"Boys in Power"

Abstract

Sexual consent determines if sex is consensual, but the concept is under-researched globally. In this article, we focus on heterosexual young men and how they negotiate sex and consent. We draw on peer group interviews to understand how young men are constituted by the dominant discourses at play in shaping their realities. We have identified two different discourses that inform consent, the discourse of consent (based on legal, educational, and grassroots discourses), and the discourse of heterosexuality (based on the heterosexual script, porn, and gender roles) resulting in conflicting messages for boys. They are supposed to take responsibility for sex to be consensual as well as being gentle partners, but at the same time, the heterosexual discourse itself produces power imbalances in sex and dating.

Doing Respectable Heteromasculinities in Boys and Young Men’s Talk on Sexual Encounters

“…Instead, they attempted to nuance their (assertive) behavior based on the woman’s responses, or according to what they assumed to be appropriate (“ smooth ”) behavior. Thus, their narrative followed the lines of gendered configurations whereby boys and young men perform as active boundary-testers seeking ways of making heterosexual advances, while positioning girls and young women as gatekeepers of consent (Ólafsdóttir and Kjaran 2019; Setty 2021), responsible for communicating whether their actions are unpleasant or not.…”

“…Public debates and educational campaigns on young people's sexuality reproduce this naturalized idea of active and virile male heterosexuality, often depicting boys and young men with no limits in terms of their Men and Masculinities 26(2) heterosexual desire (Ringrose et al 2013). Women and girls, by contrast, are assumed to be responsible for giving consent or setting the limits on boys and men's sexuality since they presumably cannot do it themselves ( Ólafsdóttir and Kjaran 2019).…”

“…Setty (2020) further remarks that although boys and young men still extract masculine capital through homosocial practices of sexting, they have to balance "being pursuers" with "just letting things happen" in order to avoid looking desperate (570). Some scholars have found that young men now put considerable emphasis on consent, mutuality, trust, and respect in their intimate heterosexual encounters both in "real" life (Gottzén 2019;Ólafsdóttir and Kjaran 2019) and in virtual worlds (Ravn et al 2021;Roberts and Ravn 2020;Setty 2020). Ravn et al (2021) describe how young men in their sexting practices regulate themselves so that they would not appear to girls and women as proceeding to fast and aggressively-they want to avoid being perceived as "creeps" or "pushy" (Roberts and Ravn 2020, 11), which would lead to diminishing of their sexual attractiveness in the eyes of future possible partners (see also Liong and Chan 2020).…”

“…The #MeToo movement has also intensified public debates around “bad”/“traditional” and “good”/“new” masculinities, and the potential for change in boys and men that would put an end to the sexist practices (Hearn 2021; Nilsson and Lundgren 2021). As part of this development, boys and young men experience public pressure to abandon “toxic” masculine practices (Harrington 2021) and embrace a “new” egalitarian manhood that emphasizes reciprocal and consensual heterosexual relationships (Jóhannsdóttir and Gíslason 2018; Ólafsdóttir and Kjaran 2019). Recent studies point to contradictory trends in how boys and young men respond to such pressures.…”

“…Recent studies point to contradictory trends in how boys and young men respond to such pressures. While some young men seem to adopt more sensitive and egalitarian attitudes toward women, hegemonic notions of manhood as heterosexual prowess continue to shape young men’s homosocial relations and interactions with women (e.g., Ólafsdóttir and Kjaran 2019; Roberts et al 2021; Setty 2020). In both academic studies and public discussions, the assumptions concerning the shifts toward more progressive masculinities tend to take classed and racialized forms: it is often white, middle-class young men who are expected to be the vanguard of change, while working-class and racially minoritized young men’s masculinities are imagined as more “traditional” and more “problematic” in terms of women’s bodily integrity (Roberts and Elliott 2020).…”