Between agency and uncertainty – Young women and men constructing citizenship through stories of sexual harassment
In this article, we examine young people's narratives on sexual harassment on how it is endured, objected, observed, and negotiated in diverse everyday life environments. The article is based on an analysis of thematic interviews with 36 young people aged 15–19 living in the metropolitan area of Helsinki, Finland. Altogether 23 young women and 13 young men participated in the interviews which were conducted at educational institutions as individual, paired or group interviews. We analyze young people's narratives on sexual harassment as stories of everyday citizenship and, and more precisely, as acts of citizenship. We have also applied the concept of respectability to study how young women…
Doing Respectable Heteromasculinities in Boys and Young Men’s Interview Talk on Sexual Encounters
Recent studies on boys and young men’s heterosexual practices point in contradictory directions. On the one hand, boys and young men seem to be placing less value on “hard”, overtly aggressive masculinity and compulsive heterosexuality, in keeping with their adoption of more egalitarian attitudes in their sexual relationships. On the other hand, the hegemonic masculine notions that associate “real” men with sexual prowess persist as well. In this article, we argue that this contradiction indicates careful (re)calibration in doing respectable heteromasculinities. We draw on a small-scale qualitative study located in Helsinki, Finland, in illuminating how cis-gendered boys and young men with…