Girls deconstruct sexting-related harm prevention messages

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Sharing intimate images has become a familiar part of the vocabulary of sex in our increasingly digitally-mediated world. It has also, for some teenagers, become part of wider forms of social interaction. Like the broader sphere of sexuality (Gavey and Senn Citation2014), sexting or ‘sending nudes’Footnote1 can be associated not only with intimacy and pleasure, but also with gendered patterns of coercion, harassment and abuse. Research shows that girls and women can experience pressure from men and boys to send intimate images (e.g. Ringrose, Livingstone, and Harvey Citation2012; Thomas Citation2018; Thorburn et al. Citation2021), and that sometimes the intimate images they do share consensually are misused – through, for example, being shown to other people, distributed through social networks or file sharing websites. Threats to share such images may also be used as currency for further coercion, harassment and abuse. These kinds of image-based sexual abuse can be very harmful (e.g. Bates Citation2017; Henry et al. Citation2022; McGlynn et al. Citation2021).

Over the past decade efforts to address the unethical use of intimate digital images – particularly with young people – have mostly been approached through emphasising the risks of sexting and promoting abstinence and caution as the best way to prevent harm. In this way, the object identified as the problem has been sexting itself and the solution has been cyber-safety – specifically ‘sext education’ as Dobson and Ringrose (Citation2016) describe it. This focus is understandable, given the relative novelty, in a historical context, of the practice of sending nudes through digital technology (with the new affordances this provides for quick and easy distribution, wide reach and difficult or impossible removal). But this focus on sexting per se has meant that critical responses to the problem have sometimes got bogged down in debates over its morality, and charges of moral panic against proposed solutions.

Research suggests that women are more likely than men to suffer harmful consequences when their intimate images are shared without their consent (Albury, Hasinoff, and Senft Citation2017; Dobson Citation2015, Citation2019; Ringrose, Livingstone, and Harvey Citation2012; Salter, Crofts, and Lee Citation2013; Naezer and van Oosterhout Citation2021; Salter Citation2016; Thorburn et al. Citation2021 although see Setty Citation2020). The specifically gendered nature of the harm that women may experience is fostered by the broader sexist milieu and sexual double standard that still leave women, their bodies, and their sexual behaviour disproportionately subject to judgement, stigma and shame. While women have become subject on the one hand to postfeminist sexual norms that call for adventurous ‘up for it’ sexuality (Dobson Citation2015; Ringrose et al. Citation2013; Thorburn et al. Citation2021), these co-exist with traditional sexist norms that call for feminine sexual modesty and restraint, and ‘slut-shaming’ social practices that can be deployed to punish women who depart from this. From a feminist perspective, therefore, messages that simply tell women and girls not to send nudes are problematic because they pose solutions that draw on the same sexist constraints on women’s sexual agency that shape the harm of image-based sexual abuse for women in the first place (Albury, Hasinoff, and Senft Citation2017; Dobson Citation2015, Citation2019; Dobson and Ringrose Citation2016; Naezer and van Oosterhout Citation2021; Powell and Henry Citation2014; Ringrose et al. Citation2013; Salter, Crofts, and Lee Citation2013; Thorburn et al. Citation2021).

Previous research has found young people draw on a victim-blaming discourse that positions girls and young women as ultimately responsible for the adverse potential consequences associated with sexting (Dobson Citation2015, Citation2019; Dobson and Ringrose Citation2016; Ringrose et al. Citation2013; Ringrose and Harvey Citation2015; Salter Citation2016 see also Naezer and van Oosterhout Citation2021). Drawing mainly on data from focus groups with young people in England and Australia in relation to sexting and two ‘cyber-safety campaign films’, Dobson and Ringrose (Citation2016) found that teenage girls and boys readily adopted a ‘discourse of girls’ responsibility for their own harassment’ (17). While participants across these studies acknowledged a sexual double standard, they nevertheless spoke in ways that continued to responsibilise girls and implicitly endorse the regulation of girls’ behaviour. For example, boys’ non-consensual distribution of intimate images and their breaking of a girl’s trust were perceived as obvious or inevitable and ‘naturalised as male behaviour’ (Dobson and Ringrose Citation2016, 17; see also Dobson Citation2015; Ringrose et al. Citation2013; Ringrose and Harvey Citation2015). In another focus group study conducted in Australia, Salter (Citation2016) found that young women participants similarly internalised ‘responsibility for gendered victimisation’ and endorsed ‘essentialist accounts of male sexuality that naturalised and excused sexual harassment and abuse’ (2737). Overall, this previous research shows how girls are routinely held responsible for any image-based sexual abuse they suffer. By contrast, even when boys who perpetrate harm are criticised by participants, their role tends to be comparatively obscured and their responsibility minimised (Dobson Citation2015, Citation2019; Dobson and Ringrose Citation2016; Ringrose et al. Citation2013; see also Naezer and van Oosterhout Citation2021; Salter Citation2016).

