A preliminary analysis of undergraduate women's accounts of early sexual experience examines structural factors and interpretations of these frameworks to explain decision making. The author articulates coercive historical, cultural, and hierarchical contexts; processes of interpretation; and interactional strategies. An examination of tactics women employ in their quest for valued identities shifts attention from victimization and agency to the negotiation of these identities and links individual actors to larger social structures. The author argues that a woman is neither simply the product of her circumstances (a victim) nor the producer of her world (a powerful female) but, rather, she is both.
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