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GENDER, PRESSURE, COERCION AND PLEASURE: UNTANGLING MOTIVATIONS FOR SEXTING BETWEEN

YOUNG PEOPLE

Murray Lee* and Thomas Crofts

What has been problematically termed ‘sexting’ has attracted considerable legal, political, public, media and academic attention. Concern has focused on sexting between young people who may experience emotional and reputational damage and are at risk of being charged with child abuse or pornography offences in many jurisdictions. Recent research has rightly highlighted sexting’s gendered dynamics. Accordingly, a discourse has developed that imagines the common sexting scenario involves girls feeling pressured into sending boys sexual images. This article develops an analytic framework of pressure and critically reviews research into sexting. It suggests that while such scenarios occur, they do not reflect the experiences expressed by the majority of girls who actu-ally engage in sexting, who are more likely to express motivations associated with pleasure or desire.

Keywords: sexting, criminalization, coercion, gender and power, juvenile justice

Introduction

The last 10 years have seen the growth of what the media have problematically termed ‘sexting’. ‘Sexting’ is a term which originated in the media, a neologism created by col-lapsing the terms sex and texting. Early usage of the term ‘Sexting’ is generally defined as the digital production of sexually suggestive or explicit images and distribution by mobile phone messaging or through the internet on social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace and YouTube.1 However, the definition is somewhat amorphous in the literature and in common usage, with much commentary extending it to the send-ing of sexually suggestive texts. As the Law Reform Committee of Victoria notes, the term ‘sexting’ is evolving and ‘encompasses a wide range of practices, motivations and behaviours’ (2013: 15). These range from a person sharing a picture with a boyfriend or girlfriend, to the boyfriend or girlfriend showing the picture to someone else, to the recording of a sexual assault or even to an adult sending an explicit text to ‘groom’ a child (Law Reform Committee of Victoria 2013: 19). This broad range of behaviours potentially encompassed by the term makes defining, classifying and understanding the motivations for sexting difficult.

While research appears to suggest that adults engage in sexting more regularly than children and young people2 (National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy 2008), much of the political, public, media and academic concern about

1 See, e.g., Joint Select Committee on Cyber-Safety, Parliament of Australia, High Wire Act: Cyber Safety and the Young, Interim Report (2011) [4.47]. It should also be noted that while this term is used in the media and public discourse. It is not a term used by young people, instead terms such as ‘selfies’, ‘nudies’, ‘banana pics’ are more common among the young people.

2 In the following, we will use the term young person and young people to refer to those under the age of 18.

*Murray Lee, Thomas Crofts, Sydney Institute of Criminology, Faculty of Law, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia; murray.lee@sydney.edu.au

doi:10.1093/bjc/azu075 BRIT. J. CRIMINOL. (2015) 55, 454–473Advance Access publication 3 March 2015

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the practice has focused on the behaviours and attitudes of young people. Presumably, the reason for this focus is the perceived vulnerability of young people passing through puberty and through a stage of development where sexual exploration and expression may take on increased importance in their lives (Lee et al. 2013). Adding the opportu-nities provided by new technology to take, store and widely disseminate information and images creates the conditions for what has been described as ‘the perfect storm’ (Arcabascio 2010: 4) in terms of risks to young people. A resultant, serious legal and policy issue is that children who produce, distribute and receive naked or semi-naked digital images may face severe legal sanctions in many jurisdictions under a range of child pornography or child abuse laws (Crofts and Lee 2013). This issue of the crimi-nalization of young people for sexting has become a key focus for criminologists and legal scholars with criminal law struggling to keep up with technological and attitu-dinal change (Karaian 2012; 2013; Crofts and Lee 2013; Lee et al. 2013; Döring 2014). However, there is also concern about the emotional and reputational damage that sex-ting can have and the capacity for abuse when used as a form of cyberbullying. These very concerns have become the key focus of a range of education campaigns aimed at deterring such practices (Salter et al. 2013). Further, there are fears that distributed sex-ting images could fall into the hands of adult paedophiles (Griffith and Simon 2008: 8). But beneath this—even in the growing if somewhat limited body of academic literature on the topic—is a moral interest in regulating what are often constructed as improper expressions of childhood sexuality (Lee et al. 2013).

While sexting between young people has become a significant cultural phenomenon, a topic of major media discussion, and also the target of concern by law and policy mak-ers, our knowledge of the practices and perspectives of young people is still relatively limited. What we do know comes from a handful of medium-scale surveys, and an even smaller number of in depth qualitative studies. Most of the corpus of this work comes from North America and the United Kingdom, with a small number of studies having been carried out in Australia. Despite the relative paucity of empirical data on the topic, much political, media, popular and even scholarly discourse around the topic seems to suggest that there is an inherently negative nature to sexting in general, and the gendered dimensions of sexting in particular (Tallon et  al. 2012; Phippen 2012; Ringrose et al. 2012; Englander 2012; Dake et al. 2013). In particular, the notion that young women are regularly pressured, coerced or duped into producing and sending sexual images of themselves to boys has strong currency. This discourse is mutually reinforced by media reports (Hills 2012; The Courier Mail 2013), educational videos and prevention literature.3 But is such pressure as all pervasive in sexting by young peo-ple as is being suggested? Moreover, what type or level of pressure are we actually talk-ing about? Our concern here is to establish whether such gendered pressures implied in much of this research and broader discourse are as identifiable as might be assumed. This is important as such discourses are beginning to drive legal reform in this area, and have already been influencing educational campaigns.

