The Complex Sexualities of Young Women

By Heather Corinna, RH Reality Check. Posted July 26, 2009.

Young women today have it so much better when it comes to sex than we did... right? Now and then, when talking about the population I work with and the work I do with them, I will hear or face women my age (I'll be 39 this spring) or older stating that now that we live in a post-feminist world here in the states, they're shocked to hear that young women are struggling with sex and sexuality....well, just like we were. And some struggle even more.

Let's get that post-feminist mishegoss out of the way first. I remember the first time -- it was near the end of the 80s, which probably should have tipped me off to the fact that clearly, the end of the 80's was indeed nigh -- I ever heard someone use that phrase, as blithely as if they'd just said the earth were round. I wondered how the heck I missed the final end of sexism, patriarchy and gender inequality. Surely, if this were so, I'd have heard the long, whining wail of even just one of the Rush Limbaugh's of the world?

I've found the only conclusions I can ever come to when it comes to those who hold the idea that we're post-feminist are that they must a) be feeling the membership they have on the other team is so valuable yet so tenuous that any sign of fraternization (as it were) with the enemy would bring their exile, b) that many women are simply either tired from the struggles of feminism or who see how tired other women have become and don't want to be that worn out themselves, and/or c) be indulging in some seriously wishful thinking and have outrageously low expectations for equality.

I agree: it feels like we should be further along than we are, and should have to wait less long to get there. It feels like we -- and certainly younger women than we -- should be there already. But we're not. I can understand why it can seem like young women have it easier when it comes to sex and sexuality. Their access to many kinds of birth control and to abortion is certainly better than it has been for women in the past, even though that access has had limits imposed upon it in the last ten years and has, at times, been at serious risk. GLBT youth in the U.S., in so many ways, certainly have a more welcoming environment. Many teens and twentysomethings have information on their bodies and their sexuality available to them which many women not only did not have as easily before, but more of that material available is also being penned by women, for women, and is even truly about women sometimes. Better support services are available for this generation when it comes to rape and abuse than even the generation right before them had. Positive and negative body image are things they hear about. Sex and sexuality are discussed more openly and widely.

But all those benefits can also pose some not-so-beneficials, and some very real challenges. Young women now have some extra bags to carry that we before them may not have had to, or found quite so heavy, and either overflowing or vacant with scarcity everywhere we turned. A majority of young American women today do grow up aware that no means no, and told that they have permission to say no. However, many grow up also experiencing that while no may mean no, they don't always have an easy time saying it or feel the permission to. Too many young women are more frequently, and at earlier ages -- which for some is due to sexual development happening earlier historically than it ever has for women before -- finding themselves in the position of responding to sexual invitations and situations.

Statistically, the earlier young women become sexually active, the more frequently they report those very early experiences are coerced: saying no in a highly loaded situation, no matter what generation we belong to, tends to be something that is a lot more difficult the younger we are. As well, the younger women are when they become sexually active, the older their partners tend to be, and the less likely it is that contraception or safer sex practices are used. When they can get past the no, past the maybe, and to the yes, that yes often tends to end in a question mark instead of an exclamation point. The "yes" to sex and sexuality I hear young women often express sounds like the way many of us who took other languages in high school and trying to speak them in the country of their origin in our later years. Like asking with a feigned confidence where the drivel is when we wanted to ask where the bathroom was. Too much of the time, that's unfortunately what the yesses young women discuss sound like to me. ¿Dónde está la bana?

Sparing emergency contraception, there have not been any new advances in available birth control in the last decade: the female condom and the implant were released in the early 90's, and even emergency contraceptive pills were given FDA approval ten years ago, though they'd already been around for some time. Mostly, we've added a couple new ways of delivering the same old hormones we already had. We've had no advances in non-hormonal methods, which is no small deal for teens who may not have access to hormonal methods, or who they may not be so great for, both in terms of their health and their ease-of-use for teens (the typical use rate for the pill drops nearly 10% for adolescents from the adult typical use rate). Too, the use of hormonal methods for menstrual suppression is becoming more popular. With more older women talking about how awesome not having a period is, women in their teens having a hard enough time already accepting the adult changes in their bodies get another message that those changes are as awful and gross as they feel. I'm starting to notice that much in the same way women my mother's age have talked about how the advent of the pill could make it tougher for them to say no to sex (because "I'm worried I'll get pregnant" stopped being such an easy out), some younger women seem to feel pressure from peers and partners to suppress periods for greater sexual accessibility to them. Even EC is only so much of a great advance for them, since in the U.S. it remains out of reach of many women under the age of 18 who cannot buy it over the counter, and who face intense judgment from both their physicians and their pharmacists when they seek it out, and with less chutzpah to draw on to counter that.

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