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Article Excerpt
Partnered sexual activity is typically construed in dichotomous terms as consensual or not (i.e., rape), a categorical approach that presumes a consensual sexual encounter is also a wanted one (Peterson & Muehlenhard, 2007). Contrary to this common conflation of consent and wantedness, a growing number of studies indicate that saying "yes" to a partner's sexual overtures does not necessarily signal unequivocal interest or desire. Research suggests that almost half (between 44% and 47%) of all sexually active American undergraduates have consented to unwanted coitus (O'Sullivan & Allgeier, 1998: Sprecher, Hatfield, Cortese, Potapova, & Levitskaya, 1994). Among these studies, significant gender differences have also been identified. In their daily diary study, O'Sullivan and Allgeier (1998) found that 50% of the college women in their sample reported having had unwanted coitus over the 2-week data collection period, compared with 26% of male participants. Similarly, in their sample of American undergraduate students, Sprecher et al. found that 55% of female participants and 35% of male participants had consented to unwanted coitus. In their examination of the sexual health of African American adolescent women, Sionean et al. (2002) found that 31% of study participants had unwanted coitus in the previous 6 months. Finally, analysis of the nationally representative data of the 1995 National Study of Family Growth (NSFG) yielded evidence that although the vast majority (91%) of female adolescent respondents described their first coitus as voluntary, 25% also said it was unwanted (Abma, Driscoll, & Moore, 1998).
Given the relatively high incidence rate of consensual but unwanted coitus among adolescent and adult women, it is important to carefully consider how unwanted sex of all types (i.e., not only coitus) 1 unfolds and how young women understand these experiences not only as a function of individual psychology but also in terms of the cultural contexts and discourses in which they are situated. In line with this reasoning, we elected to conduct a qualitative analysis of undergraduate women's descriptions of their unwanted sexual experiences, with particular attention paid to the influence of both gendered and neoliberal norms. These data were gathered from participants in interviews using the Sexual Life History Calendar (SLHC), a participant-centered, mixed-method approach designed by the first author as a means of gathering retrospective, contextualized, and nuanced accounts of young women's sexual histories.
Influence of Gendered Sexual Norms
Generally, unwanted sex can be defined as partnered sexual activity to which one consents but may not desire sexually or otherwise. Close study of unwanted sex, however has revealed the ambiguity and complexity of consent and wantedness (Muehlenhard & Peterson, 2005). Recent research by Peterson and Muehlenhard (2007) indicates that wantedness is a continuous and multidimensional construct: an individual might want a sexual interaction for various reasons (e.g., sexual arousal, for peer approval) and simultaneously not want it for others (e.g., concerns about sexually transmitted infections [STIs], fear of parental disapproval). As mentioned, the incidence of unwanted sex among men is significantly lower than that among women (O'Sullivan & Allgeier, 1998). While some of the reasons given by young women for consenting to sex that is at least partially unwanted seem to exist outside of a gendered context (e.g., consenting in spite of worries about STIs because she is also sexually aroused), others appear to be products of gender norms and scripts, what Gavey (2005) refers to as the "cultural scaffolding of rape." For instance, studies have shown that many young women consent to or want sexual contact due to the following: the wish to maintain a relationship (Impett & Peplau, 2002); feeling that a male partner was aroused to a point of no return (Shotland & Hunter, 1995); partner pressure, ranging from "sweet-talking" to explicit threats (Gavey, 1992; Livingston, Buddie, Testa, & VanZile-Tamsen, 2004); fear of negative partner response to women's initiation of behaviors such as condom use (Sionean et al., 2002); and self-protection against violence (Basile, 1999).
While some research regarding unwanted sex has been dedicated to identifying factors that increase the likelihood of its occurrence (e.g., social settings such as unsupervised parties and developmental factors such as sexual inexperience; Livingston, Hequembourg, Testa, & VanZile-Tamsen, 2007), much of it has focused on feminist critique of the gender norms that make unsupervised parties and sexual inexperience so hazardous for young women in the first place. Feminist researchers have documented how heteronormative expectations that women be visually and behaviorally pleasing to men (e.g., Phillips' [2000] Pleasing Woman discourse), that women be devoid of independent sexual interests and motives (Morokoff, 2000), and that men be perpetually and unquestioningly interested in sex (i.e., "always-already"; Gavey, 2005; Walker, 1997) interlock to disadvantage women and privilege men in negotiating terms of sexual and romantic engagement.
