“We’re going to have to control your tongue,” the dentist says, pulling out all the metal from my mouth. Silver bits plop and tinkle into the basin. My mouth is a motherlode. The dentist is cleaning out my roots. I get a whiff of the stench when I gasp. “I can’t cap that tooth yet, you’re still draining,” he says. “We’re going to have to do something about your tongue.” I hear the anger rising in his voice. My tongue keeps pushing out the wads of cotton, pushing back the drills, the long thin needles. “I’ve never seen anything as strong or as stubborn,” he says. And I think, how do you tame a wild tongue, train it to be quiet, how do you bridle and saddle it? How do you make it lie down? (Anzaldúa 1987, p. 75)

It’s like you’re laying in your bed and somebody you don’t even know, just come in and lay there with you [laughs] like it would feel really uncomfortable, like why are you laying in the bed with me? I don’t know you, like why are you in my space, my physical space? Or it’s like you’re going to the dentist and he just opens your mouth and you’re like, “Wait, can you give me a second?” Like somebody just violated my self and I don’t want you—I don’t want you existing in my space… you don’t want them there… You’re sitting here trying to change who I am. (Tee, a 19 year old queer Black Latina woman in New York City)

Tee states that she has seen a repetition of men “come on to her to try to turn her straight,” a form of sexual objectification she experiences through both verbal and physical attacks on her body as a lesbian. Days after speaking with Tee, as I listened again to her describe what these sexual violations feel like in her body, in her “physical space,” on her “self” as men try to “change who [she is],” I was taken back to Gloria Anzaldúa’s (1987) words. They both use visceral metaphors of dentists to understand how violation feels; in Anzaldúa’s case, it is the robbery of language, attempts to “control” and silence her claimed “wild tongue,” her history, her sexuality, her voice. For Tee, it is a sexualized surveillance and policing of her desires as a queer young woman. But both women refuse to be tamed, to have their bodies silenced. In listening to young women’s narratives, I hear how sexual objectification is wedged into their bodies, desires, and voices, as well as the ways in which they are speaking against it. Some speak in a whisper; others are yelling, demanding to be heard, to be recognized and to feel entitled to their bodies and desires. They all refuse to lie down.

Adolescent Desires under Sexualized Surveillance

The negotiation of sexual desire is argued to be central to the development of young women’s sense of personal empowerment, entitlement, and identity (Tolman 2002). Yet young women’s sexualities develop within contentious political, economic, historical, and psychological landscapes. Young women’s sexuality is constructed as excessive and in need of controlling through both interpersonal relationships and public policy (McClelland and Fine 2014). Queer feminist Scholars of Color have critiqued how sexualized policing of desire has been constructed within interlocking systems of racism, sexism, and heterosexism (Anzaldúa 1987; Collins 2004). Young Women of Color are hypervisible in popular and political discourse with stereotypes and controlling images of “Jezebels,” as “oversexed and over-reproductive” (García 2009, p. 528) young women “at-risk” of teenage pregnancy (Collins 2004). On the other hand, same-sex desire tends to be invisible (Collins 2004) and silenced (Hurtado 2003), albeit with limited visibility in hyper-heterosexualized (Yost and McCarthy 2012) or denigrated representations of desire (Schippers 2007). For young women, adolescence is a moment of heightened surveillance in which they experience relational and institutional pressures to silence their desires for the sake of maintaining relationships, safety, and security (Brown and Gilligan 1992).

Sexual objectification, or the experience of being reduced to a body, is one form of sexualized surveillance through which feminists have sought to understand how young women are pressured to disconnect from their bodies and desires (American Psychological Association, Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls 2007). Objectification theory (Fredrickson and Roberts 1997) places female bodies in sociocultural context to understand how sexual objectification informs girls’ and women’s lived experiences. All females experience sexual objectification but heterosexist, sexist and racist systems of power position girls and women in different ways (Shields 2008). I use a feminist narrative analysis to explore how queer young Women of Color experience sexual objectification within intersecting systems of oppression and how it informs their lived experiences of desire.

Objectification Theory

Objectification theory was formulated as a feminist integrative framework for understanding women’s lived experiences of being treated as sexual objects and the implications this has for their mental, emotional, physical and psychological well-being (Fredrickson and Roberts 1997). Sexual objectification experiences are thought to socialize girls to treat themselves as sexual objects. Girls and women learn to dissociate from their desires and to engage in surveillance of their bodies (self-objectification; Fredrickson and Roberts 1997).

Much of the work in objectification theory focuses on how this self-objectification is harmful to women and girls. A large body of scholarship with White girls and women has demonstrated that self-objectification is predictive of a host of negative consequences including body image issues, eating disorders, depression, decreased cognitive functioning, and disrupted sexual well-being (for reviews, see Moradi and Huang 2008; Szymanski et al. 2010). Yet this body of research primarily focuses on the relationship between self-objectification and eating disorders. How sexual objectification is actually experienced, as well as its implications for girls’ and women’s desires and resistance, has been under-explored.

An important gap in this body of research also concerns the focus on White, middle-class heterosexual young adult women (Heimerdinger-Edwards et al. 2011; Szymanski et al. 2010) and neglect of work on girls and young Women of Color, those with disabilities, and those who are lesbian/bisexual/queer. Research on young women’s experiences is limited, particularly research that takes into account their multiple racial/ethnic, sexual, and class locations. In their formulation of objectification theory, Fredrickson and Roberts (1997) acknowledged that diverse identities may result in different responses and experiences with sexual objectification. Although they suggested that future research must “examine the variations in experiences and effects of objectification across diverse subgroups of women, with an eye toward illuminating the ways objectification may factor into other forms of oppression” (p. 25), it is only in recent years that research has begun to explore the experiences of more diverse groups of women. This research has been important in expanding objectification theory, although it has tended to examine these effects for either (White) sexual minority women (Haines et al. 2008; Hill and Fischer 2008) or (straight) Black women (Watson et al. 2012). These findings suggest that reported sexual objectification experiences are related to self-objectification for lesbians (Hill and Fischer 2008) and Women of Color (Hebl et al. 2004). However, research also suggests that in contrast to the proposed tenants of objectification theory, self-objectification may not be connected to body surveillance for sexual minority women (Engeln-Maddox et al. 2011; Kozee and Tylka 2006), and depression may not be linked to eating disorders for Black women (Watson et al. 2015a). Surveillance may be experienced or embodied differently by sexuality, race/ethnicity, family or community (Warner and Shields 2013).

