Sexual Coercion from Male Adolescent Perspectives: Evidences from a Qualitative Study in Buenos Aires

Hernan M. Manzelli, University of Texas at Austin

The aim of this article is to analyze some social meanings that male adolescents build over sexual coercion behaviors. Data proceeds from a qualitative research in Buenos Aires, Argentina, among male teenagers of middle and lower strata. From a gender framework, this research is guided by the assumption that the manners that masculine identities are culturally constructed could produce legitimating spaces for coactive behaviors. Data from interviews shows that meanwhile a rape situation appears clearly delimited and defined by these boys, a wide range of sexual behaviors comes out when they focus on coercion; behaviors which are difficult to categorize as sexual coercion or as cultural dissimulated consent. A social imperative that said that boys are who have to take the sexual initiative, aggregated to essentialist understandings about sexuality, place this male adolescents in a cultural action framework where are confusing the limits between seduction and sexual coercion.