In a previous article, we reported findings from a study conducted with New Zealand teenage girls, in which we examined their talk around the contradictory gendered pressures associated with sexting (Thorburn et al. Citation2021). Here, we focus on another area of our findings from that study: namely, girls’ responses to formal and informal harm prevention messages related to sexting. Through our analysis we turn attention away from sexting per se to the more specific problem of image-based sexual coercion, harassment and abuse. Image-based sexual abuse is the creation and/or distribution of a person’s intimate images without their consent (or threats to do so) (e.g. McGlynn and Rackley Citation2017). We argue that this subtle shift in focus helps to clarify where the problem exists – rather than further debating the morality, legality and safety of sexting per se. We have expanded our framing of the problem to image-based sexual coercion, harassment and abuse to explicitly recognise that pressure to send nudes can be a form of harassment (e.g. Thorburn et al. Citation2021), and to recognise the way that broader sociocultural dynamics can operate coercively in concert with interpersonal pressure in ways that complicate assumptions about how consent works.

In this article we explore how groups of teenage girls in Aotearoa New Zealand made sense of the messages implicit in harm prevention advice related to sexting. In order to explore the potential for supporting girls’ more critical analyses of these sexist dynamics, instead of using one-off focus groups we invited girls to participate in three small-group workshop sessions that were intentionally designed to create space for discussion and critique.

Methodology

In response to issues identified by staff at an urban secondary school – relating to online harassment and abuse of girls – we collaborated with the feminist group (a pre-existing school club) and key staff members to design and implement this study, including framing its scope, determining relevant questions and planning a practical methodology. We then refined this methodology through an initial series of three workshop interviews with students in the feminist group before conducting workshop interviews with other groups of girls in the school. Throughout this overall process, the girls in the feminist group were both research collaborators (in helping shape our design and approach) and research participants (as the transcripts from their workshop sessions formed part of our wider dataset).Footnote2

We used repeated workshops to allow for more in-depth discussion that could develop over time. As well as inviting girls to share and discuss their knowledge relating to sexting, the workshop process provided them with a context for critically reflecting on their knowledge and observations. Our ‘dynamic sociocultural’ approach drew on Freire’s (Citation1972) principles of critical pedagogy and Foucauldian ideas about the role of discourse in enabling or constraining different ways of being and acting in the world (Calder-Dawe and Gavey Citation2019). In practical terms, we adopted a non-didactic Freirean ‘problem-posing’ style within the workshops, which invited participants to view the world around them as an object to be interrogated rather than viewing social norms, structures and dynamics as ‘just the way things are’.

Participants

Twenty-eight girls participated in groups of 3 to 5. They were aged 16 (n = 24) or 17 (n = 4) years old. In an open-ended questionnaire, 27 participants identified their gender as ‘female’ and one as ‘fluid’ (hence our umbrella reference to our participants as ‘girls’ is not entirely accurate). They reported their sexuality as: heterosexual/straight (18), bisexual (4), pansexual/maybe pansexual (2); four participants provided no response. Participants described their ethnicity as: British (1), Chinese (2), Indian (1), Iranian/Japanese (1), Māori/PākehāFootnote3 (1), Māori/Pasifika/Pākehā (1), Pākehā/Asian (1), Pākehā (12), PNG (1), Samoan (1), Samoan/Māori (1), and Taiwanese (1). The ethnicity of four participants was difficult to categorise (‘New Zealander’ [3] and ‘mixed’ [1]).

We recruited participants through daily school notices, inviting students who were interested in discussing ‘girls’ perspectives on the topic of ”intimate online communication” – including the culture of ”sending nudes’’. Students were able to sign up within existing friendship groups or individually.

