Sexting as sexual stigma: The paradox of sexual self-representation in digital youth cultures

Introduction

Within the early social constructionist work on sexuality, symbolic interactionist accounts exploring the impact stigma can have on people’s sexualities played a significant role (Johnson, 2015). Erving Goffman’s (1963) Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity is important for its sociological exploration of stigma, while Ken Plummer’s (1975) Sexual Stigma explored what it means for ‘homosexuals‘ to experience themselves as sexual deviants. For Goffman (1963), stigma refers to a disgraced identity: ‘a person reduced in our minds from a whole and usual person to a tainted, discounted one’, someone who is ‘perceived as weak’ and has ‘unnatural passions’ (p. 3). Plummer (1975) argued that for stigma to occur, there first must be a ‘norm violation’ and ‘stigmatizing responses’ by society and/or a self-reaction in which a stigmatized person feels ashamed and labels himself or herself a ‘deviant’ (p. 72).

Since both these pioneering works were published, much has advanced in how sexuality is understood in social and cultural theory, but also regarding what society perceives as sexually ‘deviant’ or ‘normal’ (Weeks, 2007). Nevertheless, the conceptual toolbox for understanding the constructed nature of sexuality and how sexual norms operate has not lost its significance for exploring the many diverse spaces (e.g. private and public, increasingly mediated) in which sexuality becomes meaningful in current life-worlds. Therefore, this article aims to explore how sexual stigma is socially and culturally (re)produced in or around digital media used for sexual self-representation, which is referred to as ‘sexting’. Sexting is a recent neologism, derived from ‘sex’ and ‘texting’, referring to the exchange of self-produced sexual materials (above all images, but also texts and videos) using digital media (Albury, 2016; Döring, 2014; Hasinoff, 2013). How is the context of digital media (social and mobile) related to sexual stigma at a time when these technologies are increasingly being used to express the self sexually, especially in youth cultures?

Despite sexting being a recent term to describe a mediated sexual practice, significant attention has been paid to it, especially related to worries about the claimed ‘popularity’ of sexting within young people’s peer groups (Ringrose and Harvey, 2015). Academic and public discussions on youth and sexting have become symbols for rapidly emerging moral and ethical questions on how to deal with young people living many of the most intimate and sexual aspects of their social lives through digital media (Crofts et al., 2015). Within society, sexting has taken on some mythical proportions; sexting has come to signify unnatural sexualized passions of the young, a sexual practice related to ‘risky’ behaviors (Houck et al., 2014), the harsh struggle for popularity in youth culture (Vanden Abeele et al., 2014) and proof that youth are failing to manage digital media appropriately (Van Ouytsel et al., 2017). Some of these academic and pedagogical discussions argue that young people are in need of education about the ‘dangers’ of sexting, that young people need to understand the benefits of sexting abstinence (Döring, 2014) and worse, that young people are scared because of the ‘emotional, social and legal consequences when engaging in sexting’ (Walrave et al., 2015: 806). Some prosecutors in different jurisdictions have responded to sexting by charging teenagers with child pornography, sexual harassment and indecency offenses (Simpson, 2013). From a more critical point of view, I would argue that, in the current moral sexting panic, socio-legal and pedagogical responses are not only displacing the question of teenage sexual agency (Angelides, 2013) but also crucial questions of sexuality and ethics (e.g. the importance of consent) in digital media contexts (Hasinoff, 2016).

Explorations of sexting and sexual stigma argue that many of the societal responses, such as ‘sexting prevention campaigns’, as well as the dramatic tone of news media reporting on sexting, reinforce shame and stigma (Albury, 2016; Gabriel, 2014). To put it in Foucauldian terms, discourses spreading a panic about sexting in youth culture have come to produce the very violence society fears is being done by sexting, such as leading to a loss of reputation and possible bullying of sexting ‘victims’ (Albury, 2016). This article argues that the early work on sexual stigma (Goffman, 1963; Plummer, 1975) can generate a deeper understanding of why such a stigma surrounds teenagers who sext and why (semi-)nude pictures have become symbols of stigma that are oftentimes traded like currency among teenage peer groups (Ringrose et al., 2013). While a symbolic interactionist framework may inform our current understandings, this article does not make an argument for returning to this pre-Foucauldian understanding of sexuality. Rather, I use the early work on sexual stigma to situate the ongoing transformation of sexuality because of digital media. I seek to radically contextualize power struggles (Grossberg, 2010) as they unfold around sexting. As such, this articles’ focus is on discourses surrounding digital culture that manage ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ conduct in online contexts, which often relate to fixed ideas about ‘social status’, ‘reputation’ and doing appropriate ‘risk management’.

