Paper short abstract:

Our research presents the sexual initiation of young girls living in a countryside town of Amazonas state, in Brazil, and discusses gender, sexuality and sexual abuse.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper we present the research carried out in the municipality of Presidente Figueiredo, a countryside town in Amazonas (Brazil) about the sexual initiation of young girls who graduated from a public educational institution, which offers professional education integrated with secondary education. The research was developed with girls who are currently over 18 years old, who had graduated from the institution, with the aim of understanding how they describe their first sexual experiences, their affections and their role in these experiences. There were several stories in which young women participating in the research experienced sexual abuse in childhood and adolescence, as well as situations in which their first sexual relationship occurred with a teacher, emphasizing the relationship of hierarchical inequality between those involved, which made it difficult for the researchers to work, because it was an ethical issue about reporting the teacher, since sex with minors under 14 is, by law, presumed rape. However, what caught our attention the most was how young women dissociate situations of sexual abuse from consensual sexual initiation. By broadening our view of sexual initiation to the processes involved until the culmination of sex, we realize that several situations that precede sexual interaction are abusive but ignored or naturalized and when talking about sex, gender, affections and choices, girls disconnect sex by their own choice due to the abuse they suffered during their lives. And in this context, sex with a teacher is described as a personal choice.