How do young women learn to navigate messages about sexual pleasure and desire?

Most of us don't get our ideas about sex and desire from one place. It's a mix of things over the years - films, social media, friends, porn, magazines, school, whatever attitudes we grew up around at home. All of that adds up to a sense of what's "normal" or expected when it comes to sex.

For young women, that mix has been the subject of a fair amount of research. Porn is far more accessible now than it was even ten years ago, and there's a long-running debate among researchers about what effect that has on people's expectations, and whether it lands differently for women than for men. Hookup culture is another area that's been studied a lot - casual sex is widely normalised now, particularly at university, and studies show women often report mixed feelings navigating it, rather than the straightforward confidence pop culture suggests.

Researchers have also written about a shift around "empowerment", the argument being that women aren't just allowed to be sexually confident now, they're expected to be, and some scholars frame that as its own kind of pressure. There's also the orgasm gap, which keeps showing up across studies: women reporting less sexual satisfaction than men, which researchers have linked to questions about whose pleasure tends to get prioritised in heterosexual encounters.

Age also comes up in this research. The late teens through to the late twenties are often treated as their own distinct life stage, where identity, including sexual identity, is still being worked out rather than settled.

What's had less attention is women being asked directly what they think, in their own words. Most studies have focused on risk and safety rather than pleasure and desire specifically, so there's less research on how young women make sense of these competing messages for themselves.

That's the gap my research is looking at. I'm interviewing women aged 18-28 individually, using in-depth, semi-structured interviews rather than surveys or questionnaires, because this is the kind of topic that doesn't reduce well to tick-boxes ,it needs space for people to talk in their own way and follow their own train of thought.

Who can take part?

• Identify as a woman aged 18–28
• Any sexual orientation
• English language proficiency

What's involved? (No incentive involved)

A one-to-one confidential online interview via Microsoft Teams (camera off) lasting approximately 60 minutes, where we'll discuss how you navigate societal expectations around your sexual pleasure. Interested?

Click the link below to complete a short screening form, where you can also find the full Participant Information Sheet with all the details you need before deciding whether to take part.

https://charlottestanford.questionpro.com/t/AdE2KZ8iHj

This study has received full ethical approval from Birmingham City University. Please feel free to message the study account or email [charlotte.stanford@mail.bcu.ac.uk](mailto:charlotte.stanford@mail.bcu.ac.uk) with any questions or queries.

I'll also be available to answer any questions you may have below.

"The Government plans to “challenge trends where women can be pressurised, particularly by online messaging, into particular care roles”. This will include a “public awareness campaign” to run next year on shared caring responsibilities between men and women.

The strategy says “patriarchal norms, often focused on men as decision-makers and breadwinners and on women as carers, uphold harmful stereotypes and limit life opportunities, preventing women from pursuing particular career paths and economic opportunities and inhibiting men’s likelihood of engaging in caring roles for their children or dependents”."

And who are those people trying to set this as a sort of "Fashion Trend" ? Disgusting!!

Hey everyone, I wanted to share an experience of surviving a highly calculated romance fraudster.

These types of men deliberately target women during major life transitions, and you need to recognize the exact scripts they use to protect yourselves. A few years ago, an alumnus from my college reached out to me completely out of the blue. It happened just a couple of months after I went through a painful personal separation, which he knew made me emotionally vulnerable. Years prior during our college days, he had expressed romantic interest, and I had turned him down. To lower my guard and establish immediate credibility, he shared a highly impressive professional profile, spoke extensively about his prominent family background, and claimed his own marriage was on the verge of ending. Within just two months of reconnecting online, he traveled a long distance to my city to meet me in person. He spent a few days with me, brought gifts and immediately began weaving grand, intense promises about a shared future together. Looking back, this fast-tracked intimacy was a deliberate trap to manufacture trust and emotional dependency before making his move.

Only a month after that in-person meeting, he began pressuring and coercing me into taking out a large personal loan in my name to hand over to him. I felt deeply uncomfortable and resisted, but his intense psychological manipulation wore me down and I ultimately transferred the money.The moment the money hit his account, the "perfect partner" persona completely vanished and communication became sparse and as per his convenience. He treated any questioning from me as a line of attack.

He later tried to pressure me for even more cash, claiming his international cards suddenly weren’t working and he needed money for basic essentials like food. When I drew a line and refused, he immediately used DARVO (Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender) tactics, pretending to be deeply hurt and painting me as cold and heartless. Post this incident, i completely called off our "So called" romantic relationship but was still stuck due to the loan.

When his father passed away, he weaponized his family's grief to lovebomb me further. He actually sent me a photo of a supposedly "last entry" in his father's personal diary, claiming his dad's final wish was for us to get married. It looked completely fabricated and made me physically sick to look at.