Looking closely at the way stigma operates, we can see how many of the current reactions to sexting (from educators, media literacy pundits, etc.) do not question the stigma itself, but as Goffman (1963) would say it, are teaching young people to reduce the stigma symbols that draw attention to the ‘devalued identity’. As a consequence, often well-intentioned pedagogical advice becomes the moment young people learn about sexting as stigma: they learn, for example, to identify sexters as ‘victims’; they learn that sexting is ‘shameful’; and they learn to reduce the ‘stigma symbols’ (e.g. sexting pictures) by making themselves unrecognizable when sharing (semi-)nude photos (Walrave and Van Ouytsel, 2014). Research has found many examples in which sexting advice has heavily focused on potential harm instead of agency and consent (Hasinoff, 2016).

This article explores sexting as stigma by listening to young people’s discourses in the context of their own peer groups. I have been exploring how they make sense of the broader societal responses and cultural values that surround their sexual life-worlds in the context of the digital. These meanings are derived from focus groups with Belgian teenagers (15–18 years old). Attention will be paid to how stigma is socially (re)produced through interpretations, interactions and cultural institutions such as education, family and mass media. In doing so, I argue that, from the perspective of young people, sexual self-representation is surrounded by a powerful and troubling paradox: while digital media may offer opportunities for interpersonal intimacy and enjoyable sexual communication, at the same time, there is a strong assumption that something is inherently deviant about engaging in sexting (Hasinoff, 2015). In the focus groups, participants created a consistent narrative, an ideology through which they normalized stigmatizing responses to sexting and sexters.

Methodology

This article explores data from six focus groups conducted in 2015 with a total of 38 participants. The people involved were aged 15–18 years and equally divided by gender. The research took place at the participants’ schools to ensure the discussions were set in natural peer group settings. The schools were located in the Dutch-speaking region of Belgium; involving six different schools ensured there would be a mixed sample of education classifications (e.g. schools offering a general, technical or vocational education). The focus groups were based on a semi-structured questionnaire and initiated 90 minute conversations. Rather than focusing on young people’s individual behaviors, the discussions focused on young people’s interpretations of and interactions with sexting in everyday life contexts using creative methods (e.g. card sorting; Colucci, 2007), as well as on how they perceived cultural institutions such as educational, family and mass media’s conceptions of sexting. The focus group used several vignette techniques based on scenario building (e.g. ‘what would a teacher/parent say when a sext is spread?’ ‘what would a journalist report about a semi-nude picture that was spread?’ Jenkins et al., 2010). A focus on young people’s meaning makings, perceptions and performativities surrounding sexting provides in-depth knowledge of sexual self-representation on digital media. Taking seriously young people’s voices and relating them to situated socio-cultural contexts has been the focus of only a minority of studies on sexting (e.g. Albury and Byron, 2014; Ringrose and Harvey, 2015); this article helps deepen functionalistic accounts on sexting that ignore the multifaceted operations of sexual practices and politics in the contexts of youth and digital media culture.

Understanding sexting as norm violation in digital youth cultures

In the focus groups, the participants referred to various reasons to explain why text messages with sexual content and/or (semi-)nude pictures might be sent. They usually referred to sexting in a very negative context in which the sexual agency of the person sending the sext was hampered. This finding relates to many preceding studies on sexting, arguing that teenagers, usually girls, are put under pressure to sext, and that sexts get spread without consent because they have a particular value among boys’ peer groups for ‘showing off’ or ‘getting revenge’ when romantic relationships end (Döring, 2014; Ringrose et al., 2013; Walrave et al., 2013).

