Innocent Girls or Active Young Women? Negotiating Sexual Agency at a Detention Home

This article analyzes discourse about sexuality at a detention home for young women aged 13-21 years. Staff members, both male and female, talk about the young women as if they were still children, i.e. as asexual beings, thereby denying them sexual agency. The image of young women as innocent children is, however, contested by the young women themselves, who explicitly claim sexual agency. The article concludes that by not using the situatedness of a young woman as their therapeutical point of departure, the staff members cannot provide her with the guidance and support that she needs. The article further suggests that feminist theory should focus on young women's own perceived sense of agency and that sexual agency can be understood and established in the context of Moi's (1999) model of women as `de Beauvoirian' situated beings.