Laina Bay-Cheng
Biographic Data
| ID | 4370489 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Laina Bay-Cheng |
| GIVEN NAMES | Laina |
| FAMILY NAME | Bay-Cheng |
| SIGNATURE | BAY-CHENG L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University at Buffalo, State University of New York |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8965-4398 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 49 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 455 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 49 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Put at and kept from risk
INTRODUCTION: The current study examines Bay-Cheng and Ginn's (2024) claim that marginalized youth confront two intertwined sexual risk dilemmas: being put at risk by unjust social forces and structures that threaten their sexual health and safety; and being kept from risk by those same forces and structures, thus compromising their development and dignity. METHODS: We explored the presence and relevance of these dilemmas using interviews conduct…
Sexual Self-Concept After Child Maltreatment
Emerging adults’ social media engagement & alcohol misuse
Prohibited by Pity
Perceptions of monogamy, nonconsensual nonmonogamy and consensual nonmonogamy at the intersections of race and gender
Given the historical entrenchment of racialised stereotypes of Black women and Black men as sexually promiscuous, we wondered whether consensual nonmonogamy (CNM) among Black partners would be seen as favourably as among white partners. We also wondered if Black participants would perceive different relationship types differently from white participants. We pursued these questions in a vignette study featuring heterosexual couples coded as Black …
Picturing Sexual Agency
Distinctly Neoliberal
At risk and in love
INTRODUCTION: Research indicates that sexual and romantic relationships play an important role in youth well-being and development. This strengths-based perspective sits in tension with the documented risks that youth with histories of maltreatment face in sexual/romantic relationships. We conducted a U.S.-based mixed-method study to examine the connection between childhood maltreatment and youth relationships. METHOD: = 22.51). Qualitative analy…
Between Rights on Paper and Capabilities on the Ground
Critical Feminisms
The Sexual Rights of Others
Advocates argue that sexual safety, access to sexuality-related services, sexual health and well-being, sexual privacy, and sexual autonomy are universal and inalienable rights of all people. However, for those relegated to the social, economic, and political margins, their sexual rights can only be secured with the support of others. In the current study, we examined whether a sample of 307 majoritized women (i.e., white, cisgender, and heterose…
Are My Pants Lowering Your Test Scores? Blaming Girls and Girls' Empowerment for the 'Boy Crisis' in Education
Drawing on participatory research in a high school implementing single-sex classes, this article demonstrates how single-sex education masks racialized economic inequality by framing low academic achievement among low-income youth of color as a function of gender, thereby scapegoating girls for a supposed 'boy crisis' in education. We demonstrate this with data collected by and from students, as well as from educators and parents, delineating how…
Me First
Agency Is Everywhere, but Agency Is Not Enough
Through a conceptual analysis of sexual agency, I consider the limitations and distortions of what we typically recognize as agency and whom we recognize as agents. I argue that the dominant perspective of sexual agency as an outward performance of an internal attribute both: underestimates its presence, blinding us to the many manifestations of agency, including among girls imagined to have none; and overestimates its potency, insinuating that i…
Young Women’s Sexuality in Black and White
Evidence suggests that U.S. attitudes are increasingly accepting of young women's rights to sexual self-expression and activity. However, such support may not be unequivocal or uniformly offered and received. It is especially unclear how the endorsement of young women's sexuality varies by race, both in who holds these supportive views and in who benefits from them. We examined whether appraisals of a hypothetical sexually active young woman woul…
Do I score points if I say “no”?’
