Feminist Approaches to Youth Sexualities

Anonymised transcript of an interview with Dawn, who is completing her GCSE's and would like to go on to do community care at college. An only child, she lives at home with her mum and stepdad, who are quite strict and overprotective. Both parents are unemployed. She has plans to move out with her best friend, but would like to stay close to her family. Dawn has had one serious boyfriend, though the relationship only lasted a few weeks. This is the first person she had sexual intercourse with, mostly because she was 'curious', but she had been worried about getting a 'reputation', and had had other sexual relationships in the past. He broke up with her shortly afterwards which made her feel a bit used - she thinks everybody is only after one thing. They were both happy to use a condom, but Dawn made her friend go and buy the condoms for her. Condom use was largely to prevent pregnancy, rather than any worries around AIDS. She had seen AIDS campaigning on TV and found this 'interesting, helpful'. She didn't get much sex education at school, and learnt about contraception through reading leaflets at the doctors.

Title	Interview with Dawn, 16 - 17, White British, working class, Protestant. Women, Risk and AIDS Project, Manchester, 1989. Anonymised version including fieldnotes (Ref: MBS15)
Description	Anonymised transcript of an interview with Dawn, who is completing her GCSE's and would like to go on to do community care at college. An only child, she lives at home with her mum and stepdad, who are quite strict and overprotective. Both parents are unemployed. She has plans to move out with her best friend, but would like to stay close to her family. Dawn has had one serious boyfriend, though the relationship only lasted a few weeks. This is the first person she had sexual intercourse with, mostly because she was 'curious', but she had been worried about getting a 'reputation', and had had other sexual relationships in the past. He broke up with her shortly afterwards which made her feel a bit used - she thinks everybody is only after one thing. They were both happy to use a condom, but Dawn made her friend go and buy the condoms for her. Condom use was largely to prevent pregnancy, rather than any worries around AIDS. She had seen AIDS campaigning on TV and found this 'interesting, helpful'. She didn't get much sex education at school, and learnt about contraception through reading leaflets at the doctors.
Identifier	MBS15/O
Subject	Aspirations Family life Parental attitude First sex Relationships Condom use Sex Education AIDS disease White British Working class Protestantism.
Date	26/04/1989
Creator	Women, Risk and Aids Project (WRAP, 1989-90)
Publisher	The Reanimating Data Project
Type	Text
Temporal Coverage	1989
Spatial Coverage	Greater Manchester, UK
Rights	CC BY-NC 4.0

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