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Although it is widely recognized that sexual content pervades television, research rarely examines how television's sexual messages are gendered and occur in a relational context. This study describes the development and implementation of a new coding scheme to evaluate sexual content from a feminist perspective. Merging scripting theory (Simon and Gagnon, 1986 ) with the theory of compulsory heterosexuality (Rich, 1980 ), we explicate a heteronormative and dominant sexual script, the Heterosexual Script, and assessed its presence in the 25 primetime television programs viewed most frequently by adolescents. Our codes captured depictions of boys/men and girls/women thinking, feeling, and behaving in relational and sexual encounters in ways that sustain power inequalities between men and women. Male characters most frequently enacted the Heterosexual Script by actively and aggressively pursuing sex. Less frequently but still at high rates were depictions of female characters willingly objectifying themselves and being judged by their sexual conduct.

The summer after college, Tolman read In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development, in which Carol Gilligan fleshed out her 1977 Harvard Educational Review article, answering her question, \"What don't we know because of all-male samples and virtually exclusively male researchers and theorists?\" Carol's resulting study on how women make choices about abortion launched a disruption in the held of psychology: listening to women upended a moral order, the hierarchy of justice over care and justice logic as more developed than an ethic of care. Women speaking their transgressive thoughts and feelings interrupted the deeply grooved, normalizing, and pathologizing story of development as a climb to individuation and separation, revealing that relationships and care are fundamental to well-being and make up the moral map of the human condition, Carol contended that when women's voices are taken seriously, people really do hear a different voice. Listening to the dynamic of the psyche--social norms and expectations embedded in the body, relationships, the social and cultural outer worlds that kept women's knowledge out of range--was the way in.

There is controversy about the nature of women's sexual desire. The aim was to explore narrative descriptions of sexual desire among mid-aged women in hopes of clarifying how women define and experience sexual desire, and how these might differ among women with and without female sexual arousal disorder (FSAD). Mid-aged women without (age: M = 45, n = 12) and with (age: M = 55, n = 10) FSAD took part in in-depth interviews that invited them to share personal stories of sexual desire. Women also completed the Brief Index of Sexual Functioning and the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI). Women in both groups described sexual desire in genital, non-genital physical, and in cognitive-emotional terms. Although women with FSAD had low ratings of sexual desire on the FSFI, they could recall recent experiences of desire that did not differ from the control group. Women identified a number of triggers of desire including touch, memories, and partner's responses-the latter of which acted as both a trigger and an inhibitor. Women in the control group were more likely to express conflation about the distinction between desire and arousal. Among the different \"objects\" of women's desire, most women acknowledged emotional connection as most important.

This study used a feminist developmental framework to test the hypothesis that internalizing conventional ideas about femininity in two domains--inauthenticity in relationships and body objectification--is associated with diminished sexual health among adolescent girls. In this study, sexual health was conceptualized as feelings of sexual self-efficacy (i.e., a girl's conviction that she can act upon her own sexual needs in a relationship) and protection behavior (i.e., from both STIs and unwanted pregnancy). A total of 116 girls (aged 16-19) completed measures of femininity ideology, sexual self-efficacy, sexual experiences, and protection behavior. Results revealed that inauthenticity in relationships and body objectification were associated with poorer sexual self-efficacy and sexual self-efficacy, in turn, predicted less sexual experience and less use of protection. Further, the two components of femininity ideology were associated with different forms of protection. The importance of a feminist developmental framework for identifying and understanding salient dimensions of sexual health for female adolescents is discussed.

The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of the context of heterosexual anal intercourse (HAI) among adolescents. Black and Latino youth were recruited at an urban college and an inner-city adolescent clinic. Participants completed a sexual behavioral questionnaire and the Sexual Relationship Power Scale (SRPS). A total of 61 young people, all of whom were sexually experienced, completed the survey (53 females; 8 males). Of these respondents, 20% reported engaging in HAI (N = 12), and 50% reported HAI refusal. The Relationship Control subscale scores of the SRPS were significantly inversely correlated with a history of HAI. Those who reported HAI or HAI refusal were invited to participate in an interview; 15 participants were interviewed. Most women found HAI distasteful, though some enjoyed it and instigated it. Most participants did not associate HAI with HIV-infection risk, and few used condoms. Some reported no longer using condoms for vaginal or oral intercourse after not using condoms for HAI and vice versa. The data suggest that there is no sexual script for HAI. HAI appears to be a complex behavior. Conventional views about it, as a way to preserve virginity or prevent pregnancy, may not be adequate. More research is needed to understand this behavior.

