Sex, Power and Consent: Youth Culture and the Unwritten Rules

by Anastasia Powell

Sex, Power and Youth Culture and the Unwritten Rules draws on the real world stories and experiences of young women and young men - as told in their own words - regarding love, sex, relationships and negotiating consent. Judicious reference to feminist and sociological theory underpins explicit connections between young people's lived experience and current international debates. Issues surrounding youth sex within popular culture, sexuality education and sexual violence prevention are thoroughly explored. In a clear, incisive and eminently readable manner, Anastasia Powell develops a compelling framework for understanding the 'unwritten rules' and the gendered power relations in which sexual negotiations take place. Ultimately Sex, Power and Consent provides practical strategies for young people, and those working with them, toward the prevention of sexual violence.

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, Sexuality

224 pages, Paperback

First published July 29, 2010

Reviews

[Rachel Jackson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm on a women's sexuality reading kick right now, and I thought Anastasia Powell's Sex, Power and Consent sounded like a good narrative on how people perceive sexual consent, particularly in the context of youth and gender differences. Using that as a premise, Powell seems to want to investigate youth attitudes of sex, directly interviewing some young people about their experiences and citing existing research for other information. It's a good idea, but I can tell Powell isn't writing it sincerely; the entire book sounds like a terribly veiled attempt to be academic on a subject that perhaps she doesn't care about as much as she seems.

Powell ascribes by some strange sort of pseudo-feminism, from what I can tell, that says we are in the post-feminist age where "the sexual double standard, the concern with sexual reputation that once precluded women from engaging in sex for pleasure and outside of a long-term committed relationship, may have shifted and may even no longer exist" (pg. 1). Yet she goes on to explain that double-standard throughout the book. It's a contradiction in a book that is full of contradictions, or at least confusion. Powell doesn't seem to have a clear thesis, despite insisting that "in this book I discuss..." or "I attempt to explain..." various parts of human sexuality when it comes to sex, power and consent. The book is a bit too heavy on the theory and sociology for my liking, and Powell throws out ridiculous academic words haphazardly and seems to hope a few will stick and make her sound more intelligent.

The book also doesn't have much information on race, class or even sexuality differences among the people she interviews or the studies she cites. It focuses primarily on Australia, sure, but it could cite some diverse sources. Powell does mention very briefly how lower-income people have less access to conrraception and how Aboriginal people in Australia experience higher sexual violence rates — a parallel in the United States, for sure — but she didn't go nearly in-depth enough for my liking.

I did enjoy the use of interviews in this book, when the author published verbatim or nearly verbatim the things that she asked a group of 117 young individuals about their sexual lives and habits, love and relationships and sex education in general. It's something that is always staggering to me, how so many people can agree on the same thing — in this case, that sex education is pretty terrible worldwide — but despite these testimonies, not much changes in terms of prevention or education programs in schools or even in official legal capacities. I did enjoy her sections on sexuality and law, in the context of the age of consent in various state and countries, and the laws regarding child pornography of sexting and nude photos, especially in relationships of two or more minors. That was a novel approach to something that's been a problem for years in the digital age.

I like Chapter 7, the talk on sex ed in Australia. It's clear from the young people's interviews that all around the world people do not know how to educate adolescents on how to have safe-sex, particularly if it falls out of the penile-vaginal realm. My experience was exactly the same — the health classes I had to take were not really about sexual health, but rather vilifying sex in any way, shape or form and saying what sort of terrible things could happen from sex. Instead of saying that sex can be a good thing if it's done right.

So, sure, some of the topics in Sex, Power and Consent were interesting, but none of them were angering or mindblowing enough to merit rereading the whole book — it was really nothing I'd never heard before. Still a relatively interesting read, but none of the information was particularly groundbreaking, just reinforcing what I already knew.

[Quin Rich · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent, if limited, exploration of the "unwritten rules" surrounding sexual consent in young people's heterosexual sexual encounters. Based a study done in Australia, this text is cogent account of the gendered norms which reinforce sexual violence against young women in heterosexual relationships. The book has several glaring shortcomings: a complete failure to engage at all with race (especially notable given the high rates of sexual violence against Aboriginal women), a cissexist focus on cisgender persons exclusively, little to no content on queer folks, no mention of other sites of sexual violence beyond heterosexual intimate relations (a key site nonetheless), and a bias towards public health and liberal legal reform strategies rather than radical political change. That said, as an account of the experiences of young heterosexual women and men with hegemonic gender and sexuality norms and how these contribute to widespread sexual violence against young women, this book does an excellent job of giving bovid to the experiences and concerns of young people and in providing some key insight into the issue of sexual violence in young people's heterosexual relationships. It would be good to read this alongside more radical texts such as the work by Incite! Women of Color Against Violence or the books At the Dark End of the Street or Conquest.