Dilemmas of Desire: Teenage Girls Talk About Sexuality (23 page)

When I invited girls to talk about their experiences of their sexu- ality, what emerged was the socially manufactured dilemma of desire, which pits girls’ embodied knowledge and feelings, their sexual pleasure and connection to their own bodies and to others through their desire, against physical, social, material, and psycho- logical dangers associated with their sexuality. This dilemma of desire is a poignant and powerful illustration of how girls can eas-

ily misdiagnose their problems as theirs and theirs alone, and then attempt to devise individualized solutions, which are neither answers nor routes to changing the social circumstances that pro- duce the dilemmas in the first place. Many of the strategies these girls reported may be effective in the short run but are very costly and ultimately not effective in the long run; in fact, these coping mechanisms in essence support the system that makes them neces- sary. Michelle Fine has suggested that denying female adolescent sexual desire “may actually disable young women in their negotia- tions as sexual subjects. Trained through and into positions of pas- sivity and victimization, young women are currently educated away from positions of sexual self-interest” (1988, p. 42). Without the big picture of why they deserve and are being denied their desire and how or why it is rendered so difficult for them
as a group
—not simply as individuals—they are limited in what they can devise for themselves. The lack of a framework for calling the very need for these struggles into question was evident. When articulated by a few of the girls, the power of being able to identify, deconstruct, and resist gendered sexuality and the division of girls into good and bad camps was compelling. It is reflected in their defiant claims on their desire, their ability to use their own sexual feelings to apprehend their relational worlds and make safe, responsible choices about their sexuality.

Like the political resisters in this study, Misty is right to be indig- nant at being objectified, to insist that girls refuse to be boxed in by stereotypes that leave out them and their feelings. And to some extent, she speaks the truth in her righteous claim that “no one can save you from your oppression except yourself.” But Misty’s call to action misses a key point: that girls should not and cannot be expected to, alone and in isolation, recognize and resist powerful social forces that make their own sexual desire into what ends up

feeling like a personal dilemma. To support their healthy develop- ment, we need to make it possible for girls to gain the critical per- spective that fuels Misty’s outrage at being treated as the object of someone else’s desire and Paulina’s empowerment as a desiring girl. It is crucial that we not leave girls alone to engage in this diffi- cult and necessary resistance. It is our job to make it possible for girls to gain such a perspective on their sexuality. We need to carve out safe spaces in which girls will be able to talk with each other and with adult women about their experiences with, and their questions, thoughts, fears, expectations, and hopes about, their own sexuality. We need to take responsibility for joining girls in making their sexual revolution.

Women listening to each other in consciousness-raising groups three decades ago began to realize that what was being said about their sexuality was out of sync with their actual experiences. What they knew had been covered over, left out, medicalized away, actively dismissed, and punished (Irvine, 1990). Through speak- ing with one another they understood that their own experiences had been systematically distorted and discounted, and that what seemed to be a personal problem was in fact a larger, societal phe- nomenon. The suggestion that girls need to speak with women and with one another sounds almost “retro” in the light of the early twenty-first century. Yet the stories these girls tell of the dilemmas their desire continues to pose attest to the necessity of going back to an old practice of speaking to one another about our real experiences.

Consciousness-raising groups in the 1970s more often than not centered on women’s sexuality, on how women’s experiences were at odds with what was being called “reality.” Now it behooves us to create these conversations with and for girls, at a difficult time in their lives, and to make room for them to initiate these conversa- tions safely with one another. Hearing the words of girls and

women makes it possible for other girls to voice and make sense of their experiences, their justified confusion and fears, their curiosi- ties—to live in our female bodies with an awareness of danger but also with a desire to stay connected with ourselves. Speaking the truths about female sexual desire—both the pleasures and the dan- gers—and acknowledging the reality of the complexity of girls’ and women’s sexuality in a patriarchal society is a truly attainable educational and psychological goal—and a most crucial one.

