‘I guess girls can be more emotional’: Exploring the complexities of sextual consent with young people

Abstract

Often focusing on permission to act or not to act, debates about sexual consent are multifaceted and enduring. The pervasive presence of digital technology in young people’s lives has added new complexities to ‘sextual’ consent. Drawing on qualitative small friendship group interview data with school-aged young people in Aotearoa New Zealand, this article provides insights into their understandings of consent surrounding the creation and sharing of intimate images. Through navigating the nuances of sextual consent, young people are forming their own informal norms and expectations. These informal norms are strengthened by competitive masculinity which disadvantages young women at all stages of the process, resulting in gendered harms and victim blaming. Many young people expressed views that unsafe sexting, in terms of pressure, coercion to produce the image, the image being shared without consent and the resulting fall out, could be avoided with an enhanced programme of digital literacy. While digital literacy has merit, it should not be at the expense of conversations around gender, power and culture, desire, victimisation, or how young people from different socio-cultural backgrounds navigate these relations.

Keywords

Sexting young people consent gender

Introduction

Consent, both sexual and non-sexual, is an integral part of our daily lives. A body of literature on attitudes towards sexual consent, non-consent and violence continues to emerge and evolve, moving beyond common-sense assumptions that consent divides good and bad sex, and lawful and unlawful sex (Setty, 2018). Neoliberal approaches locate responsibility for both privacy, and consent upon the individual but the ability for an individual to socially negotiate privacy is challenged due to the presence of an interconnected network (Barker, 2013). Thus, the practice of consent operates at the interpersonal, social and cultural levels (Livingstone and Mason, 2015). Nevertheless, the meaning and nature of consent is still the cause of some confusion in academia, policy and practice (Carmody, 2008). The ability to consent freely is dependent upon a ‘good understanding of sexual possibilities, awareness of our own desires and any social and relational pressures upon us, and the confidence to communicate these and to accept, refuse or negotiate others’ suggestions’ (Attwood et al., 2013: 13). Therefore, consent does not happen within a vacuum; rather, it is a result of power relations that shape social meanings and sexual relationships.

Unlike non-sexual forms of human behaviour, which can be declined without a clear verbal ‘no’, a common idea is that non-consensual sex is the result of miscommunication (Coy et al., 2013). To this end, Gavey (2005) expertly highlights the dynamics within communities that provide a scaffold where women experience coercive or non-consensual sex. While there are differences between online and offline consent, the continuous blurring of online and offline boundaries challenges the neatness of the notion that private information publicly shared in a virtual setting does not impact a victim’s offline life. This article explores the complexities of consent in relation to the role of technology in young people’s digital sexual lives. Qualitative friendship group interview data gathered from 106 school-aged young people in Aotearoa New Zealand is analysed to provide insights into participants’ perceptions of consent around creating and sharing intimate images. Views on the meanings, process and context in which consent takes place are explored, together with the implications of breaches of consent. The findings provide insights into how young people in New Zealand conceptualise consent within the confines of permission seeking and granting and the gendered implications arising from this. Young people are navigating the complexities of consent by forming their own informal norms and expectations. Most young people view sending intimate images within relationships as appropriate and the majority of intimate images that are sent are not shared without consent. Nevertheless, sexting norms are underpinned by a competitive masculinity which disadvantages young women at various stages, from the request to send a nude image, what happens to the image and the impact on young women’s reputation and friendships within the school setting.

Sexting

While the definition of sexting varies in the literature, Ringrose et al. (2012) use the term broadly and inclusively to encompass sexually explicit texts and images, and explore how they are taken and shared in peer-networked activity. Sexting is underpinned by a set of understandings around consent and privacy (Hasinoff and Shepherd, 2014). Young people report sexting for various reasons including flirting, exploring their sexuality and their sexual identities or as joke or a bonding ritual (van Oosten et al., 2017). Research shows that only a small minority of teens make and/or distribute sexting images, and of those most do not report significant distress or harm (Salter et al., 2013). Most who do send images do so consensually (Döring, 2014), and many young people do not consider sexting to be wrong. However, there are concerns around pressure, coercion and non-consensual distribution of images, which can be distressing, and potentially harmful (Setty, 2018). For some young people, sexting is considered a ‘gift’ (Lee and Crofts, 2015), dependant on the actions of the person who receives the ‘gift’, or proof of love (van Oosten et al., 2017) given through fear of losing a relationship (Cooper et al., 2016). In both cases, the trust of the original sender is undermined. Many young women feeling pressured to consent to producing sexual images and young men must negotiate competitive masculinity. Manifestations of competitive masculinity include pressure to receive an image of someone else (usually female) and forward it without their consent (Ringrose et al., 2012). Here, female’s bodies are commodified as a sort of social currency. Sending intimate images requires young women to carefully manage their desire for desirability and the risk of being labelled a slut (Ringrose et al., 2012).

