Dilemmas of Desire: Teenage Girls Talk About Sexuality (6 page)

how i listened
“One of the primary ways—probably
the
primary way—human beings make sense of their experience is by casting it in a narrative form” (Gee, 1985, p. 11; see also Plummer, 1995). And there are myriad approaches to making sense of the narratives these girls told me: one could, for instance, compare girls’ stories about sexu- ality to boys’ (Moore & Rosenthal, 1993; Martin, 1996), identify the genre of story that girls tell (Thompson, 1995), or highlight and detail the sociological contours of girls’ sexuality through ethnographic methods (Stern, 1994). But I am aware that these girls told
me
their narratives. As a result, the narratives necessarily incorporate me and my questions about desire as well as what the girls had to tell. Our brief relationship forms the context in which these narratives were told. To learn something about the context in which the experiences reflected in these narratives were lived, I asked the girls specifically about how girls’ sexuality has been talked about in their families, in religious institutions, and at school; I also asked whether they talked with their parents, peers,

boyfriends, or teachers about their own sexual feelings. Not only did this information create a backdrop for listening to them speak about their experiences, it also highlighted the paucity of safe spaces they had for exploring their questions, thoughts, fears, or hopes about their sexuality.

At the heart of my analyses of these narratives are two perspec- tives, individual and societal. Girls’ psyches and bodies do not exist in a vacuum. A girl’s personal and family history shapes her experi- ence with desire. Her personal development, her developing sense of herself and how she feels about herself, her developing body and how she and others respond to it also come into play, as do her experiences with romantic and peer relationships. Any experiences with sexual violence or abuse, and her own response as well as that of others to such experiences, may further affect her sexual desire. The specific social contexts of a girl’s life, such as her friends and the ethos of her school and her community, are likely to bear upon her sexual choices and the meanings that she makes of her be- havior, thoughts, and feelings. That is, girls’ experiences with their own sexual desire are highly individualistic. At the same time, girls’ descriptions of the specific heterosexual relationships in which they experience their sexual feelings illustrate the different and consistent ways that the institution of heterosexuality “operates” in the lives of individual girls. My approach, then, was to embed a psychological analysis of individual girls’ experiences with sexual desire within the specific context of each girl’s life and also within a feminist understanding of various social constructions of female adolescent sexuality.

In analyzing these narratives, I adopted a variation of the Listen- ing Guide, a systematic psychodynamic method for interpreting narrative data. Much like a therapist listening to a client, this method captures the multilayered meanings of what a girl says and how she says it. The method was developed originally by Lyn

Brown, Carol Gilligan, and others for listening to narratives of choice and relational conflict (Brown et al., 1989; Brown & Gilli- gan, 1992); it has been adapted subsequently to answer a variety of research questions about relational experiences (e.g., Brown, 1999; Tolman, 2001; Way, 2001). This method has been called a “voice- based” analysis, because its central feature is systematic attention to the voice of the person interviewed and the various “voices” or themes that compose the narratives. It was developed as an explic- itly feminist method in that it enables the researcher to “bring to the surface the ‘undercurrent’ of female voices and visions as it fil- ters through an androcentric culture” (Brown & Gilligan, 1990,

1. 3). It also embraces the relational nature of this kind of inter- view and interpretive work, not seeking “objectivity” or “avoidance of bias,” but acknowledging the ways that making meaning is a relational process. This analytic tool meets the challenge of listen- ing to desire narratives; clinical methods for interpreting pregnant pauses, uncontrollable giggles, or a sudden inarticulateness are part and parcel of the analysis; the obligation to theorize these silences and nonverbal expressions is embedded in the method.
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   It also forces the interviewer to attend to his or her own responses as a source of information. In this case I had to clarify my own ideas and feelings and appreciate how they did and did not correspond to the words of various girls.
   

   This method is distinctly different from traditional methods of coding qualitative data, in that one listens to, rather than catego- rizes or quantifies, the text of the interview (see On Methodology for a detailed explanation of this type of analysis). In analyzing narrative data, the researcher rarely finds “hard facts” to report, unlike with other forms of data, such as surveys or experiments— though these, in fact, have their own often unacknowledged limits in generating “hard facts” as well (Rabinowitz & Weseen, 2001). In listening, another person is always engaged in the act of making an
   

   interpretation about what he or she has heard. And so I do not simply report what these girls said; I present my interpretation, which is supported by evidence from the texts of the interviews.
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   In writing up the cases these interpretive practices yield, researchers commonly include large amounts of text from interviews, so that the reader can evaluate the interpretation presented and also con- sider alternative and additional interpretations.
   

