“If you love me, you'll wait”: Sex, love and agency in coloured teenage girls' accounts of sexuality

Abstract

abstractThis Briefing reports on an interview study with eight coloured1 working-class teenage girls from Wentworth, a former coloured township of KwaZulu-Natal. The participants talked about the interlocking ways in which sex and love were connected. On the one hand, sex, by their own admission, had negative consequences that included sexual coercion, violence and powerlessness. Such views reproduce the pervasiveness of male power in subjugating teenage girls' sexualities. On the other hand, these girls also forged meanings of love which contested and resisted male power and sexually coercive behaviour. The girls' definitions of love within religious beliefs elicits an advocacy of abstinence that informs their sexual decision-making. By denying sex and rejecting boys' requests for sex they are able to resist their assertion of control over them and choose to articulate a position of strength they would like to possess. The Briefing argues that even in contexts where male sexual power is pervasive and often aggravated by poverty, girls resist the dangers that are posed by sex, choosing to take responsibility for their own decisions and sexuality. They talk about the ways in which they seek to temporarily secure power to resist sex and regulate sexual desires on their own terms. Such resistance and agency among teenage girls has potentially important implications for sexual decision-making and the broader need for girls' empowerment in negotiating sex.