Gender, sexting and consent

A clear gender imbalance and a sexual double standard persists (Mascheroni et al., 2015). The interest in and prevalence of sexting has been linked to the sexualisation of culture and in particular the sexualisation of young women. According to McNair (2002), this has led to a renegotiation of the boundary between public and private, which is intimately linked with consent. Women are viewed as being more sexualised (Hasinoff and Shepherd, 2014) yet they are required to remain private, pure and morally responsible for protecting their ‘virginal bodies’ from male sexuality (Willem et al., 2019). By privileging male sexuality, young women’s bodies and their sexual experiences are somehow the property of young men (Ringrose et al., 2012).

If an intimate image or text is shared without the sender’s consent, repercussions are almost always more harmful for the woman (Hasinoff and Shepherd, 2014). By placing responsibility of risk and harassment on the woman, the implication is that the non-consensual distribution of intimate images is a result of women’s supposedly bad choices, which diverts attention away from the people responsible for privacy violations (Hasinoff, 2014). Victim blaming narratives are entrenched and breaking of trust by young men is naturalised and accepted (Setty, 2019). Women are assumed to be aware and responsible for their choices and their social identities, and they ‘deserve’ the negative consequences that may arise (Mascheroni et al., 2015). The ‘slut’ stigma reduces women’s social status and cultural capital (Willem et al., 2019), popular misogyny becomes commonplace (Banet-Weiser, 2018), and the cultural practices that reproduce and justify the perpetration of sexual aggression and violence (Rentschler, 2014: 67) by men towards women, becomes the norm.

Rape culture is often shrouded in a tradition of silence that further harms young women (Ringrose et al., 2012). Instead of careful consideration of the power relations that underpin rape culture, initiatives focus on ‘empowering’ young women and gendered double standards are transferred towards media literacy (Gill, 2012). A prioritisation of media literacy as remedy for young women to be confident and knowing (and hetero-sexy) places additional onus on women to be responsible, self-governing individuals (Gill, 2012). Yet, the heteronormative and misogynistic circumstances in which they live remain unchanged.

Methods

Research represents a shared space which shaped by both researcher and participants. As such, the identities of both researcher and participants have the potential to impact the research process. As a research with multiple overlapping identities, I was conscious of my positionality. I was both an insider, my research interests focused around the young participant’s social realities and lived experiences; and an outsider, as a white, mid-30s, cis gendered female, a naturalised New Zealander, born and educated in Northern Ireland. Friendship group interviews, where participants who knew each other and related to each other on a daily basis were chosen as a means to try to redress power imbalances between us. I conducted all of the small friendship group interviews with 106 self-selecting young people, aged 12–16, in three participating schools. I obtained written consent from the Head Teachers at the participating schools, a caregiver for the participants and the participants themselves. Participating schools included two single (one male, one female) sex schools and one mixed sex. In the mixed sex school, half of the group interviews were single sex (those who identified as male or female) and half mixed. There was an option in each school for young people who identified as gender diverse to have their own group or speak to me on a one-on-one basis. No one opted for this, preferring to participate amongst their friends. One rural and two urban schools participated and they encompassed a range of deciles which is used as a crude indicator of socio-economic status. The participants and I were the only people present at the group interviews which were held in a classroom at each school. While the young people were not asked directly about their ethnicity, gender or sexuality, many young people were vocal about their cultural and sexual identities and the role this played on their digital sexual lives. While the research incorporated many ethnicities, the majority of young people identified as Māori (indigenous New Zealander), Pākheā (European New Zealander), Pasifika, Indian or Asian. The vast majority of the young participants identified as cis gendered, most were heterosexual and others sexually diverse or unsure of their sexuality. Small friendship group interviews allowed many of the benefits of a focus group, but overcame some of the limitations such as the participants not knowing or liking each other. It was hoped that a comfortable small group setting with established friends would be more conducive to providing deeper insights and respecting confidentiality. I provided refreshments and the groups began with a scenario to open discussion then focused on loose topic areas. Data were recorded and transcribed by a professional transcriber and I verified the transcripts. Drawing on Braun and Clarke’s (2006) thematic analysis framework, data were coded and analysed using a latent approach to identify initial open organising codes. Sub-codes were generated by situating findings within the scholarly literature. Common themes were then identified, reviewed and further defined. Ethical approval was obtained from the University of Auckland Human Participants Ethics Committee on 4 May 2016 reference: 017039.