Recently #MeToo visualised worldwide the scale of sexual coercion and the connection of sexual coercion to gender norms and power structures. Negotiating sexual interactions with a partner is deeply intimate, yet it is also fundamentally influenced by surrounding social norms. We conducted in-depth interviews with 68 ethnically diverse Dutch young men and women (16–21) about their sexual experiences to understand how norms and values shape their …
Agents, Virgins, Sluts, and Losers
You Learn So Many Things
Many studies document the benefits of positive youth development programs, yet few examine youths’ own understanding of the growth they experience through participation. We conducted a qualitative exploration of 11 youth participants’ impressions of a drama-based sexuality education program and its impact on them. Participants credited the program with increasing their intra- and interpersonal competence. Importantly, several also asserted that m…
What the Future Holds
Hallmarks of emerging adulthood include exploring and envisioning one’s future. However, how one sees the future may vary by social location, particularly at the intersection of gender and socioeconomic status (SES). We compared the perceived importance and likelihood of various future goals across three groups of women aged 18–22: 160 affluent undergraduates, 177 low-SES undergraduates, and 147 low-SES nonstudents. Participants from all three sa…
Who Wears the Pants
Relationships in which power is equally distributed are consistently associated with greater quality (e.g., deeper intimacy, less turmoil, more pleasure), but it can be difficult to strike such a balance. Furthermore, dominant gender scripts and norms are complexly intertwined with power in heterosexual relationships. We studied the joint implications of power and gender for relationship quality using 114 U.S. emerging adults' quantitative and qu…
Yes, But
Reflecting the wide range of consensual unwanted sexual experiences, researchers often have contrasting views of the impact of these incidents on young women. Some scholars support a normalizing view of these as fairly harmless and ordinary aspects of relationships, akin to other forms of willing compromises between partners. Other researchers problematize unwanted sexual experiences, framing them in terms of gender inequalities and detrimental e…
Seeing How Far I’ve Come
The Digital Sexual Life History Calendar (d/SLHC) is a Web-based platform for collecting young adults' sexual histories. In addition to collecting diverse data, the d/SLHC was designed to benefit participants by enabling reflection on their sexual and relationship experiences in the context of other life events and circumstances. In a pilot study of the d/SLHC, survey data were collected to test whether creating a d/SLHC timeline had any impact o…
The Year’s Best
Sexual satisfaction is commonly defined and discussed in physiological terms of arousal and orgasm. Yet this narrow discourse does not accommodate the complex, multidimensional, and interpersonal aspects of sexual experience. To broaden and deepen our understanding of sexual satisfaction, we employed McClelland's (2014) holistic four-factor framework of sexual satisfaction in a theoretical thematic analysis of 39 behaviorally bisexual women's des…
Tracking Homo Oeconomicus
Researchers across the social sciences are beginning to note that neoliberalism’s influence is no longer restricted to macroeconomic and social policies, but can now be detected in individuals’ behaviors, relationships, perceptions, and self-concept. However, psychologists lack a means of assessing neoliberal beliefs directly. We collected data from three samples of U.S. undergraduates to develop and test a measure of neoliberal ideology, the Neo…
The Agency Line
The Making of Unwanted Sex
Building on extant research regarding the role of gendered norms in women's consent to unwanted sex with male partners as well as recent studies of how the sociopolitical discourse of neoliberalism shapes sexuality at the individual level, we conducted a thematic analysis of undergraduate women's (N = 22) descriptions of their experiences of unwanted sex. In accordance with previous research (Gavey, 2005; Martin, 1996; Phillips, 2000; Tolman, 200…
The Agency Line
Recovering Empowerment
Behavioral and Relational Contexts of Adolescent Desire, Wanting, and Pleasure
Studies of adolescent female sexuality often focus on coitus to the exclusion of noncoital behaviors, the relational context of sexual interactions, and adolescent women's subjective perceptions of their experiences. In this study, 38 undergraduate women's retrospective accounts of their adolescent heterosexual experiences were examined. Generalized estimating equation models were used to test the relation of diverse heterosexual behaviors and re…
Feminism Between the Sheets
To better understand the relation of feminist identification to sexuality, we compared the attitudes of feminist, egalitarian, and nonfeminist undergraduate women ( N = 342) in five domains: (a) erotophilia (one's positive affective or evaluative responses to sexual stimuli), (b) sexual assertiveness, (c) perceived self-efficacy for safer sex, (d) sexual satisfaction, and (e) support of the sexual double standard. Significant results of ANOVA ana…
Tracking Homo Oeconomicus