   A question often raised about any form of social science re- search, especially about sexuality, is how reliable the reports pro- vided by participants really are. More specifically, how do I know that these girls did not, in essence, lie or make up their answers? This is a complex question that has received quite a bit of atten- tion. In survey research, some standard practices include asking the same question in different ways and comparing answers to evaluate the validity of responses. In longitudinal research, some believe it is possible to evaluate what a respondent says about the same question (for example, “When did you first have inter- course?”) over time. In this study, however, worrying about the extent to which these reports mirror reality misses the point; what I was trying to learn was how girls themselves make sense of their own feelings and experiences (Luttrell, 1997). The “face validity” of their stories, the extent to which they ring true, is powerful. Their frequent departure from the stock, socially acceptable “it just hap- pened” story and the complexity of the experiences they describe lend their stories credibility.
   

   Because it is clear from this study and from other studies of female adolescent sexuality that all girls are denied safe spaces for their own sexual feelings, my primary goal in organizing the girls’ narratives was to highlight their commonality as girls coming of age in a patriarchal society. I report the results of this analysis in the next section of this chapter and in Chapters 3, 4, and 5. In addi-
   

   tion, because of the potential differences in how the urban girls and the suburban girls narrate their experiences of sexual desire, I report in Chapter 6 on the results of several analyses that I have done to address the question of the differential experiences of the girls in these two groups.
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   hearing an erotic voice
   In her essay “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” Audre Lorde (1984) described what she called the power of the erotic as “the
   yes
   within ourselves, our deepest cravings,” and “how fully and acutely we can feel in the doing.” She formulates the erotic as “the sen- sual—those physical, emotional, and psychic expressions of what is deepest and strongest and richest within each of us... the pas- sions of love, in its deepest meanings” (p. 55). When I listened to these girls describe their sexual desire, they expressed the power, intensity, and urgency of their feelings, which resonated with Lorde’s description of the erotic. This resonance led me to call how
   

   girls speak about their sexual desire an
   erotic voice.
   All but three of these girls could and do speak in an erotic voice—that is, do feel embodied sexual desire, can describe these feelings and, when asked, can include them in their narratives about their sexual experiences.
   

   I was struck by the discrepancy between how adolescent girls are generally portrayed, studied, and discussed and what these girls said. The belief that girls’ sexuality is focused exclusively on rela- tionships and that their own sexual feelings are nonexistent or irrelevant did not match these girls’ descriptions of desire. While some said the feeling of desire leads them into adventure and explorations of themselves, they also said that it can lead them into risky situations and thus is sometimes a warning. Sexual desire is, for these girls, a feature of being in a relationship with someone
   

   else and, in so doing, knowing themselves. These girls made a key distinction, however, between their sexual desire and their wish for a relationship. While their feelings of sexual desire most often arise in relationships, they are not the same as or a substitute for want- ing a relationship.
   

   What comes across powerfully in the narratives of the girls who said they feel sexual desire is that they experience it as having an unmistakable power and intensity. Inez knows she is feeling desire when “my body says yes yes yes yes.” Lily calls feeling desire “amaz- ing.” Rochelle feels it “so, so bad ...I wanna have sex so bad, you know”; she adds, “you just have this feeling, you just have to get rid of it.” Liz explains: “I just wanted to have sex with him really badly and I just, and we just took off our bathing suits really fast [she laughs] and um, it was almost like really rushed and really quick.” For Barbara it is “very strong... an overwhelming longing” and “a wicked [strong] urge.” Paulina’s heart “would really beat fast”; she is “extremely aware of every, every touch and everything.” Alexan- dra speaks of being “incredibly attracted” to her friend. Jane calls the power of her desire “demanding” and says, “the feelings are so strong inside you that they’re just like ready to burst.” These direct acknowledgments of the power of sexual desire came from girls of different geography, race, and sexual orientation.
   

   Some girls also conveyed the intensity of their desire by the strength of their voiced resistance to it; in response to her body’s “yes yes yes yes,” Inez explains that “my mind says no no no, you stop kissing him.” Cassandra evidences the strength and the urgency of her feeling in narrating what she does not want to do, “stop”: “he just like stopped all of a sudden and I was like what are you doing? ’cause I didn’t want to stop at all”; she says that for her, desire is “powerful.” Lily contrasts not being “in the mood to do anything... because I just have all my clothes on ... because it’s
   

   just too inconvenient” with the power of her desire when she feels it, “once in a while”: “even though it’s inconvenient for me, some- times I just have this feeling, well I just don’t care, if I have to put my pantyhose on or not,” the power of her desire overriding the normally paramount concern she has for maintaining a proper appearance.
   

