘game’, especially relationship initiation. Constructions of desirable men differed but generally reflected a wish to avoid violence, and a search for mutual respect, sexual pleasure, romance, modernity, status and money. Agency was constrained once relationships were consented to, as men expected to control their partners, using violent and non-violent methods. Women knew this and many accepted this treatment, although often expressing ambivalence. Many of the women expressed highly acquiescent femininities, with power surrendered to men, as a ‘choice’ that made their lives in cultural terms more meaningful. In marked contrast to this was a ‘modern’ femininity, centred around a desire to be ‘free’. A visible third position, notably emerging after the Stepping Stones intervention, rested not on a feminist challenge to patriarchy, but on an accommodation with men’s power whilst seeking to negotiate greater respect and non-violence within relations with men. These multiple and dynamic femininities open up possibilities for change. They demonstrate the need to engage with women, both as victims of patriarchy and active supporters of the gender order. The multiplicity of women’s hopes and desires and circumstances of emotional and relational fulfilment provides potential for interventions with women that acknowledge existing gender inequalities, validate women’s agency, reduce violence and prevent HIV. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

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This qualitative study examined 14 young women's view of their sexual agency and sexual experiences. In particular the women discuss the messages communicated about female sexuality from their parents. Previous research results were supported, such as that parents do not communicate about sex frequently, when they do refer to it they cover only limited topics and that mothers communicate more frequently about sex than fathers do. Utilizing a feminist position, themes of parental transmission of traditional gender role expectations were found, such as asexuality, the passive role of women in their sexuality and the commodification of sex in exchange for commitment. Implications for parenting practices, research foci and the importance of developing sexual agency are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contemporary Vietnam, young, unmarried, educated women are struggling to negotiate the contradictory expectations of femininity. Qualitative research conducted in Hanoi with 13 unmarried, educated women, aged from 25 to 34 years, explored women's sexual agency in a context of changing discourses on sexuality and gender roles. Interviews were conducted several times with each woman to enable in-depth understanding of sexual experiences and meanings. Either implicitly or explicitly, women in the research were found to resist the power of public discourses on femininity and sexuality. Notions of femininity can be interpreted as a temporary means for women to gain control over sexual relationships. It is crucial to acknowledge the sexual agency of unmarried, educated women and its diverse forms in order to understand complex sexual behaviours and to promote their sexual rights and health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study introduces the notion of nonagentic sexual inter-action and presents findings describing its prevalence, characteristics, and consequences among a representative sample of 566 undergraduate women. One third of respondents reported one or more nonagentic sexual interactions during a single academic year, and more than half of the senior respondents reported one or more interactions during their college careers. Relations between these interactions' behavioral characteristics and four psychological outcome measures provide limited empirical support for the notion that interactions involving a higher degree of physical intrusion and more forceful tactics are more distressing than those involving less intrusion and more subtle tactics. Narrative accounts illustrate the complexity of these interactions. Implications of nonagentic sexual experiences for healthy sexuality development are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this feminist grounded theory study was to understand the meaning and experience of postmenopausal women's sexual desire. Data collection from 22 postmenopausal women who were ongoing participants of the TREMIN Research Program on Women's Health occurred via audiotaped, telephone based, semistructured interviews. Women's descriptions of their sexual needs and desires led to the discovery of the core category, negotiating sexual agency, which refers to women's ability to act on behalf of their sexual needs, desires, and wishes. Women negotiated their sexual agency within three main domains (or axial codes): their own sexual self, their partners, and the medical system. An important finding was women's internalization of sociocultural assumptions that privilege their male partners' sexual needs over their own. The findings of this study, especially the contexts in which women negotiate their sexual agency, are important for women, women's health care providers, and women's life partners to understand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]