This article illustrates the construction of a new model of adolescent sexual health, one that addresses the complex relationships between gender and adolescent sexuality. A review of sexual health models highlights the absence of gender; in contrast, research illuminates the significance of gender. This article describes the process of building a model of sexual health explicitly for girls, guided by feminist research on adolescent girls' sexuality and a \"web of theories.\" It also describes the unanticipated challenges of making a companion model for boys and the ensuing shift from a gender-specific approach to an integrated gendered model of adolescent sexual health. Gender complementarity is defined and forwarded as a way to incorporate gender into a model of adolescent sexual health.

Be sexy but not sexual. Don't be a prude but don't be a slut. These are the cultural messages that barrage teenage girls. In movies and magazines, in music and advice columns, girls are portrayed as the object or the victim of someone else's desire--but virtually never as someone with acceptable sexual feelings of her own. What teenage girls make of these contradictory messages, and what they make of their awakening sexuality--so distant from and yet so susceptible to cultural stereotypes--emerges for the first time in frank and complex fashion in Deborah Tolman'sDilemmas of Desire. A unique look into the world of adolescent sexuality, this book offers an intimate and often disturbing, sometimes inspiring, picture of how teenage girls experience, understand, and respond to their sexual feelings, and of how society mediates, shapes, and distorts this experience. In extensive interviews, we listen as actual adolescent girls--both urban and suburban--speak candidly of their curiosity and confusion, their pleasure and disappointment, their fears, defiance, or capitulation in the face of a seemingly imperishable double standard that smiles upon burgeoning sexuality in boys yet frowns, even panics, at its equivalent in girls. As a vivid evocation of girls negotiating some of the most vexing issues of adolescence, and as a thoughtful, richly informed examination of the dilemmas these girls face, this readable and revealing book begins the critical work of understanding the sexuality of young women in all its personal, social, and emotional significance.

On December 4th 2014, the International Centre for Reproductive Health (ICRH) at Ghent University organized an international conference on adolescent sexual and reproductive health (ASRH) and well-being. This viewpoint highlights two key messages of the conference - 1) ASRH promotion is broadening on different levels and 2) this broadening has important implications for research and interventions – that can guide this research field into the next decade. Adolescent sexuality has long been equated with risk and danger. However, throughout the presentations, it became clear that ASRH and related promotion efforts are broadening on different levels: from risk to well-being, from targeted and individual to comprehensive and structural, from knowledge transfer to innovative tools. However, indicators to measure adolescent sexuality that should accompany this broadening trend, are lacking. While public health related indicators (HIV/STIs, pregnancies) and their behavioral proxies (e.g. condom use, number of partners) are well developed and documented, there is a lack of consensus on indicators for the broader construct of adolescent sexuality, including sexual well-being and aspects of positive sexuality. Furthermore, the debate during the conference clearly indicated that experimental designs may not be the only appropriate study design to measure effectiveness of comprehensive, context-specific and long-term ASRH programmes, and that alternatives need to be identified and applied. Presenters at the conference clearly expressed the need to develop validated tools to measure different sub-constructs of adolescent sexuality and environmental factors. There was a plea to combine (quasi-)experimental effectiveness studies with evaluations of the development and implementation of ASRH promotion initiatives.

Young women’s narratives of their sexual experiences occur amid conflicting cultural discourses of risk, abstinence, and moral panic. Yet young women, as social actors, find ways to make meaning of their experiences through narrative. In this study, we focused on adolescent girls’ ( N  = 98, age 12–17 years) narratives of their first experiences with oral sex. We document our unexpected findings of persistent discourses of performance which echo newly emergent academic achievement discourses. Burns and Torre ( Feminism & Psychology 15(1):21–26, 2005 ) argue that an extreme and high stakes focus on individual academic achievement in schools impoverishes young minds through the “hollowing” of their sexualities. We present evidence that such influence also works in the opposite direction, with an achievement orientation invading girls’ discourses of sexuality, “crowding out” possible narratives of pleasure, choice, and mutuality with narratives of competence and skill usually associated with achievement and schooling. We conclude with policy implications for the future development of “positive” sexuality narratives.