“Too weak to fight,too scared to scream”: Understanding experiences of sexual coercion of Black female adolescents through digital storytelling

Abstract

Black female adolescents are less frequently viewed as victims of violence or as agents of resistance. This study analyzed the experiences of sexual coercion of Black female adolescents on the South Side of Chicago through narrative scripts used to create digital stories. Using Sexual Script Theory and applying an intersectional lens, we analyzed a collection of 46 narrative transcripts from Black female youth, living on the South Side of Chicago, five of which specifically focused on the theme of sexual coercion. Under the broader theme of sexual coercion, the following subthemes were identified: (1) broken expectations of romance, (2) sex as a means of seeking attention from a male partner, (3) sex as a means of maintaining a partner, and (4) rape. By better understanding the social context of relationships for Black adolescent girls in heterosexual relationships, we may be able to better design sexual and reproductive health interventions for young women of color.

Keywords

sexual coercion rape sexual script Black African American female adolescent youth women of color intersectionality

Introduction

Sexual coercion is the act of making another person engage in sexual activity despite their unwillingness to do so (Jeffrey and Barata, 2017). Contextualized as a continuum of sexual experiences, sexual coercion encompasses rape and sexual assault, being pressured to engage in sex within the context of a relationship, and the use of intoxicants to take sexual advantage of another person (Hartwick et al., 2007). Acts of sexual coercion can occur through the use of physical force, threats, emotional manipulation, pressure, fear, or violence.

Research indicates that cisgender women in the United States and Canada are 1.4–1.8 times more likely to report experiencing sexual coercion than cisgender men (Brousseau et al., 2012; Struckman-Johnson et al., 2003). Similarly, cisgender female adolescent students in the United States reported significantly higher rates (21.4%) of physical or sexual victimization compared to cisgender male students (9.6%) (Rasberry et al., 2017). Approximately one in five women (21.3%) in the United States reported having ever experienced a completed or attempted rape and approximately one in six women (16.0%) have ever experienced sexual coercion (Smith et al., 2018). Cisgender women in the United States were also more likely to be subjected to tactics of post-refusal sexual persistence, defined as persistent attempts to have sexual contact with someone whom they had already refused (Struckman-Johnson et al., 2003).

Sexual coercion is moderated by the stage in life course development in which it is experienced. Verbal sexual coercion is particularly common in adolescent relationships (occurring between the ages of 10 and 18 years), with approximately one in 10 adolescent females in the United States reporting verbal sexual coercion in their current relationship (Rickert et al. 2004; Zweig et al., 1997). Experiences of sexual coercion are also more common among adolescents of color in the United States (Ybarra and Mitchell, 2013). In a study of 117 Black teenage girls in the United States, 52% of the sample reported at least one sexually coercive experience, including experiences in which verbal and physical threats and drugs or alcohol were involved (French and Neville, 2008).

Verbal sexual coercion in adolescence is a risk factor for later experiences of coercion and other forms of intimate partner violence (Young et al., 2012). In a sample of Australian women, most adult female victims of sexual coercion had experienced coercion before reaching 25 years (De Visser et al., 2007). In a systematic review, the effects of sexual coercion were shown to be intensified if the first experience of sexual intercourse occurred at or before the age of 14 years (Soomar et al., 2009). For young women in the United States and Canada, experiencing sexual coercion can lead to deleterious mental health consequences, including anger, social isolation, self-blame, and negative sexual self-perceptions (Katz and Tirone, 2010; Offman and Matheson, 2004). Cisgender women who experience sexual coercion may develop post-traumatic stress, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, reduced self-esteem, and suicidality (De Visser et al., 2007; Vezina and Hebert, 2007; Young et al., 2012). Further, Black female adolescents in the United States who have experienced dating violence were more likely to report less understanding of healthy relationships and more likely to report using drugs (Raiford et al., 2007).

Theoretical framework: Sexual Script Theory through an intersectional lens

The theoretical framework that was applied in this study is Sexual Script Theory (SST) through an intersectional lens. SST analyses the social, cultural, and interpersonal factors influencing sexual behaviors and roles (Simon and Gagnon, 1984). Sexual scripts refer to the ways in which the rules of engagement for sexual behavior are established by gendered norms of social interaction (Simon and Gagnon, 1984). Structures underlying gender and power dynamics are deeply rooted in society through the ascription of gender-determined scripts (Wingood and DiClemente, 2000, Tripathi et al., 2022).

Sexual discourse often validates the unequal distribution of sexual power between cisgender women and men in heterosexual relationships. Adolescents in the United States encounter differing expectations and experiences by virtue of their socialization by gender as girls and boys (Eagly et al. 2000) and by race as White people or as people of color. Gender-based inequalities in power within sexual relationships can reduce women’s ability to negotiate safe sex, including condom use, family planning decisions, or unwanted sex (Silverman et al., 2011, Azhar et al., 2020). Oppositional scripts regarding femininity and masculinity may condition the practice of sexual coercion of young women (Richardson, 1998). SST suggests that men should exhibit high levels of desire in order to abide by social norms and expectations (Murray, 2018).