Understanding girls’ and women’s actual experiences of sexual objectification, particularly as they are informed by and contribute to systems of sexist, heterosexist, and racist inequalities has been under-explored in objectification theory research (Moradi and Huang 2008; Szymanski et al. 2010; Watson et al. 2012). The ways identities, desire, and surveillance are experienced are context-dependent (Warner and Shields 2013); they are also socially, historically, and politically situated in relation to structural systems of power (Collins 2004). Limited qualitative research utilizing objectification theory has found that White sexual minority women experience their same-sex sexual behavior as sexualized and promoted as a pornographic fantasy for heterosexual men (Chmielewski and Yost 2013; Thompson 2013). Research with heterosexual Black women’s experiences reveals the importance of qualitatively exploring the ways in which sexual objectification is informed by multiple identities (Watson et al. 2012). Through interviewing Black women about their sexual objectification experiences rather than providing pre-determined measures, Watson et al. (2012) found that participants experienced sexual objectification as connected not only to patriarchal social structures, but also to slavery and sexualized, animalistic stereotypes of Black women. Sexual objectification was experienced as a way to police their sexuality and bodies as Black women, not just as women. Participants also revealed coping mechanisms and ways that they engaged in resistance to objectification, such as drawing on spirituality, social support, and speaking back when harassed. Research on girls’ and women’s sexualities in relation to sexual objectification should incorporate attention to context as well as the ways that their multiple identities interact to shape their individual and collective experience (Warner and Shields 2013).

Compulsory Heterosexuality and the Policing of Desire

Compulsory heterosexuality (Rich 1980) offers an important lens through which to explore how girl’s and women’s relationships with their bodies, voices, and sexual subjectivities are shaped and constrained through sexual objectification. Originally formulated by Adrienne Rich to expose the “erasure of lesbian existence” (p. 185), compulsory heterosexuality unearths the ways that heterosexuality operates not as a natural choice or sexual orientation, but as an ideology that is imposed on women through a “pervasive cluster of forces, ranging from physical brutality to control of consciousness” (p. 640). “Women learn to accept as natural the inevitability of [heterosexuality] because we receive it as dogma” (p. 646). Within this system of compulsory heterosexuality, White heterosexual femininity is idealized; expectations for how young women should think, feel, and behave are shaped in relation to this ideal (Tolman 2006).

Other forms of sexuality and femininity are denigrated for the maintenance of this ideal White heterosexual femininity. Contemporary cultural images and discourses of hypersexuality for Girls and Women of Color are historically based in a legacy of slavery and colonization, where depictions of Women of Color as highly sexual justified their dehumanization and sexual exploitation, and set them in opposition to “good” White femininity. On the other hand, compulsory heterosexuality regulates lesbians by stigmatizing them as deviant for their lack of heterosexual desire for men (Collins 2004). Queerness and blackness are constructed as abject and in binary opposition to the heterosexual, White “good girl” ideal, and sexual minority Girls and Women of Color are denigrated for their failures to meet the demands of hegemonic femininity (Schippers 2007). Although all young women experience objectification and are taught that their desire is deviant and dangerous, young women who are queer and Black and Brown continue to be constructed in relation to these historicized images as particularly “sexually excessive” and in need of policing (McClelland and Fine 2008). Sexual objectification cannot be understood outside these systems of power.

Although research has not utilized sexual objectification as a mechanism of control within compulsory heterosexuality to understand girls’ or women’s experiences, research on sexual harassment and victimization provide insight into how queer young Women of Color’s experiences can be understood through this lens, as well as the particular contexts in which objectification has yet to be explored. Research suggests that queer Girls and Women of Color experience more sexual harassment and sexual and physical violence from peers and adults than straight and White girls and women do (Calabrese et al. 2015; Collier et al. 2013). Recent scholarship has also connected these processes of victimization to structural inequalities through discriminatory and sexualized school discipline and policing practices for queer young women and young Women of Color (Brunson and Miller 2006; Chmielewski et al. 2016). For instance, school discipline is disproportionately distributed against female adolescents who are “too loud” (Fordham 1993; Morris 2007), dress in gender nonconforming ways, or engage in same-sex displays of affection (Snapp et al. 2015). Research suggests that a lack of support on the part of school administration for young women’s experiences of sexual harassment may render them vulnerable to more harassment and school discipline consequences (i.e. suspension, expulsion) because they are penalized for defending themselves (Miller 2008). Research with Black women has found that their experiences of sexual objectification are more related to fears of crime than are White women’s (Watson et al. 2015b), and research with female Black adolescents has found that many experience sexual harassment from police instead of protection (Brunson and Miller 2006). This research suggests that sexual objectification may operate differently across different contexts and have broad social and material implications for queer young Women of Color’s desires (sexual, academic, safety, among others).

Desire and Lives under Sexualized Surveillance

In listening to young women’s experiences navigating sexual objectification to understand how it informs their lived experiences of desire, I use Sara McClelland and Michelle Fine’s concept of thick desire (Fine and McClelland 2006). Thick desire broadens desire from simply the erotic to “a broad range of desires for meaningful intellectual, political, and social engagement, the possibility of financial independence, sexual and reproductive freedom, protection from racialized and sexualized violence, and a way to imagine living in the future tense” (p. 300). Young women’s thick desire exists in conversation with larger psychological, sociopolitical, and historical contexts (McClelland and Fine 2014). Queer young Women of Color are uniquely positioned within these contexts at the intersection of sexist, heterosexist, and racist systems of oppression. They must navigate a double consciousness as they experience their identities, desires, and bodies being policed within multiple cultures (Anzaldúa 1987; Du Bois 1903). From the margins, they may develop critical insights and recognition of injustice, as well as possibilities for activism—what Hall and Fine (2005, p. 177) describe as “positive marginality.”

My examination into where queer young Women of Color’s desires live and take shape provides a frame for understanding how contexts of sexual objectification—informed by sexism, heterosexism, and racism—intersect in young women’s lives. Using a feminist narrative analysis, I sought to expand objectification theory by examining the types of sexual objectification these young women experience, how they actively negotiate and resist objectification, and how these negotiations shape their lived experience of desire.

Method

Participants

Same-sex desiring Black and/or Latina young women between the ages of 16 and 19 were recruited using a purposive sampling strategy. I sent recruitment emails through LGBT community groups for youth, Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) facilitators, and teachers, and I also recruited in-person at a local gay pride event. The final sample consisted of eight young women, aged 16–19, who were either currently in or recently graduated from a New York City public high school. Six participants were currently in high school and two participants were currently in their first year of college at the time of the interview. Four participants identified as Black, two as Latina, and two as Black Latinas. Three were bisexual and five identified as lesbian.

Procedure

I conducted one-on-one interviews with each participant in a private office at my academic institution. Interviews lasted approximately one and one-half hours. After greeting participants, I discussed the parameters of their participation, provided them with informed consent documents, and asked them to choose a pseudonym. In order to maximally protect their confidentiality, participants’ willingness to participate was recorded rather than written. Parental consent was waived for participants under 18-years-old in an effort to increase sampling of participants who may not have been “out” to their parents/guardians (Mustanski 2011). Participants were provided with $5 gift cards and compensation for metro travel. IRB approval was obtained for all research procedures.

