ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses young people’s attributions of blame and responsibility for harmful youth sexting practices. Taken-for-granted notions of risk and harm, combined with a delegitimisation of and denial of rights to sexual and bodily expression underpinned victim blaming, social shaming and bullying of exposed sexters. The chapter explores how some of the young people positioned themselves in terms of these narratives. Some of the girls, variously, internalised and resisted social shaming and blaming processes. Some sought to carve out space for meaningful sexual and bodily expression within and despite narratives of risk and shame. Regardless, however, a lack of critical consciousness on the part of young people meant that the wider systems of sexism and inequality that underpin taken-for-granted constructions of risk and harm meant that the status quo ultimately prevailed. Addressing both interpersonal and sociocultural harms requires challenging young people’s individualistic orientations to risk management and empowering them to recognise the socially contingent landscape of risk in which they all, as bystanders or ‘the audience’, play a part.
