Affective Dissonance as a Path for Rethinking Girls’ and Young Women's Sexuality Research

Addressing vulnerability as an affective pattern, this paper offers an epistemic and methodological framework to conceptualise girls’ and young women's subjective sexual expression in a neoliberal climate. It addresses affective dissonance–both in their experience and in the research procedure–to reveal how they cope with intensified vulnerability while sexually expressing themselves. This paper reflects on the thematic analysis of the Israeli case study of ‘attacking,’ a slang term for a heterosexual practice performed in youth nightclubs. Based on an analysis of 39 interviews with young women aged 18–23, it demonstrates how the affective standpoint reveals relations and attentiveness to the vulnerable body that support the positioning of young women vis-à-vis objectifying heterosexual practices. This methodological framework contributes to the conceptualisation of vulnerability together with agentic modes of action, meeting the challenge of holding a critical analysis of power formations without diminishing girls’ and young women's subjective sexual expression. By reclaiming the vulnerable affective positionality, it disputes the neoliberal dichotomies of objectification-subjectification and vulnerability-empowerment. Based on this analysis, the paper offers two complementary paths to sexually empower young women: raising awareness of the duality of their vulnerability and reclaiming affective dissonance as potentially transformative.