Re-positioning female heterosexuality within postfeminist and neoliberal culture

Introduction

In this article, I take a feminist social constructionist perspective to critically examine contemporary constructions of women’s sexuality. First, I situate these understandings in the broader cultural context and then, by drawing on my own research and that of others, demonstrate how these understandings of women’s sexuality are informed by postfeminist and neoliberal ideologies and also dominant discourses of heterosexuality. While there exists a body of literature that focuses primarily on the effects on women’s bodies and sexuality of either postfeminist and neoliberal ideologies (Burkett and Hamilton, 2012; Evans et al., 2010; Gill, 2007b, 2008a; Jackson et al., 2013; Stuart and Donaghue, 2011) or dominant discourses of heterosexuality (e.g. Allen, 2003; Farvid and Braun, 2006, 2013; Jackson and Cram, 2003; Maxwell, 2007; Stewart, 1999; Tolman, 2006), in this article I explore both in equal depth to demonstrate how they work individually and in tandem. My aim is to move beyond surface messages of women’s empowerment, choice and agency that are so frequently mobilised in postfeminist and neoliberal discourses, to examine how contemporary constructions of women’s sexuality impact on sexual health. Drawing on the World Health Organisation definition (2011), I take sexual health to encompass ‘physical, mental and social well-being in relation to sexuality’, and thus argue that contemporary constructions of women’s bodies and sexuality directly challenge women’s sexual health at these varying levels.

The broader cultural context

It has been said that in our contemporary society ‘Sex … has become the Big Story’ (Plummer, 2002: 4). Everywhere we look we seem to be surrounded with images and representations of sex. This phenomenon, termed the ‘sexualisation of culture’ (e.g. Attwood, 2009; Coy, 2009; Gill, 2012b), means that western culture has become increasingly saturated with representations of sex in unprecedented ways, and a sexualised culture has become normalised and mainstreamed (Attwood, 2009). Contemporary western societies are characterised by a sexual permissiveness not experienced by previous generations. Within this new social landscape, where women have already achieved significant gains in areas of the public sphere such as legal rights, education and employment (McRobbie, 2004), one might perhaps expect that sexuality equality has been achieved and women can enjoy the same sexual freedoms as men.

As (Attwood, 2006: 81) argued, ‘what sex means and the way it means are changing dramatically’. The phrase the ‘sexualisation of culture’ is used to indicate a number of things: an increasing cultural shift towards sexually permissive attitudes; a visible proliferation of sexual bodies, representations of sex and all things sexual; a fixation with sexual identities, values and practices; a weakening of social rules and regulations around sex which previously helped keep constructions of morality and decency in check; and the emergence of new types of sexual experience and encounters, facilitated by recent developments in communication technology (Attwood, 2006; Bale, 2010; Gill, 2012b).There is little disagreement among academics, policy makers and practitioners that a shift has taken place in exposure, accessibility, attitudes and laws regarding sexuality. Disagreement converges around how these changes should be interpreted and understood (Coy and Garner, 2012), with positions ranging from a ‘public morals’ stance evident in recent policy frameworks on the topic in Australia (Australian Senate Committee, 2008), the UK (Bailey, 2011; Papadopoulos, 2010) and the USA (American Psychological Association, 2007) to a more optimistic and celebratory perspective (e.g. McKee, 2009, McNair, 2009), that sees this shift as a marker of cultural maturity, sexual liberation, freedom and choice (Gill, 2012b).

My own perspective, outlined in this article and drawing on the work of others (e.g. Barker and Duschinsky, 2012; Coy and Garner, 2012; Gill, 2012b; Tolman, 2006; Whelehan, 2000; Williamson, 2003), is pro-sex, but also has a strong focus on the extent to which contemporary sexualisation is sexist, or represents what Williamson (2003) has coined ‘retro sexism’. My research in this area has focused on different aspects of women’s sexuality, employed a range of methods and used different data sources but has nonetheless drawn similar conclusions. The most evident of these is the prevalence of dominant discourses of sexuality that are deeply constraining for women, and the way that this reality is obscured by neoliberal and postfeminist ideologies (Harvey and Gill, 2011) that present a world where women ‘have it all’ and gender inequality and sexism are a thing of the past (Pomerantz et al., 2013).

