Young women ways of speak doesn’t indicate gender transformations in relationships

A research from Universidad Internacional de La Rioja analyces conversation about sexual or afective relationships in two group of twenty-year-old-fiends. Results show there are two different models of heterosexual feminity between this youngs and point out the problems that both models can mean in order to get equalitary heterosexual relationships.

Even when the two analyzed conversation confirm a more open and flexible vision about heterosexual relationships between young people, who accept sex with no compromise as a freedom sight, results also whos very different ways to face the question. In one of the groups, particpant express their desire about the informal relation of one of them evolve towards a formal relation, producing a speach focused on feelings, trust and afection. In the other group, the young women celebrate fun, parodiate romantic stereotipes and speak in sexual terms about the relation of one of them with a guy.

Researcher Virginia Acuña comes to the conclusion that in one group friends are part of a young feminity that reproduces clasic stances in this field, as they understand informal relation as a chance to get a partner. The second group reivindicates a feminity free of romantic speeches, focused just in the sexual aspect. Acuña thinks that both of them can lead to problems: “in one way, the clasical version can lead to unequality situations in which women would take a pleasent role, knowing that romantic love and the importance of having a partner is still asociated with women”, as the author sais, “for the other hand, the liberal one reminds to a stereotipicaly masculin speech that perpetuate the vision of women as sexual objects under a fake equality apereance”.

This is what Acuña suggest as starting hypothesis for future research, that will also approach the young masculinity studies: “to evaluate the state of the heterosexual relationships, we need to analyze the evolving of the heterosexual masculinity”.

Reference: Acuña Ferreira, Virginia. Conversación juvenil e identidad de género: despliegues de feminidad heterosexual en grupos de jóvenes veinteañeras, en Círculo de Lingüística Aplicada a la Comunicación, 69, 3-33. Doi: 10.5209/CLAC.55312

 

December, 4th.- Eva Ferreras