A lot of these stories came from these teenagers’ everyday life contexts; they were happening at their school, but some of them had only heard about such stories through friends or on the news. Drawing on such information, all the different focus groups had a broad agreement that sending nude pictures, or even texts with sexual content is, as Thomas (M, 17 y.o.) said, ‘not very smart’ and simply ‘stupid’. Els clarified this further:

The overall conclusion was that being ‘smart’ means being self-disciplined and refraining from sending any sexual content through digital media. Many explained that, no matter how careful you are, sexting is always, as Bas put it, ‘doomed to fail’; sharing sexual self-representations would always mean becoming a sexting victim. Freya heard stories about coercion and sexts being spread, eventually leading to bullying at her school and said, ‘I really don’t want this to happen to me’. Sexual self-representation in or around digital media was only rarely linked to sexually positive experiences such as flirting; only long-lasting romantic relationships seemed to be an exception where sexting could maybe be responsible behavior. Some participants seemed at moments to associate sexting with pleasure, fun and communication (mostly referring to texting). Usually, these participants made clear it should then be seen outside the context of something sexual, ‘to have a laugh with friends’, ‘just to be funny’ and so on.

Sexting was perceived by the participants as a stupid thing to do because they were aware of the consequences of sharing sexts. Moreover, it was clear to them that sexters, those who are sending sexual messages or sending (semi-)nude photos, represent a danger to good conduct in digital media contexts. More than just being a victim, silly or stupid, they were violating a norm that, when transgressed, could lead to a stigmatizing response (Plummer, 1975). Participants Maria and Pico did not understand why some of their peers were sending (semi-)nudes:

Both examples make clear that sexting is linked to stigma. A person sending sexts is often thought of as possessing a stigma: ‘an undesired differentness from what we had anticipated’ (Goffman, 1963: 5); a person becomes literally ‘gross’. Goffman (1963) refers to this process as the ‘construction of a stigma theory, an ideology [author’s emphasis] to explain his [or her] inferiority and account for the danger he [or she] represents, sometimes rationalizing an animosity based on other differences, such as those of social class’ (p. 5). Understanding sexting as norm violation based on the transgression of a particular ideology would then mean understanding what that ideology is, how those young people learn about it and how it operates. I would argue that the primary ideology regulating sexting is their perceived knowledge about what is good and bad conduct in the context of digital media. It should be noted that the context of digital media is surrounded as well as intertwined by many related power struggles. One of these is the well-researched gender hierarchy around bodily display and nudity in the context of sexting; for example, girls are more often harshly judged for being ‘a slut’ when sexting (Ringrose and Harvey, 2015). While the participants in this study made clear both girls and boys are stigmatized for sending nudes, it was clear that ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ conduct is differently judged for boys than for girls. Young people’s norms around sexting are known to be strongly gendered (Symons et al., 2018). Pico in the above quote spoke from the position of a boy, showing clearly his disgust and calling sexting from a girl ‘gross’, while words to describe boys who sext where less visceral, calling them ‘silly’ and ‘stupid’. The particular stigma of girls sexting is oftentimes linked to many more hierarchies such as those surrounding class and sexual identity (De Ridder and Van Bauwel, 2015; Moreno and Bernárdez, 2017). Furthermore, sexting is surrounded by norms about the naked body of young people in society. Research has shown that social values representing nakedness as immoral and sexually shameful are strong among teenagers (Donnan and Magowan, 2010: 35).

While, as many studies have shown, gender is a crucial ordering principle to understand sexting as stigma, to explore the ideology regulating sexting as stigma in digital media contexts, the meanings people attach to the socio-technological spaces they use for sexual self-representation are crucial to consider too; as sexual stigma becomes increasingly related to mediated contexts, both human and non-human actors play a significant role. The mutuality between technological shaping and social practices is usually referred to in media and communications research as ‘affordances’ (Livingstone, 2008; Nagy and Neff, 2015). When the participants reflected on ‘sexting’, they usually referred to specific social media affordances such as ‘spreadability’, the ease with which content can be shared with mobile social media, and ‘persistence’, the durability of online expressions and content (boyd, 2014: 10–11). The knowledge participants showed about these affordances regulated their opinions on sexting as something you should not do. To them, sexting violated the norm of ‘natural’ common sense or ‘decent’ online behavior; stigmatized persons, those who sext, are in denial of the social order that social media affordances create:

In such contexts, sexting pictures or texts then become seen as stigma symbols: ‘signs which are especially effective in drawing attention to a debasing identity discrepancy’ (Goffman, 1963: 43). The participants believed that when a screenshot is taken of a (semi-)nude, such pictures are then spread onto many more, different platforms for a bigger audience to see. Taking the sext out of context of a private one-on-one communication without consent seemed to be a stigmatizing response among young people’s peer groups – a shaming of the sexter by exposing the picture:

While I have found that these young people’s orientations toward sexting are very negative, seeing sexting pictures as merely ‘stigma symbols’ would miss an essential point for understanding the paradox of norm violation in digital youth cultures: a sexting picture can be both a stigma symbol for which the producer is shamed and at the same time a ‘status symbol’. At different moments and in certain contexts, a sexting picture can lead to romantic success and popularity, mainly for girls (Bailey et al., 2013). As some of the boys jokingly made clear in the focus groups, although they disapproved of sexting, ‘it is still nice to receive them though’, as ‘a nude picture can be nice to look at’.

Goffman (1963) used to argue that stigma symbols are the very opposite of status symbols. Currently, the situation seems to be very different: transgressing a norm governing what is ‘natural’, ‘good’ or ‘popular’ sexual behavior related to digital media means dealing with a continuously shifting norm that depends on a specific context. The social order that social media affordances are creating is therefore much less clear from what Plummer noted in Sexual Stigma; he referred to clear norms that need to be transgressed for a person to be stigmatized, such as unsettling the ‘linear sequence of normal sexual development’, ‘the “natural goal” of sexual intercourse’ and the ‘divinely marriage and God’ (Plummer, 1975: 69). Since then, much has changed in the way sexuality is academically understood, as well as how sexualities are lived. Goffman’s and Plummer’s works were written pre-Foucault (1998); since then, we have come to understand sexuality as being discursively regulated in different social contexts. Also, since Foucault, the politics of sexuality have been more understood as a complex system of value (Rich, 1993) rather than a fixed set of norms that must be transgressed in order for stigmatizing responses to happen. The late modern context in which sexualities are currently shaped therefore creates an individual choice to sext or not. However, as Weeks (2007) notes, regarding this so-called democratization of sexuality, ‘[t]he reality is that choice is always limited by the same social forces that have made it available’ (p. 126). While social media affordances have made available the socio-technological opportunity for sexual self-expression, taking advantage of it is potentially dangerous and risky for young people. Social media affordances are important for regulating sexting as stigma because they create the technological structure to control and discipline those who sext (e.g. by spreading the picture). Even more so than the technological structure, social media affordances create a ‘common sense’ social order that regulates sexting as a norm violation. This norm violation is related to the broader ideology surrounding the social media age. Acquiring a high ‘status’ and maintaining a ‘good reputation’ is needed to acquire symbolic capital that allows one to be successful in life (Marwick, 2013). Sending a sext would, as my focus group participants argued, risk your current and future symbolic capital, as Max explained in relation to his need to find a job soon:

Learning about sexting as sexual stigma

As I have shown in the previous section, becoming known as a ‘sexter’ can initiate stigmatizing responses; these responses are related to participants’ knowledge of how social media functions. However, far more than simply reflecting on the functions of affordances, these young people had affective relationships (e.g. good, dangerous, silly) with social media that, as they have learned, are known to be used for sending nudes. As noted by Papacharissi (2016), the impact of social media is not a function of these affordances, ‘but more so … the outcome of our own expectations from technology’ (p. 321). For example, Snapchat was oftentimes mentioned in the focus groups as having a ‘bad reputation’ despite many of the participants using it. Therefore, a mobile social media app such as Snapchat is generating certain expectations, which is consequential for how people make sense of people’s (sexual) practices related to these media. The following participants referred to ‘hearing stories’ creating expectations about Snapchat:

Young people are learning about the stigma of sexting from various interpretations and interactions in everyday life in which different cultural institutions, such as education, the family and mass media, may play an important role. As Goffman (1963) noted, to be aware of stigma, there needs to be a process of socialization through which people are learning what it would be like to possess a particular stigma (p. 32). As Plummer (1975) noted,

