Heterosexual experiences of secondary school pupils in Ireland: sexual coercion in context

Abstract

This paper reports on data from a wider study of young people's heterosexual experiences in Ireland, but focuses in particular on issues of sexual coercion. Data were gathered from 29 focus group interviews with 102 young women and 124 young men and were analysed using a qualitative research strategy. Drawing on concepts of social coercion and interpersonal coercion, we argue that both female and male participants reported a general sense of social coercion to lose their virginity by a certain age. However, narratives of interpersonal coercion were far stronger in the case of the young women compared with their male counterparts, while the young men reported a particular type of social coercion that propelled them to subscribe to conventional heterosexual male behaviour. We argue that while the distinction between social coercion and interpersonal coercion is far from watertight, it is a useful conceptual tool in identifying broad variations in women's and men's sexually coercive experiences.

Résumé

Cet article rend compte d'une vaste recherche sur les expériences hétérosexuelles des jeunes en Irlande, et se concentre particulièrement sur les questions de coercition sexuelle. Les données proviennent de 29 groupes cible auxquels ont participé 102 jeunes femmes et 124 jeunes hommes, et elles ont été analysées selon une stratégie de recherche qualitative. En nous basant sur des concepts de coercition sociale et de coercition interpersonnelle, nous soutenons que les participants, aussi bien de sexe féminin que de sexe masculin, ont exprimé le sentiment général d'avoir subi une certaine coercition sociale poussant à perdre sa virginité à un certain âge. Cependant, ces récits de coercition interpersonnelle ont été bien plus tranchés chez les jeunes femmes que chez les jeunes hommes, ces derniers évoquant plutôt un type particulier de coercition sociale les ayant poussés à adopter des comportements masculins hétérosexuels conventionnels. Nous affirmons que si la distinction entre la coercition sociale et la coercition interpersonnelle est loin d'être étanche, elle est un outil conceptuel utile pour l'identification des variations importantes entre les expériences sexuelles coercitives des hommes et celles des femmes.

Resumen

En este artículo informamos sobre los datos de un amplio estudio en cuanto a las experiencias de jóvenes heterosexuales en Irlanda pero centrándonos en cuestiones de coerción sexual. Se recabaron datos de 29 entrevistas en grupo en las que participaron 102 chicas y 124 chicos; los datos fueron analizados mediante una estrategia de investigación cualitativo. Basándonos en conceptos de coerción social e interpersonal, sostenemos que los participantes de ambos sexos comunicaron un sentido general de coerción social para perder la virginidad a una cierta edad. Sin embargo, los relatos sobre la coerción interpersonal fueron mucho más firmes en el caso de las chicas comparados con sus compañeros, mientras que los chicos manifestaron un tipo particular de coerción social que les impulsaba a aceptar la conducta masculina heterosexual convencional. Argumentamos que si bien la distinción entre coerción social y coerción interpersonal está lejos de ser hermética, es una herramienta conceptual muy útil para identificar las diferentes variaciones en las experiencias sexuales coercitivas de ambos sexos.

Keywords:

• heterosexuality
• sexual coercion
• gender
• youth
• Ireland

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Crisis Pregnancy Agency for funding this study. The opinions expressed in this publication are of the researchers and are not necessarily those of the sponsor.

Notes

1. A conceptual parallel emerges in Mitchell and West's (1996, p. 47) research into the initiation of cigarette smoking in which the authors problematise definitions of peer pressure based on the notion that young people are bullied or coerced into smoking. Rather, the authors argue that young people's initiation into smoking has more to do with concerns about identity and the influences of group membership than one‐way persuasion.

2. ‘P’ indicates that a participant is speaking, and where the identity of the participant was recognized in the course of transcribing, the participant is identified by a number. At times during the interviews, however, particularly when interactions among group members became highly spontaneous, it was impossible to identify who the speaker was. The fact that the young people within particular groups tended to speak with the same accents and the same level of maturity in their voices exacerbated the problem.