More pleasurable experiences countered narratives of shame and inherent risk. However, while participants wanted to be met ‘on their own terms’, they discussed a range of factors and influences upon their decision-making that meant pleasure needed to be contextualised (see Gill, 2007; Lamb and Petersen, 2012). Resultantly, neither abstinence nor liberal sex positivity is likely to wholly engage with the breadth and complexity of young people’s perspectives, nor the sociocultural context to their practices (see Döring, 2010: Livingstone and Mason, 2015). Young people should be empowered to critique harmful practices, restrictive ethical attributions of responsibility and individualised solutions to harm, while acknowledging their rights to make free and informed choices as to the encounters in which they do or do not engage. However, it is not just about shifting blame narratives to perpetrators, but understanding the conditions of young people’s lives, deconstructing their practices, exposing the underlying meanings and challenging harm more broadly. Bystander intervention – in terms of recognising the roles and responsibilities of the ‘audience’ in providing a facilitating context to harm (Powell, 2010b) – can be valuable, but only if it reconnects harm to broader social and cultural narratives and inequalities, and does not just become another individualised endeavour of searching for blame and responsibility. Renold (2016) developed an approach to doing so in ‘Agenda’. Agenda is a national online toolkit developed with young people, and designed to support young people to raise awareness of gender-based and sexual violence in schools and communities across Wales. Renold’s (2016) ‘What Jars You?’ task, for example, encourages young people to think more broadly about what ‘jars’ them about inequality and unfairness, which may help challenge individualistic narratives.
More pleasurable experiences countered narratives of shame and inherent risk. However, while participants wanted to be met ‘on their own terms’, they discussed a range of factors and influences upon their decision-making that meant pleasure needed to be contextualised (see Gill, 2007; Lamb and Petersen, 2012). Resultantly, neither abstinence nor liberal sex positivity is likely to wholly engage with the breadth and complexity of young people’s perspectives, nor the sociocultural context to their practices (see Döring, 2010: Livingstone and Mason, 2015). Young people should be empowered to critique harmful practices, restrictive ethical attributions of responsibility and individualised solutions to harm, while acknowledging their rights to make free and informed choices as to the encounters in which they do or do not engage. However, it is not just about shifting blame narratives to perpetrators, but understanding the conditions of young people’s lives, deconstructing their practices, exposing the underlying meanings and challenging harm more broadly. Bystander intervention – in terms of recognising the roles and responsibilities of the ‘audience’ in providing a facilitating context to harm (Powell, 2010b) – can be valuable, but only if it reconnects harm to broader social and cultural narratives and inequalities, and does not just become another individualised endeavour of searching for blame and responsibility. Renold (2016) developed an approach to doing so in ‘Agenda’. Agenda is a national online toolkit developed with young people, and designed to support young people to raise awareness of gender-based and sexual violence in schools and communities across Wales. Renold’s (2016) ‘What Jars You?’ task, for example, encourages young people to think more broadly about what ‘jars’ them about inequality and unfairness, which may help challenge individualistic narratives.
eThesis%20Emily%20Setty.docx