The interview protocol included descriptive questions to understand how participants felt about their experiences of sexual identity and relationships, such as “What is it like to be a (lesbian/bisexual) girl?,” “What is it like dating or being in a romantic relationship in your school?,” and “What do you think being a (lesbian/bisexual) girl allows you to see and know that other people might not?” However the interview primarily focused on narrative questions: “Can you tell me about a time when you felt like you were being looked at or judged based on your appearance or sexuality in a way that made you feel uncomfortable?” My goal in using narrative questions was to elicit stories from participants and support their choices in how to tell these stories (Brown and Gilligan 1992), as well as how and where to bring in their multiple identities. Follow-up questions focused on how they felt, how they responded, and how they wanted to respond in these situations. All interviews were transcribed verbatim prior to analysis.

Analysis

I used the Listening Guide (Brown and Gilligan 1992), a feminist psychodynamic method of analysis, to uncover the double consciousness in young women’s multiple struggles with objectification and voices of resistance. The Listening Guide centers on voice as a way to enter into the psyche and considers stories as inherently contextualized by relationships (both within the stories themselves and between speaker and listener). It was developed to enable the researcher to uncover female voices and visions as they filter through a patriarchal culture (Brown and Gilligan 1992). This method is focused on uncovering complexity and contradictions within the multiple perspectives or “voices” individuals have about their experiences. Different voices are attended to through multiple readings of interview transcripts, where each reading focuses on a different aspect of participants’ experiences.

The Listening Guide’s analytic procedure consists of a series of sequential readings for each transcript. The first reading is for the plot of the story participants are sharing. Here, I read for what was happening in the stories that young women told me about surveillance: the where, when, how, and why of their experiences. I also attended to my own feelings and responses here, writing “listener’s responses” (Gilligan et al. 2006) to the narratives, as well as interpretations of the plot for each story participants told me. I later used my interpretations of this plot voice to organize and then examine patterns in young women’s stories based on the contexts in which they occurred.

My second reading was for the self-voice, which is focused on identifying how the participant speaks about and knows herself. All statements that refer to the self are underlined: “I,” “me,” “my,” “we,” “you.” I then took all statements of the self and compiled them in a list by the order in which they appeared in text (Sorsoli and Tolman 2008). Below is an excerpt of Amanda’s self-voice in one of her narratives about street harassment.

I’ll be like, Excuse me?!

I know you’re not talking to me!

I’ll really go off.

But… if you’re gonna say something

you don’t know what they can do…

they can hurt you

end up following you

when I’m by myself

I won’t say nothing to them

This reading for self is particularly well-suited for examining struggles with agency and where a young woman experiences herself as an object (Tolman 2002). As I traced where and how young women switched between active (“I’ll really go off”) and passive (“you don’t know”; “I won’t say nothing”) representations of themselves, I heard multiple voices of self-assurance in one’s own desires and knowledge, questioning of the self and desires in response to surveillance and policing by others, and confusion in trying to make sense of what was happening, as well as what to do.

The third and fourth readings are guided by the research questions and draw the researcher’s attention to relational or “contrapuntal voices” (Gilligan et al. 2006, p. 164), which allow for a focus on multiplicity in meaning. This stage of the analysis was iterative. I read each transcript multiple times to identify different voices. Once I identified each voice, I reread each transcript and underlined the text where the voice appeared. Given my aim to explore how sexual objectification is experienced for young women who likely experience multiple and intersecting forms of surveillance around their sexuality and desires (Collins 2004; Hurtado 2003), the relational voice I conceptualized was a voice of surveillance. When I listened for this voice, I heard two voices in these narratives: a voice of surveillance and young women’s response to surveillance, what I identified as a voice of self-surveillance. Through the voice of surveillance I heard young women narrating different voices of feeling under surveillance or policed based on race, gender, and sexuality. As a result, I used the Listening Guide in an explicitly intersectional way: I read transcripts multiple times for how young women recognized experiences of sexual objectification, heterosexist (anti-gay) prejudice, surveillance of gender expressions, and racist surveillance or racism. I conducted separate readings for each of these voices and also underlined where they overlapped to examine how young women felt and experienced each individually as well as how they worked together. I then read for the voice of self-surveillance, focusing on young women’s responses to each form of surveillance. With this voice, I ultimately read for three threads of self-surveillance: young women’s internal monitoring of their identities and/or desire, external management of their bodies or emotions, and refusals to engage in any form of self-surveillance.

After reading each narrative for these voices, I transferred relevant narratives to worksheets where I began to develop interpretations. I looked for patterns in the data by displaying data in matrices (Tolman 2002). I created two matrices: one that organized the data according to the types of surveillance young women were narrating and one organized by young women’s response. I used these matrices to look for patterns within and across young women’s stories. I first looked across narratives to examine how a voice of sexual objectification intersected with other voices of surveillance. I then examined patterns in responses to these experiences through the self-surveillance voice, as well as patterns and fluctuations in young women’s self-voices in relationship to these experiences. Finally, I began developing themes, using my analysis of the plot readings to look at emerging patterns of surveillance and response. Here I noted that there seemed to be three contexts in which young women narrated experiencing sexual objectification: within relationships, within school, and in street harassment. I created a new matrix organizing narratives by these identified contexts and then focused on further developing and solidifying themes through an examination of how young women’s patterns of response varied within and across these contexts.

Reflexivity

I engaged in the listener response step of the Listening Guide in order to “bracket” my feelings (Gilligan et al. 2006) and focus on understanding young women’s voices. During my first readings for the plot of young women’s stories, I wrote my questions and recorded my emotional reactions—where, when, and how I felt connected to participants. I also wrote memos directly after each interview, after transcription, and throughout my analytic process. These memos were both analytic (focused on developing my analysis) and personal (focused on feelings and questions I had as I listened to the data). Referring back to my written reflections during my analysis and writing of interpretations helped me to see where my own feelings (sometimes sadness, anger, frustration; other times, curiosity and/or excitement) sometimes helped me to interpret young women’s narratives, as well as sometimes got in the way of my ability to listen. As a White woman listening to Black and Latina young women talk about sexualization, I attempted to take up a “white anti-racist standpoint” (Frankenberg 1993, p. 265), understanding the ways in which young women’s sexualities and bodies have historically been constructed in racist ways, while also acknowledging that I am limited in how I can understand these young women’s experiences. To this end, I also consulted with colleagues diverse in racial/ethnic and sexuality identities with my emotional reactions, analytic questions, readings of the data, and writing. I also consulted with an expert in the Listening Guide method throughout my analytic process in order to establish the credibility of the voices I identified and my interpretations (Morrow 2005). I invited participants to read and provide feedback on their transcripts and a write-up of my preliminary themes. Six participants responded, all with positive feedback.