While themes regarding sexual coercion have been explored in previous research focusing on cisgender women, less focus has been paid to the experiences of sexual coercion of Black, adolescent girls. Intersectionality is a critical tool for understanding how socially constructed categories shape multiple dimensions of lived experience through the convergence of gender, race, sexuality, class, age, and other forms of social identity, particularly for women of color (Crenshaw, 1995; Azhar and DeLoach McCutcheon, 2021; Azhar and Gunn, 2021). Under the lens of intersectionality, sexual scripts can be seen to be heavily impacted by identities of race and ethnicity (Bowleg et al., 2015; Eaton et al., 2016). SST explores the cultural norms that frame expected sexual behavior and how those expectations are negotiated in the formation of sexual identity (Simon and Gagnon 2003).

For Black women, sexual scripts are shaped by negative stereotypes, colorism, and race/gender dynamics. Stereotypes of young Black women include the temptress or Jezebel; the nurturer or the Mammy; and the undeserving poor or the Welfare Queen (Stephens and Phillips, 2003). The sexuality of Black girls is often characterized as oversexed vixens, teen mothers, and carriers of infectious diseases (French, 2013). Through these scripted processes, women of color are often represented as sexual objects whose primary role is male pleasure (French, 2013). These images are socially constructed upon racist and sexist myths that portray young Black women as not having the capacity to be sexually innocent or naïve (Collins, 2004), insinuating that experiences of sexual coercion were prompted by Black women themselves.

Alternatively, feelings of racial inferiority can push Black men to assert dominant masculine traits, instigating behavioral responses that are steeped in hypermasculine ideologies, like misogyny, overachieving, rebellion (Moore, 2021), strength, and pride. Taken together, these findings suggest that the intersections of oppressive systems of racism, poverty, and sexism contribute to the vulnerabilities to sexual coercion that are experienced by young, Black, cisgender women.

Such gender norms place young women of color in subordinate positions in intimate relationships and may be a principal driver of sexual coercion and relational violence (Thomas et al., 2011). Research exploring the relationship between sexual scripts and sexual coercion is vital to understanding how young women interpret their victimization (French, 2013). Taking into account the added scripts associated with being a young woman of color, and therefore being subjected to both racialized and gendered systems of oppression during adolescence, this project attempts to understand the intersectional experiences of sexual coercion for Black female adolescents.

Narratives as a medium for sexual expression

One means by which youth actively make sense of their sexual experiences is through the creation of narratives. Narratives are often used in digital media and have dramatically changed the platforms by which youth communicate. Sexual health researchers need to stay engaged with emerging technology in order for their research to remain relevant to youth (Allison et al., 2012). A particularly useful way of engaging youth in discussing sensitive topics is through the use of digital storytelling, a workshop-oriented process where individuals create their own short autobiographical films (Burgess, 2006). Digital storytelling grew out of a movement to increase access to art, particularly for marginalized populations, and to use the scripts from these narratives for social change (Fish and Syed, 2021; Lambert, 2013). The Centre for Digital Storytelling, a non-profit, community arts organization, based in Berkeley, California, recommends the use of 3-day workshops to help participants become absorbed in the art of creating personal narratives in digital stories (Gubrium, 2009). The Centre for Digital Storytelling’s (2022) guidelines served as the methodological framework used to structure workshops in the present study.

Digital storytelling entails the creation of an audio-video clip combining photographs, videos, music, and voice-over narration; digital stories were originally used for community development, artistic and therapeutic purposes, and have more recently been adapted as a participatory research method (De Jager et al., 2017; Lambert, 2010). Digital storytelling can serve as a participatory tool for sharing first-person lived experiences (Fish and Syed, 2021) by allowing participants to become active leaders in creating the content and design of their own story by choosing relevant images, videos, and music to accompany their own words.

The South Side of Chicago

“Chicago is one of the most segregated yet diverse cities in America” (Moore, 2016: 1).

Due to significant historical housing discrimination in Chicago, including redlining, African Americans were forced to live in an area of the South Side called the “Black Belt.” Racial segregation in Chicago, leaving the South Side to be inhabited by mostly Black folk and the North Side inhabited by mostly White folk, is reflective of historical, racial, and urban planning factors. The South Side has a higher concentration of poverty as well as a greater clustering of Black communities than the North or West Sides of Chicago. The median income for the neighborhood of Hyde Park, where this research study was conducted, is $58,518 while the median income for the city of Chicago is $65,781 (Chicago Metropolitan Agency For Planning, 2023). Chicago has a history of gun violence, numbering 695 homicides in 2022; further, the vast majority of homicide victims in Chicago in 2022—more than three out of every four—were Black people (Masterman, 2023). Schools on the South Side of Chicago have been characterized as being underresourced and underutilized (Ewing, 2018). Social science researchers have referred to the South Side as: “a largely low-income, African American community” (Peek et al., 2012). Nonetheless, the South Side is not uniformly poor nor Black. As Mario Small argued, there are “perils of assuming that the South Side of Chicago represents poor black neighborhoods” (2007, p.413).

