Abstract
Past research has argued that young women in the United States encounter gendered and heteronormative cultural messages that tend to paint men’s sexuality as active and women’s sexuality as passive. Recent research argues that neoliberal ideology—with its focus on individual choice and personal responsibility—has modified these traditional sexual discourses, including women’s entitlement to sexual subjectivity. This study centers the voices of a diverse group of young women who attend a regional, Hispanic-serving university in southern California, USA, in an analysis of their responses to an open-ended survey about two aspects of sexual subjectivity. Results show that the majority of the women in this study feel entitled to sexual responsiveness from their partner and feel comfortable asking for sexual stimulation. In contrast to past research where women from historically marginalized backgrounds in the United States were more likely to prioritize romantic relationships over sexual pleasure, the majority of the participants in this study did not dismiss their sexual needs. Participants describe sexual pleasure as a relational, rather than purely self-interested accomplishment that is important for their own well-being and for building healthy romantic relationships.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Availability of Data and Material
Survey instruments used in this study are available upon request. Original data is not available due to Institutional Review Board restrictions on data destruction post-publication.
References
Allison, R. (2016). Family influences on hooking up and dating among emerging adults. Sexuality and Culture, 20(3), 446–463. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-016-9334-5.
Allison, R., & Risman, B. J. (2014). “It goes hand in hand with the parties:” Race, class, and residence in college student negotiations of hooking up. Sociological Perspectives, 57(1), 102–123. https://doi.org/10.1177/0731121413516608.
Armstrong, E. A., England, P., & Fogarty, A. C. K. (2012). Accounting for women’s orgasm and sexual enjoyment in college hookups and relationships. American Sociological Review, 77(3), 435–462. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122412445802.
Armstrong, E. A., & Hamilton, L. T. (2012). Paying for the party: How college maintains inequality. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Armstrong, E. A., Hamilton, L. T., Armstrong, E. M., & Seeley, J. L. (2014). “Good Girls:” Gender, social class, and slut discourse on campus. Social Psychology Quarterly, 77(2), 100–122. https://doi.org/10.1177/0190272514521220.
Backstrom, L., Armstrong, E. A., & Puentes, J. (2012). Women’s negotiation of cunnilingus in college hookups and relationships. The Journal of Sex Research, 49(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2011.585523.
Bay-Cheng, L. Y. (2015a). The agency line: A neoliberal metric for appraising young women’s sexuality. Sex Roles, 73(7–8), 279–291. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-015-0452-6.
Bay-Cheng, L. Y. (2015b). Living in metaphors, trapped in a matrix: The ramifications of neoliberal ideology for young women’s sexuality. Sex Roles, 73(7–8), 332–339. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-015-0541-6.
Bay-Cheng, L. Y. (2019). Agency is everywhere, but agency is not enough: A conceptual analysis of young women’s sexual agency. The Journal of Sex Research, 56(4–5), 462–474. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2019.1578330.
Bay-Cheng, L. Y., Bruns, A. E., & Maguin, E. (2018). Agents, virgins, sluts, and losers: The sexual typecasting of young heterosexual women. Sex Roles, 79(11–12), 699–714. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-018-0907-7.
Bay-Cheng, L. Y., & Eliseo-Arras, R. K. (2008). The making of unwanted sex: Gendered and neoliberal norms in college women’s unwanted sexual experiences. The Journal of Sex Research, 45(4), 386–397. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224490802398381.
Bay-Cheng, L. Y., & Goodkind, S. A. (2015). Sex and the single (neoliberal) girl: Perspectives on being single among socioeconomically diverse young women. Sex Roles, 74(5–6), 181–194. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-015-0565-y.
Bettie, J. (2003). Women without class: Girls, race and identity. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Bogle, K. A. (2008). Hooking up: Sex, dating, and relationships on campus. New York: New York University Press.
Butler, J. (2013). For white girls only?: Postfeminism and the politics of inclusion. Feminist Formations, 25(1), 35–58. https://doi.org/10.1353/ff.2013.0009.