Postfeminism and neoliberalism

Postfeminism refers to ‘the simultaneous incorporation, revision and depoliticisation of many of the central goals of second wave feminism’ (Stacey, 1987) and is highly contradictory, characterised by an entanglement of feminist and anti-feminist ideas (McRobbie, 2004) with feminist ideas taken for granted but feminism repudiated. It is based around a set of assumptions that suggest the ‘pastness’ of feminism (Tasker and Negra, 2007), positioning feminism as irrelevant in a contemporary context because gender equality has already been achieved (McRobbie, 2009). Postfeminism reasserts notions that gender differences result from natural, biological differences (Gill and Scharff, 2011) and reinforces heteronormative beliefs about gender complementarity (Coy, 2009; Gill, 2009). There is an emphasis on individualism, choice and empowerment largely achieved through commodification and consumerism, as well as on heterosexuality and hyperfemininity. This is articulated through identities such as the commodified version of ‘Grrlpower’ into the Girl Power made popular by the Spice Girls in the 1990s (e.g. Jackson et al., 2013; Lemish, 1998; Tolman, 2012). Femininity is positioned primarily as a bodily property achieved through self-surveillance, monitoring and discipline (Gill and Scharff, 2011), which are positioned as modes by which women can enact power (Gill, 2009). As Gill and Scharff noted, there is a significant change ‘from objectification to subjectification in the way that (some) women are represented’ (2011: 4) – namely those who fit the heteronormative ideal of being slim, young, beautiful and desiring sex with men.

Postfeminism can be understood as part of neoliberalism: the discourse that underlies contemporary political and economic assumptions of the positive value of privatisation, deregulation and deinstitutionalisation, and which characterises all individuals as ‘self-managing, autonomous, and enterprising’ (Gill and Scharff, 2011: 5). Neoliberalism assumes that all individuals have, and should exercise, choice, freedom and personal responsibility. This results in a cultural narrative of free choice and autonomy, and a denial of structural constraints, context or external influence (Gill, 2007a). Structural inequities and relative (dis)advantage defined by race, class and gender are rendered invisible, and social structures are no longer regarded as having an impact. As such, negative outcomes, for example, engaging in unwanted sex, are positioned as personal failings, and the individual positioned as fully responsible for her own actions (Ringrose and Walkerdine, 2008).

Gill (2008a) has highlighted the strong consistency between postfeminist and neoliberal discourses: individualism is central to both, at the expense of any recognition of the social or political context, so that there is a striking similarity between the autonomous self-regulating neoliberal subject and the ‘freely choosing’ postfeminist subject; and both discourses are strongly gendered, with women specifically called upon both ‘to regulate every aspect of their conduct and to present all their actions as freely chosen’ (Gill, 2008a: 443).

Research has demonstrated how both of these discourses affect women’s perceptions of gender inequalities (e.g. Baker, 2008, 2010; Burkett and Hamilton, 2012; E Rich, 2005; Scharff, 2011). With their underlying assumptions of universal, contextless, freedom of choice, these ideologies position all women as able, and indeed obliged, to exercise individual choice and to take personal responsibility for the conditions in which they live. At the same time, by focusing on the individual and her own apparently limitless capacity to shape her own life, they disguise the persistence of gender inequalities as class-based phenomena. As Baker (2010) has argued, these discourses remove the language that women need to attribute negative outcomes to systemic gender inequality, instead facilitating attributions of personal responsibility and thus a focus on self-surveillance and self-improvement (rather than gender solidarity or collective action) as the appropriate way to achieve a better future.

Research has also demonstrated the ways in which these neoliberal and postfeminist discourses are manifest in consumer and media culture in diverse ways ranging from Brazilian waxes to cosmetic surgery, and from television shows to advertising (e.g. Evans et al., 2010; Gill, 2008b; Harvey and Gill, 2011; Ringrose and Walkerdine, 2008) and position virtue and success as attainable through consumption and expenditure (Leve et al., 2011; Ringrose and Walkerdine, 2008). As noted, both ideologies valorise concepts of individualism, choice and empowerment, while simultaneously requiring women in particular to adhere to strict – and restrictive – cultural norms (Gill, 2007b, 2008b).