Results

In listening across young women’s voices of surveillance and self-surveillance, I heard participants discuss different struggles within three distinct contexts: (a) sexualizaton in relationships with peers and romantic partners where they felt they negotiated being viewed as promiscuous and sexual objects to be “turned” or enjoyed; (b) sexualized surveillance in school from peers and educators where they were viewed as sexually excessive, sexually harassed, and sometimes disciplined; and (c) street harassment and violence from men where they struggled to protect themselves and resist sexualization with a lack of state protection as queer young Women of Color (see Table 1). The narrative material from the young women is rich and complex; the texts could be analyzed in a variety of frameworks. I have decided that the most theoretically and politically significant analysis considers sexualization as a practice of objectification through the lenses of sexuality, race, and gender and as an ecological system through which these young women navigate everyday life—with peers, in school, and on the streets. This analytic lens enabled me to hear both the different forms that sexual objectification took for participants based on their geographic, social, relational, and identity contexts and the tensions and dilemmas young women faced in their negotiations of these experiences.

Table 1 Themes within contexts, their description, and illustrative examples
Full size table

I present my relational analyses across participants, examining the varied levels at which objectification occurs and the ways young women are affected by, and skillfully navigate, it within each of these three contexts. These young women are not only victims, but strategic navigators of sexually toxic ecologies; they develop fine-tuned skills for knowing who to trust and who not to trust; who to confide in and who to brush off; and how to grow thick “boundaries” and protective membranes. These lessons come with psychic and material costs, but they may be important lessons for all young women to learn so as to navigate the sexualized projections that come their way. Table 2 lists the core demographic characteristics of the eight participants by their self-selected pseudonym, and these pseudonyms accompany each quote in the following as a way to identify the speaker.

Table 2 Participants’ demographics
Full size table

Sexualization in Relationships

Peer and romantic relationships were salient contexts in which participants struggled with sexual objectification (n = 7). Participants across race/ethnicity and sexual identity described feeling as though they were perceived and surveilled by straight peers as though they were “rapists” (Ell) preying on straight young women. At the same time, they were sexualized by straight young men as “sluts” (Amanda) and as objects of hypersexuality to be “turned” straight (Tee). Across these relationships, young women faced pressures to silence their desires and feelings for the sake of maintaining these relationships, while risking their psychological and physical safety (Brown and Gilligan 1992). Some navigated this vulnernability by silencing themselves, whereas others dealt with the psychological and physical tolls of cutting themselves off from social and romantic connections in order to protect themselves from this sexualization.

“Just Don’t Say You’re Gay There”: Silencing Desire with Peers

Participants felt that a stereotype of lesbians and bisexuals as predatory towards straight young women, on the one hand, and sexually available to straight young men, on the other hand, permeated their relationships. Six participants narrated navigating these experiences through self-silencing when peers perceived them (through a braided racialized and heteronormative lens), in what McClelland and Fine (2008) would call sexually excessive ways. They experienced dilemmas in being open about their desires (and anger) while wanting friendship as well as emotional (and physical) safety. Young women narrated a self-surveilling voice of pushing desire underground as they negotiated friendships with peers who engaged in both verbal and physical sexual harassment and violence.

I wouldn’t speak unless spoken to. I don’t know… I was insecure and nervous. Just scared to be who I was and say anything… you gotta deal with a lot of people assuming that you like every girl you talk to, or… I don’t know, they just assume everything you do is very flirtatious when it’s not so you have to be wary about who you talk to and how you talk to them, what you say, because… I don’t know, when people are aware of your sexuality, they kinda take it and they use it to like influence everything… I definitely do have to watch what I say so they don’t misinterpret anything as me trying to flirt with them or try to come on to them when I just genuinely want to be friends with the person. (Brit)

Brit “wouldn’t speak”; she has been “insecure,” “scared” to be herself. As she switches to a second-person voice, she speaks of her own experience as one she sees as a reality for lesbians in general. Lesbians have to be wary and control to whom they speak and how they speak to them for fear of people taking same-sex sexuality and using it to make them seem sexually predatory. She conveys that she “has to watch what she says,” monitoring her own actions. She also reveals this surveillance blocks her from what she really wants—whereas she “wants to be friends” and have authentic connections, she instead “keeps to [her]self” and “wears a mask” over her feelings.

Although some young women were more vocal in their anger and refused to turn objectification onto themselves, they also narrated code-switching in order to maintain connections with straight peers. In particular they discussed having to navigate spaces of heightened sexuality (i.e. showers, locker rooms) delicately so as not to be perceived as sexually threatening.

In the locker room my friends who are fully straight and they know I’m bisexual, they’ll feel some type of way changing in front of me… There’s been times they’ll look at me some type of way and be like, “She’s actually attracted to girls, let’s move this way.” Like, honey, you’re not even all that cute-looking. You look like the bottom of my shoe, like you’re not really that hot. Don’t flatter yourself. And I feel bad because it’s like I’m being judged but then I’m like—at least I’m not like every other person who would yell and start a problem with it. (Michele)

Michele narrates a two-ness or double consciousness (Du Bois 1903), in this situation where she experiences herself as an objectified Other. Her same-sex desire makes her feel she is a site of perceived excess and contamination (McClelland and Fine 2008) for straight young women because she perceives they “look at [her] some type of way” and “move” away from her in this space of heightened sexuality. “Being judged” is hurtful to her, and yet she laughs at their ignorance, ironically objectifying them back as “not really that hot.” At the same time, however, she indicates that she chooses not to “yell and start a problem” with these friends. She says that when she has done this, it is “known as having a Black moment.” She fears that as a young Black woman, anger will confirm stereotypes that “I’ll be ghetto, and we’re ignorant”; thus, racist stereotypes about loud Black women (Fordham 1993) seem to shape how she feels she can respond to these sexualization experiences. Michele holds onto her anger but silences herself to get by.

Some young women also experienced this need to self-silence in the face of potential sexual violence. Three lesbian participants discussed these perceptions of sexual deviance as rendering them vulnerable to experiences of sexual victimization: straight young men treated them as “sex objects” (Brit), trying to sleep with them as a way to win social standing or as a threat to turn them straight. Two participants described coping with these experiences by self-silencing as they struggled to make sense of violations and hold onto these relationships (Tolman 2002). Morgan narrated her experiences with her male friends trying to sleep with her. They have a running competition of who can sleep with the most “types of women” and she is “up for grabs as the token lesbian.”

One time this lack of respect resulted in Morgan’s friend engaging in an unwanted sexual advance and “feeling her up.”

