“Dude, Come On, Like, Let’s Just Do the Thing”: Men’s and Women’s Navigations of Sexual Communication and Sexual Consent in Australia

Introduction: Notions of effective sexual communication and consent have shifted towards an enthusiastic consent framework. This study explored how young cisgender heterosexual men and women apply these concepts in casual sexual encounters.

Methods: Six single-gender and mixed gender focus groups of 44 participants were conducted with young cisgender heterosexual men and women living in Australia in 2021. Participants were asked about their dating and sexual practices, as well as their understanding and navigation of sexual communication and sexual consent practices using vignette methodologies. Findings were analysed using interpretive phenomenological analysis techniques.

Results: The findings highlight tensions between how participants understand what constitutes good practices of sexual communication and consent, and how they expected characters in the vignettes, or themselves, to engage in similar scenarios. These involved (1) gendered power dynamics in sexual encounters; (2) the need for context in universal assumptions; and (3) differences between expectations and personal actions in similar scenarios.

Conclusions: The participants express a high degree of knowledge of what constitutes best practice for sexual communication and sexual consent. However, such knowledge is not necessarily engaged in their lived experiences of sex for a variety of reasons.

Policy Implications: While current educational and health promotion methods for topics such as sexual communication and consent are valuable, they may be limited in efficacy. Sexual encounters are often complex, and are influenced by culture, religion, and various emotions. Decision-making in such situations involves known and unknown variables. A deeper understanding of these processes is needed to develop more nuanced resources.