Navigating the Complexities, Ambiguities, and Controversies of Youth Sexuality: Meaning-Making around Sexual Health and Equity in a Community Coalition

Abstract

As part of human development, youth must learn to navigate the vulnerabilities, excitements, and risks associated with sexuality. In the United States, multiple organizations and practitioners are dedicated to supporting youth in this process. These adult systems often aim to promote youth “sexual health” and to ensure these supports are equitable and inclusive. There is a lack of consensus, however, about what healthy sexuality means for youth, what sources contribute to it, and how to achieve equity and inclusion in relation to it. Using an ethnographic case study approach, this dissertation explored these issues by analyzing how concepts of “sexual health” and “equity and inclusion” circulate and are made meaningful in relation to youth sexualities in a community coalition which uses these framings to underpin the goals of their work. Analysis of qualitative data from coalition documents, in-depth interviews with coalition members, and 15 months of participant observation documented the complexities, ambiguities, and controversies inherent in supporting youth navigating sexuality while working across ideological, political and personal divides. The coalition's formal vague framings of youth “sexual health” and “equity and inclusion” functioned to bring diverse organizations together. Members’ collective framing of youth sexual health was expansive; they saw it as a necessarily multi-faceted and holistic concept with core elements of authenticity, body knowledge and relationality. Members interpreted a commitment to equity and inclusion in their work as supporting and respecting differences, creating equitable distribution of information and resources, and elevating youth who might not be seen. Some members additionally focused on interrogating power structures and grappling with racist histories as essential. As data collection was ending, the coalitions’ emphasis on data-driven approaches to understanding youths’ experiences appeared to be narrowing their focus towards an interpretation of sexuality which focused exclusively on LGBTQ+ identities. Using the informants' perspectives and current literature, the dissertation concludes with an overview of key implications for understanding and supporting youth as they navigate the inherently complex and contested phenomenon of sexuality.