Results

Navigating consent: Gendered norms and practices

While sexting is a relatively recent practice, the young people who participated in this research were creating their own norms and practices around the sharing of intimate images, colloquially called nudes. A set of informal norms and expectations around consent and privacy were evident in each of the schools visited. Nudes were usually sent to boys for their pleasure. Discussions of young women’s desire were largely absent from these discussions. The majority of the young people involved in this study felt that sharing nudes in the context of a relationship was okay, but they emphasised the potential for the images to be shared non-consensually after the ending of a relationship or friendship. The participants made clear distinctions between positive and negative experiences, which were closely linked to whether consent was given to create and share the images. The term ‘consent’ was rarely used by the young people in this study; ‘asking permission’ was more common. They most often viewed consent as abstract and passive, more aligned with permission seeking and granting. Consent was more closely associated to sending an image rather than receiving one. Consent was most often communicated non-verbally and implicitly. For the participants, consent was not an abstract one-off event that happened in a vacuum, requests for intimate images usually came after a period of flirting, and on occasion the requestor would send (usually) his image in the hope of receiving on in return

Things like he does things like says really nice things so compliments you or your things. It’s like you owe him something. I mean you’re not in the moment to think about the things that could happen. It’s not that you don’t have respect for yourself; it’s that sometimes you don’t think about that moment. You only think about that time you guys are talking. [female]

Showing someone else an intimate image without forwarding it was considered a breach of trust, but this was considered much less serious than sending an image to someone else due to the potential for further distribution. Some young women expected their partners to show, but not send, her images to their friends. They did not consider showing the pictures to be victimising the young women in the images, in the same way that sending was.

My partner probably shows his best friend. I’m like, whatever. [female]

Showing it isn’t as bad as sending it. Because if you send it to someone … like let’s say, one of us sent you a nude, like you said, and you sent it to another one of us, we could send it to the next person and it would just keep sending and sending. But, if you just showed it, it’s still bad, but it's not as bad as sending it, because then every person that it's sent to has it on their phone; or even if they delete it, and you have like an iPhone it will be in recent. [male]

Participants’ responses ranged from consent lasting a few seconds to the length of the relationship or even forever. Some participants associated duration of consent with the platform being used to send the image (e.g. Snapchat images were temporary whereas WhatsApp images were permanent), although they did talk about the possibility of temporary images being screenshotted. The possibility of keeping a nude was considered a potential bargaining chip in the future, either in the event of a breakup or wanting further image or as ‘a relationship bond, for safe keeping’ [female]. While participants clearly knew the image should not be shared without consent, the image was considered to be ‘owned’ by the receiver: ‘I feel that’s like up to the person. Like, they could keep it for years and years, or they could keep it for an hour’ [male]. A number of young people suggested that teaching about Snapchat, and digital literacy more broadly, was an effective way to promote safe sexting. While Snapchat does remove some of the issues such as the length of time one can have an image, it may curtail discussions around young people’s expectations of consent.

If an image was shared non-consensually, the community in which young people lived was important than how many people saw the image.

Researcher: would it be worse if you sent me an image and I shared it with everyone around this table but no more or you sent me an image; I didn’t share it but it was hacked and 100 people saw it in America? [mixed sex group]

The first one would be worse. [male]

Coz you know those people and they’ll probably judge you because of what you’ve done. [female]

And the people in America wouldn’t even really know who you are so they’re not going to be able to trace it back to you. [male]

If your face isn’t in it then they can’t look you up on Facebook or maybe post on your timeline. There’s some people out there that are like that. [male]

Researcher: why is your ‘real life’ community more important?

There are people in there; obviously some boys would wank over it, sorry. There’s actually girls added to it and they laugh at it. They’re not there for the enjoyment of the nudes; they’re actually there to just see who has been sending nudes and what it looks like. Then they laugh at it. [female]

In a separate all girls group, participants were asked the same question

Like, I don’t know, and I wouldn’t want anyone to test it, but maybe it is that other people knowing. Because I feel like if a photo of me popped up on a porn site in like Russia and no one that I knew would ever see it ever, that would somehow seem less bad to me than that one photo being shared with only three family members. It's like, 5000 people in Eastern Europe could have seen it, but I’d never know them. This is my mum, my dad and my siblings seeing that, and that’s somehow worse for me.

Yeah, so the impact on relationship; like it's directly impacting on your life. Like, if your dad seen that he’ll know you’re not his little girl sort of thing. Often it depends on how close you are with each member of the family who sees it.

I think it again comes back to society doesn’t it; like how it's not a cultural thing and a societal thing to be so open about that kind of thing with your family members. Like, everything comes down to how our society is structured around this kind of thing. Because in some cultures maybe it's completely fine to have sex in front of your parents and they wouldn’t think anything of it. Like, do you get what I mean? Like, it's different.

The terms shame and bad decisions were used regularly when talking about harm caused by the non-consensual sharing. When unpacked, young people reported being ashamed that people had seen the image, but also that their trust had been broken so publicly. The bad decisions were both the decision to send the photo but also to trust the receiver.

Researcher: are you ashamed that people have seen your image, your trust has been broken or that people know your trust has been broken?