I felt very uncomfortable… but I didn’t say anything. And I felt violated and… ick it just was creepy. I feel like my guy friends don’t respect my sexuality enough to know that would make me uncomfortable. Granted he did apologize… it just was… that you don’t respect what I told you and feel the need to advance because that’s what you want to do. But I didn’t say anything. I confided in someone about it and they told me like how to proceed and move forward… They told me basically to address the issue with him so it wouldn’t be weird between the two of us because… it was. And that’s what I did. We fixed it although it was like a couple of weeks where I didn’t really want to be around him. (Morgan)

In relaying this story, she is clear on her feelings about this experience as a violation and yet she has difficulty holding onto this knowledge because she is pressured to make excuses for him. She attempts to take care of herself by seeking support from a friend, but this is a failed strategy; instead of validating her experience of being “violated,” she is pressured to make amends. Morgan turns to questioning herself and why she did not speak up: “I wanted to verbally tell him to get off of me… and that just didn’t happen. I don’t know why because I am very good at voicing how things make me feel and in that moment I wasn’t.” She feels frustrated with her inability to find her “voice” in this situation. As she struggles to make sense of the encounter, she begins excusing his behavior, asserting that “he’s not like a violent or aggressive person” to rationalize her need to “rectify the situation” for him and her friends despite her anger and discomfort. She is pressured to normalize aggressive male (hetero)sexuality; his needs and perspective are placed above hers and her experience is minimized so that things “wouldn’t be weird” for him (Rich 1980). In these contexts of young men imposing heterosexuality on young women’s (queer) desires and bodies, participants sometimes contained their own voices and desires as a survival strategy, albeit one with a host of potential negative consequences (Brown and Gilligan 1992).

“You’re Not Gonna Manipulate Me”: Speaking Back in Relationships

Some girls (sometimes) chose to cut off relationships to prevent experiencing these forms of sexual objectification and the undermining of their identities, particularly from straight young men (n = 5). They took pleasure in speaking back and resisting, but their narratives also highlight the psychological costs of constant vigilance. Tee tells me about the repetition of boys and men in her life who have tried to “come onto” her. She understands these experiences as about policing her sexual identity, and she protects herself by limiting contact with male peers and friends.

These guys will try to speak to me on Facebook or in my inbox and um I’m like, “No I have a girlfriend” or “No, I’m gay” and they’d be like, “Well you just haven’t had the right dick.” I’m like, “It has nothing to do with it, trust me. It’s just you.” [laughs]… yeah like some of the people that know I’m gay, they try to hit on me… So my boundaries towards men are much bigger than they were before. Like with a male friend I would hug him like forward, full-on. Now I just hug him on the side, like “No, cuz you’re not gonna get that close to me. I don’t know what you’re trying to do.” (Tee)

She does not question herself and instead puts up firm “boundaries,” telling these boys “no,” and blocking them from communicating with her. She sees that their intent is to violate her boundaries as a lesbian woman who is not abiding by the rules of femininity and submission to men. She takes pleasure in recounting her resistance to these violations, and this critical resistance may be a strength guiding her toward only those relationships she can trust; yet it also comes with fears and feels like a “burden” (Tee).

All bisexual participants also spoke about maintaining active boundaries with straight young men who did not take seriously same-sex relationships between young women or bisexuality as a sexual identity; instead they sexualized them as about male pleasure, projecting fantasies of threesomes and hypersexuality (Chmielewski and Yost 2013). Participants were firm in their convictions that these beliefs were sexist, and they did not tolerate or internalize them, but fears of being sexualized in these ways permeated their dating relationships and desires. Lizbeth-Goying actively chose to only date young women or bisexual young men as a result. Michele and Amanda did date straight young men but described needing to be protective of themselves and their desires.

Amanda described herself as always on the defensive because young men make assumptions about her being more sexual and “slutty.” She tells me about a time when she ended a relationship with a young man because he was trying to push her into being sexual with him.

He got really mad and… he used a line on me saying that I was acting different towards him and I used that line straight back on him [laughs]! Like it wasn’t me, it was you the whole time! Like anytime I would push away being alone with him romantically, he wouldn’t like it… so when I feel like I’m being manipulated I will stop talking to you cuz like I refuse to be like manipulated… I don’t like feeling like I have to change who I am to appease someone else. (Amanda)

This young man tried to make Amanda question herself and pressure her into making a sexual decision about which she was not comfortable. She recognizes that he is sexualizing her as a bisexual Latina, and she resists, taking pleasure in reclaiming power as she recounts how she “used that line straight back at him! It was [him].” She does not self-objectify or “appease” him, but she is always on the defensive. She fears that young men just want to use her; she refuses to let them “manipulate” her or make her feel badly about her body or feelings. Participants, like many straight young women, had difficulty trusting young men’s intents in friendships and romantic relationships (Tolman 2002); they strategically navigated this lack of trust by setting up physical and emotional boundaries to protect themselves.

Sexualized Surveillance in School

These forms of sexualization from peers also influenced participants’ experiences within school and had particular implications for their academic engagement and well-being (n = 7). Young women described particular struggles with sexual objectification in school and their academic lives, highlighting the ways in which compulsory heterosexuality operates within school. Young women described feeling under a sexualized surveillance from peers and school staff who would watch over their sexual and/or affectionate displays, as well as harass them about their sexual desires and identities. Some young women also reported being disciplined by teachers and staff in attempts to control their desire and resistance (Snapp et al. 2015). Participants expressed feelings of depression, isolation, and discomfort expressing their sexuality, as well as negative academic well-being as they struggled in unsupportive schools (Wortham 2006).

“I’m under a Microscope”: Sexualization of Same-Sex Desire

Seven participants discussed feeling uncomfortable in school because they were sexualized by peers and/or teachers. Many felt like Othered spectacles, caught between multiple stereotypes of female sexualities (i.e., lesbian and bisexual desires as sexualized and/or deviant; heterosexual behavior as victimization for young women) intersecting with race and racism. Participants experienced emotional isolation as a result, struggling with how to express their desire in the context of others’ hyper-surveillance.

Michele reported she feels she has to “be a certain way or hide” because teachers seem very interested in, and controlling of, her sexuality:

Sometimes I might have to be a certain way or I have to hide it. For example, last year when I kissed [my girlfriend] in the hallway, the teachers looked at me some type of way, like, Oh my god she kissed a girl. And I’m like, this is not Katy Perry [a pop singer with the hit song, “I kissed a girl”]. This is not broadcasting this, it’s just who I am… A teacher actually asked me, “Does your mom know?”… I feel like I can’t be open. (Michele)

After openly expressing her desire and affection for her girlfriend in school, Michele feels her teachers gazing upon her in shock, like “Oh my god she kissed a girl.” She does not share how she reacted to this situation at the time but she seems to assert now that these teachers need to get over their reactions, “it’s just who [she] is,” and she is not a spectacle, not “Katy Perry” kissing a girl for sexual attention. At the same time, as a Black bisexual young woman in a school with teachers worried about pregnancy, Michele’s desire for men is also policed in racialized and classed ways.

