Dilemmas of Desire: Teenage Girls Talk About Sexuality (3 page)

The obsessive quality of our focus on teenage girls’ sexual behavior and vulnerability calls attention to less obvious motives for our intense anxiety about them. Recall the Spur Posse case in Lakewood, California: A group of high school boys who were dis- covered to be competing for how many girls they could manipulate into having sex. Although many people criticized their behavior as an example of unchecked adolescent sexuality, the boys’ parents were publicly untroubled by their sons’ actions. But try to substi- tute “girls” for “boys”: Can anyone imagine a girl who coerced a boy to have sex being shrugged off or even defended and admired by her parents on national television because of her “raging hor- mones” or because of their belief that “girls will be girls”? Such concerns about boys are glossed over by the assumption that ado- lescent boys not only are sexual beings but are overwhelmed by their sexuality, and that such intense sexual desire is a
natural and normal part of male adolescence and male sexuality.
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A gendered perspective on adolescent sexuality offers more explanation for what is behind the urgency of resisting girls’ sexual desire: Girls’
lack
of desire serves as the necessary linchpin in how adolescent sexuality is organized and managed. To the extent that we believe that adolescent sexuality is under control, it is adolescent girls whom we hold responsible, because we do not believe boys can or will be. We are left with a circuitous argument that fails to include the reality or importance of female adolescents’ own sexuality: Boys will be boys ergo sexuality is dangerous for girls. Our impulse to keep girls safe by keeping them under control seems so neces- sary that the cost of denying them the right to live fully in their own bodies appears unavoidable. Just as impossible standards of thinness serve to curtail girls’ and women’s hunger for food, this

seemingly justified worry about their sexuality fuels denial and demonization of female adolescent sexual desire. In essence, we let boys off the hook for a wide array of consequences
for girls
because of what we denote and perceive to be their inevitable and uncon- tainable sexuality, as was so blatantly conveyed by my dinner com- panion. In the process, we also make it hard for adolescent boys to experience a full range of emotions and connections. In the wake of these beliefs, how could we not worry about girls? Why would we want to acknowledge
their
desire?

an invisible system of control
Feminist scholars have offered extensive social analysis of how controlling female sexuality is a key component of the oppression of women on which patriarchy is premised (Rich, 1983; Snitow,

Stansell, & Thompson, 1983; Vance, 1984). Adrienne Rich, a femi- nist theorist, poet, and writer, identified the social construction of what she called
compulsory heterosexuality
as an essential means for controlling women within patriarchy. She asserted that hetero- sexual sexual desire—that is, women having sexual desire for men—is not a natural state but the result of specific involuntary socialization processes. As a result, social hierarchies are premised on gender and produce social constructions of proper female sexu- ality and appropriate gendered behavior for women. She suggested that we are all under enormous pressure to internalize and comply with these social mandates. Rich wove together seemingly discrete social phenomena that, she argued, constitute the systematic dehu- manization and oppression of women through sexuality, both directly and indirectly, identifying specific processes by which women’s sexuality has been and is manipulated as a way to control women. These include the objectification of women, the socializa- tion of women to feel that male sexual “drive” amounts to a right, the idealization of heterosexual romance, ideologies of femininity

and masculinity, the denial or denigration of female sexual plea- sure or agency, rape and sexual violence, pornography, sexual harassment, and the erasure of lesbian existence from history and culture.
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Thus, thinking about heterosexuality as an institution includes but is not limited to the idea of heterosexuality as a sexual orientation, that is, as simply desiring the opposite sex.