Study objective

While storytelling can be a powerful mode of sharing lived experience and exploring personal values (Willox et al., 2013), the intersectional experiences of Black, adolescent girls have remained marginalized in narrative projects and research. Black female adolescent are rarely viewed as victims of violence or as agents of resistance (French and Neville, 2008). Further, themes regarding gender and sexuality have not been fully explored in the narratives of Black female youth. A scoping review of digital storytelling research in Australia found a lack of digital stories on sexual health and relationships by racially and culturally diverse young people (Botfiield et al., 2017).

For Black female adolescents, examining race and gender-based stereotypes may aid in better understanding the development of sexual identity and sexual decision-making processes (Stephens and Phillips, 2003). By analyzing their narratives, we may gain a better understanding of how to address salient issues for Black female youth. To address this objective, the goal of this research study was twofold: (1) to describe the digital storytelling process for the project and (2) to qualitatively analyze the narratives from digital stories of Black female adolescents on the South Side of Chicago for themes regarding gender and sexuality.

Methods

In the present study, the narrative transcripts of 46 digital stories from Black youth were analyzed from a program called South Side Stories. Funded by Ford Foundation, South Side Stories was a digital storytelling project through the University of Chicago Center for Interdisciplinary Inquiry and Innovation in Sexual and Reproductive Health (Ci3). South Side Stories aimed to raise the voices of Black youth living on the South Side of Chicago. Of the 46 narratives that were coded for themes relating to issues of gender and sexuality, 29 were written by cisgender women and 17 were written by cisgender men. No participants self-identified with any other gender-nonbinary label. While we coded all 46 digital stories for themes, this article focuses on the narrative transcripts from five of these stories that specifically addressed themes regarding sexual coercion, all of which were written by Black female adolescents.

Study population

Black youth between the ages of 13 and 24 were recruited to participate in digital storytelling workshops. Participants were recruited from local community-based organizations that work with youth on the South Side of Chicago, including Girls, Inc. and the Chicago Black Gay Men’s Caucus. All participants were students or residents in Hyde Park. Workshops were led by two professionals, who had been formally trained in digital storytelling, photography, videography, and media editing.

Digital storytelling creation process

To ensure that the storytelling process was relevant to youth, participants were asked to share stories about an experience that was meaningful to them (Wexler et al., 2013). Youth were not provided a prompt and were not required to focus on a topic related to gender or sexuality. Through an iterative process, youth constructed transcripts; made recordings of their narratives; collected images, videos, and personal photos; and selected musical accompaniment for their final, 3–7 min digital story.

The creation of stories relied on the Centre for Digital Storytelling’s methodological framework for digital storytelling research workshops, which involves six steps: (1) an introduction to digital storytelling concepts, (2) an oral story circle, (3) script writing and editing, (4) preparation of media to be included in the story, (5) producing the story using software editing tools, and (6) screening of final stories with group reflection (Lambert, 2010, 2013). While all youth completed the digital storytelling workshop and had written complete narrative transcripts for their projects, not all transcripts had been fully produced into complete digital stories, even years after the project had started. As such, this study only analyzed the narrative transcripts, not the entire digital story with its corresponding sound, images, and videos. Though the digital story is much richer in qualitative data, as it includes visual imagery, music selection, videos, and tone, we excluded this information because not all the transcripts had been fully produced at the time of writing and were unlikely to be subsequently completed.

Data analysis

Transcripts were imported into the qualitative data analysis software, NVivo 10 for Macs, for coding. Recognizing that collaborative methodologies generate local models of social change, this project utilized participant insights in co-creating data analysis. To analyze the transcripts, two coders, who both lived and worked on the South Side of Chicago, independently coded transcripts, using the methodology of thematic content analysis (Krippendorff, 2018). The first coder was a youth advisor, who is a Black cisgender woman who had participated in the digital storytelling workshop herself. The second coder was the author/principal investigator, who is a South Asian cisgender woman, who had assisted in the workshop planning, execution, and analysis.