Both probably. [male]

It’s more that other people can see their relationship. [female]

It’s so private. It’s your body. [female]

You don’t want everyone knowing what goes on between you and that person. [male]

It’s like your private parts. It’s not on display for everyone. When you take that out like take it all off; it’s for someone you trust or you care for or something you know? It’s really private so yeah. [male]

Researcher: did you make a bad decision trusting the person or sending the image?

Who he really trusted. [male]

I reckon both because yeah. He probably shouldn’t have trusted. [male]

Angry at the person for sharing but more embarrassed about the photo. [female]

Boys requested nudes more often than girls. They were more likely to share these images more than girls. Expectations for girls and boys as binary categories were strong (Ravn et al., 2021) and consent was entwined with societal and gender norms for both sending and receiving images: ‘I feel like there’s a lot of sort of pressure on girls and sort of negativity on it for girls, but then when guys do it, it’s like, “what a god”’ [female].

Biological explanations were often used by both male and female participants to justify boys’ actions regarding intimate images. Males, as people, were considered as oversexualised, ‘it is what society says is normal, but it’s boys are oversexualised; girls are I guess under’ yet girl’s bodies were discussed in more sexual terms than boys, ‘big boobs’, ‘thigh gaps’ and ‘thick-thin’.

Young men were described as the ‘dominant sex’, some young women felt they were unable to ‘control when they get a boner and things like that and so in that sense maybe that gives them an excuse’ and variations of the phrase ‘boys will be boys. That’s just them. That’s who they are’, was used regularly. Nudes from boys usually contained a photo of a penis. Male participants felt this was a safer way to share intimate images. Some of the male participants commented

It’s as simple as this, and just have like one rule that I stick by; you just don’t put your face in it! No-one really knows who you are! Just don’t put your face in it, but chicks always put their face in it and it’s no wonder everyone knows, because you’ve literally put yourself in the spotlight. [male]

‘It’s like if you just didn’t put your face in it! There’s billions of photos of boobs out there; there’s billions of photos of pussy. You know what I mean? No-one’s going to know it’s yours unless they’ve actually seen you naked before, and that would mean you’d probably have to be in a relationship, or you have like a one-night stand, and even then it’s still pretty hard to find that one picture’. [male]

While some young men felt that girls were naïve to include their face, girls reported that they were expected to show their face in the image. Intimate images were requested from more young women than young men and this was attributed to young women ‘maturing faster’, especially those who ‘grew big boobs early’. There was more pressure on young women to share their images. Young women had to balance the desire to be desired alongside the risk of being labelled a slut.

It's more of a boy thing isn’t it? I feel like the guy’s always the one to ask for it first, and then he would say he’ll send nudes after the girl would send it. And, they like say, ‘Just come and do it, I’m not going to show anyone or anything’, and then the girl will do it, and he might send them back, or he might like take a screenshot and then it will go everywhere. [female]

That pressure to do it so then you’re not like an outcast or something. [female]

We’ve got to do it for the boys. [female]

Young women were conscious of their body image and they sometimes sent intimate images to find out ‘do you like me or not?’ or maintain relationships. One of the young women had concerns about being perceived as the last to be sexually active, ‘we’re getting older and are thinking more differently now. It's all about, you don’t want to be the last person in the group to lose their virginity. That’s like the main thing I feel like’. Some young women reported a ‘flattering photo’ being less damaging if it was shared non-consensually as that would reduce the risk of being bullied. One young woman described the conflict ‘if they were kind of not up for sending a photo abut they send a photo anyway; they can be quite insecure about their body’. Some felt that the (male) requestor would ‘take it personally’ if they did not send an image or ‘the guy will still want to be satisfied. If you pull out then that will be really frustrating for him’ [female]. Both young men and women recognised the gendered double standard and as one boy explained it as ‘societal expectations, the image of girls has been purer and more virgin sort of thing’.

In addition to the pressure on young women to send images, there was pressure on young men to share them with their friends. In doing so, the girl’s images become social currency.

Pressured; highly pressured. I think peer pressure is an incredibly strong thing; especially when it comes to human emotion, sex and stuff. Yeah, under a lot of pressure. [female]

Gossip, as well, that’s a big thing to being included. You’ll get pressure from your mates, ‘Hey Brian have you done it?’ ‘Yeah’. [male]

If you’re pressured into doing something then you do it; then you tell your friends about it and they will do it; it’s a chain effect. [male]

If your mates were like, ‘Oh, you’ve got to do it bro’. That peer pressure from your mates, it’ll be like, ‘Oh, I told the boys we’re not doing that’. Or whatever, you know, but the sense of almost failure that you haven’t done that. It’s big pressure, and even if you don’t want to do it; it would seem perhaps it’s something that he needs to do to actually get the approval of his mates, or whatever, which is not a very good mindset to have, or to have developed from your mates. [male]

There’s a surprisingly high percentage of conversations between boys at school, whatever school, about stuff like that. [male]

If she was really hot, maybe he's just proud of her. [male]

Through exchanging nudes, the responsibility of risk and consequence is placed firmly with the female sender. This responsibility came from both male and female participants as well as their parents.