Researchers across the social sciences are beginning to note that neoliberalism’s influence is no longer restricted to macroeconomic and social policies, but can now be detected in individuals’ behaviors, relationships, perceptions, and self-concept. However, psychologists lack a means of assessing neoliberal beliefs directly. We collected data from three samples of U.S. undergraduates to develop and test a measure of neoliberal ideology, the Neo…
Safer, Better Sex Through Feminism
Feminists have argued that traditional gender norms can obstruct women's sexual well-being ( Amaro, 1995 ; Morokoff, 2000 ; Tolman, 2006 ; Walker, 1997 ). Therefore, we expected feminist ideology, by virtue of this critique, to be associated with women's sexual subjectivity and sexual well-being. To test this model, we analyzed data from a survey of college-age women ( N = 424) using structural equation modeling. As hypothesized, feminist ideolog…
Sex and the Single (Neoliberal) Girl
Agency Is Everywhere, but Agency Is Not Enough
Through a conceptual analysis of sexual agency, I consider the limitations and distortions of what we typically recognize as agency and whom we recognize as agents. I argue that the dominant perspective of sexual agency as an outward performance of an internal attribute both: underestimates its presence, blinding us to the many manifestations of agency, including among girls imagined to have none; and overestimates its potency, insinuating that i…
Living in Metaphors, Trapped in a Matrix
Mixed Drinks and Mixed Messages
Experimentation with alcohol and sexuality is a normative aspect of adolescent development. Yet both present distinct risks to adolescent females and are especially problematic when they intersect. Although youth are often cautioned about the dangers associated with having sex and using alcohol, popular entertainment media frequently depict the combination of alcohol and sexuality as carefree fun. It is unclear how adolescent females interpret th…
Not All Nonlabelers Are Created Equal
Past research regarding feminist identity has revealed that a significant number of women endorse feminist attitudes yet reject a feminist identity. In the current study, we sought to examine whether these nonlabeling women fall into two distinct groups: (a) one that falls on the same ideological continuum of their feminist peers and (b) the other that represents an attitudinally unique group of women characterized by their neoliberal beliefs tha…
Agents, Virgins, Sluts, and Losers
Young Women's Experiences and Perceptions of Cunnilingus during Adolescence
Recent studies indicate that cunnilingus may be as prevalent as fellatio among American adolescents. Despite this approximate equivalence in rates, there is an imbalance in the amount and type of attention paid to fellatio and cunnilingus. Furthermore, there has been little empirical examination of young women's experiences and perceptions of cunnilingus during adolescence. Two studies in response to this gap in knowledge were conducted. In Study…
SexEd.com
The sexual values and norms transmitted to adolescents through school‐based sexuality education programs have been noted and critiqued by an interdisciplinary pool of researchers. With the increasing availability of the Internet to many American adolescents, the opportunities it provides for discreet and independent exploration, and the virtual lack of regulation of information provided by web sites, the Internet is emerging as a unique and criti…
Who Wears the Pants
Relationships in which power is equally distributed are consistently associated with greater quality (e.g., deeper intimacy, less turmoil, more pleasure), but it can be difficult to strike such a balance. Furthermore, dominant gender scripts and norms are complexly intertwined with power in heterosexual relationships. We studied the joint implications of power and gender for relationship quality using 114 U.S. emerging adults' quantitative and qu…
The Year’s Best
Sexual satisfaction is commonly defined and discussed in physiological terms of arousal and orgasm. Yet this narrow discourse does not accommodate the complex, multidimensional, and interpersonal aspects of sexual experience. To broaden and deepen our understanding of sexual satisfaction, we employed McClelland's (2014) holistic four-factor framework of sexual satisfaction in a theoretical thematic analysis of 39 behaviorally bisexual women's des…
Yes, But
Reflecting the wide range of consensual unwanted sexual experiences, researchers often have contrasting views of the impact of these incidents on young women. Some scholars support a normalizing view of these as fairly harmless and ordinary aspects of relationships, akin to other forms of willing compromises between partners. Other researchers problematize unwanted sexual experiences, framing them in terms of gender inequalities and detrimental e…
Seeing How Far I’ve Come
The Digital Sexual Life History Calendar (d/SLHC) is a Web-based platform for collecting young adults' sexual histories. In addition to collecting diverse data, the d/SLHC was designed to benefit participants by enabling reflection on their sexual and relationship experiences in the context of other life events and circumstances. In a pilot study of the d/SLHC, survey data were collected to test whether creating a d/SLHC timeline had any impact o…
"Disciplining "Girl Talk
