A focus on pleasure: disgust, comfort and fun in young people’s accounts of sexual relationships
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The right to sexual pleasure has been central to the politicizing and theorising of sexuality for socially marginalised groups for over half a century. More recently this discourse of politicized pleasure has been applied to young people to critique contemporary frameworks of youthful sexuality and to advocate for more effective and holistic sexuality education and health service provision. This paper draws on focus group data from a mixed methods study on young people’s understandings and experiences of sexual pleasure. An analysis of this data will be used to explore some of the ways in which sexual pleasure is discussed, silenced and performed by young people in the group context. My analysis will focus on how concepts of disgust, comfort and fun materialise in these group spaces as ways for young people to negotiate the shifting and uncertain moral boundaries around sex, pleasure and desire. In each group, these concepts are gendered, classed and raced, producing collective accounts of pleasure and sexual morality that are uneven and uncomfortable. The paper will use this analysis to consider whether focusing on sexual pleasure in theory and research can generate imaginative and critical spaces for understanding young people’s sexual relationships.
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A focus on pleasure: disgust, comfort and fun in young people’s accounts of sexual relationships
- 1. A focus on pleasure? Disgust, comfort and fun in young people’s accounts of sexual relationships Ester McGeeney The Open University Sociology in an Age of Austerity: BSA Annual Conference 2012
- 2. Exploratory work January – Feb 2010 5 exploratory focus groups and survey pilot Fieldwork April 2010 – November 2010 Stage 1: Survey (n281) Stage 2: Focus Groups x4 (n14) Stage 3: Individual in-depth interviews (n16) Diverse sample of young people 16-26 who live, work, study or access a service in a north London borough. Methods
- 3. ‘A genuine discourse of desire would invite adolescents to explore what feels good and bad, desirable and undesirable, grounded in experiences, needs, and limits. Such a discourse would release females from a position of receptivity, enable an analysis of the dialectics of victimization and pleasure, and would pose female adolescents as subjects of sexuality, initiators as well as negotiators.’ (Michelle Fine 1988). ‘While it may be unacceptable in most cultures to suggest that teaching young people how to achieve sexual pleasure is valuable, there are increasing indications— from developing as well as developed countries—that public health outcomes may benefit from a greater acceptance of positive sexual experiences. It is suggested that greater comfort with one's own body will enable greater ability to communicate wishes to others, and to be less ‘pressured’ into unwanted sexual relationships.’ (Roger Ingham 2005) ‘A discourse of erotics would involve the acknowledgement that all young people, whatever their gender and sexual identity (transgender, intersex, female, male, lesbian, gay, bisexual, heterosexual or something else), are sexual subjects who have a right to experience sexual pleasure and desire. Including this discourse within programmes is about creating spaces in which young people’s sexual desire and pleasure can be legitimated, positively integrated and deemed common place.’ (Louisa Allen 2004)
- 4. Focus group 3 Ester Researcher Graham Sexual health worker Steven Youth worker Wits, Tats, Luke Ryan, Mark, H. 6 participants – all male, heterosexual and aged 16- 21.
