Putting ‘gendered’ sexualization and pornification on the UK Educational Policy Agenda

Dr. Jessica Ringrose

Educational context

• DCSF ‘Gender Agenda’: Girls are more successful than boys because of high test scores!

• What about the social dimensions of schooling and increased pressures around sexualized bodily display online/at school?

• Need to link up sex education, media studies, bullying and achievement policies and discourses to address gendered sexualization/pornification

The Research Project

• Young people’s negotiations of social networking sites

• Funded by: Norwegian Centre for Child Research (NOSEB)

• Investigators: Rebekah Willett and Jessica Ringrose

SNSs and Schools

• Social networking sites are an increasingly important bridge into understanding social relationships at school, because contrary to the notion that young people are making many new contacts in cyberspace, young people are mostly communicating with their school friends online (Livingstone 2007, boyd, 2008, Willett and Ringrose, 2008).

• SNSs work in large part to extend and amplify school based relationships (Ringrose, 2009)

SNSs and Schools

Schools are faced with difficulties in understanding and addressing SNSs, as many view online engagement as happening mostly outside the bounds of schooling (Selwyn, 2008). For this reason, schools have not addressed the specifically gendered and sexualised aspects of student’s engagements with SNSs or how this impacts students’ experiences at school.

Bebo

• According to Ofcom statistics 49% of those aged between eight and 17 have an internet profile on social networking sites (SNSs) such as Bebo and Facebook. The majority of students we worked with were using Bebo, a site used “predominantly by the 13- to 24-year-old age group” (Smithers, 2008).

Sexualization and Pornification

• According to Paasonen et al (2007: 8)• The sexualization of culture refers to a fairly

wide range of cultural phenomenea while pornification is a more specific term pointing to the increased visibility of hardcore and soft-core pornographies, and the blurring of boundaries between the pornographic and the mainstream... porn chic: involv[es] depictions of pornography in non-pornographic contexts in art and culture

• I explore a general trend of gendered sexualization, and specific discourses that illustrate (hetero)pornification, porno-chic on Bebo.

Bebo customized ‘arrows’

TAKE THIS QUIZ!

Are You Sexy, Flirty, Or A Slut? <sexy-flirty-slut

> (Bebo application)

Marie’s quiz result

YOUR RESULT IS: FLIRTY

You must love to tease...

Your result is: Sexy...(mmm)

What Kind Of Lingerie Are You? - take this quiz!

• What kind of Lingerie are you? My

result is: V-String Panties

What Sexual Fantasy Are You?

• My result is: Sexy schoolgirl

User Photos

Marie, 15, New Mills High School

Marie’s ‘cartoonization’ of herself in bunny ears

Daniella 14, Thornbury High School

Slut <Da- Da- Daniellaaaa>"AЧЧЧЧЄЄЄЄЄЄ ..♥“Hi Im Daniella And ii Like It UpThe Bum .. Just Like Your Mum! And I Suck Dick for £5

- Im A Little Bit Dramatic,,- I Talk To Much,,- Im Way To Nosy,,- Im A Tiny Bit Loud,,- I Do Have My Blonde MomentossBut Hey That Is Just Me

•Its all just make believe isn’t it?

• A wise girl kisses but doesn't love, listens but doesn’t believe, and leaves before

• she is left.

• Marilyn Monroe

‘I’m her slut and she my whore’

Daniella (14, Thornbury High School)… We have this little thing, like she’s my slut, I’m her whore. Because loads of people used to call us it, so we just thought whatever, we’ll just be them then. And like one day we just found a background like it, and we were like, oh, that’s quite nice... like some people, like older girls that saw us, like with someone would be like, oh you slag or you slut because…. Just because they didn’t know us, but just because they wanted to insult us… so we just got a bit like, oh I don’t care. ‘Cos we used to really care about it, and then we just got a bit like oh I don’t care anymore… we just got used to it, and then … I don’t really know what happened but it was just a random thing of where we were just like, I’d be like your she’s my whore and I’m her slut. Whatever. Get over it and Then she’d say the same”.

Hi Im Daniella And ii Like It UpThe Bum .. Just Like Your Mum! And I Suck Dick for £5

Daniella explained the genesis of the tagline. She made a rhyme on Sadie’s site about how she cheated on her boyfriend with a boy who ‘gave her an org” “because his name rhymed with org… and then it was just running, like where we basically swapped Bebos and she’d write loads of comments.” The day Sadie put the “ I like it up the bum” tagline, Daniella retaliated with “I suck nipples for free but you have to ask nicely”. Daniella said: ‘I didn’t mind because I know she was only joking. ‘Cos I was on the phone to her at the same time. So she was going, like, ha ha, look what I’ve thrown on your Bebo… So I was like, no, look at your Bebo. It was just like that, so it just started building up and got worse and worse.’

Questions: Positive desire-flows

• Is the meaning of slut shifting (Atwood, 2007)?

• Do Daniella and Sadie ‘resignify’ ‘slut’ and ‘whore’? Butler, Hey etc.

• Does the online space operate as a fantasy space to ‘experiment’ with sexual ‘knowingness’ (Stern, 2007; Bragg and Buckingham, 2009)?

Questions: Regulation

Do we still see a ‘missing discourse of female desire’ (Fine, 1988, 2006) – or a phallogecentric organization of desire centred around servicing the phallus?

Do Daniella’s offline relationships indicate increased sexual confidence at school? No.

Are we seeing a ‘disciplinary technology of sexy’ a compulsion to perform a sexually knowing, up for it sexual identity (Gill, 2008)?

Political Action: Feminist Pedagogy in Schools

I call for a feminist pedagogical strategy in schools to address the power dynamics of ‘gendered’ sexualization (Atwood, 2009) and pornification (Nikunen, 2007).

Inform ‘Fact finding review on sexualization of girls’Use the Gender Equality Duty to prioritize research and

interventions on new formations of gendered sexualization and pornification (reshape DCSF policies Post –’Gender Agenda’

Figure out what a focus on gendered sexualization and pornification could mean/look like in Sex-education, Media Studies, and other curriculum

Relevant PublicationsRingrose, J. (forthcoming 2009) Beyond Discourse?: Affective assemblages,

heterosexually striated space, and lines of flight online and at school, Educational Philosophy & Theory, Special Issue: The Power In/Of Language

Ringrose, J. (forthcoming 2009) Are you sexy, flirty or a slut? Teen girls navigating sexual commodification and pornification on social networking sites, In R. Gill and C. Scharff (eds.) New Femininities: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism and Identity, London: Palgrave.

Ringrose, J. (forthcoming 2009) Sluts, whores, fat slags and Playboy bunnies: Teen girls’ negotiations of ‘sexy’ on social networking sites and at school, In C. Jackson, C. Paechter and E. Renold (eds.) Girls and education 3-16: Continuing concerns, new agendas, Basingstoke: Open University Press.

Ringrose, J.”I’m her slut and she’s my whore!”: Teen girls, sexualisation, heteropornification and the new feminine ”disciplinary technology of sexy” on social networking sites and at school, in preparation for Sexualities