Coding followed three stages: (1) open coding, (2) axial coding, and (3) selective coding (Strauss and Corbin, 1990). The coding process was conducted by the author/principal investigator and the youth advisor through a collaborative process. The researchers grouped codes by the contexts in which cisgender women of color experienced sexual coercion and the conditions that shaped how they managed them. During the open coding phase, the research team identified, named, and categorized phenomena found in the text related to sexual coercion, drawing on each other’s ideas and suggestions. During the axial coding phase, the author and the youth advisor identified relationships among the open codes. During the selective coding phase, the author and the youth advisor reread the transcripts and coded the data, using the identified themes from the first round of coding. The author and youth created a codebook with an initial set of themes from the stories, which were revised and edited as the coding process continued through an iterative, data analysis process. To ensure inter-rater reliability, consensus was reached on all coding decisions through a process of weekly discussions between the two research team members. Given the sensitive nature of this research, all personally identifying information in the narratives, for example, names, neighborhoods, addresses, and places of employment, were changed or removed to protect the confidentiality of participants.

Ethical issues

The study protocol was received approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at Fordham University in 2016. After research staff reviewed the study objective, duration, risks, and benefits with potential participants in the South Side digital stories project, written consent was obtained from all study participants. Financial incentives were not provided to study participants, although meals were provided to participants while they engaged in the digital storytelling workshops and during subsequent research group meetings.

Results

Under the broader theme of sexual coercion of Black female adolescent, four subthemes were identified: (1) broken expectations of romance, (2) sex as a means of seeking attention from a male partner, (3) sex as a means of maintaining a partner, and (4) rape. All passages from the digital stories are presented exactly as they were in the transcripts, including any instances of spelling or grammatical errors.

Broken expectations of romance

Adolescents often draw on discourses of sexuality and romance that are widely available to them through cultural interactions (Walkerdine, 1984). For youth, first experiences of sex are often shaped by expectations for love and intimacy (Hird and Jackson, 2001). Stories of initiation into kissing (Alapack, 1991), touching, and other sexual activities are often primed by these expectations for romance.

The discourse of first love primes adolescents for a sexual experience that is highly romanticized with depictions of “perfect kisses” and “magic moments” (Alapack, 1991). As Bella recounts in the following narrative, being noticed as attractive creates a newfound sense of acceptance, which has intersectional effects based on the writer’s age, gender, and race.

“To be called beautiful and gorgeous was a new experience. And for that, he became my savior. The one who understood me. Before meeting him, I was the black sheep. Never feeling pretty. Never feeling beautiful. He pushed those words to life… made me feel wanted. Happy to be loved, and be loved by him.”

Fairy tale expectations are woven into the psyches of young girls through bedtime stories, cartoons, television shows, and films. The participant speaks of her new love in almost spiritual ways—as her savior. These romantic expectations may be broken when youth instead feel pressured into having sex with their partners before they feel ready to do so. Soller (2014) calls this phenomenon “adolescent romantic relationship inauthenticity,” or the incongruence between the thoughts/feelings about how romance should ideally be and the actual events that take place within intimate contexts. The participant writes that she was “never feeling pretty. Never feeling beautiful.” This may reflect how she, as a young Black woman, may not easily fit into White standards of beauty, such as having long, straight hair, thinner lips, or a more petite-sized body. Interestingly, the writer also uses the words “black sheep” to refer to herself, a reference that may speak to her racialized and gendered embodiment as a young Black woman, experiencing intersectional vulnerabilities on the South Side of Chicago.

In alignment with these adolescent ideologies about love, multiple young women of color expressed idyllic notions of romance and first kisses, notions that they themselves were aware were contextually situated. A Black, adolescent girl by the name of Cassandra, wrote:

“I’m a teenage girl so you’ve guessed it right if you said it was about boys… The first kiss, something that every girl thinks about. He texted—if you still like me, you shouldn’t—as if he can control my feelings. In a way he does, the way I listen to music, what music I listen to, the way I interpret artists, and interact with boys. When I listen to certain musicians, or meet a new boy, I think about him, and how he doesn’t even care, or how it seems that way. Every time I see him, I think about these four corners. One day soon I will have a boyfriend that appreciates me and feels that every day with me is a blessing. I will reciprocate the same, and unrequited love can be something of the past.”

These narratives reveal themes regarding the potential toxic hypermasculinity of men in relationships. The underlying ways in which this young man has control over Cassandra’s preferences for music, and generally for her likes and dislikes, reflect the intersectional gendered and racialized power dynamics that ultimately leave sexual decision-making capacity in the hands of her male partner.

In a similar vein, another young woman, Samantha, speaks about her expectations and disappointment with her first experience with sex.

“Every girl never forgets her first love. In my case, I wish I could. It didn’t start out that way of course. He made me feel special. With his warm embrace, compliments, and promises. All the things I wanted to hear... It felt meant to be, like fate (if you believe in that type of stuff). It even came to the point where I felt like I needed him. I needed his smile, his hugs, his kisses, his… love.”

Samantha recounts that her partner exerts emotional control over her. Similarly, Gisella wrote about how broken expectations of romance impacted her ability to trust other partners.

“He has affected me in a way where I keep to myself in certain situations. Fear of being judged. Finding it a problem to put my trust in every one that comes along. Feeling like I would just get hurt and misused in the end.”

