ABSTRACT
For young people around the world, engagement in or disengagement from cultural narratives of masculinity and femininity forms an important backdrop for their own constructions of the meanings of sexuality, sexual behaviour and health risk. Although the emerging literature on young people’s sexualities points towards the importance of social spaces in the development of young people’s sexualities and gender ideologies, remarkably few studies have sought to explore the specific mechanisms through which the social and cultural construction of gender and sexuality might provide a meaningful context for the fuller understanding of their sexual practices and expressions, and gendered, sexual and reproductive health scripts. Hip-hop culture is a key social medium in and through which many young men and women of colour (particularly in the USA, but also increasingly in other societies) construct their gender and sexuality (Kitwana 2002; Collins 2005; Watkins 2005). While it is certainly not the only important medium in this regard, it has nonetheless taken on increasing salience in recent years as it has been taken up and reproduced through the mass communications, fashion and the cultural and entertainment industries. Sexism, homophobia and violence are among the traits commonly associated with hip-hop in the popular media. Thus, it is not surprising to find an emerging research literature that has begun to identify relationships between listening to hip-hop modalities and increments in health risk behaviour among young people (Martino et al. 2006). By way of contrast, some scholars have deconstructed societal beliefs about hip-hop and have pointed out how many of these so-called facts about hip-hop are heavily influenced by the positions of those in social power to make such claims (Rivera 2003). This chapter focuses on the hip-hop club scene with the intention of unpacking narratives of gender from the perspective of young men and women, and exploring how these relate to their sexual experiences. Our approach required ‘listening’ to young people’s perceptions and interpretations of the ways in which the social structures of the hip-hop club scene intersect within the realm of sexual intimacy. Specifically, in this chapter, we will describe how young men and women negotiate gender relations on the dance floor of hip-hop clubs, the boundaries that govern such relations and how these dance encounters translate or not into sexual encounters. To explore these issues, we conducted a three-year ethnographic study (see MuñozLaboy et al. 2007 for information on the research design). The first part of this chapter will focus on the dance floor, gendered courtship, boundaries and transitions to sex. The second part of the chapter will contextualise these findings in relation to broader issues of sexuality, space and health.