In my opinion if you send nudes and they share it, it’s your own fault. You’re the one who clicked the send button to that random dude you don’t know, and now you’re all over the internet. Well no shit; you’re literally sending it to a dude you don’t know. [male]

Because boys kind of think it's like funny. [female]

I think it’s ‘cause they probably think that guys are all hormonal and can’t control it. They kind of think girls are more mature. I don’t know, maybe it’s just because girls mature quicker so they think that they’re more in touch with their emotions or something. [male]

She should understand that, and if she doesn’t then she’s a bit dumb. [male]

I feel girls are more self-conscious about themselves; so girls feel like they take a bigger risk when they send needs, because it's putting their own body out there, which they can have self-consciousness about it and stuff. Whereas boys they don’t care about what people think; and, so if it gets out they don’t care. It's just if it gets out they probably feel like it's a bonus because more people see it. With girls it's like, if heaps of people see it, it can make them feel more self-conscious than they would, because people can judge so easily. [female]

‘My dad would throw the toys out of the cot because they’re like his little princesses; he wants to keep them in that bubble; he doesn’t want any males around them’. [male]

I think my mum would be a bit more angry, because I’m the woman; so I’m pure I guess. That’s how mum would look at it. They would be a little bit more on the angry side of it. [female]

Normative masculinity and gendered harm

Breaches in consent were consistently considered to be more harmful for the girl. Reported breaches ranged from intimate images being forwarded to friends or What’s App groups, being uploaded to the internet and in one case, of one young woman’s intimate images was shared without consent, copied several hundred times and attached to the back of chairs in a school hall before assembly. This resulted in her being bullied, moving schools and suffering emotional harm. For others, harms included humiliation, distress and anxiety, being bullied or ostracised from friendship groups, being targeted for sexual harassment and being punished by their school and parents.

It would feel a bit like rape but not rape at the same time; it’s like mental rape I guess. [female]

All the boys would ask her for nudes. [male]

Girls take it personally compared to if it was spread by a boy, the boys would just be like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s my hmm-hmm’. But, if it was a girl they’d be more depressed about it, because girls have more emotions and they’re more sensitive; well, some girls are anyway. [female]

It’s probably to do with the fact that throughout history in general, and even now it still exists – it’s always been, the men are higher than women; it’s how it’s been throughout history; and only recently, last few years, is that attempting to be rectified. But it still exists. So, the guys won’t… It might do some damage, but it won’t last forever. But for the girls, their found as maybe easier targets, and they’re like, ‘Oh, we can bring them down further.’ Something along those lines. [male]

I don’t know. I’m not meaning like to sound sexist or anything, but I don’t know, I guess girls can be more emotional. [male]

Rather than framing consent or the breach of it in legal terms, the female participants were more concerned with managing their sexual reputation. When consent was breached, responses were consistently gendered and blame was often attributed, in part, to the victim.

Initially you’d probably be like there’s no trust anymore so you’d be angry at me. Then after reflecting I think you’d feel like, ‘Why did I send it in the first place?’ I don’t know. If he did that then obviously I don’t really know him so I didn’t know what he was going to end up doing. [female]

Male and female participants implied that girls who have intimate images of themselves shared by boys had to take some of the blame as they created it. Responsibility for breaches of consent and online abuse rests with the victim, even though (usually her) consent had been breached. The majority of participants expressed the view that the (usually male) sender is never held accountable for their actions. Other responses included put downs in terms of body image, bullying, slut shaming and victim blaming by other young men and women which had implications for young women’s reputation, social status and cultural capital.

And, then other girls will like judge her on that and then talk about her, and she’ll end up hearing about all this stuff that the girls have said about her. [female]

If the girl’s nudes are leaked to the guy’s friends they might all see her as an easy target for sex. [female]

Like, if you don’t look a certain way you’re not good enough, and it’s causing a lot of people to like commit suicide and cut themselves and do things like that, because they don’t feel like they’re good enough, not even for themselves. [female]

Victim blaming by others was reinforced through self-victim blaming

it's like ‘Oh my god, I was such an idiot, I shouldn’t have trusted him, he did that, everyone is going to know that I’m an idiot for trusting him,’ and so the cycle goes. [female]

When one group of young men were asked if they would go out with a girl who had had nudes shared before with someone else, responses focused around their sexual histories, preferences and a link between sexting, trust and cheating.

