This paper seeks to explore young people’s understandings and lived experiences of sexual pleasure and success and to develop a method for theorising these experiences within broader biographical and socio-cultural contexts. The paper will use case studies drawn from in-depth interviews to explore how young people negotiate and experience pleasure in their sexual relationships. My analysis will focus on the ways in which these experiences of desired, absent or embodied pleasure materialise in young people’s accounts as part of broader biographical narratives of transition, identity and success. In my analysis I will draw on debates from the field of youth sociology on the extent to which young people’s unequal experiences of transition are shaped by the peer, family and community networks within which their lives are embedded. Drawing on these debates I will examine the resources that young people are able to access to make sense of ideas about sex and pleasure and how this impacts on their capacity to negotiate pleasure in their relationships in ways that are gendered, classed and raced, producing uneven experiences of loss, control and success. The paper will use this analysis to consider whether a biographical narrative approach is useful for understanding and contextualising young people’s embodied experiences of sexual pleasure.

1. Sex, pleasure and success: Putting young
people’s experiences in context
Ester McGeeney
The Open University
Youth, Gender, and Sexuality: Contemporary Debates
25 January 2012
University of Nottingham

2. ‘Good Sex’: Young People, Sexual Pleasure and Sexual Health Services
Fieldwork period:
April – November 2010
Stage 1: Survey (n281)
Stage 2: Focus Groups x4
Stage 3: Individual in-depth interviews x15
Research and recruitment sites
Peer Educator groups
Chlamydia Screening Service
Young People’s sexual health clinic
Training provider
FE College
University x2
LGBTQ young men’s group
Young mum’s group
Children's Centre
Youth Centre
Detached youth work
Hostel
Leaving Care and Asylum Service
www.londontown.com/LondonStreets/Boro/Islington Online

3. Developing a method: biographical narrative and sexual
experience
-Identity biographical narrative in data.
Possibly involving transition / personal
change.
-Locate this narrative in context of peer,
family and community networks and explore
how these may be shaped by socio-cultural
factors.
-Map participants’ descriptions of their
sexual experiences on to this located,
evolving biographical account.?
• ‘Critical moments’ Thomson et al 2002
‘an event in an interview that either the researcher or the interviewee sees as having
important consequences for their lives and identities’
• ‘Body reflexive practices’ and ‘circuits of production’
Connell 1995
‘Body-reflexive practices…are not internal to the individual. They involve social relation and
symbolism; they may well involve large-scale social institutions. Particular versions of masculinity
are constituted in their circuits as meaningful bodies and embodied meanings. Through body
reflexive practices, more than individual lives are formed: a social world is formed.’ 44

4. Oscar
Little Fucker – breadwinner, youth educator and caring lover
Class, gender
Resources
Biographical ‘critical
moments’ Dad’s death
1st sex
1st sex 2nd sex
Mapping sexual experiences
Accounts of current sexual
relationship experiences

5. First sex: A successful man, ignorant body and tragic
consequence
When it was happening, I was worried, because I didn’t know where to put it,
what to do and how to move. Do you know what I mean? I didn’t know what
to do. I didn’t. I felt uncomfortable, man. Proper bad. Like I felt like I was all
getting itchy and like I was thinking, oh, what do I do? How do I do this and
that? Like obviously I thought back to watching that thing [porn film] and just
like doing….It half worked out in the end but it ended up tragic, innit?

6. Second sex: competent, happy and a new start
[I felt] Sort of like relief. Like everything was new, everything was cool, and
like… there you go. Do you know what? I’m going to… like obviously where I’ve
read the leaflets and that back then and I knew what I was doing. I’ve had that
bad experience. It was sort of basically a new start for me, isn't it? But I was
scared that I don't want to mess it up and end up going through that again. Do
you know what I mean?...When she went home and that, when I walked her
home, on my way home, I know it sounds silly that, but oh I was so happy that
everything just went right and I felt the best ever I felt. I thought, “Yes. Thank
god for that. I’m not a fuck-up.” Do you know what I mean? It’s going to be
alright for me now. Like I thought that was me. Like, obviously where you’re
young you think every time I’m gonna do it I’m going to have this on my plate.

7. Experiences of pleasure: taking time, showing love,
making it last
Like even if like say me and her are having sex, like, if she does have an
orgasm and I don’t, that stuff wouldn’t bother me, isn't it? Because I know that
she’s happy innit?...I don’t just want to like have my fun and slip out. Do you
know what I mean? Like make it meaningful. It lasts longer, doesn’t it? You
know, more of a… you can even… sometimes you can even have a laugh. As
you do… We’ve both done it before and we’ve both, like, we were just being
stupid and we ended up just rolling over and having a giggling fit. Just little
things, isn't it? Don’t just always… like I must admit it – I jumped straight into it,
didn't know how to do it, slipped off out, ended up near enough having a baby
on the way. Do you know what I mean?
I’m happy that I’ve done it [given oral sex]. Like just by seeing her, the look
on her face when I was doing it, like I knew she was happy and I was happy
that I made her happy and I didn’t expect it in return because I love her.