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Girls Want Sex, Boys Want Love: Resisting Dominant Discourses of (Hetero) Sexuality

University of Auckland

Based on empirical research with 17-19 year olds, this article explores young people's understandings of themselves as sexual in relation to dominant discourse of (hetero)sexuality. It is concerned with providing empirical evidence of resistance in young people's constitution of their sexual subjectivities. The research findings suggest that young people generally draw upon dominant discourses of (hetero)sexuality in their talk about themselves as sexual. However some took up subject positions that involved more resistant conceptions of the sexual self. For some young people this took the form of simultaneously accommodating and resisting subject positions offered by traditional discourses of (hetero)sexuality. It is argued that the potential to take up more resistant subject positions was partly contingent upon young people's location in contexts that offered access to, or opened space for, other ways of constituting themselves as sexual.

Key Words: dominant discourses • heterosexuality • resistance • young men's sexuality • young women's sexuality

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