Femininity has been modernised and is visible in various guises. This re-articulation, identified by Gill (2008b) in the world of advertising as ‘the midriff’, and by Machin and Thornborrow (2003) in the pages of women’s magazines such as Cosmopolitan as the ‘fun fearless female’, sees a radical departure from a traditional femininity which was characterised by caring and domesticity, to a modern femininity that is marked by a focus on being beautiful, sexy and empowered (Gill, 2012a, 2008a; Moran and Lee, 2011). There is an imperative for ‘self-improvement’ and ‘self-transformation’, with the clear message that this is achieved by spending time and money on the self, particularly on shaping the body to meet restrictive modern standards of feminine beauty (Raisborough, 2007), all disguised within a false rhetoric of personal choice (Braun, 2009). Through this identification of successful femininity with continuous self-improvement and with personal responsibility for the self and for one’s appearance, neoliberalism pressurises women to be dissatisfied with every aspect of themselves (Tolman, 2012) and experience perpetual anxiety or ‘normative discontent’ about their appearance (McRobbie, 2009).

Nowhere is this more evident than in the ‘makeover culture’ that dominates much of contemporary media’s content (Gill, 2008a; Tiefer, 2008). Yet the discourse of freedom, choice and empowerment obscures this reality, instead, positioning the work and the expenditure of time and money to engage in practices designed to achieve a standard definition of ‘beauty’, as well as more extreme measures such as breast augmentation and female genital cosmetic surgery, as freely chosen and positive aspects of the modern woman’s life (Gill, 2008a; Moran and Lee, 2013).

The notion of empowerment has become central to academic feminist debates about women, sex and sexualised culture, and the implications of postfeminist and neoliberal discourses (e.g. Gill, 2012a; Lamb and Peterson, 2011; Tolman, 2012), largely because of how a rhetoric of empowerment is mobilised in them. Some scholars have argued that modern women’s engagement with sexualised culture, for example pole dancing (S Holland and Attwood, 2009) or with ‘choosing’ a certain look (Duits and Van Zoonen, 2007) signifies empowerment, while others have suggested that referring to these activities as ‘empowerment’ is nothing more than ‘a cynical rhetoric … postfeminist packaging that obscures the continued underlying sexism’ (Gill, 2012a: 737). Gill has argued that, in the contemporary cultural context, the term ‘empowerment’ ‘has been emptied of all its political significance and used to sell everything from diets to pole dancing classes’ (2012a: 738). Once signifying ability, competence and self-knowledge, empowerment has become a normative feature of contemporary constructions of women’s sexuality, shorthand for a commodified version of female sexuality, encapsulating a narrow representation of ‘sexy’ for male consumption (Tolman, 2012).

Dominant discourses of heterosexuality

Dominant social discourses generally have their roots in powerful and long-lasting social institutions such as law, religion and academia. One way in which they serve to legitimise existing power relations is by defining what is normal (Allen, 2003). In addition to the neoliberal and postfeminist construction of modern secular societies, they can also be seen to be ‘pro-(hetero)sex’ (Farvid and Braun, 2006). In her argument for the concept of compulsory heterosexuality, Adrienne Rich (1983) highlighted the ways in which heterosexuality functions as an invisible political institution, which is normalised through social processes at the level of the individual, in interpersonal relationships, through culture and the state. Rich explicated the dimensions of compulsory heterosexuality, which she saw as encapsulating: the idealisation of heterosexuality, monogamy, romance and heterosexual intercourse; the assertion of an uncontrollable male sex drive, coupled with denigration of female sexual desire; the legitimisation and normalisation of one specific form of femininity (Tolman, 2006); and the positioning of women as sexual commodities for male consumption.

