‘I'm not a real risk-taker’: moral identity construction and sexual-risk perceptions among a group of young rural Tasmanians

Abstract

Some young people are labelled more ‘at-risk’ of harming themselves through various behaviours, such as having sex, than others. However, such distinctions between young people are ambiguous, as youth itself is imagined as inherently risky. At-risk discourse has fuelled the existing links between youth and risk, and morality and risk. It has also impeded explanations of young people's sexual risk-taking. This article examines the stories that young rural Tasmanians (a group considered to be at sexual risk) tell about their experiences of safe and risky sex. A narrative analysis highlights the way that they perceive risk through the prism of self-identity. The participants' desire not to understand the self as a ‘real’ risk-taker inhibits them from imbuing their sex practices with significant risk. The findings suggest that sexual health research and safety promotion strategies may benefit from a shift away from at-risk rhetoric and a greater emphasis on the self-identity and risk perception nexus.

Acknowledgements

The study was undertaken as part of a PhD in sociology at the University of Tasmania. Ethics approval was granted by the University Ethics Committee. Thanks are due to Kristin Natalier and Karen Willis and especially to the 31 young Tasmanians who shared their private stories with the author.

Notes

^1. The term ‘unsafe’ is used widely throughout the youth sexuality and sexual health literature to refer to sex that may lead to either (or both) infection and unwanted pregnancy, and also more broadly to sexual coercion. ‘Unprotected’ sex is also used. However, as the focus is predominantly on condom use, ‘unprotected’ has become shorthand for sex without a condom – which may be safe from both pregnancy and disease, and thus not ‘unprotected’ or ‘unsafe’ per se. The term ‘condomless’ is also used (see Sobo 1995), although less often and usually to describe men who have sex with men without a condom (see Shernoff 2006). Where appropriate, I use the unambiguous terms ‘condomless’, or ‘condomless/unprotected’ rather than ‘unsafe’ throughout the paper.

^2. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (2004) ‘defines “Rural” in the ASGC (Australian Standard Geographical Classification) Section of State Structure as areas which are not part of any “Urban” area’. There are three sub-categories of urban; the third refers to areas with a population of 100,000–249,999 (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2004). The sample therefore excluded Hobart and Launceston, both of which exceed this number, and was drawn from areas with populations significantly lower than this.

^3. However, research into sexual risk behaviour has far more often focused on urban youth (Blinn-Pike 2008, 70). This reflects the traditional belief that social problems are concentrated in urban areas and that rural areas are safe and void of stressors, particularly for young people, who are thus considered less at risk of engaging in unsafe behaviours (see Dixon and Welch 2000, 254).

^4. I acknowledge that there are narrative authors who locate themselves within a post-modern or post-structuralist framework. But while following some of the principles that are generally accepted as part of the narrative paradigm, much of this work exists on the margins of the narrative approach. These authors contradict the key tenet of the narrativist approach to identity, because rather than positing self-coherence they suggest that the self can be multiple and fragmented (see Davies 1989; Sondergaard 2002).

^5. This relates to the relevance of context for identity, first articulated by Goffman (1959, 1963) who argues that people perform the ‘face’ considered most appropriate for that ‘stage’ and audience.