Abstract
Middle-class youngsters in Dhaka, the quickly developing capital of Bangladesh, are facing contradictory demands. On the one hand they live in a patriarchal society marked by gender inequality expressed in gender segregation, sexual purity, sexual harassment of women and a focus on the male breadwinner. On the other hand, profiting from economic developments and schooling, they have the financial and intellectual resources to explore new spaces and to buy the appliances that can connect them with the views and images of the whole world, including those on gender and sexuality. In this thesis, adolescent sexuality of middle-class girls and boys is explored from their own perspective, and it is studied how these young people navigate in this situation of conflicting demands at home, at school, in Love Lane and on the Internet. The research sheds light on how their concerns diverge from the usual focus on 'dangers' in scholarly depictions of sexual and reproductive health issues. It challenges the traditional binary view that conceives of adolescents as either passively reproducing or deliberately transgressing dominant norms. Instead, their negotiations of sexuality and gender are intricately tied to their aspirations for modernity and cosmopolitanism, as well as their desire to attain a respectful middle-class standing within their families, peer groups, and society at large. For practitioners and policymakers in the field of sexual and reproductive rights within the country, adopting an emic perspective can prove valuable in understanding the complexities of adolescent everyday experiences and concerns of sexuality, gender and belonging.