What is most compelling about Rich’s theory is that she showed how heterosexuality is “a political institution which disempowers women” (p. 182). She revealed this institution
as an institution
by naming and connecting what appear to be separate features of society, thereby identifying its invisible contours. By linking these various features of social life, she showed how the institution of heterosexuality functions by being nowhere in particular and at the same time embedded in every aspect of society and social life. And it is in being institutionalized as what is “natural” and “nor- mal” through condoned social discourses, or ways of framing and speaking about social life, that the “compulsory” part of heterosex- uality is invisible. Rich’s theory reveals how socializing girls and women into conceptions and practices of femininity that write their sexual desire, pleasure, and agency out of normal female behavior contributes to the production of the institution of het- erosexuality. Her theory also makes clear how the institution is maintained or reinforced by the constant threat of violence or other negative repercussions for refusal to comply with such restrictive norms of normalcy and femininity; conversely, con- straints on women’s freedoms are imposed in the name of protec- tion from vulnerability to male sexuality.

Evidence of the institution of heterosexuality at work can be seen everywhere: parents telling girls to be nice (and boys not to cry), movies in which the hero rescues the girl from certain disaster and romance prevails (and they marry and live happily ever after), expectations that women and only women want to have and

should care for children. Disregard for the scientific evidence that “abstinence-only-until-marriage” sex education is insufficient to meet the health needs of children (Kirby, 2001) and the current federal policy of funding only this approach, going so far as to threaten its removal if other aspects of sexuality and relationships are discussed by teachers, are good examples of the institution of heterosexuality and of its compulsory nature.

The importance of the institution of heterosexuality to our social order and organization becomes especially evident when the institution itself has been violated. In the 1999 film
Boys Don’t Cry,
Hilary Swank gave a compelling, Academy Award–winning por- trayal of the true story of Teena Brandon. Born a girl, she felt so intensely that she was a boy trapped in a female body that she attempted to live as a boy, and did so very convincingly. She was a boy for all intents and purposes in the eyes of those around her, including the girl with whom she fell in love. When the commu- nity discovered that this person they knew as a boy, who was hav- ing what appeared to be and felt to the girlfriend to be a “normal” heterosexual relationship, was in fact a girl, not only did they beat and rape her, but ultimately they killed her. By successfully making others experience her as a boy when her body was female, she had both unveiled and challenged the institution of heterosexuality at its heart. The result: violence of unspeakable proportions.

Rich’s identification of the institution of heterosexuality offers a powerful theoretical lens through which to view adolescent sexual- ity. The effect of this invisible system of social control is that we all, adults and adolescents alike, construe the “problem” of girls’ sexu- ality as an individual rather than a social one. We think about girls’ sexuality only as a personal phenomenon, a personal set of deci- sions, choices, consequences, or even feelings; we obscure the ex- tent to which societal norms and ambivalence offer girls a range of poor “choices,” which rarely, if ever, include the reality or impor-

tance of their own sexuality. Where society is ambivalent, there is a tendency to focus on those with the least power; we are able to con- strain, blame, and punish them for the anxiety they provoke in us, and the more disenfranchised the individual, the more she bears the brunt of our fears about social disorder and personal threats (Fine & Weis, 2000). In the case of adolescent girls, we distort and justify this displacement because of society’s sense of entitlement, even sense of obligation, to regulate and control their sexuality.

and now for something completely different . . .

This book is not about the usual dangers that we associate with adolescent girls’ sexuality: unintended pregnancy and the risk of HIV/AIDS or other sexually transmitted infections. It is not about the “problem” of female adolescent sexual activity and its conse- quences. It is not even about girls’ sexual decision making. I do not begin from a position that the only or even the best way to think about girls’ sexuality is in terms of avoiding risks. An understand- ing of how and why male and female sexuality is socially con- structed in the ways described above yields a counterintuitive stance that is grounded in a different set of concerns. In this book, I begin with a different assumption: Girls live and grow up in bodies that are capable of strong sexual feelings, bodies that are connected to minds and hearts that hold meanings through which they make sense of and perceive their bodies. I consider the possibility that teenage girls’ sexual desire is important and life sustaining; that girls’ desire provides crucial information about the relational world in which they live; that the societal obstacles to girls’ and women’s ability to feel and act on their own desire should come under scrutiny rather than simply be feared; that girls and women are entitled to have sexual subjectivity, rather than simply to be sexual objects.