Although empowerment is frequently invoked in social work discourse, it is nevertheless a complicated and contested practice method. A critical minority of social work theorists and practitioners point to the paradox of empowerment practice that reifies power differences and infringes upon client self-determination (Gruber & Trickett, 1987; Hartman, 1992; Pease, 2002; Simon, 1990). Despite the acuity of this critique, it has neither fully penetra…
Critical Feminisms
What Puts “At-Risk Girls” at Risk? Sexual Vulnerability and Social Inequality in the Lives of Girls in the Child Welfare System
Our “Ideal Girl”
Adolescent girls must contend with several sets of competing expectations at the discursive intersection of sexuality, age, gender, and race. This article examines how a feminist mentorship program for early adolescent girls engaged the issue of sexuality. Despite the program’s self-described feminist orientation, ethnographic analysis revealed its reliance on moralistic, age-based standards of appropriate sexual interest and behavior; the suppre…
Left to their own devices
Linking Femininity, Weight Concern, and Mental Health Among Latina, Black, and White Women
Studies examining women's appearance ideals and weight concern have predominantly relied on samples of White women. This study addresses this oversight, examining the different relations among embodied femininity, weight concern, and depressive symptomatology that exist for different groups of women. Using a nationally representative sample of women between the ages of 18 and 45, bivariate analyses were conducted using three samples of Latina, Bl…
SexEd.com
The sexual values and norms transmitted to adolescents through school‐based sexuality education programs have been noted and critiqued by an interdisciplinary pool of researchers. With the increasing availability of the Internet to many American adolescents, the opportunities it provides for discreet and independent exploration, and the virtual lack of regulation of information provided by web sites, the Internet is emerging as a unique and criti…
Linking Femininity, Weight Concern, and Mental Health Among Latina, Black, and White Women
Studies examining women's appearance ideals and weight concern have predominantly relied on samples of White women. This study addresses this oversight, examining the different relations among embodied femininity, weight concern, and depressive symptomatology that exist for different groups of women. Using a nationally representative sample of women between the ages of 18 and 45, bivariate analyses were conducted using three samples of Latina, Bl…
The Trouble of Teen Sex
This paper examines the reliance of American school-based sexuality education (SBSE) programs on a moralistic agenda and several presuppositions of adolescent sexuality, resulting in a biased and inadequate approach to sexuality education. Furthermore, by virtue of its authoritative position, SBSE serves as an influential force in the construction of 'normal' adolescent sexuality and in the pro duction of a particular kind of sexual teen. A multi…
Left to Their Own Devices
Left to their own devices
Our “Ideal Girl”
Adolescent girls must contend with several sets of competing expectations at the discursive intersection of sexuality, age, gender, and race. This article examines how a feminist mentorship program for early adolescent girls engaged the issue of sexuality. Despite the program’s self-described feminist orientation, ethnographic analysis revealed its reliance on moralistic, age-based standards of appropriate sexual interest and behavior; the suppre…
"Disciplining "Girl Talk
Although empowerment is frequently invoked in social work discourse, it is nevertheless a complicated and contested practice method. A critical minority of social work theorists and practitioners point to the paradox of empowerment practice that reifies power differences and infringes upon client self-determination (Gruber & Trickett, 1987; Hartman, 1992; Pease, 2002; Simon, 1990). Despite the acuity of this critique, it has neither fully penetra…
Feminism Between the Sheets
To better understand the relation of feminist identification to sexuality, we compared the attitudes of feminist, egalitarian, and nonfeminist undergraduate women ( N = 342) in five domains: (a) erotophilia (one's positive affective or evaluative responses to sexual stimuli), (b) sexual assertiveness, (c) perceived self-efficacy for safer sex, (d) sexual satisfaction, and (e) support of the sexual double standard. Significant results of ANOVA ana…
Safer, Better Sex Through Feminism
Feminists have argued that traditional gender norms can obstruct women's sexual well-being ( Amaro, 1995 ; Morokoff, 2000 ; Tolman, 2006 ; Walker, 1997 ). Therefore, we expected feminist ideology, by virtue of this critique, to be associated with women's sexual subjectivity and sexual well-being. To test this model, we analyzed data from a survey of college-age women ( N = 424) using structural equation modeling. As hypothesized, feminist ideolog…
The Making of Unwanted Sex
Building on extant research regarding the role of gendered norms in women's consent to unwanted sex with male partners as well as recent studies of how the sociopolitical discourse of neoliberalism shapes sexuality at the individual level, we conducted a thematic analysis of undergraduate women's (N = 22) descriptions of their experiences of unwanted sex. In accordance with previous research (Gavey, 2005; Martin, 1996; Phillips, 2000; Tolman, 200…
Beyond Trickle-Down Benefits to Research Participants