This article sketches out a variety of gendered pressures that might influence the dynamics of sexting by young people. It also traces some of the moral dimensions of the discourse of pressure that can be identified in much of the recent academic or quasi-academic work regarding sexting, gender and young people. We begin by briefly

3 See, e.g., the analysis of the Think U Know campaign in Salter et al. (2013).

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outlining a typology the gendered dimensions of sexting, we then move on to an analy-sis of the existing survey data on the topic then turn to the available qualitative studies. Following this, we will suggest that frameworks for analysing young people’s sexting behaviours are problematically being influenced by a risk discourse with significant moral overtones. By focussing on young people’s perceptions of sexting rather than their motivations it may well be the case that researchers are discovering recursively the very discourses of pressure and coercion in their respondents that the education campaigns themselves are communicating to young people. Finally, we will discuss the ways in which accepting this unproblematically is blinding researchers to a range of important issues of gender and sexuality when it comes to the practice of sexting by young people. In short, we aim to interrogate the existing literature and research on its own terms asking the question of whether its claims of pressure and coercion being a common part of sexting between young people are justifiable.

Questions of Pressure?

Before we forward our argument, it is necessary to make a number of points of clari-fication. First, we do not argue that problematic gendered practices do not take place as part of sexting, nor that pressure or coercion at a range of levels is not a factor in the sexting practices of young people. Moreover, we concur with Ringrose et  al. (2013), Englander (2012) and Albury et  al. (2013) that there is a gendered double standard when it comes to young people and sexting—which we explore further below. What we will demonstrate is that—taken on its own problematic terms—the current empirical evidence does not support the notion that pressure or coercion is the key factor, or even one of the key factors, motivating girls to produce and send nude or semi-nude pictures of themselves. To be more specific, it is not a factor commonly expressed by girls (or boys) who themselves send sexts, as motivating instances or acts of sexting.

Second, we are not proffering an empiricist or essentialist argument here4; we are not suggesting that the existing data on which we draw proves (or can ever prove) a firm alternative hypothesis. Moreover, we are not privileging quantitative over qualitative research—both are addressed below. Rather, our starting point draws on Foucaultian scholarship (Rabinow 1991) and conceptualizes such data as having truth effects—rather than representing the ‘real world’.5 These truth effects can then recursively affect the entire field and discussion in regard to a topic. Our intervention is thus one of resistance designed to ensure that alternative voices, ways of knowing, or ways of being are not subsumed by an unquestioning adherence to a dominant discourse or ideology. In this sense, while we wish to highlight the ‘voices’ of those young people who engage in ‘sexting’ and ensure they are properly represented, it does not follow that these voices represent a ‘true’ transparent picture of the practices and motivations discussed. Rather, they demonstrate how respondents ‘construct themselves as active

4 We are currently conducting our own empirical research into young people and sexting, the results of which will appear in a report for the Australian Institute of Criminology.

5 ‘Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it induces regular effects of power. Each society has its regime of truth, its ‘general politics’ of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true’ (Foucault, in Rabinow 1991).

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and knowledgeable’ (Jackson and Cram 2003: 115). Accordingly, we do not see young women’s responses ‘as transparent, or a window on reality’, but as ‘a medium through which individuals construct their self-knowledge’ (Wilcott and Griffin 1997: 448).

Gendered dimensions of sexting

There are a number of elements to the arguments around the negative-gendered nature of sexting that we will disentangle through a typology that will be used as a tool for the analysis of the existent literature. In the literature and scholarship, these various elements are not always clearly articulated.

Pressure and coercion

First, there is the argument that pressure and/or coercion is a key reason why young females (in particular) send images of themselves to others (usually young males). Englander (2012:3) notes of her research for example that ‘[i]ndisputably, the most important motivation for sexting revealed in this study (and others) was pressure or coercion’. However, one of the reasons why debates around pressure and coercion become circular is that the variety of forms and origins of pressure that might be expe-rienced are not always well articulated. We might separate these presumed elements of pressure into three categories all of which overlap and intersect; individual pressure, peer group pressure and sociocultural pressure.

Individual pressure might be best described as the form of pressure that operates within individual relationships between sexting participants (senders and receivers). Such pressure is also likely to have some basis in the biographical particularities of individuals involved. This type of pressure is also the type more likely to become coer-cive. At one end of the scale of individual pressures might be when one partner in a relationship asks for an image which the other only sends because they feel obligated to for the good of the relationship—but nonetheless the sender might still also enjoy sending. Pleasure and pressure are not necessarily mutually exclusive feelings—just as risk can be both exciting and dangerous. On the other end of the scale may be where an individual is blackmailed into sending an image of themselves through threat of some kind of shaming, humiliation or even violence. The latter is probably more accu-rately a form of cyberbullying where the act of sexting facilitates or is the tool of bul-lying. The way such individual pressures are experienced (or not) are likely to related to the gender, status, or position of power of the sender. That is, the biographical and sociodemographic characteristics of the individual sending a photo will place them dif-ferentially in relation to power.

Peer group pressure might involve the midrange dynamics of particular peer or social groups. Such group dynamics might even extend to entire school cohorts, but they may be bounded geographically, be relative to specific class or ethnic characteristics (Peskin et al. 2013), and may themselves be specifically gendered. Indeed, it is clear from the currently available qualitative research (Albury et al. 2013; Ringrose et al. 2012; 2013) that particular peer and social groups are likely to influence normative behaviours where a member of such a group might feel their group membership is jeopardized by non-participation in sexting. At the other extreme peers may actively coerce individuals

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to send images of themselves through abusive behaviours that have a continuum from the classroom and playground into cyberspace (Ringrose 2013). We might conceive the dynamic of such peer groups through an interactional framework (Becker 1963; Lemert 1981) where labels (internalized and externalized) and group dynamics create incentives or, indeed disincentives, to engage in sexting. Put simply, sexting behaviours may be positively reinforced within the group culture.

Socio-culture pressure might best be described as the general normative pressures in any social order. There is a body of literature for example that sees young girls as becom-ing increasingly sexualized and pornified in post-feminist cultural and social contexts where forms of sexualized selfhood are to be performed (Durham 2008; Attwood 2009; Gill 2012). Additionally, cultural (hetro-) norms create a situation where particular displays of feminine (hetro-) sexuality might be rewarded or judged positively (or nega-tively). As Powell (2007:11) argues;

Subtle pressure relates to the gendered social norms or expectations as to what men and women are ‘supposed’ to do in a relationship … this is further borne out in research which suggests that ideals surrounding love, romance and sex as well as gender-role expectations of sexual encounters, can influence the occurrence of unwanted or ‘compliant’ sexual experiences.