Workshop interviews

Each of the seven groups participated in a series of three workshop interviews that were facilitated by either AW, BT, GS or OC. The three workshops were structured sequentially to focus on the social context and gendered dynamics of sending nudes, harm prevention messages, and girls’ views about the extent to which there are problems associated with sending nudes, how and why these occur, and how they might be addressed. We planned the workshops with structured activities and questions to focus the discussions, and implemented the arrangements somewhat flexibly to allow room for girls to discuss the issues in ways that were relevant and interesting to them.

Of particular relevance to our analysis, in the second workshops, as a prompts for discussion, we presented participants with: (1) material from New Zealand’s online safety agency’s webpage on Sexting (Netsafe Citation2015) and, as a counter-point, (2) a summary of findings from a study of young women’s and men’s views about sexting (Walker, Sanci, and Temple-Smith Citation2013). Aimed at parents, the Netsafe webpage provides information on ‘sexting and young people’, including what parents can do if they find ‘naked photos’ on their children’s devices, and how to prevent their children from sexting. The summary of Walker, Sanci, and Temple-Smith (Citation2013) research highlighted key findings on the gendered nature of sexting, and recommendations for challenging power dynamics and promoting bystander intervention that involves young men. We posed questions about how the Netsafe materials imagined a parental response, how young people who send nudes were represented, whether sending nudes is depicted as a problem, how the problem is portrayed, and what solutions are presented for how it can be fixed. We asked girls what they would change about these representations of young people and sending nudes. While the prevention material we shared from Netsafe was a significant prompt for our discussions related to harm prevention, the workshops had a broader focus including messages in the media and girls’ observations and inferences about people’s views more generally.

Our framing of the issue – in terms of girls’ online communication with boys, particularly in relation to sending nudes – was a deliberate starting point because of the gendered nature of the problematic issues the school had recently been facing. However, we were careful to not restrict discussions in ways that were presumptively heterosexual or heterosocial.

Workshop interviews were each approximately 45–60 minutes long, and were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. We assigned participants pseudonyms and used codes to identify which group and workshop quoted extracts come from. For example, Group 1 Workshop 1 is displayed as G1-W1. We do not identify individual participants’ ethnicities or gender and sexual identities for confidentiality reasons. The study received ethics approval from the University of Auckland Human Participants Ethics Committee (Reference 017527). Prior to participation, participants signed a consent form after being given written information about the study and the chance to ask questions.

Findings and analysis

Our analysis examines how girls identified, interpreted and responded to dominant messages related to the prevention of sexting-related harm. We focus on elaborating the key ways in which they noticed the gender and sexual politics associated with harm prevention messages. We do not, however, claim that all the participants in the study always did this. As in prior research (Dobson Citation2015, Citation2019; Dobson and Ringrose Citation2016; Salter Citation2016), participants drew on discourses that responsibilised girls as both agents and victims of ‘sexting-related harm’, as well as articulating strong critiques of these discourses.

What, if anything, is the problem?

In all the groups, girls agreed that the potential risk of nudes being misused in unethical and harmful ways was a legitimate concern. Across different groups and sessions, however, girls shared a range of views about sexting, about how big a problem image-based sexual coercion, harassment and abuse was, and about how best to prevent it. In this section, we discuss how girls responded to representations of the problem of sexting-related harm.

At some points girls’ talk leaned towards emphasising risk and at other points it leaned towards downplaying risk. Overall, participants seemed wary of ‘over-exaggerating’ (Jen, G5-W2) the scale of sexting, and by implication the scale of the potential problem, while also recognising there is a problem: As Jen (G5-W2) said, ‘Yeah I do think that it’s like a big issue but I wouldn’t say it, that it affects most people’. Framed in a different way, but sharing this ambivalent tone, Alanna (G6-W2) described Netsafe’s information on sexting, for example, as ‘magnifying the problem a little bit’, while noting that she felt ‘it’s appropriate that they do’.