It is often sufficient for a sexually different person simply to reconstruct in his imagination [author’s emphasis] what the consequences of a perceived reaction [author’s emphasis] might be for it to have sufficient impact upon him to come to see himself as deviant. (p. 72)

I found in the focus groups that the young people generally referred to ‘hearing about’ sexting stories through (mass) media to demonstrate how ‘stupid’ or ‘risky’ it was to sext; media are known to have created a moral panic about sexting (Lim, 2013), thereby creating a public consciousness with a ‘hysterical effect’ about sexting as a stigmatized sexual activity (Plummer, 1975: 77).

To understand sexting as stigma, attention needs to be paid to the broader socio-cultural concerns that lead to the stigmatization of sexting and how young people themselves then perceive these. The media, culture and values in a society are crucial for understanding young people’s online life-worlds; they create a ‘holistic system of meanings of a given society’ (Livingstone et al., 2015: 13). One example may be how the law is a formal identifier of sexting stigma; legislative frameworks may allow sexting to be criminalized based on child pornography legislation without distinguishing whether it is consensual or not (Lievens, 2014). Sharing information about such legislative frameworks may be used to scare young people about the ‘serious legal consequences’ sexting can have. Media, culture and values are important for stigma learning. The need to pay attention to broader socio-cultural institutions and structures that may lead to stigmatization was discussed in the focus groups, specifically related to news media, education and the family.

(Self-)stigmatizing responses to sexting

The perceived responses to sexting can not only inform us how young people may learn about stigma but also indicate that they may label themselves ‘deviants’ because they have been sexting. As such, it becomes a task of continuous ‘identity management’ and ‘guilt negotiation’ (Plummer, 1975: 80). Seeing sexting as stigma means paying attention to how stigmatizing societal reactions to sexting may lead young people engaging in sexting to label themselves as having ‘unnatural abnormal passions’. This process of self-labeling should not only be seen as an internalized cognitive process, but these are deeply affective attachments to the cultural norms and expectations for sexual conduct in the context of digital media that young people are very aware of; these norms and expectations are used to make sense of sexual and gendered selves (Johnson, 2015). Because of this process, when someone is labeled a sexter, they may feel a deep sense of shame, a tendency toward victimization, self-isolation or ‘breaking with reality’ (Goffman, 1963: 7). These stigmatizing self-responses could be related to research that describes sexting as ‘risky’ for young people; in extreme cases, taking them to the point of suicide (Döring, 2014).

Remarkably, while a considerable number of studies have examined (and warned of) the consequences of sexting, the research has not been as attentive to the stigmatizing self-responses of young people that are engaging in sexting. Likely, an in-depth look at self-stigmatizing responses is difficult to accomplish precisely because of the stigma that surrounds sexting in young people’s life-worlds. For young people, it may not be easy to talk openly about sexual practices and experiences in the context of digital media. This was observed in the context of the focus groups; all the participants strongly distanced themselves from sexting; no one admitted even thinking about sending semi-nude photos. This was contradicted by their willingness to share with the interviewer the fact that sexting happens regularly in their own peer groups. Furthermore, they shared that ‘accidents’, where pictures are shared without consent, happen at least a few times every year at school.

Many of the various responses to sexting in the focus groups related to what Goffman (1963) would classify as ‘typical’ stigmatizing responses. First, some of the participants were compassionate when talking about sexting ‘victims’, showing pity and feeling sorry for them. Second, as we also have shown before, some participants argued that sexters are simply ‘dirty’, discredited and shameful persons who are too ‘stupid’ to realize that sending (semi-)nude photos is dangerous. A third, less ‘typical’ response, according to Goffman’s classical account of stigma, was how participants most often responded in the focus groups: many participants argued that whether to engage in sexting is a personal choice. They added that choosing to do so is not smart, emphasizing they would never engage in sexting themselves:

This response to sexting may seem less stigmatizing. Arguing that sexting is a personal choice does not – as is the case when having ‘pity’ for sexters – lead to victimization by removing agency; it does not reduce sexters to powerless targets for (unavoidable) shaming and/or bullying. Also, this response certainly seems less stigmatizing than simply discrediting the person who sexts.

