What else can a crush become: working with arts-methods to address sexual harassment in pre-teen romantic relationship cultures

Abstract

This article focuses on a study in which feminist new materialist and arts-based methodologies were employed to explore how three girls address their experiences of sexual harassment as part of 'crushes' with boys in fourth and fifth grade. The study stems from longitudinal research on how Finnish children from preschool to pre-teen years are caught up in entanglements of power in the formation of romantic relationship cultures. Such entanglements often escape articulation and are therefore difficult to study using more traditional research methods. During the arts-based process, the girls began to negotiate consent and self-determination in new ways through collecting, crafting, and making a booklet and a YouTube video. Conceptualising the changes as minor gestures [Manning, Erin. 2016. The Minor Gesture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press] that gradually transform girls' somatic archives [

Mundane matters: Mapping the becomings of heterosexual girlhood in the emerging sexual cultures of elementary school children

“…The moments are exemplified by excerpts from our field-work notes. While we observed the case of a single girl, Minka, that case resonates also with our long-term research in which we have explored the gender and sexual cultures of children and young people (Huuki et al, 2022;Huuki & Renold, 2016;Pihkala & Huuki, 2019;Puutio et al, 2021). This emphasizes how even a single case is always entangled with broader experiences, stories, materializations, and previous research on gender, sexuality, and injustices related to those in western child cultures (see also Hill & Kearl, 2011;Renold, 2013;Renold & Ringrose, 2011;Rysst, 2010).…”

“…Nonetheless, romantically, or sexually toned relations are difficult for girls to control (Cannoni & Bombi, 2016;Huuki, Kyrölä & Pihkala, 2022). Sexual cultures are often associated for girls with contradictory fears of harassment, social embarrassment, and over-sexualization (Hill & Kearl, 2011)-and with a pressure to remain innocent victims (Renold & Ringrose, 2011).…”

Between agency and uncertainty – Young women and men constructing citizenship through stories of sexual harassment

“…Joint intergenerational reflections on the prevailing understandings of sexuality and its borders help adults and young people alike to identify problematic views of sexual harassment, safeguard the sexual integrity of individuals, and evaluate the appropriateness of their conduct. Such self‐reflection is most productive when organized and facilitated in youth‐centered ways and when it is meaningful and relevant from the perspective of young people (Huuki et al., 2021; Ringrose et al., 2021, p. 574). Moreover, appropriate understanding the meaning and processes of the doing of gender (West & Zimmerman, 1987) is crucial for educators.…”

“…Earlier studies have examined victimization experiences of young women and their meanings in different contexts, including schools (Aaltonen, 2017;Berndtsson & Odenbring, 2021;Lahelma, 2002Lahelma, , 2021Ringrose et al, 2021), consequences of harassment (Ringrose et al, 2021), coping strategies (Leaper et al, 2013;Priebe et al, 2013), male harassers (Robinson, 2005), and art-based methodologies in the articulation of harassment (Huuki et al, 2021). To complement this literature and to provide a new perspective to sexual harassment we utilize the citizenship framework to highlight and examine young people's agency and societal positions formed in relation to the phenomenon of sexual harassment.…”

Posthuman co-production: becoming response-able with what matters

“…This is not about utilising arts-based methods for "data" that are waiting to be collected. Like many post-qualitative arts-based youth research/ers (see for example Coleman et al, 2019;Hickey-Moody et al, 2021;Huuki et al, 2021), the art in our praxis is a processual, relational and transformational notion of art-as-way (Manning, 2020, p. 22)a process of creating ethical-political spaces for surfacing what matters. Barad's call to become response-able has enabled us to recognise how our research praxis matters and to work with the affective politics of what comes to matter (see Meissner, 2014;Massumi, 2015).…”