Some girls more directly pushed back against the representation of sexting-related harm as a significant problem, appearing keen to reject a too-easy association of sexting with harm. This position was noticed in three of the groups, where girls rejected what they saw as misleading representations caused by extreme case formulations and generational misunderstandings. Miranda (G3-W2) for example, suggested that wider public discussion around sexting was misleadingly focused on ‘extreme cases’ where something went wrong. Similarly, Lea (G6-W2) described the Netsafe materials as ‘kind of talking about more of the extreme aspects of it’: going on to say, ‘it’s not like every sexting image sent has been like exposed or leaked or something’. In G3-W2, girls pointed to generational misunderstandings leading to media (and parental) constructions of the problem that were out of touch, coming from ‘older people’ (Miranda), who ‘don’t tend to … [have] personal experience’ (Helen) and who ‘don’t understand what is actually happening and the emotions associated with like the moment when you are asked or when you are sending’ (Kim). Several girls were critical of what they saw as an overly ‘negative’ portrayal of sexting and the abstinence advice that followed. Mia, a member of the feminist group that tended to articulate these critiques most strongly, noted:

I feel like representation of nudes in the media is very negative and like sort of like it’s bad, you should never do it, parents be careful of it and like I think there will be something on the news and mum is like don’t. (Mia, G7-W2)

As some girls in this (and other) groups said, such advice is at odds with the way young people are advised to navigate potential risks related to ‘sex’:

Penelope: Yeah I think they hear about all these negative experiences in the news like it will be a couple of experiences you hear about but then they don’t tell you about all of these negative experiences in the news on sex and then discourage you from ever having it. Like they will hear one story about sending a nude and they will be like okay never do that, it’s not something you should do. But you’ll hear a story about a girl being raped but they don’t-

Facilitator: Never walk outside.

Penelope: Yeah, yeah they don’t say don’t ever walk outside, don’t ever talk to a guy, don’t, you know. I think it’s unfairly judged, the whole concept of sending nudes. (G7-W2)

Tamsin observed that messages limited to advice not to send nudes was ‘kind of like history is like repeating itself’ (Tamsin, G7-W3) as with teaching abstinence in relation to sex in the past. Not only is this a problem because it ‘doesn’t work’ (Tamsin, G7-W3) – ‘people aren’t going to stop sending nudes’ (Lucy, G7-W2) – but participants were alert to the problematic ways such messages unfairly responsibilise girls for rape prevention by limiting and constraining their behaviour, and in doing so setting up the conditions for victim-blaming. Overall, girls’ objections to abstinence-based harm-prevention messages in relation to sexting were both practical and principled. As Penelope suggested, it would be unthinkable to respond to the potential risk of rape by promoting abstinence from sex or avoiding interactions with men or moving in public spaces.

‘Usually it’s her fault’: the gendered economy of responsibility and blame

Girls oriented to the way these ‘just don’t [send nudes]’ messages target the behaviour of the person sending nudes as the point for intervention. For example, one participant in Group 1 noticed that the Netsafe material only had information for parents on ‘how to prevent your child from sending’ nudes (Louise, G1-W2). In Group 6 (W2), Lea similarly noted that the Netsafe material is ‘just [about] sending it, how do I prevent my child from sending’. Overall, girls noted that it targets ‘the people who are going to be affected not like people that cause the situation’ (Rory, G7-W3). While the Netsafe material on sexting was gender neutral (referring to ‘young people’, ‘our child’, ‘my boyfriend or girlfriend’), some participants readily de-coded the gendered meaning and likely assumptions regarding who are imagined as at-risk senders of nudes in peer-to-peer interactions – and where responsibility implicitly, if not explicitly, lies. As Miranda and Kim observe below, the sequence of connection between sender, gender and responsibility implicitly constructs girls as both the victims and the source of ‘the problem with sexting’ (see also Dobson Citation2019):

Miranda: There was a lot about the person sending them rather than the person asking. They didn’t really mention the person asking.

Kim: It doesn’t say anything about gender but it really puts it on the person sending them not … yeah. (G3-W3)

Before we had introduced the Netsafe (Citation2015) and Walker, Sanci, and Temple-Smith (Citation2013) materials in the second workshop, the girls in this group were asked what they saw in the media about sexting. They had already noted that problems related to sexting are gendered; as are ‘common sense’ approaches to the solution:

Miranda: I think girls are affected by the problem.

Kim: They are often blamed for the problem.

