Despite significant changes in the social landscape over the past two decades, much ethnographic research suggests that young women's negotiations of (hetero)sexuality remain dominated by the sexual double standard. Within the sexual double standard, an active, desiring sexuality is positively regarded in men, but denigrated and regulated by negative labelling in women. This article analyses young women's talk on the subject of negotiating (hetero)sexual relationships, drawn from focus-group interviews with six groups of young women aged 16-18 years. A feminist, post-structuralist form of discourse analysis is used to analyse the material, the aim being to examine young women's talk about (hetero)sexuality from the standpoints of agency and resistance. Analyses identified various ways in which the sexual double standard was disrupted, including challenging the language of the sexual double standard, articulating sexual desire, and positioning of self and (hetero)sex within alternative discourses. The findings also suggest, however, that voices of resistance to the sexual double standard may be muted and individual rather than collective, and that, accordingly, every effort should be made by those working with young women to recognize and support attempts to disrupt the sexual double standard.

Although repeated exposure to narratives of romance in popular culture from an early age may lead young women to expect idealized romance in their heterosexual love relationships, a good number encounter abusive experiences. This article draws on young women's stories of abuse in heterosexual love relationships gathered from interviews with 23 young women aged 16-18 years. These stories are examined using a feminist, poststructuralist form of narrative analysis to explore the extent to which young women draw on cultural narratives of romance or alternative narratives and to explore how self and boyfriends are positioned within these narratives. Although at one level romance seemed to be a trap that prevented young women from abandoning an abusive boyfriend, at another it was a resource that they used in an active way to make sense of what had happened. Ways in which this work might usefully inform prevention, education and counselling are discussed.

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Sexual coercion of female adolescents is a major ongoing concern of feminists. This article provides a comparative analysis of a sample of New Zealand and British adolescents' narratives concerning sexuality, sexual practices and coercion within heterosexual dating relationships. The narratives suggest that sexual coercion operates through ‘normal’ heterosexuality which employs discursive dichotomies of femininity and masculinity. ‘Slut’/’angel’ and ‘wuss’/ ‘stud’ dichotomies provide an oversimplified grid from which adolescents are required to negotiate complex feelings towards their own sexuality and the expectation to engage in various degrees of heterosexual sexual activity. Heteronormativity presents heterosexual sex as different for females and males, and that these supposed differences are ‘natural’, immutable and based on biology.

This article examines the ways that men actively construct masculinity within an online pornography-abstinence reddit forum, NoFap. Of central interest is how members of NoFap negotiate possible contradictions between abstinence and presenting themselves as masculine subjects. Utilizing discourse analysis, we illustrate the ways in which forum members employ idealized discourses of innate masculinity and the need for 'real sex' to justify their resistance to pornography use and masturbation. However, we also highlight the paradox of having to perform ostensibly innate characteristics, and the outright rejection of feminist critiques of pornography use as it pertains to masculine conduct. As such, this article offers an alternative approach to the popular 'user effects' paradigm that suggests that users reject pornography because of internal biological drives interfering in their lives. Instead, we suggest that some users reject pornography to reconcile pornography use with particular expectations of normative masculinity.

In a social climate that largely problematizes young women’s sexuality, voices of sexual desire and pleasure may struggle to be heard. Teenage magazines, in actively marketing young women’s (hetero)sexuality, offer ‘permission’ to talk about sex through their problem pages. This article examines letters written to the advice pages of an Australasian teen magazine in which writers articulated or alluded to sexual desire. Using a feminist, poststructuralist analytical approach, the article looks at the ways in which sexual desire is constructed by writers and by agony aunts, how sexual subjectivities are constituted in the text, and the identification of cultural resources drawn on in these constructions. Analyses suggest that attempts to ‘do’ desire in young women’s letters were often undermined or ‘undone’ in the agony aunt’s responses, particularly desire for someone of the same gender. The article argues that erasure of desire is deeply ironic, given the magazine’s sexual content, and misses an important opportunity to encourage talk about desire.

Over recent years, young feminist activism has assumed prominence in mainstream media where news headlines herald the efforts of schoolgirls in fighting sexism, sexual violence and inequity. Less visible in the public eye, girls' activism plays out in social media where they can speak out about gender-based injustices experienced and witnessed. Yet we know relatively little about this significant social moment wherein an increasing visibility of young feminism cohabits a stubbornly persistent postfeminist culture. Acknowledging the hiatus, this paper draws on a qualitative project with teenage feminists to explore how girls are using and producing digital feminist media, what it means for them to do so and how their online practice connects with their offline feminism. Using a feminist poststructuralist approach, analyses identified three key constructions of digital media as a tool for feminist practice: online feminism as precarious and as knowledge sharing; and feminism as ''doing something'' on/offline. Discussing these findings, I argue that there is marked continuity between girls' practices in ''safe'' digital spaces and feminisms practised in other historical and geographical locations. But crucially, and perhaps distinctly, digital media are a key tool to connect girls with feminism and with other feminists in local and global contexts.

Advice columns in teenage magazines provide space for young women to both write and read about representations of issues that teenage girls may grapple with in their everyday lives. Issues related to sexuality appear frequently in these pages. This article examines letters about sexual health issues written to the advice columns of Girlfriend, an Australasian teen magazine. Using a Foucauldian poststructuralist analysis, the article asks how sexual health problems are being constructed by writers and the magazine doctor, and how young women's sexual subjectivities are being drawn through their positioning in the various discourses mobilized in the texts. Analyses suggest glimmerings of plurality in sexual subjectivities, dominance of the 'coital imperative' in constructions of sexuality, and emphasis on discourses of risk and danger versus pleasure.