”VILL JAG HA SEX ELLER SKADA MIG SJÄLV?” En internetstudie kring konstruktioner av sex som självskadebeteende

Abstract

The purpose of our study was to examine the construction of sex as self-injury on the Swedish internetforum Familjeliv. The construction has been analysed in terms of how discourses influence the construction of sex as self-injury. We have utilised Michel Foucault’s development of social constructivism, and a constructivist perspective on sexuality to obtain a deeper understanding of our empirical material. The analysis was done via a qualitative method and using a content analysis of our collected data. The collected data consisted of four discussion threads with 75 posts in total. Our main findings were that whether a specific sexual act is socially acceptable or not depended on the context. Our results show that the underlying motive is of importance when determining whether a sexual act can be classified as self-injury. We could conclude that both identified discourses, the mental health-discourse and the sexuality-discourse, have an impact on the construction of sex as self-injury and thereby affect social work.