The male partner in this relationship holds the primary power—the power to decide whether or not he likes her, the power to decide whether or not he will kiss her or have sex with her, and ultimately the power to decide whether or not she will be happy. This power may be even more pronounced for young Black men who may not hold that same power within circles of other cisgender White men. The space these men share with Black women may become a site to deflect feelings of inadequacy and inferiority. This again reiterates themes of toxic hypermasculinity that may push some Black men to control their partners in intimate relationships. While gendered power dynamics undoubtedly impact women and men of all racial backgrounds, the intersectional nature of the experiences of young Black women is reflective of their positionalities, within both racialized and gendered contexts, as youth “who live the realities of more than one historically oppressive identifier” (Miles Nash and Peters, 2020: p. 270).

Even with the disappointment of experiencing a relationship that did not fulfill her expectations for romance, the digital story ends with the writer once again still believing in true love. Racialized and gendered scripts clearly play an important part in delineating these ideals of romance for young women of color. Even after patterns of hurtful experiences, many young women still believe that a future relationship will eventually leave them with a “happily ever after” finale.

“But I still haven’t given up on love... I believe every girl deserve a Prince Charming, just like Cinderella. I hope that one day I get my fairy tale ending.”

Samantha maintains the belief that the perfect guy is still out there for her, highlighting how the “fairy tale ending” of falling deeply into romantic love is a major life goal for many young women, including women of color. Intersectional experiences of poverty, race, and gender helped to define the importance of these dreams of romance for Black, adolescent girls. As McPherson (2020, p.1) writes, “In spite of popular contemporary themes such as #Blackgirlmagic, used to uplift and empower Black girls in adverse circumstances, it is important to acknowledge that Black girls are not inherently magical and therefore, cannot individually resolve the larger systemic educational issues which impact them.” It is imperative to understand the intersectional experiences of sexual coercion for Black female adolescents and appreciate how race, class, and gender interact in these young women’s lives.

Sex as means of maintaining a partner

Several participants expressed feelings of not wanting to disappoint their partners by refusing to engage in sexual activity. Many young, Black cisgender women reported engaging in verbal interactions where they feel pressured to acquiesce to the demands of their male partner. In these instances, sex becomes a bargaining chip for male adolescents to exert control over their girlfriends. Young women expressed a fear of losing their boyfriend if they did not engage in the sexual activities that were asked of them. These gendered dynamics speak to the lack of power and privilege embodied by young Black women in relationships with young Black men, as well as the racialized positionalities of Black men and women on the South Side of Chicago. Samantha relates the consistent pressure that she received from her partner to have sex. At first, the pressure was simply to engage in sex for the first time, and then the pressure increased to having sex on a regular basis. The emotional impact that this exchange had on Samantha emerges in the following narrative:

“I thought us going all the way would make our relationship even stronger and make him want to never leave, to stay with me forever, like a fairy tale.”

This writer reveals that she assumed that by “going all the way,” her partner would stay. For young women, sex can be viewed as a means of satiating a partner, whose affections they fear they may lose if they refuse to engage in sex. The sexual script here is that sex is a requirement in order to procure and maintain a relationship with a young man. Script theory, informed by intersectionality, helps to theorize how women of color can often be represented as sexual objects, whose primary role is male pleasure (French, 2013). While these experiences of sexual coercion may not necessarily be unique to Black cisgender women, the circumstances and effects on these women are influenced by their positionality in larger society within systems that oppress them in multiple ways.

Similarly, Cassandra stated how she felt sexually pressured in her relationship and how this pressure impacted her communication with her partner:

“Then came that uncomfortable conversation about sex. I tell him I wasn’t ready. He said things like ‘I thought you loved me?’ and ‘If you really love me… why can’t we have sex?’ Maybe he was right. I did love him. He had to know that. I asked him ‘Why can’t we wait?’ He said because he wanted me. Truth is, I felt special to be wanted. I wanted him to want me. Everyone loves the feeling of being wanted. Nobody wants to feel unwanted.”

Cassandra’s experiences are also undergirded by the intense peer-to-peer comparisons that can dominate adolescent experiences as she worries about what other students in her school will say.

“There were always rumors going around my school. Most untrue, of course, as rumors usually are. But the ones that hurt the most were the true ones. Hearing the story from an outsider’s perspective, I sounded so naïve and stupid. Maybe I was a Hoe.

Maybe…he never loved me.

I cried. A lot.”

The importance of belonging and being wanted, salient themes for adolescent girls, may have been one of the underlying reasons why these young women allowed sexual coercion to continue in their relationship. Worries about being labeled a “hoe” may also resonate in particular ways for women of color, who may be more likely to be subjected to stereotypes regarding sexual promiscuity. These themes are reflective of stereotypes portraying women as seductresses, temptresses, the Jezebel type (Stephens and Phillips, 2003)—all social constructions that become even more exaggerated when combined with race. Black women are often depicted as caricatures, cast in hyper-sexualized, dehumanizing roles (Tynes, 2005). The fear of being labeled a “hoe” speaks volumes about how the intersecting identities of race, gender, and class create social pressures for young Black women.