Miranda: You don’t ever- you always hear people saying that girls just shouldn’t send the photos but you never hear anyone saying boys shouldn’t ask for the photos, you know. (G3-W2)

Mia (G7-W1) made a similar point, giving the example of someone sending nudes ‘and then people would save those and then like send them around’, noting, ‘it would all be the girls’ fault. Like the pressure would be on the girl and not on the guy. It’s not about the guy it’s about the girl’ (Mia, G7-W1). Participants in Group 3 returned to this theme of how, while girls are likely to be blamed within general discussions about sexting, the role of boys is relatively invisible in talk about the exchange and circulation of nudes:

Clare: Even though it might be the first nude she has ever sent and she was manipulated into it, she would still be a slut yeah.

Miranda: Yeah maybe stupid, like a foolish teen.

Clare: Usually it’s her fault, it’s not the boy.

Kim: No one even thinks of the boy. I think even if he is the one that has sent it on or screen shot it or whatever um it’s almost like the girl has done it alone.

Miranda: Yeah it’s almost like he was never there.

Clare: Yeah.

Miranda: Just like sending out nudes to no one. (G3-W3)

This exchange highlights the girls’ observation of a gendered economy of responsibility, wherein girls are both hypervisible and responsibilised as ‘sexters’, while the role of young men is largely hidden from view.

Image-based sexual coercion, harassment and abuse: A symptom of gendered inequality

In all groups, girls connected the potential harms related to sexting as well as the intervention messages designed to prevent such harm, to the broader context of gender inequality. In some groups in particular, girls readily observed different societal expectations for women and men and different societal responses to women’s and girls’ behaviour compared to that of men and boys.

In discussing the dominant discourses of gender and heterosexuality, for example, girls in Group 3 outlined the differing societal expectations for women and men, observing that women would be expected to be ‘gentle and quiet’ (Miranda), ‘sensitive’ (Helen), not ‘assertive’ (Rose), ‘not having opinions’ (Miranda). When asked how these ideas would relate to sexuality, they said:

Miranda: I think that probably men are in charge sort of thing

Rose: mmmm

Helen: They’re more dominant (Miranda: yeah)

Miranda: Yeah yeah they’re supposed to be dominant and leaders-

Kim: Especially um with the physical aspect- (Helen: yeah) yep (G3-W1)

In Group 2, girls shared similar observations of social expectations:

Girls are more docile because like are timid and shy and like caring, more feminine, whereas boys are more dominant like um 50 Shades of Grey where Christian Grey is really dominant and the girl is like… (Jane, G2-W3)Footnote4

Some girls observed how these normative cultural understandings of gendered sexuality – that portray men as sexually driven and needy – can be used to minimise and excuse boys’ and men’s coercive or unethical behaviour and blame women for their own abuse. In Group 7, Penelope brought up the example of a man who ‘was exposed’ as having ‘this weird obsession with child pornography’, and who ‘came out to the media’ drawing on these kinds of ideas about men’s naturally uncontrollable sexual behaviour (in this case overlaid with a discourse of addiction) to rationalise his abusive actions:

And he like just tried to get people to feel sorry for him and sympathise with him because he has this addiction and he can’t help it because he’s the guy, which I think really expresses what the whole gender role thing is around sex and roles people have in it based on their gender.(Penelope, G7-W2)

When the workshop facilitator asked the group, ‘so how would that relate to sending nudes, that dynamic?’, Penelope said:

Yeah I think women can be blamed more for it because the guy- […] Yeah because the guy can’t help it. He can’t help feeling I don’t know, sexually aroused (laughing). I don’t know. I think that just women are placed, the blame is placed on them because it’s easier than changing what an entire society is built on. (G7-W2)

Lucy suggested that these kinds of ideas about men’s uncontrollable sexuality also work to engender a more sympathetic response to a boy’s decision to send his own nudes – which, as Penelope (G7-W2) said, is ‘never perceived quite as extremely as the girls’:

Because there’s like as if it’s the girl’s responsibility to think about the consequences of sending a nude whereas for a guy like he can’t control his sexual urges, you know, it’s just like spontaneous, so ooh it’s not his fault. (Lucy, G7-W2)

Girls in three different groups used the phrase, ‘boys will be boys’ (Abbey, G4-W1; Chloe, G2-W3; Rose, G3-W3) to represent this dynamic, as they mapped out the ways in which societal expectations for girls and boys shaped ‘the field of play’ for sending nudes – in relation to responsibly, accountability and blame. Girls noted that while boys and men were given a wide berth in terms of accountability – as Chloe (G2-W3) said, ‘they say boys will be boys. It’s okay, we can forgive anything’Footnote5 – girls were burdened with the extra responsibility associated with being constructed as ‘morally superior’:

Yeah it’s always kind of been that way […] in history women are meant to be like these pure, morally superior kind of people when guys are less of that they’re superior in most ways apart from morally in a sense. (Poppy, G4-W1)

By contrast to the maturity and restraint societally expected of girls, participants explained how the ‘boys will be boys’ trope works to normalise, minimise and turn a blind eye to unethical and harmful behaviour by boys:

Rose: … like if it’s a foolish boy it’s just kind of like shaken off like oh he doesn’t know what he’s doing, yeah. But girls it’s more like…

Miranda: Yeah I think people always expect boys to be foolish you know.

Rose: Yeah so it’s like that’s just- (Miranda: It’s just normal) that’s just boys. Boys will be boys you know like I think, but then girls it’s like they can’t really, it’s like a worse thing.

Miranda: But they expect all boys to be foolish but only the girls who send nudes are foolish.

Kim: But boys are allowed- it’s almost like boys have permission to be foolish or do whatever they do but girls are expected to…

Miranda: To try and be a bit more mature.

Kim: Yeah, which is not fair on the girls who are pressured into doing that. (G3-W3)

The girls in Group 4 continued this theme, specifically extrapolating to how these sociocultural notions supported the gendered economy of responsibility and translated into a form of harm prevention that not only restricted girls and women but conveyed the message that unethical and harmful behaviour by men is unfixable:

Poppy: … girls are meant to kind of be um have more morals than guys and-

Abbey: Be like oh don’t wear that guys boys will be boys that kind of thing.Footnote6

Poppy: Yeah that’s a big issue girls are meant to be kind of the bigger person the more mature one and then because of that I think it’s kind of stemmed from that idea that girls are meant to know better or guys are just can do what they want.

Abbey: Like instead of telling guys not to do it and girls are told they’re going to do it so this is what you should do to avoid it you know. (G4-W1)

But where does this critique leave us? The practical conundrum girls face

As we have shown, many girls identified how a gendered economy of responsibility unfairly holds girls responsible for any harm they may suffer in relation to their intimate images being misused, while excusing boys for the coercive and unethical behaviour that contributes to such harm. Girls critiqued this in relation to harm prevention messages specifically as well as the wider social context in which such messages are produced and received. For example, girls variously drew attention to the role of gendered constructions of morality, and the specifically gendered construction of masculine sexuality (as lacking restraint), which both set out different expectations for girls and boys. Many girls were critical of the perils of victim-blaming that shadowed these gendered norms, expectations and power relations.

While some participants were critical of the way prevention messages focused seemingly exclusively on the behaviour of senders of nudes (and by association, girls), their critiques were frequently weighed in relation to considerations about the need for girls to protect themselves. In practice, it seemed that many girls held a both/and appraisal of the kinds of measures that might be necessary for preventing image-based sexual coercion, harassment and abuse. In critiquing sender-targeted approaches, many participants identified the problematic sexual politics they draw on and reproduce. At the same time, many of the girls conveyed that they understood the logic underlying such approaches ‘in the world we live in’ (Abbey, G4-W2) and gave the impression that girls may not have the luxury to completely reject them. In this sense, a theoretical endorsement of women’s and girls’ right to engage in intimate image sharing was counterposed with pragmatic caution considering the ‘reality’ of risk.

Girls widely agreed there was a sexual double standard that affected how boys and girls were judged for sexual behaviour (see also Thorburn et al. Citation2021). They talked about ‘slut shaming’ and ‘and how like if you are a guy you are praised and if you are a girl you are like dishonoured’ (Kathy, G1-W2). When asked if they thought that happened in relation to sending nudes, Kathy (G1-W2) for example, quickly replied, ‘all the time’. As Chloe (G2-W2) said, ‘the double standard is very true’. In discussing the sexual double standard – or what girls in Group 4 referred to as ‘gender bias’ (Eliza, G4-W2) – relating to sexting, Eliza referred to ‘the actual truth that girls get more harm than guys’, alongside the lack of recognition for this: ‘People like tiptoe over the fact that it is really the majority of the time girls that get hurt’. Recognising these gendered realities, Abbey reached a pragmatic conclusion:

Abbey: Like I would like it not to have one [referring to the sexual double standard] but then again I would like everything to not have a gender bias which is not the case, but you know, [Eliza: Exactly] in the future. Um so yeah honestly like overall I would just say don’t send them you know.