The skewed portrait of desire that we have drawn for ourselves and propped up so effectively is a disservice to girls and women, as well as to boys and men. This set of beliefs leaves out many possi- bilities and experiences that could make desire more desirable. Sexual desire, in and of itself, is not dangerous, essentially mascu- line, or monstrous. Desire is part of our relational world, a sign and manifestation of our connection with our own bodies and connection with other people. Developing sexual subjectivity is at the heart of the adolescent developmental task of becoming a “self-motivated sexual actor” and of making responsible choices about sexual behavior. Jean Baker Miller, in
Towards a New Psy- chology of Women
(1976), identified sexual authenticity—that is, the ability to bring one’s own real feelings of sexual desire and sex- ual pleasure meaningfully into intimate relationships—as a key feature of women’s psychological health. From a psychological point of view, developing a strong sense of self and engaging in authentic, meaningful, and joyful intimate relationships requires an acknowledgment and acceptance of one’s own bodily feelings. As William James (1890/1970) observed in psychology’s earliest hour, “The world experienced ... comes at all times with our body as its center” (pp. 21–23). That is, the body is the counterpart of the psyche in the ongoing process of composing and constructing one’s sexual subjectivity. Thus, desire is one form of knowledge, gained through the body: In desiring, I know that I exist.

Making sexual desire a fundamental aspect of a girl’s sense of self offers a way to think about adolescent sexuality, a revision of what developmental psychologists have long acknowledged to be a task of the adolescent period: to learn how to bring all aspects of oneself into relationships, which can lead to a sense of connection, entitlement, and empowerment that can go beyond sexuality by including sexuality. To “know” one’s own body means to have knowledge about it and also the ability to feel the feelings in it, to

have access to the range of physical sensations that course through one’s body, providing information about the experiences—emo- tional as well as physical—that one is having. Feeling desire in response to another person is a route to knowing, to being, oneself through the process of relationship: “The psyche cannot cut off one kind of desire without affecting another. When sexual desire is truncated, all desire is compromised—including girls’ power to love themselves and to know what they really want” (Debold, Wil- son, & Malave, 1993, p. 211).

In other words,
not
feeling sexual desire may put girls in danger and “at risk.” When a girl does not know what her own feelings are, when she disconnects the apprehending psychic part of herself from what is happening in her own body, she then becomes espe- cially vulnerable to the power of others’ feelings as well as to what others say she does and does not want or feel.
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Keeping in mind this different view of female adolescent sexual desire, let us return to Inez and notice what this vantage point enables us to hear that was not audible before.

If I listen to Inez from the perspective that girls have sexual feel- ings and can or should act on them, I listen for her acknowledg- ment of her own sexual feelings, for the presence and absence of her own desire in her description of her sexual experiences. Prior to telling this story, Inez has told me that she is capable of feeling sexual desire and can describe those embodied feelings: When she gets in the “pleasure mood,” she explains, her “body says yes, yes, yes.” She identifies herself as Latina, and the specific qualities asso- ciated with acceptable feminine demeanor and behavior for Latina girls suffuse everything she says (Espin, 1984, 1999; Amaro, Russo,

& Pares-Avila, 1987; Hurtado, 1996). In this story, I listen specifi- cally for what Inez says about herself and her body—“I felt like I wasn’t there, it was like my body just went limp...I feel like I didn’t notice anything.” Inez describes a body that is present yet

not feeling; a self that is not there, that does not act but is acted upon, that does not contribute or even “notice”; a body that is “limp” rather than alive or engaged. From this perspective, Inez’s story is about how
she
disappears when she has sex for the first time—literally and figuratively. Her body is silent—and conse- quently, (unprotected) sex “just happened.” In this story, there is no hint that her own sexual desire was part of her first experience of sexual intercourse.