Gill (2012) has likewise questioned whether notions of young women’s ‘empowerment’ through practices such as sexting may simply be reinforcing, reproducing and reflec-tive of sexualized and sexist (hetro-) normative expectations. She notes that the term may have lost any analytical purchase given its cooption for consumerist and possibly exploitative purposes.

As a result of pressure and coercion at this range of levels it is legitimate to question whether young women in some instances are able to fully and freely ‘consent’ to the activ-ity even where they produce and send the image ‘consensually’.

Gendered double standards

On top of pressure to send there are other key characteristics of sexting that are said to reproduce gendered power relations. For example, there is likely to be a gendered double standard around how females who send images of themselves are judged against males who do the same thing. This double standard has been demonstrated in qualitative research (Albury et al. 2010, 2013; Ringrose et al. 2013) but it has also been demon-strated in a number of high profile incidences where young women have committed suicide as a result of the humiliation of having a digital image of themselves circulated. Here, moral expectations of what ‘good girls’ should and should not do can be seen to collide with the expectation to behave in a sexualized way—as discussed above.

Connected to this double standard is the capacity for females who send images, or whose images are forward distributed to be slut shamed. Again, while males who send images can likewise be shamed there is no equivalent category of ‘slut’ that is likely to have the same derogatory implications. On top of this, there is also the capacity of slut shaming to operate at the individual, peer and socio-cultural levels in much the same way pressure can—but almost as the opposite side of the same coin. So potentially girls may be under more pressure to produce and send images of themselves, but may suffer more severe public censure should the ‘trust’ they have in the receiver be breached—‘damned if you do and damned if you don’t’.

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While slightly different to slut shaming, there is also the capacity for images of girls to be used by boys to bolster their own status. Ringrose et al. (2012; 2013) have demon-strated though qualitative research how such photos can subsequently be used as tro-phies or, in some cases be sent on to friends as a mark of male status between peers. In this sense, images can be part of a digital online economy. They also note how boys take effective ‘ownership’ of girls’ bodies, with some girls even writing across their breasts that they are the property of a particular boy, then photographing and sending the image (Ringrose et al. 2013). This objectification, while it can also affect boys, is more likely to be gendered to the detriment of girls.

Current Surveys and their Methodologies

In line with a critical approach to this topic, it is useful to begin the discussion withan evaluation of the methods and approaches of the currently available research. We start with surveys into sexting practices by young people and then look more closely at qualitative research. A literature search at the time of writing identifies ten such sur-veys.6 Most of these surveys are aimed at identifying the prevalence of sexting among young people and only a small proportion deal with the motives or reasons for sexting (National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy 2008; Mitchell et al. 2012; Dake et al. 2013), or the emotional or practical consequences of sexting (Phippen 2009; National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy 2008; Mitchell et al. 2012; Tallon et al. 2012; Dake et al. 2013; Strassberg et al. 2013).

There are three key methodological approaches deployed in these surveys—internet-based (often self-selection) surveys, telephone-based random sample surveys and more traditional targeted paper-based surveys—almost exclusively administered through particular schools. We will look at the benefits and limitations of each of these briefly in order to situate the argument that follows.

Internet-based surveys

Internet-based surveys collect a sample of respondents through links to a web-based survey either via a pool of volunteers, or by emailing potential respondents, or by using popular web pages or social media to recruit respondents. The first major study into sexting was an internet-based ‘Sex and Tech’ survey in the United States conducted in 2008 (National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy 2008). This survey sampled some 1,280 respondents (653 ‘teens’) ‘from among those that volun-teered to participate in TRU’s online surveys’ (National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy 2008: 5). Data was weighted and stratified according to US Census data. Cox (2009) also conducted an online survey with a sample comprising 655 US teenagers aged 13–18. Results were weighted for a range of demographic variables. Although it is not clear, it appears that, like the Sex and Tech survey, volunteers were recruited from a pool of registered volunteers—in this case through Harris Interactive.

6 The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy (2008); Cox Communications (2009); Lenhart and Pew Internet and American Life Project (2009); Phippen (2009); Joint Select Committee on Cyber Safety (2011); Englander (2012); Tallon et al. (2012); Peskin et al. (2013); Dake et al. (2013); Strassberg et al. (2013).

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The strength of both surveys is that their online nature may have given young people a sense of anonymity likely to elicit relatively ‘honest’ responses. Both also ask something about motivations or reasons for sexting. An initial flaw in both, identified by Mitchell et al. (2012), is that the sample of ‘teens’ includes those aged 18 and 19 (in the case of Sex and Tech) for which many ‘sexting’ practices will be legal given they are, by most definitions, adults. Importantly, the broad definition of ‘sexting’—which includes texts (that is, SMS messages, as opposed to MMS)—dilutes the data in relation to the production and send-ing of images. Neither study was peer reviewed, nor was either sample a probability sample.

Phippen (2009) also conducted an online survey. In this UK-based study, 535 respond-ents aged 11–18 were recruited from 18 schools. While the study suffers from many of the methodological shortcomings of the previously discussed internet surveys in terms of its sample and the definitions of sexting, it also fails to ask individual sexters about their own practices, choosing instead to ask only for respondents’ perceptions about sex-ting.7 As we will argue below, this is an important distinction.

Telephone surveys

The second set of surveys were conducted by telephone. There are two key surveys of this genre (Lenhart 2009; Mitchell et al. 2012). Both included significant representa-tive population samples (Lenhart n  =  800; Mitchell et  al. n  =  1,560). Only Mitchell et al. (2012) is peer reviewed. Lenhart (2009) suffers from the limitation that only ‘cell phone’ traffic is assessed—the sending of images via computer and other devices is excluded. Lounsbury et al. (2011) also point out that the definition of ‘semi-nude’ is unclear in the Lenhart survey.