girls speaking with women
A place to start is for adult women to speak with girls about sexual desire and girls’ entitlement to sexual subjectivity as they are devel- oping into women. Sharon Thompson (1990), for example, found among the four hundred adolescent girls she interviewed about their first sexual experiences a small group she calls “pleasure nar- rators.” Like Eugenia and Amber, these girls described their own desire and pleasure as key aspects of their first experiences of sex- ual intercourse. These girls were unique among the girls Thomp- son interviewed in that they talked with their mothers about female sexual desire and pleasure. Their mothers shared what they knew about the sexual feelings their daughters would experience, validating and even celebrating this embodied knowledge. Some feminists have interviewed girls about their experiences in rela- tionships (Brown & Gilligan, 1992; Brown, 1999), specifically about the ways in which gender weaves in and out of their rela- tional worlds (Fine & Macpherson, 1995). Janie Ward (2001), in her research on the political socialization that African American families engage in with their children, notes how vital it is for these children to have families and communities in which they can have ongoing conversations about the differences between the realities of their lives and what is said to be “reality.” The girls in this study push us to ask: In a patriarchal society, what can make it possible

for girls and women to speak about, feel, and act upon their sexual desire, and its absence, fully and freely?

At the end of each interview, I asked the girls in this study whether they had talked to anyone before about their sexual desire, their experiences with sexuality, or their own bodies. Jenny, one of the girls who said she did not feel desire, observed, “it’s just not something that’s really talked about, like what makes you feel good. It’s not like a normal topic of conversation.” Trisha ex- plained, “I’ve never had a conversation like this [laughs], I’ve never been asked direct questions, so it’s kind of like fun.” Megan said, “it’s okay, it’s uncomfortable, it’s just not normal, you know?” As Inez finished telling me a story about desire, she commented after a long pause, “it’s weird ... it’s weird to speak about that, I, because I don’t talk to anybody about that... if it wasn’t because you was doing this little research thing, I wouldn’t be speaking to you about it right now.” The paucity of safe spaces for girls to sort out the contradictory, complex, and confusing mandates about their sexuality is palpable, and the need to initiate conversations about sexual desire, sexual entitlement, and sexual subjectivity is obvious.

Even the simple act of talking in positive ways about adolescent girls’ sexuality is easier said than done, however. As noted by a number of the girls, talking itself constitutes a risk. While some of them would not talk to me about it, the majority were eager and relieved to explain to an adult what dealing with their sexuality was really like for them. Jenny and most of the other girls in the study realized, from their experience of speaking about their sexuality in the interview, that talking about it not only helped them but also offered an alternative discourse through which to sort out their sexual experiences; talking “made me think about different things that I’ve never really thought about before . . . like pleasure and

like what makes you feel good and what you like and what you don’t like.”

The question of whom girls can speak to is also a vital one. Mothers often ask me how they should speak with their daughters about sexual desire. There is no simple or standard answer to this difficult question. Not all daughters want to speak with their mothers about sexuality; not all daughters have this choice. For instance, Sophie told me that she does not talk with her mother about sexual things; she believes “they make [her mother] uncom- fortable.” The African American concept of “othermothers” (Collins, 1990) is useful to consider here. Othermothers are adult women who serve as additional caretakers of children who are not their own but with whom they have a close and caring relation- ship. Women speaking to girls about desire, then, does not mean solely mothers speaking with daughters.

A few girls had had positive and helpful experiences speaking with other adults. Emily spoke about a young female teacher whom she felt “understood” rather than “judged” her and her friends, who offered straight talk about sex as well as her own opinion that sex is better for women when they and their partners are older and thus more knowledgeable about women’s bodies and sexuality. This opportunity to talk and ask questions about sexuality without getting the response “just say no” enabled Emily to seriously con- sider the possibility that she wanted to postpone having sexual intercourse and led her to begin to ask herself, as she reported back to the group, “why am I really doing this?” in sexual situations. Focusing on her own feelings and motivations offered an alterna- tive perspective on earlier unpleasant and in the end unwanted experiences that had been motivated by her wish to be perceived as nice and not to make waves. It became evident, when I asked the girls in the post-interview what they thought of the experience of

