DIMENSIONS OF DESIRE.: Bridging Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in a Study of Female Adnlescent Sexuality (original) (raw)
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Getting Beyond "It Just Happened": Adolescent Girls' Experiences of Sexual Desire
1999
This document describes research pertaining to adolescent females' perceptions of sexual desire. It analyzes 30 interviews of girls, 15-18 years old, who are juniors in suburban and urban high schools. The key finding was identified as the dilemma of desire. Girls responded to the dilemma in three ways: simply not feeling the desire, resisting their own desire, or making a claim to their own desire. No pattern was found of race, ethnicity, or social location in each of these resolutions voiced by the girls. A narrative of one female's sexual encounters and a description of her sexuality is included.. Sexual desire, like all other forms of desire, can be empowering, instrumental in girls' confidence in themselves, essential to their agency, a compass for making decisions about relationships and sexuality, and a road to knowledge about self and relationships. We have to make it possible for girls to get beyond "it just happened" by fighting for girls' right to feel and act upon their own sexual feelings without having to be encumbered by the dilemma of desire. (Author/JDM) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.
Psychology of Women Quarterly, 1999
This study provides an example of how feminist psychology can bridge qualitative and quantitative methods while keeping lived experience at the center of an inquiry. The goal of the study was to begin to understand adolescent girls' experiences of sexual desire. We describe three separate and synergistically related analyses of interviews with 30 adolescent girls. We begin with a qualitative analysis of their voiced experiences of sexual desire; follow with a quantitative analysis of the differences in how urban and suburban girls describe these experiences, assessing the role of reported sexual violation; and conclude with a second qualitative analysis exploring the interaction between social location and reported sexual violation. These three analyses enabled us to understand qualitatively and to quantify interrelated dimensions of desire as described by adolescent girls.
Object Lessons: Romance, Violation, and Female Adolescent Sexual Desire
Journal of Sex Education and Therapy, 2000
The familiar story that organizes "normal" female adolescent sexuality is a romance narrative in which a (good) girl, who is on a quest for love, does not feel sexual desire-strong, embodied, passionate feelings of sexual wanting. In this story, sexual desire is male; it is intractable, uncontrollable, and victimizing. There continues to be no readily available image or story of a normal girl who has and responds to her own sexual desire. Following a social constructivist perspective, the ways in which we do and do not "story" sexuality into being are definitive in how we make meaning out of our bodies and our relationships, and so the ways in which we do and do not speak about sexuality are crucial. This perspective also suggests that providing critiques and alternatives to sanctioned stories can be a crucial intervention. This point is illustrated by following the stories that are available to one girl for understanding her sexuality, and by portraying the tensions, revelations, and challenges that the interplay between these stories and her lived experiences produce. The use of a method for analyzing narratives to develop an understanding of adolescent girls' sexuality in terms of their own desire is described. The article presents an analysis of a case from the author 's current exploration of how girls' knowledge and experiences of their bodies and of their desire is shaped, enabled, and undermined by stories available in the culture about female intimate relationships and sexuality.
Feminist Ideals for a Healthy Female Adolescent Sexuality: A Critique
Sex Roles, 2009
This paper explores the ideals of healthy sexuality for teenage girls in the U.S. proposed by feminist theorists and researchers. Current ideals emphasize desire, pleasure, and subjectivity, and appear to be a response to three historically problematic areas for women and girls: objectification; abuse and victimization; and stereotypes of female passivity. There are, however, several problems with using these qualities as markers of healthy sexuality. This essay discusses these problems, including the rigid dichotomizing of subject and object, the idea that desire, pleasure, and subjectivity may have different historical meanings for girls from diverse backgrounds; and that using pleasure as a gauge for whether sex is "good" has moral implications that may undermine other important goals of feminism.
“Sexual pleasure on equal terms”: young women’s ideal sexual situations
Journal of Psychosomatic Obstetrics & Gynecology, 2012
The aim of this study was to identify young women's ideal images of sexual situations and expectations on themselves in sexual situations. We conducted audio-taped qualitative individual interviews with 14 women aged 14 to 20 years, visiting two youth centers in Sweden. Data were analysed with constant comparative analysis, the basis of grounded theory methodology. The women's ideal sexual situations in heterosexual practice were characterized by sexual pleasure on equal terms, implying that no one dominates and both partners get pleasure. There were obstacles to reaching this ideal, such as influences from social norms and demands, and experiences of the partner's "own run". An incentive to reach the ideal sexual situation was the wish to experience the well of pleasure. Our research further accentuates the importance of finding ways to focus on the complexity of unequal gender norms in youth heterosexuality. A better understanding of these cognitions is essential and useful among professionals working with youths' sexual health.
Female adolescents, sexual empowerment and desire: A missing discourse of gender inequity
In this commentary, I offer a response to . I base these comments on the feminist scholarship on adolescent girls' healthy sexuality that Lamb (2010a) critiqued in the first of this series. I address and redress several of her concerns by providing the context and history of my own research and recovering the meanings of desire, pleasure and subjectivity as they appeared in this body of work. I then engage Lamb and Peterson's points of consensus about the role of sexual empowerment in adolescent girls' healthy sexuality by 1) positioning sexualization as more than a context; 2) identifying a missing discourse of gender inequity as a central issue in their discussion; and 3) explaining how the use of theory and interpretation in feminist research methods is necessary for and distinct from a surface reading of narratives of lived experience. Finally, I will provide examples of some alternative paths for supporting healthy adolescent women's sexuality that extend beyond school-based sex education and media literacy into alternative engagements with girls through technology, media activism and participatory practices.
Over-Sexed and Under Surveillance: Adolescent Sexualities, Cultural Anxieties, and Thick Desire
The Politics of Pleasure in Sexuality Education: Pleasure Bound, 2014
"In this chapter, we extend our earlier work on sexuality education in U.S. public schools in which we forwarded a theory of adolescent sexuality, which we called thick desire (Fine & McClelland, 2006). We chose the metaphor of thickness in order to evoke the multi-faceted ‘nature’ of sexual desire and to underline our reading of desire as a product of intimate and social negotiations. In contrast to contemporary theories that frame sexual desire as emerging solely from individual motivation, behaviour, or fantasy (within the person or the couple; see Basson 2000, 2001; Brotto, Bitzer, Laan, Leiblum, & Luria, 2010; Carvalho & Nobre, 2010; cf., Kaschak & Tiefer, 2001), thick desire invites a theoretical and methodological intervention. It reminds us that bodies adhere with connective tissue to economic, political, historic, and psychological landscapes—meaning that desire never stands on its own. It is a concept we placed into feminist discourse to signal how bodies are linked to social arrangements, politics, yearnings, deprivations, and betrayals in public settings and that these connections—both supportive and restrictive—inform how young people learn to develop a sense of desire. Thick desire encourages researchers and policy makers alike to situate desire as an ‘entry point’ (McClelland & Frost, 2014), a window through which we might begin to notice the extensive web of factors in a person’s life, family, community, and nation when making evaluations and recommendations about how individuals can and should learn about, practice, and engage with sexuality."
Phenomenological Research and Adolescent Female Sexuality: Discoveries and Applications
This paper presents research in female first sexual intercourse in Australia. Previous research in adolescent sexual behavior, particularly issues around first sexual intercourse behavior, has mainly utilized quantitative methodology. Our research adopted a qualitative approach to provide unique insight into adolescent sexual behavior, attitudes, and development. We used phenomenology to investigate adolescent female sexual experiences. The findings can inform national and international sexuality education.