In her revis(ion)ing of Adrienne Rich’s theory, Tolman (2006) placed hegemonic masculinity as central to compulsory heterosexuality, to demonstrate how male power is maintained. This position is also evident in the research of others (e.g. Allen, 2005; Fine, 1992; J Holland et al., 2004; Hollway, 1989; McPhillips et al., 2001), which has demonstrated that, in sexual matters, both women and men draw upon discourses that privilege masculine desires and meanings, and which contrast an active, instrumental, embodied and positive male sexuality with a passive, relational, disembodied and negative female sexuality. J Holland, et al. (2004) termed the omnipresent power of this male-dominated compulsory heterosexuality ‘the-male-in-the-head’, suggesting that young women experience their feminine identities relative to a male audience and must play by the rules of the conventions of compulsory heterosexuality or suffer the consequences of transgression. J Holland, et al. (2004) noted that men too experience their identities under a male gaze and respond to the surveillance power of ‘the-male-in-the-head’, and that there is no corresponding ‘female-in-the-head’ evident in this ‘male dominated and institutionalised heterosexuality’ (2004: 10).

This construction of normal heterosexuality as a ‘masculine model of sexuality’ (e.g. Farvid and Braun, 2006; M Jackson, 1984) forms the most common implicit understanding of human sexuality, and brings with it a number of socially constructed assumptions about what constitutes normal sexuality (Moran and Lee, 2014a). Male and female sexuality are constructed as in opposition to each other, with male sexuality centred around sexual ability, performance and competence (Tiefer, 2004), and female sexuality positioned as more passive, more vulnerable and less desiring than men’s (Allen, 2003; Moran and Lee, 2011). Further, the norms of femininity position women as being complicit in a male-focused activity, in which he is the actor and she the acted upon (Gavey, 2005; Grose et al., 2014; Hamilton and Armstrong, 2009; J Holland et al., 2004; Moran and Lee, 2014a, 2014b; Pearson, 2006). Thus, women ‘are culturally defined as the ‘other’ in relation to the dominant male’ (J Holland et al., 1991: 6).

Heteronormative discourses have been shown to impact negatively on women’s sexual agency both before and during sexual encounters, meaning that women are less inclined to be sexually assertive in initiating sexual situations in the first place and more likely to be uncomfortable in expressing their preferences in sexual encounters (Moran and Lee, 2014a, 2014b; Pearson, 2006). This masculine model of sexuality positions men as sexual experts who are free to initiate sexual activities, while women are positioned as gatekeepers whose role is to refuse sexual encounters until certain socially defined criteria (e.g. indicators of commitment to a relationship) have been met (Moran and Lee, 2011). Women are thus hindered from being full and active participants in the initiation and negotiation of sexual activities (Moran and Lee, 2014a, 2014b).

Discursive resources available within a particular culture at a given time enable certain identities, actions and behaviour, and constrain alternatives (Braun et al., 2003). Condom use provides an illustration of the way in which decisions which are apparently non-discursive, and assumed to be based entirely on individual decision-making and objective knowledge of health risks, are in fact embedded in a complex web of social discourses and meanings. J Holland et al. (1990b) have argued that condom use is laden with symbolic meanings, and asking a man to use a condom can be extremely problematic for women, as it requires her to contravene notions of female passivity (Pearson, 2006). Strong negative social constructions of the use of condoms, such as that they undermine the spontaneity of passion (Gavey et al., 2001; J Holland et al., 1990a), also support women’s passivity in sexual encounters by negating the very possibility of mutual discussion and decision-making about sex, thus of course increasing the likelihood of having unprotected sex (Moran and Lee, 2014a; Pearson, 2006).

Dominant social discourses also assume that women should, and do, conflate sex with romance and this also has negative implications for sexual safety. When a woman draws on a conventional discourse of romance, she constructs the man as in control, with her entrusting herself to his protection (Gavey and McPhillips, 1999), making non-assertiveness and compliance the norm (Moran and Lee, 2014b). A further aspect of the dominant construction of heterosexuality is the coital imperative; this constructs penis-in-vagina intercourse as the only natural, normal, real and complete type of sex (Braun et al., 2003). Braun et al. (2003) found that the conflation of coitus with male orgasm, and its identification as ‘proper sex’, makes it difficult for women to make and to express specific sexual preferences, as there is a perceived obligation to have intercourse.

