Amor, sexo e género: trajectórias íntimas do/s jovens adultos para a vida adulta (original) (raw)

Based on semi-structured interviews with 60 young people, aged 18-29 years old, living in Leiria, Portugal, and belonging to different social backgrounds, this work analyses the intimate paths of a group of young people and its articulation with their transitions into adulthood, taking into special attention the representations, values and norms that guide young people’s sexual and/or love practices and relationships, and the contexts, networks and social positions in which they are immersed. Thus, it’s argued that young people’s knowledge about sexuality and their construction of sexual and gender identities is based in multiple socialization spaces, as the family, friends, partners, media and the new information technologies, that can transmit contradictory information and/or have different possibility fields. In these contexts young people create their own patchwork of ideas (Almeida, 2013). Thereafter, young people tend to have diverse, multiple and, often, contradictory practices and representations of sexuality; drawing on different sexual scripts that exist in society (romantic, essentialist, hedonist...) according to their social circumstances and positioning, their interpersonal encounters, and the possibilities they admit at an intra-psychic level. Simultaneously, it’s argued that the domain of intimacy, namely sexuality, it’s not trivial for young people’s transitions into adulthood. Intimacy, affection, sexuality and gender have practical implications in their lifestyles and/or may affect young their expectations, especially concerning leaving home, conjugality and/or parenthood. Finally, the importance of intimacy and the relational aspects of life are underlined, e.g. in terms of family relations, friendship, sexual and love relationships and parenthood, against the “risks” of the individualized world, of contemporary western societies