I think it all depends on how sexually active and adventurous they have been. [male]

Yeah. If they just tell you, ‘It was a bad decision’, and they don’t continue to keep sending nude stuff to people and cheating on whoever you go out with; going around to parties and get with other people and stuff like that. [male]

When asked why breaches of consent were experienced differently between men and women

I mean I feel like I don’t know. For girls it’s like boobs and I don’t know if this relates but for a man it’s okay for them to take their top off and for us it’s not. It’s like, do you know what I mean? I think it’s since we cover them; therefore when it’s something we cover all the time and it’s something we don’t show; even in a bikini you don’t normally show it; therefore when you take it off or I mean you see a picture of it, it’s like, ‘Oh my god. She did that’. [female]

It’s just kind of like what’s been shaped in societies now like women you know. [female]

Digital literacy

While many female groups recognised that there was gendered imbalance to how consent was conceptualised, they alluded to boys not understanding or appreciating this due to a lack ‘of personal experience’ about the pressure to give consent and the impact of consent being breached.

Regarding the importance of gender when thinking about consent, young women felt they received targeted talks about consent which ignored the role of boys. The following is from an all-female group interview

Researcher: do you think gender is important when we think about consent?

I don’t know about other schools, but if you’re only educating half of the people, like the girls; then it’s kind of missing the point.

Yeah, it’s not really going to work. It’s like immunising half the people.

Also, usually the issues that are around consent – it’s not me trying to be sexist by the way – but typically, it is to do with males, because it’s easier; rape, if you’re a male – just how it is.

For several of the female participants and most of the boys, breaches of consent and well as harmful consequences were either met with a culture of silence or an increased emphasis on digital literacy as opposed to a need for a deeper understanding of gendered power relations.

They’re [girls] less likely to talk about it, because they feel as if they’re almost taking a masculine approach in doing it, and that makes them look less female. It goes on and on. [male]

My dad would be pretty understanding. I’ve had some pretty deep meaningful chats with my dad. Yeah, he’s pretty down to earth, and mum would be okay as well. They’re both very digital; they live in a very digital world. They’re both fully aware of how the internet and everything reacts. I don’t think they’ll have a huge reaction. [male]

I know my parents would definitely handle it differently. My dad wouldn’t really care but my mum definitely would. My mum is not specially technological. So of course that also goes into the equation. [male]

I think social media can prevent this sort of thing from happening. There should be a setting where it cannot be screen shot or shared. It’s as simple as that. Nothing would be spread, but literally it’s a bit of coding that could stop all these problems. [male]

Discussion

Negotiating gendered consent

A set of informal norms and expectations around consent and privacy were evident in each of the schools visited. The process of consenting is a complex and nuanced endeavour, yet, for many young people consent merely involved asking permission or agreeing to a request. Trust was an important aspect for respecting the privacy of the sender and this was often related to whether or not the sender and receiver were in a relationship, prioritising relationships over sex and sexual activity (Clarke et al., 2018), and thus upholding the socially produced public/private binary (Clarke, 2018). The young people acknowledged that consent to send an intimate image didn’t happen in isolation, usually it was after a period of flirting and on occasion the requestor would send their image in the hope of receiving on in return. Most participants agreed that a gender imbalance existed, with young women being viewed as innocent but at risk of being tainted through young men’s desire (Mascheroni et al., 2015; Ravn et al., 2021). While the potential for young women to be victimised was regularly discussed, there was little discussion around the place for women’s pleasure or desire in consenting to send or receive intimate images. These norms were rigid and difficult to challenge.

Scholarship consistently highlights the complexity of both men’s and women’s understanding of sexual activity (e.g., Allen, 2003), yet the conceptualisation of men as sexually aggressive and women as sexually passive, eventually ‘submitting’ to men, has been influential (Jackson, 1984). Normative behaviour expectations for ‘men’ and ‘women’ as binary categories, where ‘dominant’ men held power over women were accepted and reproduced. Boys requested intimate images more often than girls. They were more likely to share these images more than girls. Gendered differences between sexual activity are often considered to be determined biologically, despite the critical interviews of feminism and queer theory (Hasinoff, 2015: 50). The young people who participated in this research often justified boys’ actions, both requesting and non-consensually sharing images, as biological and out of their control. These culturally pervasive assumptions about gender influenced how the young participants understood sextual consent – boys versus girls, often simplistically and without nuance or impact of power relations.

Intimate images were almost always categorised differently. Female images were nudes, usually requested, male images were dick pics, often unsolicited. Girls were expected to include their faces in the images, as it was requested by the person who wanted the image. These images then became embodied and of greater harm if shared non-consensually later on. Dick pics maintained an emotional disconnection (Mascheroni et al., 2015) and an element of deniability. Most of the dick picks received were unsolicited and so a request was not made for a specific type of image, for example, including the boy’s face. Women’s images were often viewed as gifts, relationship bonds or as proof of love, whereas unsolicited dick pics were understood as mainly confirming the sender’s masculinity through online territory marking. A product of young men's privilege and entitlement over their female counterparts (Waling and Pym, 2019), unsolicited dick pics became a gendered power exercise. This facilitated the production of gender through the young people’s bodies. Rather than gender being passively inscribed on the intimate images, the nature and reception of the images produced social realities in which young women’s images held more ‘value’ than young men’s by including more of the sender’s sexualised body and indeed their identity. This framing naturalises and legitimates the unequal treatment of young women who have their images shared – their images are deemed more desirable (Ravn et al., 2021) and more vulnerable to being shared. Even though some boys are criticising and shaming girls for creating images, this unequal treatment creates an exchange value (Mascheroni et al., 2015) and young women’s images become social currency within the school setting.

