In this presentation, we draw on a number of examples taken from fieldwork over several years and in different projects, in order to explore the formation of young people's sexual identities. We argue that young people produce themselves as gendered and sexualized actors in and through certain key relationships. Their most immediate contexts are the sexual cultures of young people themselves, formed in relation to institutional sites such as schools, commercial popular culture and household and family relations. We suggest that identities are powerfully formed through what R. W. Connell has called "body-reflexive practices" - that is, the circuit of effects between bodily experiences, emotional life and cultural explanations for them. It is important to note, however, that these experiences and understandings are developed in the context of social relations of power. Sexual differences, for example, are always accompanied and mutually shaped by other "differences that make a difference" in people's everyday lives (such as race, gender or embodiment). Immediate, faceto-face interactions are always imbued with larger cultural formations around the sexual, which are reproduced and sometimes changed in such practices as media representation, political and legal processes, the sale and consumption of commodities, education and scientific, professional and expert knowledge. These understandings have considerable implications for professional practices for they indicate that, as practitioners in caring, teaching or medical professions, for instance, we are directly and actively involved in the identity construction of ourselves and our clients, students or patients. We argue that ethical practice with young people in relation to their emergent sexual identities is only achievable when professionals are self-reflective about the limitations of their own horizons and aware of their partiality.
identity; embodiment; body-reflexive practices; young people