Eliza: Yeah, that’s the thing because like again I think we said it before like in a perfect world you would be able to do this with no consequences and you would be able to share intimate images of yourself and they would only go to the person which you intend it to go to, but we actually, honestly we’re never going to have that, like just the way that humans are and the way that our society is, like…

Abbey: Like you are always going to have bad people [Eliza: Yeah] who are nasty. (G4-W2)

Oftentimes, girls were aware of the delicate compromise this pragmatic position represented. As Poppy (G4-W3) noted, ‘even though it sucks and it kind of is almost reinforcing [the] victim blaming thing it’s still unfortunately it can be very much like that’.

In some of their discussions, girls wrestled with how best to make sense of challenging scenarios in ways that navigated an impossibly fine line between self-protection and responsibilisation leading to victim blaming. For example, girls in the feminist group discussed at length a local case in which a girl had supposedly sent a sexually explicit video of herself to a group of boys that was subsequently ‘shared and shared and shared [… .] she kind of got like a lot of like attacks because of it’ (Mia, G7-W2). As Lucy reflected on this case, she resisted a straightforward demarcation between victim-blaming (which she and the group implicitly disapproved of) and holding the view that the girl was partly, although not mostly, responsible:

Okay, so this is my new realisation. Um so right now we are like victim blaming because it’s like we are not asking why, why, why did she send that, like mmmneugh it’s why did the guys share it with other people? Like although she probably should have like thought about that before she sent that to a large group, which was- it’s kind of different to victim blaming because it’s not as extreme but I do think it was partly her fault but most of the blame should be on those guys because that is not right to send it around and all those people that received it should have said hey no, this isn’t okay, like you need to stand up you know. (Lucy, G7-W2)

Shifting the focus to boys, men and the ethics of seeking, possessing and distributing another person’s intimate images

Research has demonstrated that although young people tend to draw on regulatory discourses of sexual shame and gendered risk that responsibilise girls for their own victimisation, they are also capable of challenging sexual double standards and sexist assumptions inherent in sexting harm prevention messages (e.g. Dobson Citation2015, Citation2019; Dobson and Ringrose Citation2016). The girls who participated in our study expressed a range of views, and drew on potentially contradictory discourses in discussing messages about preventing sexting-related harm. However, within workshop spaces designed intentionally to create opportunities for critical reflection, we found that many girls were not only able to deconstruct the gender and sexual politics embedded in messages that emphasise abstaining from sending nudes, but were also able to mobilise these critiques into insights about what needs to be done differently to prevent teenage peer-to-peer image-based sexual coercion, harassment and abuse.

Participants from a couple of groups suggested that young people could be given stronger messages related to the ethics of handling nudes once they had been received. This would shift the message away from advice about sending nudes to addressing unethical use of them:

Miranda: And just say stuff like it’s not okay to distribute these photos [beyond their intended audience].

Facilitator: So emphasising that side of it?

Miranda: The distribution side of it, maybe not so much emphasising the sending or asking. (G3-W3)

Girls from a number of groups highlighted the importance of interventions designed to promote respectful, ethical communication, suggesting these would be more effective than those designed to censor behaviours entirely:

It’s like now nudes have become such a big part of our culture, we need to be instead of saying don’t send them because that’s not going to work, you need to say how to send them safely and how in educating people how to respond to them and be nice. (Lucy, G7-W2)

For these girls, sexting itself was not inherently the problem. As Jade argued: ‘I feel like you shouldn’t prevent it [sexting] or not necessarily not prevent it but not make it such a bad thing because it’s not necessarily a bad thing’ (Jade, G5-W2). Rather, what these girls were calling for is a stronger promotion of respectful communication and ethical handling of intimate images.

As well as messages directly focussed on sexting, several girls drew attention to the wider underlying social factors that animate the specifically gendered harms of image-based sexual coercion, harassment and abuse. Poppy noted that teaching girls about boundaries (for example) may not only not ‘fix’ the problem, it might also reinforce victim-blaming:

Poppy: Yeah so they’re teaching girls like how to know the boundaries and what to know what is right or wrong and that’s great that’s awesome but then when you get to the real kind of root of the problem and you don’t address that that’s not going to fix anything and then that again is kind of reinforces the-

Abbey: The idea that it’s the victim’s fault or-

Poppy: Yeah.