Mitchell et al. (2012) constitutes the most solid survey from a purely empirical per-spective and collects a significant amount of data on motivations and demographics. However, both of these surveys have a procedural limitation that does not affect internet surveys so significantly: in both cases interviewers ask to speak to an adult in the house-hold first to seek informed consent to speak to a young person. Taking Mitchell (2012) as an example, the interviewer then tells the adult/parent that the interview with the young person is confidential. Informed consent is then obtained from the youth. Yes/no questions are asked in order to ensure confidentiality and regular checking is conducted by asking the youth if the conversation is private. It strikes us, however, that this adult filter process might disincentivize young people from providing accurate accounts of their sexting activities, with both the formality of the process, and the awareness of the proximity of an adult acting as disincentives. The methodology may also exclude young people who have strained relationships with their parents and may spend less time in the home, or those whose parents may refuse to consent to their participation.

Hard-copy questionnaires

Finally, there is a group of surveys administered via ‘hard-copy’ questionnaires to school students—and computer-based variations on this that use school computers ‘off line’ to run the surveys. These surveys tend to draw their recruits from a school or schools in

7 See Lounsbury et al. (2011: 3) for a more expansive critique.

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a particular area(s). Strassberg et al. (2013) sampled 606 students from a single private high school in the South-West of the United States. The sample constituted some 98 per cent of the total students at the school. Although it provides an excellent snapshot of prevalence at that particular school, these results are not generalizable given, inter-alia, the nature of the school. This survey was also very brief and asked little about motivation apart from whether it was wrong or right to send a sext (on a Likert scale), or whether participants felt positively or negatively about sexting (on a Likert scale). Similarly, Peskin et al. (2013) surveyed 1,034 tenth grade ‘ethnic minority’ urban school students in a single school in South-East Texas, United States. The study did not ask about motivations or intent and again is not generalizable.

Tallon et  al. (2012) conducted 10 consultations at eight schools across New South Wales, Australia, following which ‘around 800 students’ took the survey, with 70 of these taking the survey online. While this survey was largely aimed at identifying what respondents knew and thought about the laws around sexting and cyberbullying, and did not ask about motivations, it did ask the students what behaviours they deemed the most harmful (and most harmless). The framework of harm here, while useful in the legal context of the survey, does not allow respondents to express positive feelings they may have about sexting. The students were also asked to take the survey after they had viewed a presentation that sought to inform them of the laws and penalties that apply to sexting and cyberbullying in an ‘honest and frank manner’ (2012: 27). While the research was designed to ensure that it ‘would contribute to young people’s knowledge and understanding of the law’ and to give young people a voice, it is highly likely that the presentation would influence young people’s perceptions of sexting and the associated harms and thus their survey responses.

While Englander’s (2012) research was computer based and online, it was focused on a select 617 college freshman from Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts. Respondents anonymously completed surveys with those reporting that they had sexted being asked a series of follow up questions, including about the outcomes of their activities.

Dake et al. (2013) administered surveys to of 1,289 students in 35 schools in the mid-west of the United States. The study constitutes a stratified random sample. Essentially, it asked respondents about their sexting practices—defined broadly to include sexual texts—and more problematically, about what the researchers presumably see as a range of negative risk factors in youth development. We will begin the next section using the Dake et al. (2013) survey as an example of how a focus on adult constructed moralizing risk evaluations of sexting practices can blinker researchers to other possible motiva-tions for such behaviours.

Surveying gender and sexuality: quantifying or moralizing?

The gendered dynamics of sexting between young people has rightly been an impor-tant focus of some researchers in the field who have argued that there can be a contin-uum of abusive behaviours from childhood to adulthood of which sexting and/or other forms of cyber crime can form a part (Powell 2010; Salter et al. 2013). Subsequently, power relationships between girls and boys have become of great interest, particularly the interrelated notions of pressure or coercion. But it is important to reflect on just how often pressure and coercion do play a role and in what way.Dake et al. (2013: 3) situate their survey in the literature by suggesting:

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Peer pressure seems to be an important reason for sexting, with 23 per cent of teens saying they felt pressured by a friend and 51 per cent of teenage girls saying they felt pressure from a boy to send sexually explicit messages (emphasis added).

This data is attributed to the first large-scale survey on the topic by the US-based National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy—the survey gener-ally known as ‘Sex and Tech’. However, Dake misinterprets the Sex and Tech Survey. The Survey does not establish that 51 per cent of girls felt pressure from a boy, rather, what Sex and Tech (National Campaign to Prevent Unplanned Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy 2008: 4) actually says is:

51 per cent of teen girls say pressure from a guy is a reason girls send sexy messages or images; only 18 per cent of teen boys cited pressure from female counterparts as a reason.

There is an important distinction here that is more clearly illustrated when we look at exactly what the Sex and Tech survey asked these young people. The question was not, ‘For what reason did you post/send sexy messages or pictures/videos of yourself?’ Rather, it was, ‘What do you think are the reasons that girls send/post sexy messages or pictures/video of themselves?’ (National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy 2008: 9 emphasis added). That is, the question asks the entire sample cohort of female respondents—most of whom had never sent a sext according to the survey results—why they think or perceive that girls send the images, as opposed to asking the motivations of those that actually do it.