- 5. Telling sexual stories: comfort, disgust and authority SH worker: You were saying that with the same person it gets dull, but the thing that I, the thing tha-my personal opinion is, that with the same person, if you are able to talk to that person, if you are able to communicate with that person, what happens is those things that you wanna try out or that person wants to try out, you can do that with that same person because they're comfortable talking to you, they're comfortable trying new things and those new things can be stuff that you wouldn't be able to do with someone whose- Youth worker: - Like a one night stand. SH worker: Yeah Ryan: Big man ting. That's true though like you know when, you know when you just meet a girl yeah, you don't wanna try it all like try everything with her innit? Cos obviously like…. Wits: Not being funny or nothing but if you're with someone, you're going to do that over time, but if its just a slag - Luke: Its just a quick (slaps hands twice) Wits: - Obviously its just a quick beat* and then... Noise - all talking at once. Wits: What happened the last time I left here? What happened last week, the last time I left here. Youth worker: I had already left. Wits: And then the slag was over there and I asked her what happened. And before I know… Loud laughter, all talking Tats: She got drag out! Youth worker: You are joking? Wits: No, obviously. I went [the park] innit? But man never had to speech it or do nuttin you get me? But, I could have done whatever I wanted. Youth worker: You all said, you all said - Wits: Its the first time I ever met her in my life! * to beat = to have sex
- 6. Telling sexual stories: disgust and desire for the stinking ‘thing’ in the lift Wits: Was you there when I brought that thing to [the Oxford Estate]? The thing that Trigger brought back from Kings Cross? Tats: And she stunk out the whole block! Wits: Bruv, she stunk out. I swear to you Graham yeah, I’m beating it, and I’m opening the lift door at the same time, that’s how bad it was, this girl was absolutely foul. I just had to come out of there! Laughter Youth Worker: But had she had sex with someone else before you? Wits: Yeah Trigger, that bastard! Laughter Wits: That bastard violated the whole sin bruv! Laughter. All talking at once. Wits: Uuuh she was stinking! Ester: So, why, why did you have sex with her? Wits: Cos obviously at first innit, cos as soon as I started you know like having sex with her obviously, the smell, just something started coming up and I was like, nah, ‘llow this bruv. Tats: Off fish. Luke: Yeah off meat. From Dalston!* Mark: Off meat from Dalston! *Dalston = an area in Hackney, North East London where there is a cheap local market that sells meat and fish.
- 7. Imagining sexual futures: Upper class girls, respect and social exclusion Tats: You gotta go out and explore and find some more upper class girls. Ryan: (puts on Caribbean accent) Get out and go fishing man! Youth worker: So its, change, changing the type of girl you're looking for then? Tats: Yeah, you get me. Luke: Yeah, you know what type of girls I look for? Them sort of women that walk out of [the tube] station at half five. Youth worker. And what do you think they will see in you? Laughter and talking all at once, calling out 'at half five!’ Youth worker : For what reason? What’s the difference then? Luke: I dunno they’re upper class innit? Working, secretary looking, you know the ones I'm saying? Youth worker : So because they are working? Ester: What they're rich-richer? You mean or? Youth worker : Or they're working? SH worker: Or is it, is it a state of mind? Because they're working it shows something about them, that maybe? Ryan: That they got self respect innit. Wits: Yeah, like more and more girls these days are just like on the roads, like what are you really doing, they're just like out! Luke: Yeah, yeah, I want an older woman, I want an older woman! Wits: Like those two girls from Stevenage, what do they do? Laughter Wits: They come down from Stevenage, they go jump on the 29 [bus], they go from Camden to Holloway, to Camden to Holloway and Finsbury Park and just get batteried out the whole bus lines. Tats: Disgusting sight, disgusting. Wits: But what do they do? Tats: That’s why I don't want to have a daughter. Things like that. That's appalling. SH Worker: So, a girl who works is more like- a girl who doesn’t work is more likely to sleep around do you think? Wits: Yeah, a girl that don't work, just like, on the road, what's she doing? She obviously more likely to just be stepped out, sleeping about and that innit, a girl that’s obviously working, whose got something-obviously something to do with her time. Like that would be the girl that would be more likely to be wanting a relationship and a proper life innit, not just going around, sleeping about.
Notas del editor
- Introduce paper – give overview Outline – going to introduce the research, provide a brief reflective account of my experience of conducting the group and analysing the data. Show three data extracts. 1 group 3 data extracts The three concepts that appear in the title of my presentation – fun, comfort and disgust were key concepts that emerged from my analysis of the focus group data.