Poppy: Victim blaming. (G4-W1)

In recognising the fundamental role of gender inequality Penelope noted:

it’s like part of a much bigger problem in like the whole of society. It’s not just about that image, it’s like, just representing and reinforcing the whole completely different power dynamics of girls and boys and that’s what needs to be addressed (Penelope, G7-W3)

Similarly, when asked what the solution to sexting-related harms might be, Laura simply proposed we ‘raise boys so they respect women’s bodies and privacy’ (G2-W3), and Rose (G3-W2) suggested the need to ‘teach [boys] how to respect the other gender’, depicting this as something that would ‘stop a massive amount of problems, like not just this one’. Abbey agreed a wider cultural shift in gendered power relations would be necessary and desirable:

It’s like part of the culture, so yeah that’s got to change first and then maybe we will see a bit more of equality when it comes to that kind of thing (Abbey, G4-W2)

Discussion

In this article we have shown the ways that 16–17-year-old girls made sense of messages intended to prevent sexting-related harm. In workshops designed to create space for observation, discussion and critical analysis, they discussed a range of views and positions. Many girls shared the same critiques delivered by feminist scholars (e.g. Albury and Crawford Citation2012; Albury, Hasinoff, and Senft Citation2017; Dobson Citation2015, 2019; Dobson and Ringrose Citation2016; Ringrose et al. Citation2013; Salter, Crofts, and Lee Citation2013; Salter Citation2016), of the ways that abstinence-based messages implicitly target and seek to regulate girls and their behaviour as the site for change necessary to prevent harm from ‘sexting gone wrong’. They critiqued abstinence-based messages on matters of principle and practicality. Not only did they think they would not work, but they were critical of the ways such messages reinforce the sexual double standard that renders girls more vulnerable, in general, than boys to harm from peer-to-peer image-based sexual abuse in the first place.

At the same time, however, participants suggested that teenage girls may not have the luxury of resting their case with such critiques. They spoke of having to weigh principled objections to restrictions on girls’ sexual agency and expression against a certain reality of risk in a gender unequal world. In their talk around the issues that create this situation, several girls highlighted other spheres where our prevention lens needs to turn – including the general gendered drivers of the sexual double standard as well as a specific focus on the ethics of handling other people’s intimate images. This suggests the benefit of turning a prevention lens away from (potentially vulnerableFootnote7) senders of nudes, and implicitly girls, to the seekers and secondary distributors of nudes – often boys (see also Dobson and Ringrose Citation2016; Powell and Henry Citation2014; and see Gavey et al. Citation2021, for an example of research engaging boys in a similar process). We argue that reframing the problem away from ‘sexting-related harm’ to image-based sexual coercion, harassment and abuse will help to support this necessary shift in direction. It will turn critical attention to the behaviour of those who fail to treat others’ intimate images with care and respect, and the sociocultural milieu that minimises and tolerates this. Given the gendered patterns of such behaviour, preventing image-based sexual coercion, harassment and abuse among teenagers will require critical engagement with the sexual politics of gender inequality.

Strengths and limitations

One of the contributions of this study is to highlight the value of a problem-posing methodology in supporting the capacity of girls to critically unpack dominant gendered norms; in this case, norms that contribute both to image-based sexual coercion, harassment and abuse and to the form of dominant contemporary harm prevention messages. This approach could be valuable as a pedagogical tool for engaging young people in critical analysis of a wider range of issues related to gender, relationships and sexuality, and in developing collaborative ethics. Our findings showed girls’ insights resonated with the accounts provided by feminist scholars; and their ideas support novel prevention recommendations.

In considering the wider applicability of our approach, it is important to note that participants were self-selected volunteers who may therefore have had particular interest in the topic and/or motivation for taking part in discussion-based group activities. How well the approach would work with less selective audiences remains to be tested. Furthermore, our study focussed on the dynamics of heterosocial and/or heterosexual interactions between girls and boys. If this methodology were to be adopted in an educational context, careful consideration would need to be given to how to effectively create space for also addressing the dynamics of image-based sexual coercion, harassment and abuse for sex, gender and sexuality diverse young people (see Fenaughty Citation2019), as well as between same-gender peers in general.

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