In fact, the Sex and Tech survey did ask the motivations of those who had actually sent messages/videos. These results indicate that only 10 per cent of all teenagers reported that they felt ‘pressure to send it’ in response to the question: ‘What are the reasons that you’ve sent/posted suggestive messages or nude/semi-nude pictures/videos (of yourself)?’ (National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy 2008: 9). Contrary to Dake et al.’s (2013) assertion, the most common reason for sending sexy content was to be ‘fun or flirtatious’, with 66 per cent of girls and 60 per cent of teen boys responding thus. Of the teen girls, 52 per cent said the sext was a ‘sexy present’ for their boyfriend; 44 per cent of both teen girls and teen boys said they sent sexually suggestive messages or images in response to receiving such content; 40 per cent of teen girls said they sent sexually sugges-tive messages or images as ‘a joke’; 34 per cent of teen girls say they sent/posted sexually sug-gestive content to ‘feel sexy’; and finally only 12 per cent of teen girls said they felt ‘pressured’ to send sexually suggestive messages or images (National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy 2008: 4). Importantly, respondents could choose all the responses that applied, so the fact that ‘pressure’ had such a low response rate is very significant.

This eliding of perceptions and expressed personal experiential motivations is not unique to the research of Dake et al. (2013), we use it simply as an example, rather, this same miscomprehension informs much of the research and literature on sexting and young people, including research co-authored by us (Salter et al. 2013). Thinking back to our typologies of pressure then, we might be problematically confusing various levels of pressure and even overdetermining pressure all together. However, before moving into these more conceptual discussions, let us explore what other surveys have found in relation to pressure on girls to send sexts to boys.

Englander (2012:3) asked her cohort about their motivations for sexting. She states that

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Indisputably, the most important motivation for sexting revealed in this study (and others) was pres-sure or coercion. Girls were more likely than boys to report that they had sexted, but the gender difference was entirely due to the girls being more likely to report that they had been pressured, coerced, blackmailed, or threatened into sexting.

This sounds straightforward, but there is little detail on the types of questions asked in this survey. From the snippets we get in the report there appears to be limited scope for respondents to report any pleasures or other positive experiences of sexting.

Mitchell et al. (2012) is the other key survey-based study that touches on motivations. Respondents were asked why they thought the sexting incident(s) they were involved in occurred. The vast majority of those producing and sending (51 per cent) and receiving (54 per cent) said it was part of a romance or existing relationship. Another 23 per cent (sending and producing) and 11 per cent (receiving) suggested it was a joke or prank; and trying to start a relationship (five per cent and 11 per cent respectively), or getting someone’s notice (three per cent and seven per cent) were also factors. Only three per cent and two per cent respectively reported being blackmailed, coerced or threatened into the activity, and zero per cent and one per cent, respectively, reported it to be related to conflict or revenge. Similarly, zero per cent and one per cent respectively reported it was the result of bullying or harassment. While Mitchell et al. (2012) provide no specific gendered breakdown of the small numbers of respondents reporting nega-tive motivations and negative responses to their actions, the figures do not suggest that large numbers of girls involved in the behaviours report being pressured to do so. Of those engaged in creating and sending, or receiving, images, a quarter or less reported any negative emotions about this involvement:

Twenty-one per cent of respondents appearing in or creating images reported feeling very or extremely upset, embarrassed, or afraid as a result, as did 25 per cent of youth receiving images. (Mitchell et al. 2012: 16)

While there is again no gendered breakdown, there is little evidence to conclude that a majority of girls felt negatively or expressed negative feelings about their involvement in the practice. It may well be that their methodology under samples those more mar-ginal respondents who may be more susceptible to pressure and coercion? It may be that their sampling technique acts as a disincentive to report experiences of pressure? However, this is speculation and what we are left with are very low levels of expressed pressure or coercion—even at the individual level with reference to our typology.

Phippen (2009) notes that those personally impacted (presumably negatively, but this is not clearly articulated) by ‘sexts’ were very much in the minority. However, he highlights that a larger number were aware of friends who have been ‘affected’: 30 per cent of respondents said they knew a friend affected by the problems introduced by sexting. While we do not wish to downplay this finding it is important to note that only secondary knowledge is used here. There is no sense whether these ‘effects’ might be positive or negative from the way the question is framed. Moreover, we can infer from the aforementioned surveys that non-sexters are likely to judge the behaviour of those that engage in the activity quite negatively.

Our argument that those who engage in the activity are less likely to judge it neg-atively is also supported by the research of Strassberg et  al. (2013). These research-ers found that students who sent explicit pictures of themselves were more likely than

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others to positively evaluate the behaviour. Indeed, only one in seven who actually sex-ted reported generally negative feelings (Strassberg et al. 2013: 19).

Returning to the Sex and Tech survey (National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy 2008); we find even stronger affirmation that the majority of those engaged in sexting activities had positive feelings about their involvement. Respondents were asked: ‘Thinking about suggestive messages or nude/semi-nude pictures/videos that you ever received, how did getting them make you feel?’ The responses were ‘surprised’ (55 per cent), ‘amused’ (54 per cent), ‘turned on’ (53 per cent), ‘excited’ (44 per cent), ‘happy’ (40 per cent), ‘more interested in hooking up with the sender’ (27 per cent), and ‘more interested in dating the sender’ (22 per cent). Far fewer respondents had negative feelings with some being ‘creeped out’ (22 per cent), ‘grossed out’ (18 per cent), and ‘turned off’ (15 per cent). The clear conclusion is that the vast majority of those receiving sexts did not view this negatively.

In summary, the majority of the current survey results taken together, as imperfect as this data is, indicates that when young women are expressly asked about their sexting motivations they rarely express pressure or coercion as the key driver. It is certainly an issue for some girls and one motivation among others—indeed, a serious one—but, according to the data, it is a significantly lower-order issue than what might best be described as motivations of ‘pleasure’ or ‘romance’. But, drawing on our typology of pres-sures, what type of pressure are we talking about here? Clearly the survey model is most likely to tap into whether individual pressure was applied ‘by a boyfriend of girlfriend’ for example. Indeed, many of the surveys ask a version of this question. Respondents are in a sense asked to phenomenologically bracket their experience to the one-on-one exchange. More difficult from the survey model is the job of measuring peer group or socio-cultural pressure. There may be an argument that questions asking the entire cohorts about their perceptions of others that sext might be tapping into evaluations of these peer group and socio-cultural pressures? However, this is again speculation and not clearly conceived. More likely we think, is that the higher levels of pressure identified as a result of the perceptions questions are reflective of the gendered double standard that sees both males and females evaluating the sexting activities of others more harshly than they would of themselves. That is, they are reflective of (hetro-) normative moral judgments of females who sext.

