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Gender, Sexual Agency, and Friends with Benefits Relationships

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Abstract

Recent trends suggest that friends with benefits (FWB) relationships are prevalent among emerging adults on college campuses. Notably, young women are just as likely to participate in these relationships as young men, a finding that differentiates FWBs from heterosexual hook ups, where women traditionally report less participation. As such, it has been suggested that friends with benefits relationships may provide young women an avenue to explore and achieve sexual agency. Yet, whether emerging adults actually perceive friends with benefits relationships as affording women sexual agency has not been explored explicitly. In this study, we focus on female sexual agency and examine whether college women and men perceive FWB relationships as a means of expressing women’s sexual agency. Based on focus group discussions with 71 women and 35 men at a large public university, this study explores the myriad ways that students make sense of FWB relationships. Focus group discussions focused on the themes of empowerment, control, and safety in FWB relationships; we examine these themes in order to provide a nuanced analysis of FWB relationships as an increasingly widespread sexual behavior among young people on college campuses.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported in part by funding from the authors’ institution. The views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of the sponsor. We would like to express our sincere thanks to the many undergraduate and graduate students who provided assistance over the course of this project: Emily Aguilar, Jerusha Beebe, Anna Black-Hogins, Mick Bruckner, Megan Carnow, Alex Fernandez, Ilea Harrington, Natalie Hendricks, Markie Jorgensen, Nikki Lanshaw, Melina Manetti, Marguerite McHale, Natalie Neach, Luke Politi, LaurynPreeshl, Hamzah Ramadan, Xavier Ramos, Travis Raynaud, Michelle Tan, Sydney Tanimoto, Taelor Trimble, Sevelyn Van Ronk.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology and Child Development, California Polytechnic State University, 1 Grand Ave, San Luis Obispo, CA, 93407, USA

    Jasna Jovanovic

  2. Department of Political Science, California Polytechnic State University, 1 Grand Ave, San Luis Obispo, CA, 93407, USA

    Jean Calterone Williams

Authors
  1. Jasna Jovanovic
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  2. Jean Calterone Williams
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Correspondence to Jasna Jovanovic.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institution and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors.

Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Appendix: Focus Group Questions

Appendix: Focus Group Questions

  1. 1.

    We want you to think about someone you know who has considered having a FWB relationship—or if you have had one, you can also think of your own relationship.

    1. (a)

      why did—or why didn’t—the person decide to participate in a FWB relationship?

    2. (b)

      for those that did—was the experience mostly positive or mostly negative or somewhere in the middle? Why?

  2. 2.

    Do you think the reasons men and women have FWB relationships are similar or different?

  3. 3.

    Is there any negotiation or discussion that takes place between two people who are considering a FWB relationship?

  4. 4.

    Would you say that the degree of communication between a hook up, FWB, and relationship are similar or different?

  5. 5.

    If you start communicating with each other about the relationship or your expectations, is it still a FWB relationship, or does communication make it into something else?

  6. 6.

    What are your thoughts on using a FWB relationship as a transition into a romantic relationship?

  7. 7.

    Is alcohol a motivating factor in whether students have a FWB?

  8. 8.

    How do you think people who participate in FWB relationships are viewed by people who know about it?

  9. 9.

    Do you think there are differences in the way women and men who participate in FWB relationships are viewed by people who know about it?

  10. 10.

    Are men and women in FWB relationships treated the same way by people who know about it?

  11. 11.

    Is there shared power or control in FWB relationships? What would be indicators of who has more power or control?

  12. 12.

    Do you think engaging in a FWB relationship is empowering or not empowering for young women? for young men?

  13. 13.

    Is a FWB relationship more, less, or equally empowering as a hookup for young women? for young men?

  14. 14.

    In another focus group, some students said that generally, women aren’t encouraged to be sexual beings or to freely experiment sexually, but that men are. They said that FWB relationships can be empowering for women because it gives them a chance to experiment and be sexual beings. What do you think about that?

  15. 15.

    Do you think that FWB relationships are an arena in which women and men are pretty equal or pretty unequal?

  16. 16.

    Are men or women more sexually satisfied in a FWB, or are both equally satisfied?

  17. 17.

    Would you say that women OR men have the power to decide what will happen in the FWB relationship? (e.g. who’s doing the calling, how often they see each other, monogamous or not, who’s making the rules, if they tell other people)

  18. 18.

    If you could define FWB relationships as feminist, unfeminist, or somewhere in the middle, how would you define them? Why?

  19. 19.

    Follow up: How are you defining “feminism”? What does it mean to you? Do you think other people your age define it the same way?

  20. 20.

    Are students likely to use condoms or other forms of contraception in a FWB relationship? Why or why not?

  21. 21.

    Is there anything we haven’t talked about that you think is important?

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Jovanovic, J., Williams, J.C. Gender, Sexual Agency, and Friends with Benefits Relationships. Sexuality & Culture 22, 555–576 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-017-9483-1

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