   Whereas these girls spoke about feelings in their stomachs, shoulders, necks, and legs, as well as sensations all over their bod- ies, Megan was one of the few girls to connect her desire to her vagina. Very few girls named the sexual parts of their bodies in these interviews about their sexual desire. Megan speaks of know- ing she is feeling sexual desire for boys because of what she feels in her body; as she says, “kind of just this feeling, you know? Just this feeling inside my body ... my vagina starts to kinda like act up and it kinda like quivers and stuff, and um, like I’ll get like tingles and and you can just feel your hormones [laughs] doing something weird, and you just, you get happy and you just get, you know, restimulated kind of and it’s just, and oh! Oh!” and “your nerves feel good.”
   

   hearing dilemmas of desire
   In phenomenological research, the point is not to test hypotheses but to develop an understanding of experience. When I began this research, however, I did harbor a hypothesis. I believed that the disjuncture between my own experience of powerful, physical sex- ual desire as an adolescent girl and the “missing discourse” about girls’ sexual desire in the literature was simply an artifact of previ- ous studies, in which no one ever asked girls about this part of their lives. When I set out to provide girls with an opportunity to talk about their experiences of sexual desire, I imagined that I would be tapping into a secret life of girls’ sexual pleasure. I
   

   thought girls would confirm my guess that they experienced sexual excitement, power, and joy in relation to their desire, even if they usually kept that dangerous information to themselves.
   

   As girls’ descriptions of their desire illustrate, they did indeed experience powerful sexual feelings. But the secret life of sexuality that I had imagined did not materialize. What I heard instead was how the social dilemma that societal constructions of female and male sexuality set up for girls, a choice between their sexual feel- ings or their safety, was experienced as a personal dilemma by them. Given that this dilemma is framed
   as if
   it were an individual rather than a social problem—if a girl has desire, she is vulnerable to personal physical, social, material, or relational consequences— it is in a way not especially surprising that girls would experience their desire and these resulting difficulties as their own personal problem. Although girls themselves did not use the word “di- lemma” in narrating their experiences, they described dilemmas and private efforts to solve what they perceived to be personal problems, since talking about and thus revealing their own desire is itself taboo.
   

   This dilemma of desire takes different forms for different girls, with certain consequences or potential bad outcomes more evi- dent or salient to some than to others. In telling their stories of desire, and of not having desire, these girls articulated the various consequences they were aware their sexual desire could invite. Their stories illuminate how dealing with desire makes important normative adolescent developmental processes difficult. Specifi- cally, these adolescents reveal how their experiences of desire get in the way of their relationships with peers, romantic partners, par- ents, and other important adults in their lives. They tell stories elaborating how their desire challenges their ability to develop identities as “good,” acceptable, moral, and normal women, and
   

   how confusing it is to develop a sexual identity that leaves their sexuality out. Their desire narratives show how the girls juggle and at the same time integrate the logistics of being an adolescent and the belief systems of their religions, their cultures, and their com- munities, including the specific communities of their schools.
   

   Ellen feared that her own desire could lead to risking pregnancy, a fear intensified by her perception that she must choose between her own sexuality and the material consequence of losing her chance of getting an education as a way out of poverty. Kim inter- nalized her father’s stated belief that a desiring girl is more likely to be considered at fault by others if she is raped. Jane described her guilt at having betrayed her boyfriend by kissing another boy, her confusion about her own culpability in this choice, and her fear about how her boyfriend, her mother, or her sisters would judge her if they found out. Lily acted on her desire and was thrown out of her mother’s house. Nikki’s stories reflected the not unlikely possibility of male violence. Emily, confused by the social mandate to appear sexy, was afraid of being used. Magda did not want her sexual feelings to prevent her from fulfilling her immigrant mother’s expectations that she would be the first in her family to go to college. Megan worried that her desire would lead her to lose control of herself and make choices she might later regret. Zoe found waiting for a boy to figure out and take the initiative to sat- isfy her desire frustrating but the only possibility she could imag- ine for herself. Sophie managed to work around her perception that girls were not supposed to want or initiate sexual encounters. Julia believed that if she were to act on her desire, she would be considered “just as promiscuous” as the girls whose behavior she herself frowned upon. Melissa was highly aware that her desire for girls could lead to rejection and violence as well as constant disap- pointment. Barbara talked about the risk of embarrassment and
   

   frustration when her feelings were not returned or when someone considered her “perverted” because of her desires. Charlene was afraid that her desire would make her seem like a “slut.”
   

   A few girls were able to skirt, resist, or even transform such denial and demonizing of their desire in some contexts but experi- enced their desire as a dilemma in other situations. For instance, while Megan resisted the formulation of her desire as problematic in heterosexual relationships, her desire for girls was “blocked” by her awareness of homophobia and compulsory heterosexuality. Eugenia felt safe as a desiring girl in a long-term monogamous het- erosexual relationship but worried about judging herself and being judged by friends and family as “bad” because of sexual desires that did not fit neatly into that specific configuration. Beverly related her concern about hurting a boy’s feelings or having to deal with his violent reaction if she had told him that he could not please her. Virtually all of the girls spoke about how girls who act on their desire leave themselves open to getting a bad reputation, though not all of them were worried about this outcome for themselves. None of these examples is exclusive to any single girl; even the few girls who were aware of and fully rejected the sexual double stan- dard and refused to accept the conditions that make their own sexual feelings appear to be “the problem,” even the girls who artic- ulated the positive possibilities that may result from acting on the basis of their sexual desire and talked about their sexuality in more nuanced and complex ways, could not shake the shadows of these unrelenting threats of what can happen to a desiring girl.