Influence of Neoliberal Sexual Norms
Conventional prescriptions for a passive and pleasing female sexuality operate alongside simultaneous--and seemingly oppositional--expectations that women portray themselves as wantonly and flagrantly sexual. Through mainstreaming of "raunch culture" (Levy, 2006), women and even young girls are encouraged to perform and act out sexual personae previously reserved for women porn stars and prostitutes (or at least caricatures thereof; American Psychological Association Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls, 2007). Importantly, this sexualization and objectification of girls and women is passed off as women's sexual empowerment (for a review of the wide-ranging, detrimental effects of sexual objectification, see the report issued by the American Psychological Association Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls, 2007). Phillips (2000) accounted for the proliferation of objectifying, pseudo-empowerment discourse of female sexuality by noting that the role of the conventional Pleasing Woman is accompanied by that of the modern Together Woman. She argued that young women are put in the double bind of playing both parts, despite their divergent scripts: the Pleasing Woman is born of conventionally sexist expectations that women "be actively selfless" in the meeting of male sexual needs and wants; the Together Woman embodies a version of sexual empowerment and "promotes the notion that since women are presumed able to exert complete control over their own life circumstances, women who are victimized are somehow weak, inept, or lacking in self-respect" (pp. 51-52).
The Together Woman is produced and sustained through discourse that poses victimization as antithetical to personal agency (Lamb, 1999; Mardorossian, 2002). Together Women are not victims of perpetrators or of circumstances; at most, they are encouraged to see themselves as victims of their own inherent shortcomings (irresponsibility, immaturity, poor judgment), all of which can be corrected through self-improvement. Although accepting blame and the onus for change may seem undesirable, they actually hold great appeal from the perspective of the Together Woman since they fundamentally accord with an image of oneself as a rational, self-determining, and freely choosing agent. In her analysis of young women's rationale for rejecting feminism, Rich (2005) identified the movement's collective orientation and critique of social injustice as offensive to young women's investment in an individualist, antivictim, self-perception:
To engage in a feminist discourse was to be associated with disadvantage, or to draw upon a position of "victim" or as Christie [a participant] describes it, to be the "pathetic female." To draw on a traditional feminist discourse was for these young women, to risk including disadvantage in their narratives, to be the victim of male oppression, and rupture a powerful sense & self-determination so intimately bound with the discourse of individualisation. (p. 504)
In her work, Rich (2005) connected young women's alienation from collectivism and their disdain for victimhood to the permeation of neoliberal discourse, in which self-determination, free choice, and personal responsibility are chief values. Although attention to neoliberalism typically has been confined to discussions of geopolitics and globalized trade, it bears direct relevance to a contextualized view of human behavior:
It [neoliberalism] figures individuals as rational, calculating creatures whose moral autonomy is measured by their capacity for "self-care"--the ability to provide for their own needs and service their own ambitions.... In doing so, it also carries responsibility for the self to new heights: the rationally calculating individual bears full responsibility for the consequences of his or her action no matter how severe the constraints on this action [italics added], e.g., lack of skills, education, and childcare in a period of high unemployment and limited welfare benefits. (Brown, 2003, pp. 5-6)
Other than Rich's (2005) study of young women's antagonism toward feminism, there have been only a few attempts to link explicitly neoliberalism to individual psychology and behavior. Building on Rich's argument, Bay-Cheng and Zucker (2007) examined the influence of neoliberal ideology on the sexual attitudes of feminists, nonfeminists, and so-called egalitarians (i.e., women who endorse feminist values but eschew feminist identity). Egalitarians appeared to operate from a neoliberal, self-interested position in that while they expressed attitudes of sexuality that supported their personal rights to sexual agency and liberty, they did not extend such support to other women. In a critical review of public policies regarding women's sexuality, Fine and McClelland (2006, 2007) delineated how neoliberalism erodes the state and social resources needed to safeguard young women's sexual well-being and replaces these with a rhetoric of self-determination and personal responsibility that leads women to blame themselves for sexual vulnerability or victimization....
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