Cassandra expresses the importance of acceptance from her male partner though eventually this leads to their interactions becoming entirely defined by sex.

“It started with no more good morning texts. Then, no more compliments. He would only call to meet up... and have sex.”

These narratives reveal how young, adolescent men are often rewarded for pursuing multiple female partners, expressing high sexual desire, and initiating sexual activity (Murray, 2018) while women may be “slut-shamed” for engaging in similar behaviors. According to SST, young men are groomed by social norms to experience and express higher levels of sexual desire (Murray, 2018). Peers reinforce these sexual scripts during adolescence, suggesting that the intersectional social responses to sex vary by the gender and race of the sexual actor (Kreager et al., 2016).

“She didn’t feel comfortable in her own skin now. But she did it all for love. He made her fall. This isn’t how it supposed to be. But why does she care? He isn’t there anymore. Now it’s all over. It’s all done.”

The pressures to satiate a male partner, out of a longing for love and a fear of rejection, are often strong feelings for adolescent girls and may impact Black, adolescent girls in particular ways. The sense of rejection a young woman can feel from these failed relationships can lead to reduced self-confidence and decreased self-worth. These feelings and experiences may intersect with other feelings of low self-esteem caused by race or socioeconomic status.

Jerlisse, a Black female adolescent, conveys the expectation that engaging in sex would please her partner and would make her relationship last. Alternatively, being able to control if or when sex is had with her partner could be a means of female empowerment, particularly for young women of color.

“She falls again. She’s vulnerable to his love so she lets him move his hand across her thighs. He says, ‘I love you.’ She is then guided to his bedroom. But she’s been here times before. She knows what’s about to happen, so she doesn’t reject him, falling into his trap. As she follows his lead, hope takes over as it always does. Hoping that maybe this time things can be different. The sex was over now and he rolls over without say a word. She’s a fool. A fool in those sheets. Physically she’s with him. Mentally, she’s trapped. Trapped in a place where she feels she can no longer escape. It just didn’t feel right. The cycle repeats itself… She must be crazy to let him take advantage of her. She never should’ve told him that he were the one. She must be crazy. This cycle ends with her asking herself the same question: ‘Why do I love someone that hurts me continuously?’”

The adolescent desire to want to be loved, to want to fit in, and to win the admiration of another (Soller, 2014) are all strong themes in Jerlisse’s story. When translated into sexual terms, pleasing a partner sexually can become an unwelcome expectation in a young woman’s relationship. The desire to gain a partner’s approval may promote behavior that reflects what female adolescents perceive that their boyfriends wish to observe, according to intersecting gendered and racialized scripts. It could be that these young women had seen these behaviors modeled or rejected within their own communities. The negative self-talk and diminished self-esteem of this participant are also made clear through her statements: “She’s a fool”; “She’s vulnerable”; and “She must be crazy.” When the participant states that she feels “trapped in a place where she feels she can no longer escape,” she can be simultaneously speaking about her experiences as a woman, a person of color, a young person, and a resident of a largely impoverished community—all identities that intersect to create her positionality as a young woman of color on the South Side of Chicago.

Another young woman reported how she learned to tolerate a boyfriend’s infidelity as she feared losing his companionship. In this next passage, Naomi relays the sexual expectations that young men had of her. She may have compromised her own emotional needs to satiate the sexual desires of her male partner, ultimately tolerating his infidelity. When Naomi eventually comes to the realization that her relationship is unhealthy, she decides to break up with her boyfriend.

“The first thing I do is kiss you while smiling from ear to ear, but you wasn’t smiling and you didn’t kiss me back. I asked what’s wrong...

You just came out of nowhere and said ‘YOU DIDN’T LOVE ME’ and then left.

I stood in shock with tears falling from my eyes.

All you can hear is me crying and the clock on the wall.

I’m steady asking myself why me? Is this real?

I thought it was me at first but in reality it was you.

I put up with the cheating, and the lies.

I should have been broke up with you but just too dumb to realize until now…

You was my downfall.”

This narrative indicates the delicate desires for intimacy and belonging that these young women crave, particularly at this fragile developmental stage where notions of self-worth are often primarily equated with beauty, self-image, dress, and peer acceptance. Even at an early age, young women may become socially conditioned to expect “the cheating and the lies” from men they date. This also reflects how young Black women may be socialized to tolerate men’s infidelity through the scripted modeling of similar relationships from their peers.

Rape

While several stories touched on issues regarding sexual coercion, one story explicitly recounted the author’s personal experience with rape by a cisgender male partner.