Journal Article Beyond Trickle-Down Benefits to Research Participants Get access Laina Y. Bay-Cheng, PhD, MSW Laina Y. Bay-Cheng, PhD, MSW assistant professor School of Social Work, University at Buffalo, State University of New York, 685 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260-1050; e-mail: [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Social Work Research, Volume 33, Issue 4, December 2009, Pages 243–247, https…
Behavioral and Relational Contexts of Adolescent Desire, Wanting, and Pleasure
Studies of adolescent female sexuality often focus on coitus to the exclusion of noncoital behaviors, the relational context of sexual interactions, and adolescent women's subjective perceptions of their experiences. In this study, 38 undergraduate women's retrospective accounts of their adolescent heterosexual experiences were examined. Generalized estimating equation models were used to test the relation of diverse heterosexual behaviors and re…
Minding the Gap Between Feminist Identity and Attitudes
Sexism persists in the contemporary United States and has deleterious effects on women and girls. This suggests that feminism—as a movement, a set of attitudes, or an explicit identity—is still warranted. Although feminist attitudes may buffer against the effects of sexism, notably in health domains, we suggest that there may be an ideological divide between those who hold such attitudes while rejecting the identity (non‐labelers) and self‐identi…
Young Women's Experiences and Perceptions of Cunnilingus during Adolescence
Recent studies indicate that cunnilingus may be as prevalent as fellatio among American adolescents. Despite this approximate equivalence in rates, there is an imbalance in the amount and type of attention paid to fellatio and cunnilingus. Furthermore, there has been little empirical examination of young women's experiences and perceptions of cunnilingus during adolescence. Two studies in response to this gap in knowledge were conducted. In Study…
Recovering Empowerment
Adolescent Girls' Assessment and Management of Sexual Risks
We conducted focus groups with girls ages 14 to 17 ( N = 43) to study how the dominant discourse of sexual risk shapes young women's understanding of the sexual domain and their management of these presumably pervasive threats. Through inductive analysis, we developed a coding scheme focused on three themes: (a) types of sexual risk, (b) factors that moderate sexual risk, and (c) strategies for managing sexual risk. Collectively, participants ide…
Mixed Drinks and Mixed Messages
Experimentation with alcohol and sexuality is a normative aspect of adolescent development. Yet both present distinct risks to adolescent females and are especially problematic when they intersect. Although youth are often cautioned about the dangers associated with having sex and using alcohol, popular entertainment media frequently depict the combination of alcohol and sexuality as carefree fun. It is unclear how adolescent females interpret th…
Not All Nonlabelers Are Created Equal
Past research regarding feminist identity has revealed that a significant number of women endorse feminist attitudes yet reject a feminist identity. In the current study, we sought to examine whether these nonlabeling women fall into two distinct groups: (a) one that falls on the same ideological continuum of their feminist peers and (b) the other that represents an attitudinally unique group of women characterized by their neoliberal beliefs tha…
Ethical parenting of sexually active youth
The protection of children from harm is commonly accepted as the cardinal duty of parents. In the USA, where young people's sexuality is often regarded with anxiety, attempts to restrict adolescent sexual behaviour are seen as ethically justified and even required of ‘good’ parents. Running counter to popular anxiety surrounding young people's sexuality is a mounting argument that a degree of sexual experimentation can benefit young people's curr…
Trauma-informed sexuality education
Experiences of maltreatment during childhood and the emergence of sexuality during adolescence are both critical developmental issues that intersect in meaningful ways, yet the two are often isolated from each other in practice. Despite the prevalence of childhood maltreatment, sexuality education does not accommodate young people with trauma histories. This results in curricula and content that ignore the particular needs and experiences of a pr…
What Puts “At-Risk Girls” at Risk? Sexual Vulnerability and Social Inequality in the Lives of Girls in the Child Welfare System
Tracking Homo Oeconomicus
Researchers across the social sciences are beginning to note that neoliberalism’s influence is no longer restricted to macroeconomic and social policies, but can now be detected in individuals’ behaviors, relationships, perceptions, and self-concept. However, psychologists lack a means of assessing neoliberal beliefs directly. We collected data from three samples of U.S. undergraduates to develop and test a measure of neoliberal ideology, the Neo…
The Agency Line
Living in Metaphors, Trapped in a Matrix
Sex and the Single (Neoliberal) Girl
Psychology (47 works) · Sociology (41 works) · Gender Studies (38 works) · Social Psychology (37 works) · Gender Studies (31 works) · Developmental psychology (30 works) · Social Psychology (29 works) · Human sexuality (28 works) · Political science (26 works) · Gender, Feminism, and Media (23 works)