On the whole, dominant constructions of masculinity and femininity in sexual contexts, as in other contexts, place men and women in active/passive, dominant/submissive, subject/object complementary binaries which interlock, resulting in the privileging of male meanings and desires, and the positioning of women as acquiescing in a male activity. In her influential paper, Fine (1988: 29) identified what she described as a ‘missing discourse of desire’ around women’s sexuality. This is not to suggest that women do not experience desire (e.g. Beck, et al., 1991) but rather, Fine noted an absence of recognition of female desire. In the contemporary sexualised environment, discussions and representations of female desire remain restricted, and are most visible in highly commodified versions that represent a particular kind of sexualised identity (Allen, 2012) that demonstrate ‘the performance of sexual desire rather than the experience of it’ (McClelland and Fine, 2008: 234, emphasis in original). Numerous authors (e.g. Allen, 2003; Beres and Farvid, 2010; Few, 1997; J Holland et al., 1990b; Tolman, 2002) have identified the consequences for women of these constructions and, more broadly, of dominant constructions of heterosexuality – the inability to negotiate safety and pleasure for themselves on an equal footing with men. With no positive discourse of female sexuality to draw upon, women frequently rely on discourses that allow sexual practices to be enacted in terms of men’s desires. As J Holland et al. (1992) have put it:

since there is no overriding conception of a positive and enjoyable female sexuality in which women are both acceptably feminine and in control of their sexuality, they have to relate the ideas about love and romance and femininity, which they bring to their sexual relationships, to their initial experiences with men.

Dominant discourses of heterosexuality in tandem with postfeminism and neoliberalism

In contemporary western society, dominant discourses of heterosexuality are viewed through a postfeminist and neoliberal lens, and this lens performs a number of ideological tasks. First, sexism in the broader cultural context is obscured. Second, and perhaps even more insidiously, this sexism is transformed, repackaged and fed back to women as their own choice and as a representation of empowerment. Postfeminism and neoliberalism, with their focus on the individual, work together to obscure oppressive ideologies that underlie gender inequality.

One important way that successful femininity is articulated in postfeminist and neoliberal discourses is through body surveillance and discipline and compliance to increasingly narrow standards of beauty. While some feminist scholars regard women’s choosing to engage in such practices as unproblematic (e.g. Baumgardner and Richards, 2010), others highlight the fact that such choice does not exist ‘in a socio-cultural or political vacuum’ (Braun, 2008), and in fact demonstrates ‘conformity to the norms of compulsory heterosexuality’ (Morgan, 1991). The construction of (one type of) appearance as a marker of legitimate and natural femininity is an aspect of hegemonic femininity, a dimension of the dominant discourse of compulsory heterosexuality (Tolman, 2006). As Braun et al., (2013: 3) noted, women in contemporary society are required to engage in an extensive range of bodily maintenance and modification in order ‘to produce a sexually desirable – or just apparently normal – feminine body’. Girls and women learn how to measure themselves against these narrow norms, transforming themselves into objects for consumption through the surveillance power of the male gaze (J Holland et al., 2004; Morgan, 1991; Tolman, 2006), with women frequently attributing their own compliance to these increasingly narrow and artificial standards as their own desires rather than adherence to the norms of conventional femininity (Stuart and Donaghue, 2011).

The sociocultural context of patriarchal neoliberalism focuses on physical appearance as a measure of women’s value and indeed of their moral worth (Leve et al., 2011) with maintaining the right appearance linked to social power for women (Wolf, 1991) and women’s bodies commodified and compartmentalised, with each part positioned as in need of transformation (Negrin, 2002). This imperative for ‘self-improvement’, defined as spending time and money shaping the body to meet restrictive standards of feminine beauty (Raisborough, 2007), is couched within the false rhetoric of personal choice (Braun, 2009). The recent medicalisation of appearance and normalisation of elective cosmetic surgery in the West provides an example of the cultural value placed on the attainment of a particular type of feminine body through continual self-improvement and transformation (Gimlin, 2013).