talking this way about their sexuality, that participating in this one disruptive conversation, which offered an opportunity for speak- ing about their real feelings, provided a framework for them to reflect on their own desire. Megan specifically commented,“God, I know like the next time I’m kissing a guy I’m gonna think about all this stuff [laughs] that I’m talking about, I’ll have to call Deb and tell her [laughs] what, exactly what I’m feeling.” Megan’s reference to her phantom call to me underscores the importance to girls of bringing these thoughts and feelings, their erotic voices, into a rela- tionship they can then internalize, making such internal conversa- tions possible. Jenny concludes that girls need

somebody to make them think about [their own desire and pleasure]...I mean it’s just a perfect example, I mean I wouldn’t probably never thought about it unless I had this interview. Girls just have to like think about it, I don’t know how you would do that, but make them actually think about it and ask the questions to themselves...I mean, I know what I do and what I don’t do, but I’ve never like sat down and thought about it with myself, I mean what I definitely enjoy, what I definitely don’t enjoy, and just like, I don’t know why. I think it’s good for girls to know themselves and what they’re thinking. I mean it gives me a better handle on myself, it just makes me understand myself more, I guess, what I feel.

The diverse voices in this study are a wake-up call to the adults in their lives: We may not be ready to talk about or listen to the real questions girls have about the world of sexuality and romantic relationships they are entering, but
they are.
Many of the girls in the study, when asked, advised adults to give them the opportunity to discuss, explore, understand, question, and challenge the ways that their sexuality is framed for them and experienced by them.

We can continue to pretend that we do not notice girls’ developing sexuality, and hope that it will go away or that they will “wait” long enough, but such pretense is not only unhelpful to girls, it is a hin- drance. Although it is difficult to figure out how to talk to girls about their sexuality when there are real dangers attached, we have no choice; they need us, and we had better catch up.

girls speaking with other girls
The challenge of talking with adults about their sexuality is magni- fied tenfold when girls consider speaking to one another. When Barbara and her friends share their sexual curiosities, experiences, and knowledge, she knows that they are taking a risk: “you don’t want [those things] all over the place, because of the way the soci- ety is, and looks at it. Then you end up with this rep and all of this other nonsense that runs around, like, and that’s why a lot of girls don’t talk about it, ’cause they are afraid of getting this reputation that they are sluts.” Because the pre-interview meeting had not worked at the urban school, I scheduled no follow-up group dis- cussion there. Recall that when I asked in the interviews why the girls had not participated in the first group, they said they would not speak in a group of their peers; that is, they could not trust one another. The dangers associated with speaking to one another out- weighed any potential gain.

This problem of girls not trusting other girls with the realities of their sexuality is not limited to urban settings. Even Eugenia, who was so comfortable with her own sexuality and with talking to close friends and her mother about it, said, “I just wish somehow, like, where you could totally trust everybody, and it’d be such a, you know, confidential thing. But I don’t know if I ever just trust, um, trust people like that.” As long as the good-girl and bad-girl categories remain intact and as long as girls do not understand

how this mechanism of keeping girls and women out of relation- ship with one another does not serve us, it will be nearly impos- sible for girls to be able to trust one another.

Yet the power of being able to talk with peers about sexuality in an authentic way did come through. Two of the girls in this study were already participating in conversations about desire. They belonged to a gay and lesbian youth group, a group designed to bring out into the open and challenge how anathema homosexual desire is to mainstream society. The theme of talking about sexual- ity with others weaves in and out of these girls’ interviews. Although Megan and her friends talked about sex, she considered their talk quite limited and wondered out loud why this might be the case: “we’re so new [at sex] that we’re worried about, like, pleasing our partner and not ourselves? But, I don’t know, but I think that’s kind of, like, in a way I’m demeaning us because I think that we do have a lot more, like, feelings and thoughts about it, but we just, I don’t know, we just don’t, like, acknowledge them or at least we don’t share them.” A few other girls spoke about new con- versations they were having with one another, and with close friends whom they trust, about their sexuality in the wake of par- ticipating in the study.