“I glance over my shoulder, a man is following me. I cross the street. He crosses the street as well. I walk faster and so does he. I search my bag for my knife… it isn’t there. Is this happening? Without thinking I begin to run until the sound of my footsteps take over the music.”

Lisa’s poetic narrative retells her traumatic experience with having been sexually assaulted. She reacts by physically and emotionally disassociating from the scene. In her transcript, the participant isolated the words “I am” in the passage below, perhaps indicating her own feelings of isolation and disassociation from this traumatizing experience.

“I am

Watching the situation as if it isn’t even me.

Watching her underneath him. Panting. Crying. Pleading for him to stop.

Too weak to fight, too scared to scream.

I want to ask her: How did you get into this situation?

I want to ask him: If she’s so beautiful… how could you do this?

They can’t answer…

Running and hiding… praying with a knife by my side.

You see, there are things a girl should always remember: her first love, her

first kiss. It should be a positive thing, but that’s not her story.”

Lisa notes that her first kiss “should be a positive thing,” but the reality of her first sexual experience is a disappointment, a betrayal, a rape. She also describes the emotionally protective experience of distancing herself somatically from her own body—“watching this situation as it if isn’t even me.” Lisa recounts an essentially dissociative or depersonalized experience, which may have protected her emotionally in the moment of this traumatic moment. She questions how she got herself in this place, how her partner could do this to her, and lastly, how she will remember her first experience with sex, a memory which is now tainted with both sexual coercion and broken expectations of love. While it is important to note that this was the only story in the digital collection to explicitly recount rape, there were multiple accounts of experiences of sexual coercion of Black female adolescents across the sample.

Discussion

The novel contribution of this study is the usage of narrative scripts to qualitatively highlight experiences of sexual coercion of Black female adolescents in heterosexual relationships. This project contributes to a burgeoning evidence base, documenting how the creation of narratives can bolster community building to address health inequities by lifting up the voices of members from marginalized populations (Briant et al., 2016; Gubrium, 2009). These narratives from digital storytelling have become a powerful means for communities of color to share their stories as these voices are often ignored by mainstream media (Wexler et al., 2013). In this study, community building for women of color was created through the shared space offered by the digital storytelling workshops, the website that was created to showcase these stories with the community, and the camaraderie created amongst the youth and mentors who participated in the program.

Study findings validate previous research demonstrating how young men may pressure young women to have sex as a mechanism for establishing or maintaining a relationship (Stanton et al., 1993). Sexual coercion may be seen as a means of establishing male dominance and power (Stock, 1991). Traditional gender norms and roles shape women’s interpretations of sexual expectations and work in intersectional ways to impact women of color. Notions regarding race, class, and gender shape perceptions of femininity and independence for Black girls (Morris, 2007). Therefore, a desire to maintain a dating relationship can itself put young women, and particularly young women of color, at increased risk for sexual coercion. While the origins of these values regarding sexual coercion remain unclear, there are potential solutions of empowerment for young Black women. In order for youth to be engaged in gender-equitable relationships, expectations of sexuality need to be more closely aligned with notions of agency and consent.

Our findings suggest that Black, adolescent girls face vulnerabilities in their experiences of sexual coercion. While experiences of sexual coercion affect all women regardless of race, Black, adolescent girls are typically not part of hegemonic discourse on sexual violence and their bodies are often viewed as either invisible (French and Neville, 2008) or hyper-sensualized, leading to the creation of sexual scripts and gendered roles that place these young women in precarity of sexual violence at a young age. The socialization that Black female adolescents receive with respect to traditional gender roles and corresponding cultural attitudes may be a root explanation for heightened sexual coercion amongst this group (Byers, 1996).

Intersectionality offers an understanding of how socially constructed categories coalesce to shape multiple dimensions of lived experiences, particularly for women of color (Collins, 1999), through the convergence of gender, race, sexuality, class, age, and other social categories. As seen in our own narratives, there are intersectional effects of race on gender norms being reflected in these scripts and in the youth’s participation in workshops. For example, regarding the theme of sex as a means of seeking attention from a male partner, Black female adolescents may be faced with sociocultural expectations that uphold standards of patriarchal masculinity that are reinforced through the desire for sexual attention (Hooks, 2004). As one participant stated, “She’s vulnerable to his love so she lets him move his hand across her thighs.” Similarly, under the rape theme, the participant vocalizes how she is “too weak to fight, too scared to scream.” While the race of the perpetrator of the sexual violence is unknown, its impact on cisgender women of color remains nonetheless noteworthy. Under the theme of sex as a means of maintaining a partner, the participant worries about being perceived to be promiscuous, a concern which may reflect stereotypes regarding the sexual behavior of Black women.