In a recent study on Australian cosmetic surgery websites with a colleague (Moran and Lee, 2013) we examined how in the current sociocultural context unnecessary cosmetic surgery is legitimised, normalised and positioned as normative behaviour for women throughout the lifespan. The websites depicted a narrow aesthetic of images juxtaposed against text problematising the non-surgically enhanced body, and consistent with previous research (e.g. Polonijo and Carpiano, 2008) cosmetic surgery was constructed not just as acceptable – but rather, as desirable, and resulting in numerous emotional and physical benefits. By positioning the body within a medical discourse, anything outside of a narrowly defined cultural ideal of beauty was constructed as a medical problem, requiring surgical intervention (see also Leve et al., 2011). This shift has been facilitated by dominant discourses of heterosexuality, resulting in the phenomenon of healthy women’s bodies being surgically modified to bring them into line with cultural and social norms of femininity (Gillespie, 1996).

By deploying a neoliberal rhetoric of individual choice, self-improvement and empowerment, unnecessary and potentially dangerous surgery (e.g. Crouch et al., 2008) can be presented as rational, individual decision, devoid of social influence or pressure. This discursive framing of cosmetic surgery is extremely difficult to challenge, as neoliberalism removes the language required to locate conformity to narrowly defined beauty standards within a wider postfeminist context. Oppressive ideologies and gender inequality are rendered invisible, as is the reality that many women make the same ‘choices’ for similar apparently ‘individual’ reasons (Braun, 2009).

An analysis of the sexual content of two best-selling women’s magazines tells a similar story (Moran and Lee, 2011). This study built on existing research (e.g. Durham, 1996; Farvid and Braun, 2006; Gill, 2009) highlighting dominant discourses in women’s magazines that promote sexual stereotypes, naturalise gender differences and privilege masculinity, by exploring how these ideologies impact on women’s sexual health. Heterosexuality was valorised and being in a hetero-monogamous relationship was positioned as of utmost importance to women, and unprotected sex a sign of trust and commitment. Providing men with ‘great sex’ (solely determined by the man’s level of enjoyment) was constructed as the key to achieving a relationship. Making a strenuous effort to be physically attractive to men – primarily through the use of commercial products such as make up – was presented as essential and women’s appearance was depicted as a commodity for male consumption. As the website analysis also demonstrated, acceptable femininity was enacted within a narrow standard of beauty; slim, young, attractive, white and able bodied. Women were expected to appear sexy at all times but yet there was a marked absence of representations of positive female sexuality, agency or desire. Masculine meanings and desires were privileged and sex was positioned as work that women must perform to keep men happy.

A more recent revisiting of this genre (Moran, in press) has demonstrated that little has changed. The message consistently reinforced is that women’s primary value (and preoccupation) relates to their appearance and their ability to be desirable and sexually pleasing to men. Postfeminist and neoliberal ideologies are central to these messages, in that what otherwise might be understood as sexist, is presented through language of empowerment and choice, of women ‘choosing’ to have sex a certain way, to look a certain way, to behave a certain way, to achieve the objective of a heterosexual relationship (Moran, in press; Moran and Lee, 2011). The message is one of women using ‘their ‘feminist’ freedom to choose to re-embrace traditional femininity’ (Gill, 2009, emphasis in original).

The emphasis on choice and agency in neoliberal and postfeminist discourses also obscures understandings of negative outcomes of cultural discourses of heterosexuality. As Emma Rich argued, women in contemporary society view their problems and experiences through an individual lens where neither structural constraints nor gender inequality exists (E Rich, 2005), and this was apparent in both the website and magazine analyses – women were predominately depicted against decontextualised backgrounds, devoid of cultural or socioeconomic context, thus promoting neoliberal assumptions of universal agency, individuality and consumerism. Studies have shown that the construction of women as equal, hyper-responsible neoliberal subjects (Baker, 2008) works in tandem with gender inequality. So rather than understanding negative sexual experiences such as engaging in unprotected or unwanted sex as evidence of structural constraints or gender inequality, they are instead downplayed and interpreted as opportunities for growth or evidence of personal failure (Baker, 2008, 2010; Bay-Cheng and Eliseo-Arras, 2008; Burkett and Hamilton, 2012; Moran and Lee, 2014a).