I got in trouble for kissing my boyfriend in the hall. They [said] something to me, like, “you shouldn’t be kissing him in the hallway.” It’s that whole sexist thing cuz just cuz I can’t get pregnant by a chick, but you’re gonna come to me about a guy cuz you think I can get pregnant by him? They’re all basically “Oh we don’t want you to get pregnant.” (Michele)

She has to navigate not only her teachers sexualizing her same-sex desire, but also policing her desire for young men because she “can get pregnant.” As a bisexual young Black woman, her sexuality is seen as excessive (McClelland and Fine 2008) in either scenario. Michele critiques their interest and involvement in her sex life at school, but is left unsure of how to deal with this. She feels like she “can’t be open” because she does not want to “be judged.” She experiences tension because she is unable to escape multiple, externally imposed definitions of, and expectations for, her sexuality.

Other participants expressed more emotional and academic isolation as they struggled with how open they could be about their sexuality in these contexts. Brit, for instance, also feels like she needs to hide her sexuality and feels “uncomfortable in school” where students “view girls who like girls as sex objects.” Although she is looking forward to moving on to college, she fears that in this new environment she will face abjection due to her race. She has heard from a friend in college:

…being African American in college upstate, there’s a lot of racism that she deals with and I don’t want to deal with that. Stuff like that makes me think umm… it makes you think that you know, you’ll want to stay to the place that you’re in. Like go to community college instead of going all the way upstate. I don’t want go there and deal with people being… racist… I don’t know. I asked her about sexuality and stuff. She said that people don’t really care about that there. (Brit)

Brit has a depressed and somewhat hopeless tone as she tells me that she asked her friend about college in terms of “sexuality and stuff,” having looked toward a future where she will not feel so isolated and sexualized. Caught between the alienation of now and the anticipation of rejection in the future, she hears that “people don’t really care about” sexuality in college but she “[doesn’t] want to go there and deal with people being racist.” “It makes [her] think” she should “stay to the place” she’s in and go to community college with other young People of Color rather than face a different form of objectification. She feels as though she must choose between being seen as a “sex object” due to her sexuality or experiencing racism in a White college setting; educational options and emotional/relational well-being feel stymied with either choice.

Disciplined Desires: Resisting Sexualized Control

Some participants described negotiating more overt forms of policing from their peers and teachers who enacted explicit disapproval of their sexualities in sexualized and racialized ways (n = 4). Participants’ responses to policing in these narratives illuminate the emotional and academic dilemmas young women may face in navigating strategies of resistance in these contexts of compulsory heterosexuality and heightened surveillance, particularly in relation to exclusionary discipline practices that disproportionately affect LGBTQ Adolescents of Color (Chmielewski et al. 2016). Tee had a complex understanding that in her experiences of harassment, she was being sexually denigrated as a result of being Black, lesbian, and female.

She says that one year:

I was suspended about four times [laughs] and in detention a couple times… people would call me like “Fat bitch” or one of them called me a gay ass… yeah, “you Black gay bitch” like stupid things so I used to fight all the time. Instead of arguing I would just punch you in your mouth and we gonna keep it like that cuz I don’t got time to sit here and argue with you. (Tee)

Students called her a “Black gay bitch,” simultaneously a denigration of women, Blackness, and her queerness. She resists this objectification by fighting back physically because she refuses to take responsibility for educating their ignorance; she doesn’t have “time to sit and argue” and she does not receive assistance in school. Her survival strategy for resistance (Robinson and Ward 1991) is to resist loudly and fight back. She is the only participant to report doing so, and her narrative indicates why this is perhaps an ineffective strategy within the limited choices she has. She takes pleasure in reclaiming power in these situations, having the strength to “punch” them back, yet she is met with suspensions and detentions.

Other young women chose a different resistance strategy—disengaging from school and holding onto their anger in silence where it sometimes caused confusion, turned to depression or provided fuel to push through hostile environments. Ell, for instance, struggled with sexualized control from teachers, but she then utilized it as motivation to fight the stereotypes they had about her. Male teachers in particular questioned the authenticity of her sexuality:

When he found out I was gay he would be saying like weird comments like… it was really weird… like I couldn’t sit with certain girls because he thought we were dating or something. The gay girls I wanted to hang out with, he wouldn’t let me hang out with them cuz he didn’t want us to be gay together. And he would just say like… weird things like, “You don’t know what it is to be with a guy yet cuz you’re still young.” I was confused. I felt like something was wrong with me. With teachers, they were like, you know, authority and you’re younger, like if they feel this way it must be true. So, at first I used to think about it. But then I was just like, they don’t know nothing. (Ell)

This teacher attempts to contain her sexuality in sexualized ways, telling her, she doesn’t “know what it is to be with a guy yet” because she is “young.” He takes a perverse interest in her sexuality and acts to isolate her, to keep her from being lesbian and connecting with other young women. She recognizes his surveillance was inappropriate as she struggles to make sense of it now, repeatedly describing it as “weird, ” but “at first” she was “confused” and “used to think” that he was right because he was an “authority” figure. Once she became clear that this teacher “didn’t know nothing,” she struggled to navigate this hostile terrain.

This realization made her feel like:

My teachers—I honestly think they were always trying—like out to get me. Cuz what the heck was that about? I just did what I had to do to get out, to finish school. But as far as them [her teachers], I had no regards as to who they were. Like I did my work and that was it. It was really difficult. (Ell)

In her critical awareness of this sexualized control by her teachers, she asks “what the heck was that about?” and determines that they are “out to get [her].” She is isolated and outraged, feeling that her only recourse is to disengage from these toxic relationships, to have “no regards” for her teachers but to do “what [she] had to do to… finish school.” She is determined to finish despite how “difficult” it is to persevere through her work in such a hostile environment.

She explains,

I’m a minority, I grew up in like South Bronx like lesbian—the stereotypical thing is I’m gonna be like pregnant at 15 years old and not finish high school. And so you have to like push past that and like do what you gotta do… you need to like show the world that people can do it. (Ell)

When Ell is policed by these teachers in these disturbing ways, she has an insightful critique of their behaviors as stemming from a larger cultural stereotype, or controlling image (Collins 2004), based in denigrating her gender, sexuality, and ethnicity—that she will “be pregnant at 15 and not finish high school.” She describes part of her need to “do what she had to do to finish school” as a way to distance herself from this stereotype that follows her and “show the world [and these teachers] that [she] can” succeed. She sees herself as a part of a larger community of racial/ethnic minority lesbians who have resisted and “fought hard for our rights” and must continue to work hard in the face of racialized and sexualized objectification. Yet, she receives no collective reinforcement of her efforts. It is “really difficult” and emotionally isolating as she works “to push past” and “show the world that people can do it.”

