Putting ‘gendered’ sexualization

and pornification on the UK

Educational Policy Agenda

Dr. Jessica Ringrose

 Educational context
• DCSF ‘Gender Agenda’: Girls are more
successful than boys because of high test
scores!
• What about the social dimensions of schooling
and increased pressures around sexualized
bodily display online/at school?
• Need to link up sex education, media studies,
bullying and achievement policies and
discourses to address gendered
sexualization/pornification
 The Research Project
• Young people’s negotiations of social
networking sites

• Funded by: Norwegian Centre for Child

Research (NOSEB)

• Investigators: Rebekah Willett and Jessica

Ringrose
 SNSs and Schools
• Social networking sites are an increasingly
important bridge into understanding social
relationships at school, because contrary to the
notion that young people are making many new
contacts in cyberspace, young people are mostly
communicating with their school friends online
(Livingstone 2007, boyd, 2008, Willett and
Ringrose, 2008).
• SNSs work in large part to extend and amplify
school based relationships (Ringrose, 2009)
 SNSs and Schools
Schools are faced with difficulties in
understanding and addressing SNSs, as
many view online engagement as
happening mostly outside the bounds of
schooling (Selwyn, 2008). For this
reason, schools have not addressed the
specifically gendered and sexualised
aspects of student’s engagements with
SNSs or how this impacts students’
experiences at school.
 Bebo
• According to Ofcom statistics 49% of
those aged between eight and 17 have an
internet profile on social networking sites
(SNSs) such as Bebo and Facebook. The
majority of students we worked with were
using Bebo, a site used “predominantly by
the 13- to 24-year-old age group”
(Smithers, 2008).
 Sexualization and Pornification
• According to Paasonen et al (2007: 8)
• The sexualization of culture refers to a fairly
wide range of cultural phenomenea while
pornification is a more specific term pointing to
the increased visibility of hardcore and soft-core
pornographies, and the blurring of boundaries
between the pornographic and the mainstream...
porn chic: involv[es] depictions of pornography
in non-pornographic contexts in art and culture
• I explore a general trend of gendered
sexualization, and specific discourses that
illustrate (hetero)pornification, porno-chic on
Bebo.
Bebo customized ‘arrows’
 TAKE THIS QUIZ!

Are You Sexy, Flirty, Or A Slut?

> (Bebo <sexy-
application)
flirty-slut
 Marie’s quiz result
YOUR RESULT IS:
FLIRTY

You must love to

tease...

Your result is: Sexy...(mmm)

What Kind Of Lingerie Are You? - ta

• What kind of Lingerie are you? My

result is: V-String Panties
What Sexual Fantasy Are You?
• My result is: Sexy schoolgirl
User Photos
Marie, 15, New Mills High School
Marie’s ‘cartoonization’ of herself in
bunny ears
 Daniella 14, Thornbury High School
Slut <Da- Da- Daniellaaaa>
"AЧЧЧЧЄЄЄЄЄЄ ..♥
“Hi Im Daniella And ii Like It UpThe
Bum ..
Just Like Your Mum! And I Suck
Dick for £5

- Im A Little Bit Dramatic,,

- I Talk To Much,,
- Im Way To Nosy,,
- Im A Tiny Bit Loud,,
- I Do Have My Blonde Momentoss
But Hey That Is Just Me

•
Its all just make believe isn’t it?

• A wise girl kisses but doesn't love, listens

but doesn’t believe, and leaves before
• she is left.

• Marilyn Monroe
 ‘I’m her slut and she my whore’
Daniella (14, Thornbury High School)… We have this little
thing, like she’s my slut, I’m her whore. Because loads of
people used to call us it, so we just thought whatever,
we’ll just be them then. And like one day we just found a
background like it, and we were like, oh, that’s quite
nice... like some people, like older girls that saw us, like
with someone would be like, oh you slag or you slut
because…. Just because they didn’t know us, but just
because they wanted to insult us… so we just got a bit
like, oh I don’t care. ‘Cos we used to really care about it,
and then we just got a bit like oh I don’t care anymore…
we just got used to it, and then … I don’t really know
what happened but it was just a random thing of where
we were just like, I’d be like your she’s my whore and I’m
her slut. Whatever. Get over it and Then she’d say the
same”.
 Hi Im Daniella And ii Like It UpThe Bum ..
Just Like Your Mum! And I Suck Dick for £5

Daniella explained the genesis of the tagline. She made a

rhyme on Sadie’s site about how she cheated on her
boyfriend with a boy who ‘gave her an org” “because his
name rhymed with org… and then it was just running,
like where we basically swapped Bebos and she’d write
loads of comments.” The day Sadie put the “ I like it up
the bum” tagline, Daniella retaliated with “I suck nipples
for free but you have to ask nicely”. Daniella said: ‘I
didn’t mind because I know she was only joking. ‘Cos I
was on the phone to her at the same time. So she was
going, like, ha ha, look what I’ve thrown on your Bebo…
So I was like, no, look at your Bebo. It was just like that,
so it just started building up and got worse and worse.’
Questions: Positive desire-flows
• Is the meaning of slut shifting (Atwood,
2007)?
• Do Daniella and Sadie ‘resignify’ ‘slut’ and
‘whore’? Butler, Hey etc.
• Does the online space operate as a
fantasy space to ‘experiment’ with sexual
‘knowingness’ (Stern, 2007; Bragg and
Buckingham, 2009)?
 Questions: Regulation
Do we still see a ‘missing discourse of female
desire’ (Fine, 1988, 2006) – or a phallogecentric
organization of desire centred around servicing
the phallus?
Do Daniella’s offline relationships indicate
increased sexual confidence at school? No.
Are we seeing a ‘disciplinary technology of sexy’ a
compulsion to perform a sexually knowing, up
for it sexual identity (Gill, 2008)?
Political Action: Feminist Pedagogy
in Schools
I call for a feminist pedagogical strategy in schools to
address the power dynamics of ‘gendered’ sexualization
(Atwood, 2009) and pornification (Nikunen, 2007).

Inform ‘Fact finding review on sexualization of girls’

Use the Gender Equality Duty to prioritize research and
interventions on new formations of gendered
sexualization and pornification (reshape DCSF policies
Post –’Gender Agenda’
Figure out what a focus on gendered sexualization and
pornification could mean/look like in Sex-education,
Media Studies, and other curriculum
 Relevant Publications
Ringrose, J. (forthcoming 2009) Beyond Discourse?: Affective assemblages,
heterosexually striated space, and lines of flight online and at school,
Educational Philosophy & Theory, Special Issue: The Power In/Of
Language

Ringrose, J. (forthcoming 2009) Are you sexy, flirty or a slut? Teen girls
navigating sexual commodification and pornification on social networking
sites, In R. Gill and C. Scharff (eds.) New Femininities: Postfeminism,
Neoliberalism and Identity, London: Palgrave.

Ringrose, J. (forthcoming 2009) Sluts, whores, fat slags and Playboy bunnies:
Teen girls’ negotiations of ‘sexy’ on social networking sites and at school, In
C. Jackson, C. Paechter and E. Renold (eds.) Girls and education 3-16:
Continuing concerns, new agendas, Basingstoke: Open University Press.

Ringrose, J.”I’m her slut and she’s my whore!”: Teen girls, sexualisation,
heteropornification and the new feminine ”disciplinary technology of sexy” on
social networking sites and at school, in preparation for Sexualities