‘I guess girls can be more emotional’: Exploring the complexities of sextual consent with young people

Abstract

Often focusing on permission to act or not to act, debates about sexual consent are multifaceted and enduring. The pervasive presence of digital technology in young people’s lives has added new complexities to ‘sextual’ consent. Drawing on qualitative small friendship group interview data with school-aged young people in Aotearoa New Zealand, this article provides insights into their understandings of consent surrounding the creation and sharing of intimate images. Through navigating the nuances of sextual consent, young people are forming their own informal norms and expectations. These informal norms are strengthened by competitive masculinity which disadvantages young women at all stages of the process, resulting in gendered harms and victim blaming. Many young people expressed views that unsafe sexting, in terms of pressure, coercion to produce the image, the image being shared without consent and the resulting fall out, could be avoided with an enhanced programme of digital literacy. While digital literacy has merit, it should not be at the expense of conversations around gender, power and culture, desire, victimisation, or how young people from different socio-cultural backgrounds navigate these relations.