Empowered and vulnerable? Analyzing affective–discursive practices and dilemmas in young people’s resistance to sexual harassment

Abstract

Young people have frequently been seen as leaders of change in feminist resistance against sexual harassment and sexism, especially in the wake of the #MeToo movement. At the same time, youth and young adults continue to face harassment both in online and offline contexts, and victim blaming and shaming may undermine resistance to sexual harassment. How can scholars best make sense of knotty psychosocial territory such as this, and what options exist for analyses that mobilize familiar discursive analytic devices alongside the newer tools of affect theory? Drawing on qualitative survey and interview data collected from young Finnish people, we outline a fresh application of Wetherell’s (2012) affective–discursive practice approach, honed to shed light on the (dis)continuities and affective–discursive dilemmas of resisting sexual harassment in both online and offline contexts. We illustrate the value of three specific analytic devices: feeling positions, embodied meaning-making, and atmospheric practices. In doing so, this article presents a valuable way forward for scholarship exploring the complexities of contemporary dynamics of resisting and living gendered inequalities and, we hope, for qualitative inquiry more broadly.