The self-image of agency does not mean there is no underlying gendered social pres-sure or coercion. Equally, however, given our aim is to discover how young women perceive their engagement in sexting, such pressures should not be unquestioningly apportioned. However, it is worth noting that Cox (2009) found that 90 per cent of those that had sent a sext reported no negative fallout from the activity. We now turn to the existing qualitative evidence to assess whether these other levels of pressure might be better indentified through such methodologies.

Speaking for Girls: Qualifying Pressure or Denying Agency?

In assessing the current state of qualitative data concerning motivations of young people to produce and send sexual images, it is worth starting with more recent publications, e.g., Phippen’s (2012) report Sexting: An Exploration of Practices, Attitudes and Influences. This report for the NSPCC in the United Kingdom attempts to expand on earlier research

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by Ringrose et al. (2012). It is worth quoting Phippen’s (2012: 40) first paragraph of the introduction in order to get a feel for the way in which he situates the study:

In May 2012 a report by Ringrose et al. “A qualitative study of children, young people and ‘sexting’”, com-missioned by the NSPCC, produced ground breaking research understanding the nature of sexting for young people and identified a number of concerning issues around power and coercion, ‘casual’ sexual abuse in school environments and how technology is used in the production and distribution of self gener-ated indecent images. However the research, while highly detailed, has issues of generalizability due to the small number of students (35) and the fact that all in the sample we [sic] drawn from two innercity schools.

Phippen here rightly points out the issues with generalizability, but as this introductory paragraph makes clear, the author also takes at face value these issues of pressure and coercion. Indeed, his research methodology indicates that he introduced sexting to his respondents through the lens of the parable of Amanda Todd—a Canadian teenager who, after exposing herself on webcam in Year 7, and subsequently experiencing serious bullying and ridicule, committed suicide in 2012. Rarely in his research agenda is there capacity to tease out the pleasures or positive feelings that might be associated with such behaviours.

Moreover, Phippen (2012: 8) notes that ‘it was also made clear that we wanted to explore issues that affect young people of their age, rather than their own personal experi-ences’ (emphases added). That is, members of this cohort were not reporting on their own experiences, but their perceptions. This is not to say some would not have had first-hand experience, but the participants ‘were asked specifically not to talk about what they had done’, possibly for very sound ethical reasons.

Despite the methodological issues Phippen (2012: 10) does not find the coercion and pressure he expects to. He concludes that:

…there is a clear gender imbalance here—boys would request pictures of girls and girls may send pictures as a result of the invitations. It was considered highly unusual for a girl to request a picture of a boy … some [respondents] were aware of instances where girls had responded to [sic] request but in many other cases they simply refused.

He goes on to suggest that ‘ just because a boy asked for a picture it did not mean they had to respond’ (Phippen 2012: 11). Some girls even suggested that among their peers were individuals who viewed ‘a request for a picture, or other forms of online attention, as flattering—being asked to send a picture made you feel like you were attractive’ (Phippen 2012: 11). Among boys, they saw no problem in ‘giving it a try’. So, while the practices identified were gendered, it is an overgeneralization to call this coercion or pressure at either an individual or peer group level, and certainly that is not how the majority of girls conceptualized the exchange.

This begs the question: why did Phippen prioritize coercion and pressure over other motivations? As Phippen noted, he took his lead from the work of Ringrose et al. (2012). It is therefore worth examining that research more closely. Ringrose et al. (2012) devel-oped a detailed methodology for their qualitative research. Indeed, their research instrument is reproduced in full as Appendix 3 of their report, and clearly indicates that none of their questions were leading.8

8 It should be noted that elsewhere Ringrose and her colleagues have developed nuanced conceptual frames for understand-ing girls ‘schitzoid subjectivities’ from experiencing pleasure to pressures that provide a useful way of conceiving of girls’ array of responses to sexting (Renold and Ringrose 2011; Ringrose et al. 2013).

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There is little doubt Ringrose et al.’s (2012) research identified a troubling range of gendered practices among the cohort of 35 Year 8 and Year 10 students interviewed across two innercity schools in London. Such practices where technology was concerned included girls regularly receiving unsolicited explicit photos and boys asking for, and often receiving, semi-nude photos of their girlfriends for their default messaging image (2012). However, it is important to note that such behaviours were largely extensions of the kinds of gendered behaviours already going on in these school grounds. That is, for this cohort of students, gendered power relations played a big part in their day-to-day school lives. These gendered power relations manifested through sexualized activities in the school grounds, including: verbal harassment, being touched up, being rushed, pushed down and ‘daggering’ a range of harassments that often result in a boy thrust-ing his penis against a girl from behind or masturbating against a girl from behind.

There were then, at least in the two schools where Ringrose et al.’s (2012) research took place, serious ongoing problems or harassment of some girls by some boys—the kind of sub-legal ‘everyday violence’ astutely identified by Stanko (1990)—although in this instance some of these activities were clearly criminal offences. Thus, the use of technology for these young people was an extension of existing behaviours. Ringrose et al. (2012: 8) suggest though that technology is not simply neutral; rather, ‘it amplifies the problem’:

[T]he specific features or affordances of mobile phones, social networking sites and other com-munication technologies facilitate the objectification of girls via the creation, exchange, collection, ranking and display of images. (Ringrose et al. 2012: 8)

We do not disagree. However, there was also a specific context to this. As the authors point out in positioning their research:

The study set out as an exploratory inquiry into differently positioned young people’s experiences of ‘sexting’ in the UK. …Over 50 per cent of the students at both schools are from minority ethnic back-grounds. Both schools serve mixed socioeconomic status (SES) populations, though School One has a higher proportion of students eligible for free school meals. Both schools are located in geographi-cal areas associated with gang activity and crime. (Ringrose et al. 2012:19–20)

