| dc.description.abstract | Recurrent pain during sexual intercourse is a prevalent yet stigmatised health issue that impacts
almost a fifth of young women who have sex with men. Despite its significant effects on
subjectivity construction, the majority of research on chronic coital pain has focused on
causation and treatment from a medical perspective. Psychological studies that have examined
women’s experiences of painful sexual intercourse have largely ignored young women as a
particularly vulnerable group, only including those who have been given a medical diagnosis
and who identify as heterosexual. Additionally, the theoretical underpinnings of prior research
regularly places the issue of coital pain at the level of the woman, with little consideration of
the cultural and social environment within which she exists.
In the current study, I was interested in exploring how heteronormative ideals regarding
sexuality and gender in Aotearoa New Zealand shape how young women with chronic coital
pain understand themselves and their experiences, along with the subsequent possibilities
available to them. I adopted the theoretical framework of feminist poststructuralism to make
visible the particular ways of being and behaving that gender discourses allow and inhibit. My
study used an anonymous online qualitative survey to gather data from 108 Aotearoa New
Zealand women between the ages of 18 and 30 who regularly experience pain during
penetrative sex with men. I undertook a constructionist thematic analysis, taking a deductive
and critical approach to the interpretation of data, and applied the main principles of feminist
poststructuralism to make sense of the themes generated. From my analysis, I identified a key
theoretical concept known as the coital imperative. Six main themes were constructed from my
data – 4 that supported the coital imperative and 2 that resisted it. These included: (1) the ‘hotblooded
male’; (2) ‘good girls’ don’t rock the boat; (3) the neoliberal postfeminist woman; (4)
failed femininity; (5) resisting the coital imperative; and (6) alternative gender constructions in
heterosexual relations. The findings of my study suggest that women readily draw on
heteronormative ideals of gender and sexuality when constructing their subjectivities and
frequently prioritise the needs of their male partners ahead of their own experience of pleasure.
However, the visible adoption of egalitarian/feminist discourse that resists the coital imperative
enables women to renegotiate conceptualisations of sex, allowing for equal pleasure and
emotional satisfaction. As such, I argue that by unpacking the taken-for-granted assumptions
of normative ideals, women are able to construct subjectivities based on adequacy and selfworth. | en_US |