However, such responses relate to the increasing complexity of living sexuality in the context of digital youth cultures by making the practice of sexual self-representation in digital media a lonely moral choice. The paradox of norm violation in digital youth cultures, as we have discussed before, is constantly supported by such a ‘forced reflexivity’ (Weeks, 2007: 127): the technological infrastructures of digital media have created many more opportunities to express oneself sexually, while offering opportunities for controlling and disciplining people who are making ‘stupid’ choices. Emphasizing sexting to be a ‘personal choice’ creates a moral distance that separates those young people from peers who become identified as sexters. Such moral distancing may be equally supported by stigmatizing responses to sexting that take place in the context of digital media, even though students see each other at school every day. As participant Nand argued, ‘No one really talks about sexting’; shaming sexters or discussing sexting pictures is done through technology rather than face-to-face, which may reinforce a moral distance between people:

[M]edia, as indeed other technologies, enable the stretching of action beyond the face-to-face, and consequently undermine the expectation of responsibility and reciprocity that action and communication in face-to-face settings conventionally require. (Silverstone, 2007: 11).

When looking at sexting responses, particularly those that are aimed at shaming and exposing sexters, it seems that a sense of responsibility and reciprocity is lost. The judgment that sexting is a ‘personal choice although regrettable’ neither reduces nor questions sexting as sexual stigma. Rather, it reinforces the paradoxical nature of norm violation that leaves young people continuously troubled about how to deal ethically with sexual self-representation in the context of digital media.

Conclusion

Looking through the theoretical lens of sexual stigma (Goffman, 1963; Plummer, 1975), I illustrated how young people’s discourses on sexting have been molded into a consistent ideology: They argued that sexting violates the norm of good online conduct and thereby also normalized stigmatizing responses to sexting. Victimization, shaming, bullying and moral distance were perceived as ‘natural’ consequences of sexual self-representation in digital media contexts. While their knowledge about sexting comes from various interpretations and interactions in the context of peer groups and everyday life, their perceptions of social media affordances, societal responses and surrounding cultural values to sexting seemed to be a crucial source of information used to make sense of sexting as stigma.

It has been argued that the current moral panic on sexting buries much-needed societal discussions on privacy and consent when it comes to thinking about how to deal ethically with new opportunities for sexual self-representation (Hasinoff, 2015). Listening to young people themselves, it becomes clear how this moral panic has been framing digital media as a sex-negative space; there seems to be a mainly intolerant attitude toward any kind of sexual self-representation. Because of this sex-negative attitude, it is challenging for people to see the necessity of consent when sexting; young people seem too focused on avoiding stigma. In fact, online (sexual) reputation management has become about managing stigma, an intensive form of digital labor for everyday online life. It is now we can see how the paradox of sexual self-representation – the opportunities digital media create for sexual communication, while labeling such behavior as deviant – in fact disguises how power operates in digital youth cultures. The paradox can only be resolved by accepting that engaging in sexting is a lonely moral choice; engaging in sexting means accepting the consequences of your ‘abnormal passions’; it is through this paradox a status quo on sexual politics is maintained in digital youth cultures.

One key example found in this study was how participants did not distinguish between sexting pictures that were shared consensually and those that were shared abusively (such as to shame a sexter); participants relied on traditional moral values such as a long-lasting romantic relationship to think about a context in which sexting could maybe be ‘acceptable’. These sex-negative orientations are a response to the perceived societal responses to and cultural values surrounding sexting, which, in the specific context of Dutch-speaking Belgium, seemed to be primarily negative and orientated toward sexting abstinence.

Digital media spaces have become crucial infrastructures for young people to make sense of, as well as experience, diverse aspects of their intimate and sexual lives. Nowadays, the social construction of sexuality is mediated in digital contexts. Framing sexting through the lens of authoritative work on stigma, written long before the advent of digital media, shows how the same old power struggles surrounding sexualities are far from gone. Rather, they are being continuously reworked in the context of digitization. This article has shown how sexual values among young people’s peer groups are negotiated in relation to digital media affordances. Considering the socio-technological infrastructures through which sexualities are made sense of seems important for future understanding of sexualities in deeply mediatized societies.