Our point here is that while these practices were highly gendered in these schools, and while coercion and harassment clearly takes place, the high level of such behaviours among 35 students in two ethnically mixed and somewhat disadvantaged schools does not provide evidence that such behaviours are dominant across all schools or among young people more generally. As the authors comment:

Although the extent of sexting cannot be determined from a small-scale qualitative study… some had experienced or knew of others who had experienced sexting, also important was the finding that most felt in some ways oppressed by perceived sexual pressure—to perform, judge and be judged—from peers. Such pressures may vary by context, but the specificity of sexualization pressures—e.g. expec-tations on appearance (being very thin, having large breasts or big muscles) or actions (viewing porn, tripping and touching up, performing blow jobs, sending images of own body parts)—should be discussed in order to undermine the culture of silence that further harms youth, especially girls (emphasis added). (Ringrose et al. 2012: 8)

There are a number of points here. First, the authors acknowledge the limitations in terms of generalizability of their study; second, only some of the 35 participants had

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engaged in sexting—most accounts were second hand; third, the placing of sexting practices in the context of broader forms of harassment is both a strength and a weak-ness of the study. While it provides context to online practices, it also creates an inclina-tion to slip between the two unproblematically and see much sexting as an extension of such behaviours; fourth, the various levels or pressures and the role of sexualization could be further explored.

For a broader analysis it is worth then also placing Ringrose et al.’s (2012) work in the context of some of the surveys outlined above. A clear finding from those surveys was that sexting practices were more widespread among ethnic minority groups (Tallon et al. 2012; Peskin et al. 2013). Put in this context, it seems highly likely that the kinds of behaviours identified by Ringrose et al. (2012) may be much more prevalent in particular schools, with particular social demographic characteristics, in particular geographic areas. So in this sense the pressure and coercion that Ringrose et al. (2012) identify is likely to be a mix of the individual and peer group type pressures identified in our typology over-whelmingly experienced by students already marginalized and disempowered by a range of intersectional socio-demographic factors, including race, status, ethnicity, sexuality and class. As such the influence of broader socio-cultural sexualization pressures will be heavily mediated by the presence (or not) of these other levels of pressure.

Finally, Albury et  al. (2013) conducted a small number of focus groups with 16- to 18-year-olds in New South Wales, Australia (n = 16). Despite being a small sample, the researchers did select students from a range of differing backgrounds. While the gen-dered nature of sexting practices was a key element of the discussions in these focus groups, the question of coercion or pressure appears not to have been central to them. Rather, participants noted the different gendered interpretations of sexting practice and the likelihood of girls who sext being judged differently to boys who do so. That is, the gendered double standard in play when sexting occurred. However, girls in the focus groups did distinguish between boys who asked for photos—who they deemed more likely to share them without consent—and those who were sent photos as part of a relationship.

Risk, Danger, Pleasure and Morality

The belief that sexting for young people cannot be anything but negative or a form of pressure or coercion appears implicit in much of the research we have reviewed and this is reinforced by many key agencies and their policy responses that situate children on as ‘at risk’ (Lee et al. 2013). That is, many of the research frameworks discussed actu-ally privilege the negative aspects of sexting by denying their young respondents the capacity to express positive experiences and how sexting might be embedded in wider systems of bonding, courtship and friendship (Albury et al. 2010). Importantly, by view-ing sexting through a simple gendered lens of pressure, we are denying a panoply of voices the right to be heard. This denial of agency, or youth sexual citizenship, is highly problematic. Karaian (2012: 64) has called this the foreclosure of alternative narratives about childhood sexuality. As Albury et al. (2010) suggest:

...adult perceptions of the ‘consequences’ of sexting should be interpreted in the context of broader cultural norms of sexuality and gender, in which models of ‘healthy’ adolescent sexual development privilege an ideal of ‘un-mediated’ heterosexuality, free from evidence of interaction with consumer

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cultures. Girls and women are most ‘at risk’ in these circumstances because their sexuality is more narrowly defined…’ (Albury and Lumby 2010: 3–4)

The point is that privileging adult perceptions of sexting can actually reproduce the very inequalities and double standards young girls already experience. Gill also notes the ‘general tendency to project concerns about sex onto the young, which often seems to involve a complex displacement of our own unresolved issues around sexuality onto girls’ (2012: 744).

Nowhere is this moralizing discourse and risk framework clearer than in the work of Dake et al. (2013) discussed above. These authors specifically link sexting to risk factors, most of which have highly moralistic and (hetero-)normative connotations; for exam-ple, the likelihood of having engaged in anal sex; the likelihood of having had oral sex; the likelihood of having attempted suicide; the likelihood of having used marijuana; the likelihood have having drunk alcohol in the past 30 days and so on (Dake 2013: 8). Such correlations lead them to suggest that:

it could be hypothesized that there may be youths who act out by using substances that impair their judgments, which may lead to greater likelihood of sexting behaviour. (Dake et al. 2013: 13)

The point here is that research into sexting often begins with an adult oriented moral agenda and unproblematically takes sexting on board as a negative risk. As Shoveller and Johnson (2006) have suggested, the focus on risk has been supported by sex edu-cation programs and campaigns to address youth sexuality in terms of ‘risk factors’ with particular negative outcomes, such as pregnancy or sexually transmitted infec-tion. Similarly, sexting education campaigns have followed this risk framework (Salter et al. 2013). The focus on sexting in these campaigns which appears to privilege certain sexting scenarios, particularly those related to cyber-bullying, may have the effect of further circulating a risk discourse based primarily on the negative outcomes that can stem from sexting. This is perhaps not so surprising given the historical attempts to regulate childhood sexuality (see Foucault 1990; Fishman 1982). Indeed, such interven-tions have a long genealogy as Foucault notes:

‘The sexualization of children was accomplished in the form of a campaign of health of the race—precocious sexuality was presented from the eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century as an epidemic menace that risked compromising not only the future health of adults but the future of the entire society and species’. (Foucault 1990: 146)

In this sense, risk is simply a new framework through which childhood sexuality, and in this case sexting, has been framed and managed. It may not be such a surprise then if young people themselves, particularly those without firsthand experience of sexting, tend to report the risks associated with sexting that education campaigns focus upon back to researchers in the field.