These findings are in line with research that I and my colleague (2014a, 2014b) also carried out on women who have non-romantic sex. This study examined how – despite choosing non-normative sexual encounters – many women were constrained by dominant constructions of compulsory heterosexuality. These included notions of female passivity, coupled with constructions of an uncontrollable male sex drive that together impacted on women’s ability to initiate intercourse, to initiate particular sex acts, to initiate condom use and to refuse unwanted sex. The idealisation of monogamy and romance was also evident in these women’s accounts, particularly for those in ongoing non-romantic relationships. Previous research has shown that these constructions render condom use extremely problematic (Willig, 1998) and for women involved in ongoing non-romantic relationships, non-use of condoms was positioned as a marker of intimacy and trust. The idealisation of intercourse was also evident in these women’s accounts, as consistent with previous research (e.g. McPhillips et al., 2001), even though often not the most pleasurable, intercourse was positioned as the core and essential point of the encounter.

On the whole, these dominant constructions subordinated the legitimacy of the women’s sexual agency, desire and entitlement, and frequently resulted in negative sexual health outcomes, both physically and emotionally. In line with previous research (e.g. J Holland et al., 2004; Pearson, 2006) these outcomes were worst for women who drew on constructions of conventional femininity, positioning themselves as passive objects of male attention and the men as sexual agents. In these instances, numerous examples were given of conforming to social expectations of how women ‘should’ behave, by, for example, withholding sex to obtain a relationship, or actively using sex as a ‘tool of manipulation’ to achieve a desired outcome, such as to increase the man’s interest.

While these subject positions were frequently interpreted as offering power (see also Doull and Sethna, 2011), I argue that these positions in fact ascribe to and reinforce dominant discourses of heterosexuality that construct women as sexual gatekeepers, and as passive recipients of male desire. In this research, we found that these women disproportionately experienced negative outcomes such as engaging in unsatisfying, unwanted or unprotected sex and had great difficulty being sexually assertive. The constraining nature of these dominant constructions of heterosexuality were however largely obscured by neoliberal and postfeminist understandings that exaggerate individual capacity for choice and underplay systemic inequalities between men and women, as such, the women interpreted negative outcomes through the language of choice, personal responsibility and personal failure.

Resistance and moving forward

The ‘choices’ that women and girls have are clearly constrained in numerous ways by the discourses and ways of understanding the world which are available to us, and as these examples illustrate, postfeminist and neoliberal ideologies have profoundly affected the ways in which dominant discourses of heterosexuality impact on women. Although dominant discourses of heterosexuality function to legitimise and reinforce existing power relations between men and women, and postfeminist and neoliberal discourses function to legitimate and reinforce notions of choice, empowerment and self-improvement devoid of any contextual influence, the existence of these discourses also allows oppositional subject positions, with Foucault (1980: 13) stating that ‘as soon as there is a relation of power, there’s the possibility of resistance’. So, while discourses produce and enact social practices, they may also be resisted, thus opening up spaces for alternative discourses.

There is evidence from a number of studies in different countries that women are challenging many of the givens of dominant discourses of heterosexuality (e.g. SM Jackson and Cram, 2003; Maxwell, 2007; Stewart, 1999), and are able to resist these discourses with varying levels of success. The research I took part in on non-romantic sex (Moran and Lee, 2014a, 2014b) also demonstrated numerous examples of resistance, in which women expressed having a sense of agency and feeling confident in expressing their sexual preferences. However, these seemed very much dependent on contextual factors such as the specific nature of the interaction or their expectations for any future romantic relationship, highlighting some of the discursive constraints of dominant constructions of sexuality, and the obvious risks to sexual health in the absence of an alternative discourse which encapsulates a positive female sexual identity.