The link between social structure, social attitudes, and sexual coercion has been understudied, particularly as these factors intersect with race and age. The structural position of Black female adolescents in relationship to their male peers plays a role in the ways in which sexual coercion is uniquely experienced by young women of color, including those in our sample. This is reflected in all four of the themes: broken expectations of romance, seeking attention from a male partner, sex as a means of maintaining a partner, and rape. Discourse that limits the analysis of the experiences of Black female adolescents to single identity factor models limits our understanding of identity development among racial/ethnic minority youth (Thomas et al., 2011). This study contributes to the multiplicity of the stories of Black, adolescent girls by focusing on their narratives and their participation in these digital storytelling workshops.

This study also highlights how narratives from digital storytelling can ultimately serve as a nexus for participatory research, community engagement, and narrative, allowing youth to express their stories in their own words, in a manner in which they feel comfortable sharing with others (Willox et al., 2013). Creating narratives for digital storytelling can therefore be seen as an act of meaning construction in the sexual and romantic lives of adolescents where meaning is made at the intersection of the social, the textual (Nelson et al., 2008), the auditory, and the visual.

Limitations

There are several limitations to this study. First, in this collection of narratives from digital stories, the workshop coordinators did not specifically ask participants to create a story that was directly related to issues regarding gender, sexuality, or sexual trauma. Consequentially, the topics of the narratives varied from being about a child’s relationship with her grandmother to living in a segregated city. Had the workshop coordinators offered a prompt specific to experiences of sexuality, it is possible that even more stories may have been coded around themes of sexual coercion. It is noteworthy that even without a prompt specific to sexuality, many participants still chose to write about their experiences with sexual coercion.

Given that this was a narrative analysis, the qualitative analysis in this project did not take into account the impact of music, images, vocal tone/affect, and video that were used in the creation of the completed digital stories for some of these narratives. This information may have added a deeper appreciation for the intentions of the young women who created their stories. Unfortunately, because not all narratives had corresponding completed digital stories, this approach could not be taken without loss of a uniform methodological approach to analysis across all digital stories.

Further, we had a small sample size of only five narratives, which clearly limits the external validity of our findings. While our results may not be generalizable to other populations, the themes across these five narratives were nonetheless remarkably similar, providing insights into the qualitative experiences of sexual coercion of Black female adolescents on the South Side of Chicago. Finally, this article’s focus on sexual coercion experienced by Black women may epistemologically obscure the totality of Black women’s sexual subjectivities, potentially eclipsing experiences of sexual pleasure, reciprocity, and queerness (Adams-Santos, 2020; Nash, 2012). It is therefore important to balance these narratives of sexual coercion of Black, adolescent girls with alternative renderings of joy, satisfaction, and sexual intimacy.

Conclusion

Much of the scholarship on narratives from digital storytelling has been concerned with bringing voices of marginalized groups into the public sphere (De Jager et al., 2017). In the context of sexual and reproductive health, narratives from digital storytelling can serve as a platform by which adolescents voice their experiences and concerns regarding intimate relationships. Analyzing the narratives from digital storytelling may be particularly useful for sexuality education as it provides a space to collaboratively address stigmatized topics. For teenagers exploring their changing identities, emergent themes from digital stories have involved the questioning of vocation, sex, religion, and politics (Brito, 2012). Storytelling can ultimately serve as a device for individuals to better understand their vulnerability and gain the power to reshape their identities (Holloway and Freshwater, 2007). Our participants were able to reflect on their intersectional identities in the workshop space and to help guide the construction of their stories.

The experience of being a woman, a youth, a person of color, and a resident of the South Side creates vulnerabilities to sexual coercion as young women of color are situated at the intersectional crossroads of race, gender, age, and socioeconomic status. By better understanding the social context of relationships for Black, adolescent girls, we will be able to better design sexual and reproductive health interventions for this population. Future interventions with young, Black cisgender women will therefore need to facilitate open conversations about sexual development and agency (French, 2013). These interventions must include messages that strengthen notions of self-worth and deconstruct ideologies that have historically validated the gendered and racialized scripts, underlying experiences of sexual coercion for young women of color.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

This paper is dedicated to the young Black women on the South Side of Chicago who shared their moving stories with us. The author would especially like to thank Alexandria Brock Watson, who assisted with the coding of these stories many moons ago, as well as Seed Lynn and Marquez Rhyne, who produced this digital collection, South Side Stories.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Funding for this research project was provided through the Ford Foundation’s Ford Scholars Program, funded through the Center for Interdisciplinary Inquiry and Innovation in Sexual and Reproductive Health (Ci3) at the University of Chicago.

ORCID iD

Sameena Azhar

Sameena Azhar is an Assistant Professor at the Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service. Dr. Azhar has 20 years of clinical and research experience in the fields of mental health, addiction, and HIV care. She is a licensed clinical social worker in California and Illinois. Her research has been funded through the US Department of Education, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the American Institute of Pakistan Studies, Ford Foundation, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).

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