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"If You Loved Me, You'd Sleep with Me" : Constructions of Sexual Consent in 1970s 'Dolly' Magazine
2023
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Lilith , January no. 29 2023; (p. 11-30)'This article examines the teenage experience of negotiating non-consensual sex as represented in 'Dolly' magazine in the 1970s. While advice columns in teen magazines were often seen to be providers of crucial information on sex, discussions on consent were rudimentary and lacked nuance as social and legal understandings of sexual violence were shifting. Using 'Dolly's' popular advice columns on sex and sexuality - 'Dolly Doctor' and 'What Should I Do?' - alongside feature articles from the 1970s, this research argues that non-consensual sex was constructed in ways that reinforced harmful understandings of perpetrators and victims. Perpetrators were imagined only as strangers who inflicted physical violence while committing rape, and victims could only be innocent girls who did not engage in sexual behaviours at all. When young women wrote in seeking advice from 'Dolly', non-consensual experiences were described by the reader but they were not deemed as such by the authoritative advice columnists. Instead, advice columnists engaged victim-blaming rhetoric and rarely acknowledged sexually coercive incidents within teenage relationships. There was considerable slippage at this time between notions of awkward teenage fumbling and coerced sex. Where previous research has examined women and children's experiences at this time, this article seeks to redress the gap in research on adolescent relationships, demonstrating that these nascent notions of consent from the 1970s permeated teenage lives too.' (Publication abstract)
-
"If You Loved Me, You'd Sleep with Me" : Constructions of Sexual Consent in 1970s 'Dolly' Magazine
2023
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Lilith , January no. 29 2023; (p. 11-30)'This article examines the teenage experience of negotiating non-consensual sex as represented in 'Dolly' magazine in the 1970s. While advice columns in teen magazines were often seen to be providers of crucial information on sex, discussions on consent were rudimentary and lacked nuance as social and legal understandings of sexual violence were shifting. Using 'Dolly's' popular advice columns on sex and sexuality - 'Dolly Doctor' and 'What Should I Do?' - alongside feature articles from the 1970s, this research argues that non-consensual sex was constructed in ways that reinforced harmful understandings of perpetrators and victims. Perpetrators were imagined only as strangers who inflicted physical violence while committing rape, and victims could only be innocent girls who did not engage in sexual behaviours at all. When young women wrote in seeking advice from 'Dolly', non-consensual experiences were described by the reader but they were not deemed as such by the authoritative advice columnists. Instead, advice columnists engaged victim-blaming rhetoric and rarely acknowledged sexually coercive incidents within teenage relationships. There was considerable slippage at this time between notions of awkward teenage fumbling and coerced sex. Where previous research has examined women and children's experiences at this time, this article seeks to redress the gap in research on adolescent relationships, demonstrating that these nascent notions of consent from the 1970s permeated teenage lives too.' (Publication abstract)