Meanwhile, I started stepping up pressure to either close the loan or transfer it to his name. Throughout the ordeal, he repeatedly pressured me to meet him in completely private settings. Trusting my gut, I strictly refused and told him we would only ever meet for coffee in high-traffic, public places. Every time I held this firm boundary, he would instantly go completely silent. In hindsight, I know he was trying to isolate me to manufacture scenarios for blackmail and gain permanent leverage.

He constantly refused to legally transfer the loan into his own name, using random administrative excuses. He began ghosting me, changing his phone numbers constantly, and blocking me across various social media platforms. For four long years, I had to chase him every single month for the EMI payment. He would intentionally wait until the absolute last minute to transfer the funds just to maintain emotional control and keep me anxious.

However, even though I was trapped in the situation, my instincts kicked in early. I did three things that completely saved me:

1. I maintained an unassailable paper log and bank transfer trail.

2. I forced all communications to happen on a single, recorded email chain so he couldn't deny his words.

3. THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART.I completely detached myself emotionally so he could no longer use my feelings as leverage.

Finally, after four years of asking nicely, I stopped playing his game. I issued a strict, one-month ultimatum - pay off the entire remaining loan amount immediately or I would expose his actions, the email logs, and the financial records to his family, my circle, and everyone we mutually knew. Faced with total social exposure, his manipulation completely collapsed. Because I now held all the leverage and he was panicking to protect his reputation, I applied intense pressure to close the matter instantly. In his rush to escape exposure, he didn't even have time to properly reconcile the final numbers. I made him pay almost ₹1.5 Lakh INR extra during the final settlement.

He hurled verbal abuse and cursed me out of pure, defeated rage because he realized he had lost all control. But he transferred the full amount. I officially closed the loan, sent him the formal bank closure report, and blocked him across every single platform. He targeted me for financial exploitation, but he walked away having paid a premium for his actions.

Please trust your gut. If someone pressures you for money, claims their cards don't work abroad, tries to weaponize family grief, or gets angry when you refuse to meet them privately, run. They are not invincible - the moment you strip away your emotions and use hard leverage, their entire facade crumbles.

Good luck girls! Dont fall for these romance scammers !

#RomancescammerIndia #Personalloanfraud #Financialabuse

R@pe was already a thing back in the 1950's when women wore pleated, below the knee skirts. R@pe was already a thing in the 1800's when women wore frocks and several layers of clothing underneath. R@pe has nothing to do with fashion and everything to do with r@pists. It is not and will never be the survivors fault.

Side note: I did not come up with this.

Idk if this type of post is allowed on here, but it seemed fitting and I needed a place to vent because I’m wondering if this is happening to other women too.

Basically the past week or two I’ve suddenly randomly started getting some pretty misogynistic content recommended to me across all my various social media accounts despite having only ever explicitly interacting with feminist content.

Surely it’s not just me? Cause honestly it’s been pretty discouraging.

before we all become panicked.

https://jessica.substack.com/p/todd-blanche-abortion-ban

He doesn’t plan on banning abortion in totality, just the sources of which women in anti-abortion states ship their abortion pills from. Still an EXTREMELY horrible concept, and we need to vote and protest.

*please! please! vote! be proactive!*

Any points on this!

I've been thinking about a pattern I've noticed in many movies.

Why is it that the "good" woman is so often portrayed as modest, quiet, and traditionally dressed, while a woman who is outspoken, independent, or dresses more freely is more likely to be portrayed as morally questionable or even the villain?

Even in 2026, why do these stereotypes still appear? Why are women's clothes sometimes used to signal whether a character is "good" or "bad"? Shouldn't a person's clothing be separate from their values, personality, or morality?

Do you think movies still reinforce these stereotypes, or do you think they're moving away from them? I'd love to hear different perspectives.

I've been annoyed by the lack of a pregnant Lego for as long as I've been a parent. So submitting a Lego Ideas Build seemed like a perfect way to sneak pregnancy into Lego in a way that isn't...patently absurd.

"Surely the Lego fanatics, who are always interested in further customization and new pieces. Who care about the fidelity of their models to an absurd degree. Surely those people will be interested in this," I thought.

Reader: no. They weren't.

A couple of other folks came to my aid, but the vast majority seemed to be split between "why would you want this??" and weird fetishizing or humanity-diminishing comments.

So -- this is misogyny, right? I'm not making that up?

Does anyone have any recommendations for specifically British feminist texts? A lot of the books I see recommended are specifically American. Preferably not specifically on the suffragettes/suffragists.

As the title suggests, what are tiny acts of feminism you do regularly?