Street Harassment and Violence

Finally, all participants described experiencing sexual harassment and threats of sexual violence as queer young Women of Color when they were out in public in the city. Like straight Girls and Women of Color, they described sexualized looks and cat-calls from straight men (Miller 2008; Watson et al. 2012), but these were intensified when they were with their girlfriends; participants interpreted these experiences as based in a sexualization of same-sex desire specifically. They questioned and critiqued the ways in which men tried to make them feel that their relationships were illegitimate and that their bodies and desires existed for the pleasure of men. Yet they were forced to navigate how their desires were embodied in visible relationships with young women. They struggled between a need to engage in self-surveillance and a desire to resist and fight back in potentially dangerous contexts where they experienced a lack of state protection.

“Covering Up”: Navigating Sexual Harassment through Body Management

In their stories of sexual harassment, seven participants described that they often engaged in self-surveillance, monitoring their own bodies and behaviors when they were with girlfriends in public so as to avoid harassment. They did not engage in self-objectification (Fredrickson and Roberts 1997) in terms of worrying about how attractive they looked in these situations; several participants explicitly reported feelings of body confidence despite disliking cat-calls: “I actually really love my body. I just don’t like being harassed while walking down the street” (Morgan). However, they did discuss making concerted efforts about what they wore and how they acted when they were with girlfriends to prevent men from harassing them.

Several participants reported needing to present as more masculine to prevent men from sexually harassing them. If both young women presented as feminine or were wearing “sexy clothing,” they would garner more sexualized attention. For instance, Michele shared that if her girlfriend was “more feminine that day then I’m gonna be more tomboy or something. A little more covered up in certain places… So its like we try to balance what we’re wearing together.” Similarly, Kim would “wear [her] hat kinda low so that people couldn’t really tell” that she was female when she was with her girlfriend. Young women thus utilized traditional masculinity as a source of power and protection within and against the traditional gender norms and compulsory heterosexuality that oppressed them (Rich 1980).

This need for strategizing was difficult for participants’ relationships and psychological comfort in public space. Lizbeth-Goying described that for her ex-girlfriend and her, these experiences had been an “expected part of [their] lives” and they “would prepare for dealing with harassment” on a daily basis, like discussing how to respond before going out, minimizing intimate contact in public, and wearing headphones so that they could more easily ignore men. She said that it was “stressful” needing to “always think about these things.” In the face of limited and poor choices for navigating harassment from men without support or protection, participants sometimes turned to containing their bodies and relationships in public.

The Dangers of “Flipping Out”: Managing Resistance to Sexual Harassment

Four participants narrated a commitment to responding to sexual harassment when they could and taking pleasure in these political acts. Yet they knew that stares or sexually harassing comments could turn into sexual violence. Objectifying experiences of sexual harassment and violence were not only experienced as a policing of young women’s queer identities and bodies, but were heightened by feelings of a lack of security and protection as young Women of Color (Miller 2008). Tee connected these struggles to systemic violence, speaking about the dangers of individually navigating resistance to the sexualized policing of her desires. She has to balance “fighting back” against the injustice she feels with the dangers of violence. She understands her responses to these violations as a political act of resistance because men “need to know it’s not okay.”

The narrative she shares here happened when she was on the subway with her girlfriend. A man is making sexual comments to them and she refuses to contain her voice:

I was like, “creep!” I said “Babe, let’s go, like he’s a creep.” And I made sure he heard me… So then like I’m sitting there holding her hand and he’s looking at us and we’re talking blah blah blah and he keeps looking so then I just was like, “Listen”—I said, “Is there a reason that you’re staring?” and he’s like, “How you know I was staring unless you was looking at me?” I said, “I feel you” [laughs]. I said, “I feel your eyes piercing into my soul [laughs] sir. You was looking at me.” I was like, “I’m starting to feel uncomfortable, I’m not liking it and I would appreciate you stop looking at me and my girlfriend.” Then he’s like, “Oh I’m sorry I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable.” Yeah you do, because you keep doing it! But I just—that’s when I like—I don’t want to give them any reason to like harass me. I have to choose my battles wisely. (Tee)

Tee’s story relays a refusal to objectify herself or accept his gaze in this encounter. She speaks back to this man, calling him a “creep,” and she makes sure that he hears her by challenging him directly, refusing his excuse (“how do you know if you’re not looking at me”) with her embodied experience of “feeling” “his eyes piercing… [her] soul.” She refuses to perform under his gaze or police her expressions of affection with her girlfriend. But she understands that there is always a threat of physical danger. She has to “choose [her] battles wisely” so she does not “get into trouble.”

She has gotten into physical altercations with men before and she tells me about one experience in which she spoke up to a Black man who was sexually harassing her girlfriend. He attacked her, molesting and hitting her until a White man stepped in to help her.

I’m not trying to sound racist or anything but you know it’s an African American guy that’s doing this to me. You know how Black females are being treated. But this white guy just came out of nowhere and like you know he’s protecting me you understand? When something happens to um someone who’s Caucasian, the cops are called quicker but when it comes to African Americans they take their time. If the guy who violated me was white and I put my hands on him… you know it may be portrayed that I assaulted this guy… So I was like glad that this white guy sees this and he did something about it and like was protecting me so I felt kinda good, like that’s another step towards change. (Tee)

The dynamics of this story are racially charged and complex. She recognizes the potential both for internalized racism at play for him, as well as how, as a young Black woman, she faces disproportionate levels of individual and state violence. She observes that “this white guy sees this…and did something about it…he was protecting me.” She recognizes this as “a step towards change.” In her gratefulness, I hear that as a young Black woman, she is not afforded the luxury of protection from White men or others (Collins 2004). Cops “take their time” “when it comes to [responding to] African Americans”; she cannot rely on them. Young women had difficulty navigating the surveillance of their desires and the limited choices they saw available for self-protection and resistance.

Discussion

According to objectification theory, by virtue of being female in a patriarchal culture, girls and women experience a multitude of sexually objectifying experiences from sexual looks to harassment to rape on a daily basis (Fredrickson and Roberts 1997). The present study sought to understand the particular experiences and implications of sexual objectification in the lives of lesbian and bisexual young Women of Color. Using a narrative analysis allowed me to explore the complex ways in which young women are affected by, critique, and resist sexual objectification within intersecting systems of oppression across multiple contexts.

My findings highlight the importance of understanding sexual objectification as informed not only by gender but also by sexuality and race/ethnicity, as well as on several levels: social, institutional, and in public spaces. These young women become “objects” of fantasy, desire, repulsion, and projection at the dangerous intersection in which queer Women of Color survive. In relationships, participants struggled as they navigated stereotypes of hypersexuality and sexual availability to young men. They described tensions between self-silencing in order to avoid conflict with peers who sexualized them and remaining hyper-vigilant to avoid being victimized. Young women in same-sex relationships described their relationships as fulfilling and meaningful, but also recognized that these relationships rendered them vulnerable to sexual harassment. Researchers should investigate how these dynamics impact young women’s emotional and sexual well-being and development.