(Re)producing gendered harm

Longstanding idealised notions of masculinity are centred on toughness and emotional disconnection (Mascheroni et al., 2015), whereas femininity is conceptualised around purity. This creates a situation in which some young women are pressured by young men to create and send nudes. These images usually contained the girl’s face and body, at the request of the boy. Young men are required to remain emotionally disconnected and some are expected to share their ‘prize’ with their peers. By reproducing long-standing gendered double standards around sexuality and body display, scenarios are developed whereby young men are expected to be interested in pictures of young women’s bodies and pressure to create intimate images is almost accepted (Dobson, 2015). In doing so, a situation is created whereby consent is expected, and while withdrawal is possible in theory, it is much harder in practice.

Sharing images without consent was undoubtedly more harmful for the young women. Female victims were subjected to bullying, slut shaming, reputational damage, loss of social status and cultural capital. Men have been encouraged to be sexually liberated, yet women have consistently received a negative response for what is perceived to be ‘excessive’ or ‘overt’ sexual activity. Young women are considered to be ‘good’ and ‘bad’ according to their (sexting) behaviour (Willem et al., 2019). Good girls remain innocent while ‘bad girls’ are held responsible for not having been able to protect their bodies from boy’s sexual desires. Responsibility for the risk associated with non-consensual sharing was firmly placed on the sender. Some young women felt that having a flattering photo shared was less damaging as it reduced the likelihood of being bullied should the image be shared, suggesting some felt there was an almost inevitable likelihood to having the image shared, even though the majority of images are not shared non-consensually. Women continue to be held responsible for their sexual choices (including ‘bad decisions’, see Fine and McClelland, 2006). These societal understandings sit within a framework of ‘think desire’, that is racist, hetero-normative public policies (Fine and McClelland, 2006) which influence young women’s views of their bodies, others’ views as well as the resources which they can access.

Sexting is a practice through which young people were negotiating their sexual identities. Risk and harm narratives dominated discussions around sending nudes, yet overarching gender inequalities were taken-for-granted even though they uphold the blaming of young female victims. In sexualising both male and female bodies, discourses around masculinity were mediated and femininity were policed (Setty, 2019). Based on a system of reward and shame, young women were pressured to perform more highly sexualised femininities as well as managing of punitive associated risks (Ravn et al., 2021). If an image is shared without consent, young women’s sexual agency that is the problem (Banet-Weiser, 2018). This reproduces narratives of young women’s responsibility for harassment, while breaking of trust by young men is naturalised (Setty, 2019). This misogyny is accepted through sentiments that ‘boys will be boys’ when they commit sexual violence (Banet-Weiser, 2018).

The vast majority of young participants felt that blame for an image being shared non-consensually should to some degree rest with the creator, especially if they were a girl as they should have ‘known the risks’. Being labelled ‘stupid’, ‘dumb’ or a ‘slut’ is one of a myriad of ways through which girls’ subordination to boys is reproduced. Victim blaming allows those who forward the images without consent, to avoid blame, shame and resultant consequences. Instead, the victim is doubly impacted. Victim blaming, usually around a girl’s reputation, was enacted by both girls and boys and reduced the victim’s social status and cultural capital (Willem et al., 2019). Victim blaming was routine and compounded by self-victim blaming.

Digital literacy or social reproduction: Learning to be a girl

Neoliberal ideals place the management of well-being on the individuals. This individualised sense of risk translates into the apportion of blame, and victim-blaming (Ravn et al., 2021). If an image was shared non-consensually, the overall perception was that it was more harmful if it was seen by the offline community, such as friends, teachers, parents and siblings. This was considered to be more damaging than having an image uploaded and shared in a different jurisdiction, even if it was for sexual purposes and a greater number of people saw it. This is related to notions of shame and having made bad decisions. Shame included both the viewing of the intimate image as well as having private trust publicly violated. Similarly, having made a bad decision referred to both sending the image as well as trusting the receiver. This speaks to the importance of reputation, status and capital. Yet, for many of the young participants, unsafe sexting was deemed to be due to a lack of digital literacy – or online risk management – rather than the structural context in which images are shared.

