This article uses qualitative data to examine sexting practices as a form of empowered agentic behavior for young women within the context of American collegiate hookup culture. Focus group data from a diverse sample of American college women (n = 22; 18 % white) demonstrates their engagement with the sexual double standard and choices about sexting. Situating sexting within cultural narratives emerging from hookup culture and post-feminism, young women appear to receive contradictory messages that complicate their decision-making. Young women are simultaneously exposed to hookup culture, which promotes the expectations of sexual experimentation and self-objectification in college, as well as post-feminist ideologies encouraging them to freely enact their sexual choices. The juxtaposition of these discourses becomes complicated by lived experiences with the double standard, where women see gender-based obstacles in their decision-making that do not extend to their male peers. For these young women of color, the sexual double standard operates prominently in their decisions, so they make choices to protect their privacy, reputation, and relationships while choosing to engage in sexting. 

Sexting in a post-feminist society: Balancing agentic empowerment and the sexual double standard

https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2124&context=psychfacpub

A triangulation study of young Women's motivations for sending nudes to men

Women-centered anti-abortion rhetoric, grounded in ostensibly positive beliefs that pregnant people are precious objects who must be protected from having abortions, has proliferated anti-abortion activism and legislation. However, abortion stigma, marked by negative perceptions of people who terminate pregnancies, is the most widely used theoretical tool for understanding the social and psychological implications of abortion. In this article, we first integrate these two seemingly contradictory perspectives on abortion through the lens of ambivalent sexism theory. We then argue that ambivalent sexism paves the way for objectifying perceptions and treatment of pregnant people; specifically, our typology of reproductive objectification provides a tool for exploring how the abortion decision-making of pregnant people is undermined. Through this lens, abortion decisions can represent a subversion of these portrayals and treatment by affirming people who seek and have abortions as whole human beings. Throughout, we aim to counter White supremacy and cisheteropatriarchy, which have marked public discourse and psychological research on abortion. Finally, using this reproductive objectification framework, recommendations for clinicians and researchers are provided.

Olivia R. Checkalski

Papers

A triangulation study of young Women's motivations for sending nudes to men

Abortion Decisions as Humanizing Acts: The Application of Ambivalent Sexism and Objectification to Women-Centered Anti-Abortion Rhetoric