- My PhD research is a mixed methods project consisting of an initial stage of exploratory and pilot work followed by a survey, four focus groups and in-depth interviews with 16 young people. Part of the rationale for using this multi method, reflexive research design is to explore the methodological possibilities for researching sexual pleasure with young people – an apparently sensitive, taboo topic with a vulnerable population. What kind of ‘safe spaces’ (to use Michelle Fine’s term from her much cited article on the missing discourses of desire in sex education) can we create for researching sexual pleasure with young people? And what are would the implications of these methodological insights be for thinking about whether and how to include sexual pleasure in sexual health work with young people? My desire to provide this kind of reflexive account and to look in detail at what is going on in the group space when we ask young people to talk about sexual pleasure is part of this methodological line of inquiry that runs throughout my PhD research.
- My research is an exploratory study looking at young people’s understandings of ‘good sex’ and sexual pleasure. This research was shaped in response to the calls from sexual health practitioners and academic working within the fields of public health and gender and sexuality studies for sexual pleasure to be included and prioritised in sexual health work with young people. Some of you may be familiar with some of the arguments which although not new, I would suggest have been gaining currency and popularity in the last 5 years both within the academic fields of public heath and gender and sexuality studies and within practitioner circles. These arguments broadly suggest that including pleasure in sexual health work with young people would enable educators to provide young people with accounts of sexuality that are more holistic, critical, realistic and equitable than the dominant accounts of sexuality that young people access through pornography, popular media representations of sexuality and through current sex education programmes.
- During the second stage of fieldwork I conducted 4 focus groups with young people. In each of the groups I led an activity called ‘What is good sex?’ in which I gave the group a set of cards each of which contained a quote from previous research about ‘good sex’ and sexual pleasure. In each group I spread the cards out on the table and asked the groups to pick cards that they agreed / disagreed with and discuss them with the group. Three of these groups I put together from a pool of volunteer participants I recruited whilst conducting a survey during the first stage of my research, and one further group that I will discuss in this paper, that was with a pre- existing’ or ‘pre-acquainted’ group of young men who were taking part in a series of outreach sexual health sessions, and with whom I was able, rather opportunistically, to conduct a focus group with at the last minute. The group consisted initially of 5 young men, with a 6th joining later and sitting silently to one side, the youth worker Steven, the sexual health outreach worker Graham and me. The young men were aged 17-21 and were part of a peer group and local gang that worked illegally selling drugs from a nearby housing estate. None of the young men worked legally and only one was in education – the youth worker Steven who had been working with the boys for several years told me that none of the boys had been able to sustain any period of employment or training since leaving school. This slide visualises the groups that I conducted – I want to draw attention to the group and I hope to capture the embodied and interactive quality of focus group data in my paper. The strangeness of putting bodies together in a room and talking about sexual pleasure. Emotion and affect.
- This extract follows a discussion during which the boys have been talking about the pleasure of having sex and experimenting with new and different sexual partners and claiming that having sex with the same girl too many times gets boring and repetitive. This discussion leads to an amused discussion between the boys about Mark’s drunken sexual experience the previous night. Here, we can see Graham, the sexual health worker, trying to draw the group back to a more ‘serious’ discussion and to provide the boys with an educational message about the value of long term couple relationships in creating a positive context for good communication and comfortable sexual experimentation. If you are able to communicate with that person, what happens is those things that you wanna try out or that person wants to try out, you can do that with that same person because they're comfortable talking to you, they're comfortable trying new things and those new things can be stuff that you wouldn't be able to do with someone whose- (and Steven offers – ) a one night stand. This account of ‘good sex’ that Graham offers to the boys is an account that is set up and validated in the other three focus groups that I conducted. I refer to this as ‘the sexual comfort model’ in which feeling comfortable with yourself and your partner and being able to communicate verbally about sex with your partner are all valued and seen as essential for the experience of good, comfortable sex. Although Graham states that this view