The sexual agency of young women is constructed within various discourses that articulate multiple and conflicting social imperatives, such that they need to account for their sexual and social vulnerability while expressing their sexuality. This paper uses a common Israeli heteronormative youth practice called “attacking” to analyze young women’s sexual agency. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 39 young women aged 18–23, it explores how young women express their sexual agency while managing their vulnerability. Analyzed using a theory of vulnerability, our findings point to unique forms of relational agency that support young women’s subjective sexual expressions. The findings highlight the duality and ambiguities that young women face in spaces of “attacking,” showing how their agency is supported relationally by emerging alliances based on joint vulnerability. Based on these findings, this paper challenges the dichotomy between social forces and agency and establishes a conceptualization of relational agency with regard to young women’s sexuality.

Although young women’s sexual body is often objectified by cultural practices, analysis of their affective responses highlights various possibilities of sexual subjectification. This paper uses the case study of “attacking”—a common Israeli heterosexual practice—to address the emergence of young women’s sexual subjectivity, using affect theory to reveal the gap between affective responses, self-perceptions, and the perceived normativity of the practice. We address vulnerability as an affective pattern of the encounter of bodies with power formations, which also enables transformation. Drawing on interviews with 39 young Israeli women, we demonstrate how “attacking” evokes affective dissonance that illuminates their need to negotiate social meanings and self-perceptions, revealing new forms of collectivity and action that enable sexual expression even when facing vulnerability. This approach challenges the objectification–subjectification dichotomy and expands theorization beyond the focus on autonomy and control of sexual pleasure.