California State University Office of the Chancellor. (2019). Fact Book, 1–23. Retrieved from https://www2.calstate.edu/csu-system/about-the-csu/facts-about-the-csu/Documents/facts2019.pdf.
Cheng, S., Hamilton, L., Missari, S., & Ma, J. (2014). Sexual subjectivity among adolescent girls: Social disadvantage and young adult outcomes. Social Forces, 93(2), 515–544. https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/sou084.
Collins, P. H. (1990). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. New York: Routledge.
Collins, P. H. (2004). Black sexual politics: African Americans, gender, and the new racism. New York: Routledge.
Creswell, J. W. (2016). 30 essential skills for the qualitative researcher. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications Inc.
Fields, J. (2008). Risky lessons: Sex education and social inequality. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Fine, M. (1988). Sexuality, schooling, and adolescent females: The missing discourse of desire. Harvard Educational Review, 58(1), 29–54. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.58.1.u0468k1v2n2n8242.
Fine, M. (2005). X. desire: The morning (and 15 years) after. Feminism & Psychology, 15(1), 54–60. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959353505049708.
Fine, M., & Mcclelland, S. (2006). Sexuality education and desire: Still missing after all these years. Harvard Educational Review, 76(3), 297–338. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.76.3.w5042g23122n6703.
Garcia, L. (2012). Respect yourself, protect yourself: Latina girls and sexual identity. New York: New York University.
Hamilton, L., & Armstrong, E. A. (2009). Gendered sexuality in young adulthood: Double binds and flawed options. Gender & Society, 23(5), 589–616. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243209345829.
Higgins, J. A., & Hirsch, J. S. (2007). The pleasure deficit: revisiting the “sexuality connection” in reproductive health. Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 39(4), 240–247. https://doi.org/10.1363/3924007.
Holland, J., Ramazanoglu, C., Sharpe, S., & Thomson, R. (2004). The male in the head: Young people, heterosexuality and power. London: Tufnell.
Horne, S., & Zimmer-Gembeck, M. J. (2005). Female sexual subjectivity and well-being: Comparing late adolescents with different sexual experiences. Sexuality Research and Social Policy, 2(3), 25–40. https://doi.org/10.1525/srsp.2005.2.3.25.
Horne, S., & Zimmer-Gembeck, M. J. (2006). The female sexual subjectivity inventory: Development and validation of a multidimensional inventory for late adolescents and emerging adults. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 30(2), 125–138. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.2006.00276.x.
Jones, A. (2018). Sex is not a problem: The erasure of pleasure in sexual science research. Sexualities, 22(4), 643–668. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460718760210.
Kettrey, H. H. (2018). “Bad girls” say no and “good girls” say yes: Sexual subjectivity and participation in undesired sex during heterosexual college hookups. Sexuality and Culture, 22(3), 685–705. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-018-9498-2.
Luker, K. (1997). Dubious conceptions: The politics of teenage pregnancy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Mann, E. S. (2016). Latina girls, sexual agency, and the contradictions of neoliberalism. Sexuality Research and Social Policy, 13(4), 330–340. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13178-016-0237-x.
Martin, K. A. (1996). Puberty, sexuality, and the self: Girls and boys at adolescence. New York: Routledge.
Martin, K. A., & Kazyak, E. (2009). Hetero-romantic love and heterosexiness in childrens g-rated films. Gender & Society, 23(3), 315–336. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243209335635.
Meenagh, J. (2017). Breaking up and hooking up: A young woman’s experience of “sexual empowerment”. Feminism & Psychology, 27(4), 447–464. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959353517731434.
Moran, C. (2016). Re-positioning female heterosexuality within postfeminist and neoliberal culture. Sexualities, 20(1–2), 121–139. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460716649335.
