The Management of “Nonrelational Sexuality”

Abstract

This article uses a discursive psychological approach in examining how three different age groups of young adolescent boys (ages 10-15) construct and then manage various forms of “nonrelational sexuality” in focus group conversations. Rather than seeing nonrelational sexuality as something that is successfully or unsuccessfully “resolved” during the course of development, nonrelational sexuality will be seen as a fluid and socially constructed resource that is variously used by young men as a way to account for their masculine identities. The analysis will particularly focus on the safeguarding strategies that each age group of young men actively uses to both anticipate and counter the potential “trouble” of nonrelational sexuality and, in so doing, how they indirectly keep forms of nonrelational sexuality alive without directly appearing serious or misogynistic about it. The analysis will demonstrate how nonrelational forms of sexuality, like most instantiations of hegemonic masculinity, are notoriously elusive in resisting “fixity.”