Situated desires : negotiating sexual subjectivity, agency, and pleasure in Aotearoa New Zealand : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science, Massey University, New Zealand

Abstract

This thesis aims to explore young women’s experiences in making sense of their sexual subjectivities in Aotearoa, New Zealand (NZ). Young women’s sexual subjectivities are often conceptualised through reductive binaries that position them as either empowered and agentic, or constrained and vulnerable. Such framings risk obscuring the complex, contradictory, on-going, embodied ways women come to understand themselves as sexual beings. This thesis then, explores how eight young women narrate and make meaning of their sexual subjectivities through both the symbolic (e.g., dominant discourses, cultural norms, sexual scripts) and embodied (e.g., sexual experiences, learning through doing). Rather than conceptualising sexual subjectivity as a fixed state, this thesis understands it as an ongoing process that is continuously learned, negotiated, embodied resisted and (re) negotiated. The findings challenge dominant representations of young women as passive sexual objects or as wholly autonomous agents. Instead, the participants' narratives demonstrate sexual subjectivities that are complex and fluid – often characterised by tension and contradiction. Here, women are both agentic and influenced by various dominant discourses surrounding pleasure, safety, culture and sex, while simultaneously exercising agency in ways that are learnt, context dependent and relational. By centering young women’s voices and embodied experiences this thesis contributes to feminist scholarship on sexuality by extending on more nuanced conceptualisations of sexual subjectivity – centering complexity and contradiction as fundamental features of young women’s sexual selves. In doing so, this thesis offers an insight into how sexual subjectivity may be produced within the context of Aotearoa NZ and thus, identifies implications for sexuality education, public discourse, women’s health and future research.