The Way Forward

By critically reviewing the current research—qualitative and quantitative—this article has raised serious questions over the validity of the notion that young women regularly expe-rience individualized coercion or pressure from young men to send sexualized images of themselves, and that this constitutes a key motivation for sexting between young people.

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As we have argued, there is currently no evidence to suggest that this is the key motivation for such behaviours except perhaps for specifically (often marginalized) peer and socio-demographic groups. Many researchers appear to be over-stating the extent that pressure and coercion are a motivation for young girls to send sexts due to a lack of clarity over actual motivations for sexting and perceptions about the motivations of others. The two cohorts generally report something quite different, with active sexters much less likely to report negative feelings or repercussions about their behaviours. The available evidence suggests that most sexting between young people largely takes place in a romantic con-text between boyfriend and girlfriend and constitutes for participants ‘fun and flirta-tious’ behaviour or a ‘sexy present’ for a love interest. That is not to suggest that broader socio-cultural norms and pressures do not also influence the nature such interactions, of course they do. However, it may well be that perceptions of negative consequences associ-ated with sexting are actually products of the very education campaigns which focus on the potential risks of sexting, including sexting being used as a form of cyberbullying.

What then does this mean for research into sexting and young people, and for our under-standing of the way young people give meaning to their engagement in such practices? On a general level the voices of the young women who have actually engaged in the practice need to be heard and clearly distinguished from what the broader cohort think or perceive about the practice. While understanding general perceptions is important, it is not the same thing as motivations—as is clear from the currently available data. Once we have a better sense of these voices we might well then ask broader questions about the ways in which the expression of girls might be delineated by broader socio-cultural forces, norms and values.

Researchers also need to be clearer about what types of pressures are under discussion. We have attempted to develop a typology of the various levels of pressure that can operate in such exchanges. While we reiterate that in practice such pressures interact and are not easily separated empirically, we believe that these give us tools for better assessing what types of pressures are being implicit in the research literature. Overwhelmingly the current body of research only taps into individual and to a lesser extent peer-group type pressures. Future research may have to rethink its conceptual frameworks if we want to get a better grasp on the operation of more normative socio-cultural pressures. However, it should be kept in mind that pressure of all kinds seem to be only a minor part of most sexting experiences.

Another important aspect of future research will be to further understand boys’ motivations for asking for images. It seems unsatisfactory to suggest boys ask for them to ‘give it a try’ while girls are seen as pressured to send. There is a need to understand the dynamics of masculinities and masculinized youth cultures that normalize and/or celebrate such behaviours or produce pressures where young boys feel compelled to ask for such images under threat of otherwise being labelled as ‘gay’ or emasculated—in the same way we might seek to understand the pressures on girls. We also need to understand boys’ motivations in the context of ‘romance’ or relationships.

Also problematic is how little research interest has been shown in the links between sexting and sexuality, although it is often paid lip service. This is a key irony given that sexting-like practices appear highly normalized in the gay community.9 Indeed, the pressure on young gay men to engage in such behaviours, and for a sexualized selfhood

9 Evidenced by apps such as Grindr, Scruff and GROWLr. The Gay Community Periodic Survey 2012 (Lee et al. 2012) found that the second most common (most common was the internet) way that men meet met men for sex was through a mobile phone app such as Grindr (35.2 per cent). This proportion has increased significantly since 2011 while other ‘real-time’ ways of meet-ing men has declined.

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to delineate their on-line identities suggests that members of this cohort may well be the most prolific senders and receivers of self-produced sexual images and videos. This certainly requires further research and may reveal a more complex/nuanced view of the intersectional nature of pressure in sexting.

We have argued elsewhere that education campaigns targeting young people and sexing have tended to attempt to responsibilize young women into avoiding engag-ing in sexting behaviour by problematizing this behaviour or its outcomes (Salter et al. 2013; also see Albury 2013; Döring 2014)—much in the way many sexual assault cam-paigns attempt to regulate women’s behaviour in order to reduce their risks, rather than problematizing the behaviour of men who commit sexual assault. The familiar narrative is that of the young women whose image is passed on by a young man—as in the parable of Amanda Todd discussed above. However, if the experience and self-image of young women who engage in sexting is pleasurable and positive, rather than a result of feeling coerced and pressured, and if the passing on of images is relative rare, as the available survey data suggests, neither pure scare campaigns, nor the problema-tizing of young men’s behaviour alone, are likely to curb such behaviours. Albury et al.’s (2013) focus group respondents confirmed this by strongly rejecting abstinence mes-sages in favour of seeing girls as active agents in their sexting practices, and adopting a harm-reduction approach. Similarly to drug-taking, our aims should be harm reduc-tion rather than abstinence and fostering ethical forms of sexual citizenship (Carmody 2009), rather than none at all.

We have argued that some researchers have been drawn into the very frameworks of risk and morality that have delineated public, media and political discourse on this issue. There is a great danger that we are missing the point and subverting the evidence about young people and sexting. This could have serious implications for our attempts to mini-mize the harm the practice might cause to young people in the future. By ignoring what young people have to say about their actual experiences of sexting, we are allowing moral values to triumph over careful appreciative research. In doing so we are falling into the same discourses that have seen young people criminalized for sexting behaviours.

Funding

This research is supported by a Criminology Research Grant provided by the Australian Institute of Criminology.

Acknowledgements

The research team also acknowledges the support of The NSW Commission for Children and Young People and the University of Sydney. The authors wish to acknowl-edge the other members of the research team, Sanja Milivojevic and Alyce McGovern.

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