Muehlenhard, C. L., & Peterson, Z. D. (2005). Wanting and not wanting sex: The missing discourse of ambivalence. Feminism & Psychology, 15(1), 15–20. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959353505049698.
Nagel, J. (2003). Race, ethnicity, and sexuality: Intimate intersections, forbidden frontiers. New York: Oxford University Press.
Pham, J. M. (2019). Campus Sex in context: organizational cultures and women’s engagement in sexual relationships on two american college campuses. Sociological Forum, 34(1), 138–157. https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.12489.
Roberts, D. E. (1997). Killing the black body: Race, reproduction, and the meaning of liberty. New York: Vintage Books.
Rupp, L. J., Taylor, V., Regev-Messalem, S., Fogarty, A. C., & England, P. (2014). Queer women in the hookup scene. Gender & Society, 28(2), 212–235. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243213510782.
Rutherford, A. (2018). Feminism, psychology, and the gendering of neoliberal subjectivity: From critique to disruption. Theory & Psychology, 28(5), 619–644. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959354318797194.
Schalet, A. (2010). Sexual subjectivity revisited. Gender & Society, 24(3), 304–329. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243210368400.
Takagi, D. Y. (1996). Maiden voyage: Excursion into sexuality and identity politics in Asian America. In S. Seidman (Ed.), Queer theory/sociology (pp. 243–258). Cambridge: Blackwell Press.
Tolman, D. L. (1994). Doing desire: Adolescent girls struggles for/with sexuality. Gender & Society, 8(3), 324–342. https://doi.org/10.1177/089124394008003003.
Tolman, D. L. (1996). Adolescent girls’ sexuality: Debunking the myth of the urban girl. In B. J. Ross & N. Way (Eds.), Urban girls: Resisting stereotypes, creating identities (pp. 255–271). New York: New York University Press.
Tolman, D. L. (2002). Dilemmas of desire: Teenage girls talk about sexuality. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Tolman, D. L. (2005). Found(ing) discourses of desire: Unfettering female adolescent sexuality. Feminism & Psychology, 15(1), 5–9. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959353505049696.
Tolman, D. L., Anderson, S. M., & Belmonte, K. (2015). Mobilizing metaphor: Considering complexities, contradictions, and contexts in adolescent girls’ and young women’s sexual agency. Sex Roles, 73(7–8), 298–310. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-015-0510-0.
Tolman, D. L., & Mcclelland, S. I. (2011). Normative sexuality development in adolescence: A decade in review, 2000–2009. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 21(1), 242–255. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1532-7795.2010.00726.x.
Wade, L. (2018). American hookup: The new culture of sex on campus. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Wilkins, A. C., & Miller, S. A. (2017). Secure girls: Class, sexuality, and self-esteem. Sexualities, 20(7), 815–834. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460716658422.
Zimmer-Gembeck, M. J., Ducat, W. H., & Boislard-Pepin, M. A. (2011). A prospective study of young females′ sexual subjectivity: Associations with age, sexual behavior, and dating. Archives of sexual behavior, 40(5), 927–938. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-011-9751-3.
Zimmer-Gembeck, M. J., & French, J. (2014). Associations of sexual subjectivity with global and sexual well-being: A new measure for young males and comparison to females. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 45(2), 315–327. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-014-0387-y.
Zucker, A. N., Fitz, C. C., & Bay-Cheng, L. Y. (2015). Reverberations of racism and sexism through the subjective sexualities of undergraduate women of color. The Journal of Sex Research, 53(2), 265–272. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2014.1002557.
Funding
This study received no funding.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The author declares no conflict of interest.
Ethical Approval
This study does not contain any studies with animals. All procedures performed in this study using human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
Informed Consent
Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Appendix
Appendix
See Table 4.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Missari, S. “Safe and Satisfied:” An Exploratory Study of Two Aspects of Sexual Subjectivity Among Young Women at a Hispanic-Serving Institution in Southern California, USA. Sexuality & Culture 25, 981–1004 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-020-09805-6
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-020-09805-6