In school and in public, participants reported emotional and material consequences of sexualization as queer young Women of Color. Although all participants reported that they refused to self-objectify or remain silent in many cases of sexual harassment, they also described needing to monitor their feelings when fighting back was dangerous. Research with Black women has found that they report experiences of sexual harassment from police and a lack of trust (Brunson and Miller 2006). These considerations were often present in participants’ negotiations of objectification, particularly when they were with their girlfriends. They faced multiple layers of vulnerability as they navigated self-protection while fighting back against the dangers of racial, sexual, and gendered violence.

In school, participants spoke of a compulsory heterosexuality, where young women were literally and metaphorically disciplined for, and cut off from, same-sex desires and connections by peers as well as by teachers. A growing body of research suggests that queer young Women of Color are disproportionately disciplined and harassed in school (Chmielewski et al. 2016). Sexualization was connected to academic consequences of discipline and disengagement. In some cases then, sexualization may also prevent young women from being open about their desires in order to protect themselves against racialized and heterosexist assumptions of hypersexuality and sexual harassment (Thompson 2013). Yet, even as some participants hid their desires in some contexts, they resisted in others.

Extant literature on young women’s experiences of objectification has explored the active ways girls and women cope with objectification. Participants in the present study narrated a critical consciousness of the ways in which sexual objectification operated. They highlight the importance of exploring young women’s positive marginality (Hall and Fine 2005). Participants did not simply internalize or reject experiences of sexual objectification but rather developed insightful critiques and ways to navigate it in difficult ways. Yet they were forced to engage individually, with little support and collective reinforcement to social problems not of their own making. It is particularly troubling that these young people believe they can rarely rely on adults (e.g., teachers or police) to protect them.

Limitations and Future Directions

To my knowledge, mine is the first study to qualitatively examine sexual objectification experiences for lesbian and bisexual young Women of Color . However, there are limitations to my research. Given the qualitative nature of my study and the small sample size, results may not generalize to other lesbian and bisexual young Women of Color. In particular, participants were all 16–19 year-old women who attended public high schools in a large urban city. It is unclear how other young women may have narrated their experiences. Future research should examine possible differences in young women’s experiences based on sexual orientation and race/ethnicity. Research should also consider other identities as well, including gender expression, dis/ability, age, and class.

My identities as a White, bisexual 27-year-old woman also likely have important implications for how participants may have felt speaking with me about their experiences, as well as how I understood their experiences. Participants may not have felt comfortable discussing race as openly with me as they might with a Woman of Color. I was, however, able to draw on my own experiences to understand their meanings. I heard similarities in struggles of questioning same-sex desires, isolation in the process, the pleasure and power of “speaking back,” as well as the feelings of fear and vulnerability in experiences of sexual harassment and unwanted sexual advances. Future research could more explicitly ask participants to draw on their multiple identities in understanding experiences of sexual objectification.

Additional areas for future research include a deeper examination of the contexts in which sexual objectification occurs at the intersection of multiple identities, as well as how objectification is tied to institutional systems such as schools, policing, and the criminal justice system (Brunson and Miller 2006). All girls and women (and some men) experience sexual objectification, and all girls and women modulate their bodies and sexualities within social contexts of objectification, but objectification has particular stakes for different girls’ and women’s bodies. These stakes should be acknowledged and further explored within the larger cultural system of objectification. Objectification was not simply related to young women becoming estranged from their bodies and desires, but from interpersonal relationships, their academic environments, and trust in the state for protection. However, participants had a critical consciousness of the ways in which they were policed in racialized, gendered, and heterosexist ways. Thus, research should also explore the potentials for critical consciousness and activist development in young women’s navigations of oppression, including sexual objectification.

Practice Implications

Despite the limitations of my study, the findings hold a number of practical implications. Therapists should consider the variety of ways girls and young women encounter sexual objectification in their daily lives, as well as the ways in which different young women may be uniquely impacted by these experiences based on their racial/ethnic, gender, and sexual identities. For instance, participants in the present study did not discuss issues of body image and eating disorders, on which research has traditionally focused (Moradi and Huang 2008; Szymanski et al. 2010). Rather, they did discuss implications of sexual objectification for their sexual identity development, academic engagement, physical safety, and emotional well-being in relationships.

Young women’s narratives also suggest that they are in need of social supports in which they can connect with other young women and mentors and engage in collective action. Several participants navigated speaking and fighting back against sexual harassment and violence (from men, teachers, peers) skillfully, but they did so without support, often at risk to themselves. Therapists and others working with young women should foster critical consciousness, helping young women understand how their experiences with sexual objectification may be rooted in sexism, racism, and heterosexism, and they should help connect young women to relevant resources, social organizations, and activist groups. Organizations such as Hollaback! ( 2017), for instance, serve to educate the public and engage diverse girls, women, and men in taking stands against street harassment—transforming individual women’s experiences into collective action. These kinds of groups should consider the ways in which racism and heterosexism converge with sexism to render some young women particularly at risk in terms of physical safety and from the criminal justice system. In terms of engaging queer young Women of Color (and all young women) in collective action around sexual objectification, girl-led, intergenerational activist groups may be particularly effective. These forms of activism can be beneficial for feelings of agency and also work to challenge the oppressive social structures that inform objectification in young women’s lives (Brown 2016).

My findings also suggest that schools must take actions to create more inclusive and supportive spaces for students, particularly queer young Women of Color who may experience the brunt of sexualized surveillance from peers and school staff. Students, as well as educators and staff, need education around diverse identities and issues of oppression, particularly related to racial/ethnic, sexual, and gender identities. Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs), although positive for many LGBTQ students, often do not address the multiplicity of identities and oppressions that young queer women experience, nor do they transform school cultures of racialized and sexualized compulsory heterosexuality (Chmielewski et al. 2016). Trainings and interventions should address experiences of sexualized harassment at the intersection of gender, sexuality, and race, as well as how to support (rather than discipline) young women when they face sexual objectification in school.

Conclusions

Sexual objectification is a relational process that functions to police girls’ and women’s bodies and desires and keep them in line within a patriarchal culture (Fredrickson and Roberts 1997). All women experience these dynamics of objectification but they fall on, and have particular stakes for, different girls and women based on race, class, sexuality, gender, age, and ability status (Collins 2004). My study sought to understand the particular implications of sexual objectification for young queer Women of Color—young women whose bodies and desires are always considered out of line (McClelland and Fine 2008). Young women in my study negotiated stereotypes of hypersexuality, loud Black girls, fears of school suspension and male violence, and disrespect and lack of support from educators, yet they spoke back, refusing the sexualized surveillance they were under. My findings highlight the importance of attention to social, political, and historical contexts, as well as intersections of identity and oppressions in understanding the unique forms that sexual objectification takes, its psychological and material impacts on young women’s lives, and how young women are fighting against it.