A qualitative study of children, young people and 'sexting ... - NSPCC

A qualitative study of children, young people and ‘sexting’
R: I was standing up like this helping some boy and some boy was just sitting here and he just like
grabbed me and put me on top of him and started like daggering me, like sitting down, and he
is really strong, and so I was like moving and I couldn’t move because he is really strong. So I
just sat there and let him do it because like the more you pull away the more he is just going to
like hold on to you, so I was like, he is going to stop anyway. Then all the boys were like, ‘Oh
you didn’t even tell him to stop’ and I was like ‘If you tell him to stop he is just going to keep
going’ because he knows you are bothered about it, but if you just like let him get on with it
then he will do it.
I: So is there any part of you that thought it was kind of fun?
R: No, I don’t like it when they do that. (Jodie, year 8, School Two)
Rumours about touching and groping also circulated as a way to intimidate girls who did not want to be
touched up but might not be able to fight back:
R: They said that fingered Ashley and everything.
R: None of that happened.
R: But you find in schools, not just our school, but every school, you always find that there’s lots
of gossips and stuff.
R: Because [inaudible 36:34] can’t stick up for herself so –
I: Why is that?
R: She is just quiet, well she’s not quiet –
R: She is just scared of the boys.
R: I’m not scared of them. I just don’t really care about them yet. I do my best to ignore them
yeah.
I: Is that like a compliment that they say that they fingered you?
R: No. It is nasty. And now I am bearing the name prostitute.
R: Because she is my friend as well when they say it to me I am just like, ‘How can you say that
it makes me sick’. And they say, ‘and my fingers were wet’. That is just wrong. (Focus group,
year 8 girls, School Two)
This section has presented crucial information about the context of normalised sexism and sexual
violence in which the use of mobile technologies takes place. In the next section we turn specifically
to digitally mediated sexualised communication among young people and specifically to practices
understood as sexting.
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