‘All in all it is just a judgement call’: issues surrounding sexual consent in young people’s heterosexual encounters

Brady, G ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3431-6543, Lowe, P, Brown, G, Osmond, J and Newman, M, 2018. ‘All in all it is just a judgement call’: issues surrounding sexual consent in young people’s heterosexual encounters. Journal of Youth Studies, 21 (1), pp. 35-50. ISSN 1367-6261

Preview

Text 1281772_Brady.pdf - Post-print Download (409kB) | Preview

Abstract

In the UK, there has been growing concern about young people’s understanding of sexual consent, with the views of young people themselves often lost in academic and educational policy debates. However, the focus on high rates of sexual violence has meant a lack of attention on the everyday negotiation of consensual heterosexual activity, leading to assumptions being made regarding young people’s lack of understanding of sexual consent. This paper emerges from a wider study of over 500 young people which sought to uncover their understanding of the issues. Drawing on data from workshops and the open text responses to an on-line survey the findings presented in this paper show that the majority of heterosexual young people understood the complexity of sexual consent as an embodied process, which can be difficult to define, talk about or practice uniformly. This complex understanding, in which sexual consent is a continuum rather than a dichotomy, has implications for sexual education initiatives. We argue that it is only by providing a closer understanding of how - within consensual sexual activities - young people understand and enact sexual consent through a range of embodied communication strategies that education surrounding sexual assault will become meaningful.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Journal of Youth Studies
Creators:	Brady, G., Lowe, P., Brown, G., Osmond, J. and Newman, M.
Publisher:	Informa UK
Date:	2 January 2018
Volume:	21
Number:	1
ISSN:	1367-6261
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1080/13676261.2017.1343461 DOI 1281772 Other
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Jonathan Gallacher
Date Added:	03 Feb 2020 09:59
Last Modified:	03 Feb 2020 09:59
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/39152

Actions (login required)

Edit View

Statistics

Views

Downloads