Affect, gendered embodiment and sexual harassment

Abstract

Sexual harassment is an affective, embodied and relational issue with distinctly gendered consequences for those who experience it. Despite a vast literature illuminating the gendered dynamics of sexual harassment, detailed analyses of the affective dimensions of such dynamics are scarce. This article analyses young women’s and nonbinary people’s experiences of sexual harassment from the perspective of affective embodiment. The analysis draws on Sara Ahmed’s theorisation on embodied hurts, orientations and emotions to trace relational, embodied and affective processes of gendering linked with sexual harassment. The analysis identifies two harassment-related embodied processes: embodied regulation and embodied resistance. Whereas embodied regulation takes the form of feminisation – a process that renders bodies vulnerable – embodied resistance includes a variety of orientations labelled here as preparedness, defeminisation and embodied critique. Thus, the analysis suggests that bodies may respond to sexual harassment in varied ways, and even though harassment contributes to the constant shaping of bodies, it does not determine them.