Dangerous Sex: Gendered Sexual Bodies and Perceptions of STI Risk

Abstract

Though previous work has explored how heterosexual and LGBTQ+ young adults make sexual decisions, research comparing these groups is still needed. Using interviews with 60 young adults (aged 22–32) with diverse gender and sexual identities in the USA, this paper investigates how constructions of gender contribute to perceptions of sexually transmitted infection (STI) risk. Across gender and sexual identities, young adults’ discussions of STI experiences, close calls, and fears draw heavily from binary gendered understandings of masculinized sexual bodies as dangerous and feminized sexual bodies as non-threatening. Yet aside from individuals’ gendered identities, gendered sexual bodies emerge as a construct in participants’ accounts that conflates gendered social traits with sex assigned at birth. Participants’ use of gendered sexual bodies to calculate sexual risk poses a potential challenge to larger efforts aimed at decoupling binary gendered norms and expectations from bodies since it helps naturalize associations between assigned sex and gendered characteristics. These findings have implications for theory but also for policy due to the extent to which understandings of gendered sexual bodies influence STI risk perceptions among young adults of varying gender and sexual identity categories.