Gill (2012) has provided valuable insights around the status of ‘media literacy’ in debates about ‘sexualization’. She questions the efficacy of media/digital literacy as it shifts the responsibility onto young people to think critically and deconstruct media, while misunderstanding the complexity of young people’s relations to media and omits the importance of other kinds of affective responses including shame and desire (p.737). A focus on digital literacy alone denies scope for conversations around gender, power and culture, or how young people from different socio-cultural backgrounds navigate these relations (Willem et al., 2019). Digital literacy provides an easy answer – an individualistic focus on something tangible, rather than a collective focus on culture. In doing so, it places further responsibility on young people, particularly young women, to be digitally literate, to be desired, to be pure, and to protect themselves. This is at the expense of creating better conditions for young women to make sexual choices – both on and offline - with which they are happy (Gill, 2012: 743).

By reproducing long-standing gendered double standards around sexuality and body display, scenarios are developed whereby young men are expected to be interested in pictures of young women’s bodies and pressure to create intimate images is almost accepted (Dobson, 2015). In doing so, an environment is created whereby consent is expected, and while withdrawal is possible in theory, it is much harder in practice. By doing so we do not allow for conversations around issues such the length of consent for an image and the importance of honouring consent. This brings to issues to the fore – coercion is not consent, and receiving an image does not mean the receiver owns the image. This is particularly relevant for young people who are forwarding and collecting these images. When consent is breached, we often look to problematising the (usually young woman) who created and sent the image, rather than the breach of trust from the distributer (Lee and Crofts, 2015). In viewing both acts as equally wrong, we have delegitimised the victim’s experience and allowed space for further digital harassment to follow (Dobson, 2015). Some of the young people’s discussions brought to mind the dangerous adage ‘it is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission’. Such a mindset, compounded by some young men’s desire for status, and potential for female nudes to become viable social currency creates a dynamic where victims’ rights and wellbeing are ignored or downgraded in relation to popularity. By affording young women agency in sexting and by including a range of experiences, positive as well as victimisation, we can begin to address current gendered power imbalances regarding intimate images. In positioning women as demure, passive ‘pre-victims’ we delegitimise the desire to be desired. To repair this situation, the gendered double standard must be dismantled at all levels. There needs to be space for young women engage in meaningful dialogue around how they experience their sexualities, the legitimacy of wanting to be desired and the gendered-powered-culture in which they live. If we legitimised this desire, there is potential for a decrease in peer harassment if consent is breached (Dobson, 2016) and a space to deconstruct notions of blame and shame. Only then can we fully understand the possibilities and limitations of their sexuality (Rice and Watson, 2016) and sexual activity both on and offline.

Conclusion

Consent is an integral part of our daily life. To consent freely, one should understand sexual possibility, acknowledge desires and be aware of relations of power (Attwood et al., 2013). This article explores the complexities of consent in relation to the role of technology in young people’s digital sexual lives. Through navigating the nuances of sextual consent, young people are forming their own informal norms and expectations. Normative behaviour expectations for ‘men’ and ‘women’ as binary categories and the privileging of relationships were reproduced. Boys were more likely to request intimate images than girls. Boys were more likely to request girls include their faces in the images, and they were more likely to share intimate images of girls, than girls of boys. This was understood in biological terms – being out of young men’s control. For most young people, even though they agreed that pressuring young women for nudes or sharing them non-consensually was wrong, these biological and hormonal justifications were generally accepted without nuance or addressing the impact of their environment. These informal norms governing young people’s sexting behaviours were strengthened by competitive masculinity which disadvantaged young women at all stages of the process. Young women who had an image shared non-consensually experienced increased harms, particularly with regards to her reputation, friendships, status and capital within the school setting. This is compounded within a neoliberal framework which places the management of young women’s well-being on young women themselves. This individualised sense of risk translates into the apportion of blame and a victim-blaming narrative was reinforced as the vast majority of participants felt that blame for an image being shared non-consensually should to some degree rest with the creator. The consensus was that girls who had their nudes shared non-consensually should have ‘known the risks’, even though they may have experienced pressure to create and send the image in the first place. If an image is shared without consent, young women’s sexual agency was considered the problem rather than the misogynistic context in which it takes place. Many participants expressed views that unsafe sexting, in terms of pressure, coercion to produce the image, the image being shared without consent and the resulting fall out, could be avoided with an enhanced programme of digital literacy. While upskilling digitally is important, it disavows the opportunity to initiate conversations around gender, power and culture, desire, victimisation, or how young people from different socio-cultural backgrounds navigate these relations (Willem et al., 2019). Instead, prioritising creating better conditions for young women to make sexual choices with which they are happy (Gill, 2012: 743) and thus sext safely.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work is supported by the University of Auckland (grant no. 3710641).

ORCID iD

Claire Meehan

Claire Meehan is a Lecturer in Criminology working on the relationship between young people, digital technology and their sexual lives. She is particularly interested in their understandings of pornography, and ‘sexting’ or sending nudes in relation to the broader issues of consent, age and gender and their perceived value of the education/information they receive.

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