Sexual Ethics and Young Women’s Accounts of Heterosexual Casual Sex

Abstract

Drawing on Foucault’s work on sexuality and ethics we explore young women’s accounts of heterosexual casual sex experiences in Canada and New Zealand. We focus on what Foucault calls ‘ rapport à soi ’ (the relationship one has with one’s self) to explore reports of implied ethical (and less than ethical) practices of casual sex. To do this we conducted a theoretical thematic analysis of the women’s accounts to identify accounts of ‘ care for the self ’, ‘ self-reflection’, and ‘ care for the other’. In our analysis we draw on previous feminist theorizing on heterosexuality to demonstrate how gendered heteronormative discourses are implicated in, and at times impede, an ‘ethics of casual sex’. We argue that women’s expressions of sexual ethics are particularly constrained considering gendered power relations as they relate to heternormative sexual practices. We suggest that the cultivation of ethical sexual subjectivities offer radical potential for the subversion of dominant heterosexual discourses.