Bodies and Agentic Practice in Young Women’s Sexual and Intimate Relationships

Abstract

This paper contributes to theorisations of agency through a focus on how understandings of power within young women's sexual and intimate relationships connect with their descriptions of feeling, reacting and sensuous bodies, to suggest why and how agentic practice takes place. Drawing on the narratives of 54 young women aged 16-18 years in one secondary school in England, findings concur with other literature which suggests that sensations experienced on or within the body can instigate (agentic) practice. Significantly, however, both physical and verbal practices are drawn on during agentic moments. Young women who discursively position themselves as 'powerful' integrate their bodies within such an understanding, using this integration to shore up the possibilities for agentic practice. Moving away from an understanding of practice as 'accommodating' and/or 'resisting' norms and inequalities, this paper identifies four strategies described by the young women (assertive, refusing, proactive and interrogative) for facilitating more sustained agency.

Oral Sex, Young People, and Gendered Narratives of Reciprocity

“…Her refusal to swallow, her questioning why he wanted her to, and her evaluation of his response as inadequate ("He didn't really have a straight answer") could be interpreted as an example of agentic embodied practice (Maxwell & Aggleton, 2012), although if so this seems a far more restricted agency than appears in men's accounts.…”

Researching elite education: affectively inferred belongings, desires and exclusions

“…Two previous studies had been undertaken at St. George's, in the form of a doctoral thesis and an earlier study by both authors (Maxwell & Aggleton, 2012). Significantly, the relationship established with the deputy headteacher as part of the original doctoral study had led to a productive partnership which included 'intellectual dialogue' (Smith, 1996) about, and some casual paid work facilitating sex and relationships education for young women at the school.…”

‘You do act differently when you're in it’: lingerie and femininity

“…In their study of young women speaking about their bodies and sexual practises, Maxwell and Aggleton (2011) argue that the female body can be experienced as an 'agentic force'. They demonstrate that feelings of pleasure and/or discomfort are experienced as originating in the body can subsequently (re)direct practise in sexual relationships, allowing young women to assert agency: 'physical and emotional sensations and residues (be they pleasurable, painful or unarticulated) experienced through sexual and intimate relationships may provide the stimulus for potentially new modes of thinking and doing' (310).…”