point is his ‘personal opinion’ it is an account that sits comfortably with sex education discourses about ‘healthy’ relationships, and the importance of negotiating consent and contraception use. In this group, the ‘sexual comfort’ account is contested by the young men. As we can see in this extract, Wits undermines the authority of Graham’s account through telling his own story of ‘what happened’ after he left last week’s the sexual health education session. In this story, Wits leaves the youth centre, meets a girl on the street for the first time and (presumably) has sex with her in the local park – he states that her ‘never had to speech it or nuttin’ and he ‘could have done whatever he wanted’. Instead, Wits’ story affirms the potential for pleasure and the excitement of discovery within anonymous, casual sexual encounters. This is the pleasure of sexual conquest and immediate gratification, the pleasure of the ‘quickie’ – or as the young men say - a ‘quick beat’. In the context of this discussion, the telling of this sexual story also works to undermine the authority of the sexual health professional as a knowledge source and as the author of what counts as good sex. Just as Ryan looks like he might agree with Graham (that’s true though) Wits interrupts and tells his own story thus asserting the value of personal sexual experience as a form of learning and knowledge accumulation whilst simultaneously consolidating his own sexual prowess and position or authority within the group. Wits dominated much of the discussion in this focus group and appeared to hold a powerful position within the group hierarchy. He was the most prolific story teller within the group and continually referenced and described different sexual encounters he had experienced. The telling of these stories – as we can see here – was generally collective, with the whole group contributing, chipping in, laughing and bantering. I would suggest that this collective telling of stories of male sexual conquest over nameless, faceless ‘slags’ sets up a collective account of disgust that functions within this group space as a way for the young men to assert their moral authority in relation to young women, whilst also defying the authority of the three professionals in the room. These processes are evident in this next extract in which Wits’ leads the collective telling of another sexual story which emerges as both a ‘funny story’ and a collective expression of disgust.
- Context of talking about ‘bad sex’. Where is the desire in this story? Unable to discuss motivations for sex / desire for this woman. Returns the conversation to the performance of disgust.
- In this extract the young men are responding to my question about how they think their sexual relationship and experiences might change over the next few years. In response to my invitation to imagine a sexual future for themselves the young men collecting evoke an image of embodied class privilege and professional respectability. Tats introduces this image here - you gotta go out and explore and find some upper class girls’ Luke elaborates – them sort of women that walk out of the tube station at half five – they’re upper class inniit, working, secretary looking. Ryan adds – they have got more self respect. The discussion then moves to another performance of disgust for girls who are ‘on the road’, who don’t work and who just ride bus routes and hang around having sex. Here Wits summarises the contrast that they are making in this extract between respect and desire for the professionalism of the ‘upper class girls’ who appear in their local area after work, and disgust for the girls, who like them are young and jobless, with nothing to do but spend time on the road, sleeping around. I remember being shocked by the youth worker Steven’s comment to Luke – what do you think they will see in you? That seemed to slip out before Steven could stop himself. Although the boys smoothed over this awkward moment with their laughter, Steven’s comment laid bare the gaping inequality between the boys current marginalised socio-economic position and the culture of professionalism (IMY 1980) to which they are playfully aspiring to access through their future sexual relationships. Steven’s comment also reveals the inequalities of age and professionalism that shape the power dynamics between the young men and Steven, Graham and I – a hierarchy that the boys may have contested throughout this group encounter through the use of humour, subversive story telling and the powerful mobilisation of disgust, but one that may not be so easily dislodged outside of this particular context. Ryan’s comment that the upper class girls have ‘got more self respect innit?’ seems momentarily to acknowledge this hierarchy of respectability that Steven has just evoked that positions the young men and their current sexual partners as inferior and excluded from respectable, desirable middle class professionalism. This uncomfortable moment is quickly closed down however by Wits through telling a new hyperbolic story of disgusting female excess, and as Tats joins in (disgusting sight, disgusting, that’s why I don’t want to have a daughter - appalling), the group appear to have thus collectively re-established the young men’s, situationally precarious moral authority on the boundaries of good, respectable sex.