This research also demonstrated that although women may have a critical consciousness about the implications and effects of dominant discourses, this did not necessarily mean they were able to put this knowledge into practice. This point was also evident in research I carried out on women’s perceptions of female genital dissatisfaction (Moran and Lee, in press). These women’s comments demonstrated that an intellectual awareness of unreasonable constructs of female attractiveness did not confer immunity from feelings of bodily anxiety and shame, nor from measuring oneself against this unrealistic norm. Despite many of the women’s comments critiquing the construction of the idealised vagina, and demonstrating an understanding that it is not the norm, it nonetheless caused them considerable bodily anxiety. Both of these findings are in line with feminist research which suggests that a critical consciousness is not itself sufficient to protect or offer inoculation to girls and women from the effects of gendered discourses or media portrayals and other cultural representations of ‘the female’ (e.g. Burkett and Hamilton, 2012; J Holland et al., 1999; Vares et al., 2011).

While numerous researchers have argued for the need to develop critical media literacy skills (e.g. Kellner and Share, 2005; Lamb and Peterson, 2011; Radeloff and Bergman, 2009), others have suggested that, in the absence of alternative discourses, learning to deconstruct the sexist nature of heterosexual discourses or representations of women in the media can create feelings of being trapped and actually make women feel worse (Gill, 2012a). Indeed, feminist researchers such as Gill (2007a) and Bordo (2003) have written of their own experiences and the extent to which – regardless of how media savvy – we are all shaped by the images and discourses of our time and place in the world, and as Modleski (1991) put it, ‘we exist inside ideology’. Furthermore, a focus on teaching girls and women critical media skills actually buys into a neoliberal construction of individual responsibility. Each individual woman is required to learn how to identify and decode examples of sexism and objectification, rather than taking a collective approach to addressing and tackling these issues at a broader level (Gill, 2012a; Tolman et al., 2013).

In terms of learning about sex through more formal channels, research examining the content of sexual health education (SHE) in schools indicates that despite a sexualised culture, a ‘missing discourse of desire’ around female sexuality (Fine, 1988) remains the norm (Fine and McClelland, 2006), and highly gendered SHE, that frames the male in terms of desire and the female in terms of protection, is delivered alongside depictions of gender equality (Allen and Carmody, 2012; Beasley, 2008). These postfeminist and neoliberal subject positions mean that women must individually learn from and also normalise negative sexual experiences and take personal responsibility for such encounters, rather than attributing these to broader social discourses, and these messages are being learned at school (Burkett and Hamilton, 2012).

In order to challenge these messages and begin to transform the way that young women (and men) experience their own sexual subjectivities and relationships with others, there is an urgent need to break away from gendered norms. Inside the school, as well as in other domains, greater focus needs to be placed on how to communicate and negotiate sex that is safe and pleasurable, and on giving young women the tools to explore positive meanings about their bodies and sexuality, where their entitlement to sexual desire and pleasure on their own terms is recognised and explored and constructions of conventional femininity are challenged (J Holland et al., 1999). Not only do we need the language for individual critique, we also need to open up spaces for collective action, and to push against the existing sexist culture for alternative discourses and understandings to emerge.

Feminist activism is helping to realise these objectives. The ‘slut walk’ movement, which began in 2011, is – despite ambivalence from some feminist groups – an example of how a small group can create mass awareness and resistance to sexism and the blaming of the victims of sexual assault (Ringrose and Renold, 2012). Media activism is also a relatively new approach, and SPARK (Sexualisation Protest: Action, Resistance, Knowledge) is an example of a girl-fuelled movement that encourages girls to become activists to challenge sexualisation through a range of activism projects (Tolman et al., 2013). Participatory conferences and research are also ways that new, innovative and collective responses to sexualisation and sexism are being encouraged (Tolman, 2012), while initiatives such as the Australian sexual ethics programme highlight programme-based approaches to providing young people with the skills to negotiate safe and pleasurable sex (Carmody, 2009) In addition, a number of web-based resources aimed at both teens and adults (e.g. scarleteen.com, n.d; senseaboutsex.wordpress.com, n.d.) are also challenging many taken-for-granted assumptions about sex and sexuality by providing critical SHE and encouraging engagement and activism around these issues.

In conclusion, the rhetoric of empowerment, choice and agency that is mobilised in postfeminist and neoliberal discourses is deeply constraining for women. In order for women to have sexual health in its holistic sense, both critical reflection and collective resistance to dominant constructions of women’s (and men’s) sexuality are vital to enable all women and girls to develop a positive and fulfilling sexual identity.