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Gender and Education
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Sex–gender–sexuality: how sex, gender
and sexuality constellations are
constituted in secondary schools
Deborah Youdell
a
a
Institute of Education, University of London , UK
Published online: 19 Aug 2006.
To cite this article: Deborah Youdell (2005) Sex–gender–sexuality: how sex, gender and sexuality
constellations are constituted in secondary schools, Gender and Education, 17:3, 249-270, DOI:
10.1080/09540250500145148
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09540250500145148
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Gender and Education
Vol. 17, No. 3, August 2005, pp. 249–270
ISSN 0954–0253 (print)/ISSN 1360–0516 (online)/05/030249–22
© 2005 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/09540250500145148
Sex–gender–sexuality: how sex, gender
and sexuality constellations are
constituted in secondary schools
Deborah Youdell*
Institute of Education, University of London, UK
Taylor and Francis LtdCGEE114497.sgm10.1080/09540250500145148Gender and Education0954-0253 (print)/1360-0516 (online)Original Article2005Taylor & Francis Ltd173000000September 2005Dr DeborahYoudellLecturer in Education, Faculty of EducationUniversity of CambridgeShaftesbury RoadCambridgeCB2 2BXUK+44 1223 369631dcy20@cam.ac.uk
This paper explores the relationships between sex, gender and sexuality through a series of close
readings of data generated through an ethnography undertaken in a south London secondary
school. The paper takes as its focus girls aged 15 to 16 and considers how particular sexed, gendered
and sexualized selves are constituted. Drawing on Foucault’s understanding of subjectivation and
the subsequent work of Judith Butler, in particular her theorization of the inseparability of gender
and sexuality in the contemporary discursive frame, these analyses demonstrate how students’
mundane and day-to-day practices—including bodily deportment, physical games, linguistic
accounts, and uses of clothing, hairstyles and accessories—are implicated in the discursive constitution
of student subjectivities. The paper argues for an understanding of sex–gender–sexuality
joined together in discursive chains and intersecting with further identity categories. As such, the
paper suggests that subjectivities might helpfully be thought in terms of constituting constellations
that create both possibilities and constraints for ‘who’ students can be.
Introduction
The relationships between gender, sexuality and school experience have received
increasing attention in recent years. Much work in the area takes as given the sexual
orientation, and therefore sexual identity, of the students of whom it speaks. This
paper offers an alternative view of the school level processes at work around sex,
gender and sexuality. It rejects the silent acceptance that sexual orientation is a
biological, psychological, or psychic pre-given that is synonymous with sexuality and
exists in a causal, linear, relationship with sexual identity. At the same time, however,
it calls into question the plausibility of severing the connection between gender and
sexuality advocated by some queer and feminist theorists. In doing this, the paper
argues that such a severing is not borne out in school level practices that are marked
*Institute of Education, University of London, 20 Bedford Way, London WCIH OAL, UK. Email:
d.youdell@ioe.ac.uk
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250 D. Youdell
simultaneously by gender and sexuality. Instead, the paper shows how sex, gender
and sexuality are constituted in constellations that open up possibilities and set limits
for ‘who’ a student can be. In exploring these issues the paper draws on data generated
through an ethnography undertaken in a south London secondary school.
This examination is framed by Judith Butler’s ongoing engagement with Foucault
(1990, 1991, 1993, 1997a, b, 1999) and recent rearticulation of Althusser and
Bourdieu (1997a & 1997b). In particular, the paper takes up Butler’s (1999) theorization
of the inseparability of gender and sexuality in the contemporary discursive
frame. In this context of constraint, the paper explores the possibilities of Butler’s
(1997a) politics of performative resignification. These theoretical tools are used here
to examine school moments in which sex–gender–sexualities are constituted,
resisted and reinscribed through the day-to-day practices of students.
Background
The tradition of critical sociology of education has been underpinned by concerns
about the role that schools play in the reproduction of inequitable social relations
along axes of class, gender, race and, more recently, sexuality. Extending this tradition,
the sociology of education has begun to engage with post-structural theories to
make sense of the school’s impact on, and school experiences of, particular groups of
students. This has underpinned a shift in research foci and analyses from boys and
girls to masculinities and femininities and towards sexualities. It is in the intersection
between this critical tradition and the growing concern with masculinities, femininities
and sexualities in school contexts that this paper is located.
Feminist studies in education have made a significant contribution to understanding
gendered selves as well as gendered experiences of schooling. While the critical school
ethnographies of the 1970s tended to be concerned with the schooling of boys,
Lambert (1976) and Delamont (1989) both undertook studies of social relations in
girls’ schools, a grammar and an elite public school respectively. Substantial research
into girls and schooling was undertaken during the following decade and is reflective
of those understandings of gender inequalities, and the reproduction of gender roles
that were seen to underpin these, that were dominant during the period (see, for example,
Davies, 1984; Griffin, 1985; Mahony, 1985; Weiner, 1985; Lees, 1986; Askew
& Ross, 1988; Holly, 1989; Stanley, 1989). This body of work offered significant
insights, two of which are particularly pertinent here. First, it was suggested that
schools not only reinforce dominant societal sex roles but also:
… enforce[s] a set of sex and gender roles which are more rigid than those current in the
wider society. (Delamont, 1990, p. 5)
Second, it was argued that girls’ responses to school could not be understood in terms
of pro- or anti-school subcultural formation.
Rather, girls’ gender development in the context of the school was interpreted as
an ‘active response to social contradictions’ through ‘a simultaneous process of
accommodation and resistance’ (Anyon, 1983, p. 19). Work concerned with the
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Sex-gender-sexuality 251
schooling of Black girls identified the complexities of girls’ experiences of and
responses to schooling and highlighted the limits of notions of differentiation and
polarization and additive models of subordination developed through critical studies
of boys’ schooling. For instance, Fuller (1984) argued that Black girls’ adaptations to
schooling are simultaneously (and consciously) pro-education and anti-school. And
Mirza (1992) highlighted the inadequacy of understandings of Black boys’ experiences
of schooling—in particular notions of resistance—for making sense of Black
girls’ relationship to education and schooling.
This paper builds on the tools offered by this body of work and makes use of the
conceptual spaces that it has opened up. Specifically, it concurs with studies that
demonstrate the subtle processes through which girls are constructed as gendered in
school contexts. Valerie Walkerdine has made a crucial contribution to understanding
how the school is implicated in constructing gendered subjects. Walkerdine (1990)
argues that a dichotomy of rationality/pathology underpins the production of
self-regulating subjects in schools and suggests that girls and women teachers are
positioned through a constellation of discourses, including discourses of femininity,
passivity and irrationality. Hey (1997) exposes the myth of such feminine passivity by
showing how girls’ relationships with each other are ‘invested in the production of
certain forms of power and subjectivity’ (p. 23) through her analyses of the intricacies
of the differences between girls and the intersections of the discursive frames through
which their relationships are mediated. More recent studies, such as those by
Benjamin (2002a, b), Kehily (2002) and Renold (2000, 2001) have refined these tools
still further and have demonstrated these processes across a range of specific contexts
and in relation to the construction of particular ‘sorts’ of girls. This paper picks up
these concerns and makes further use of these theoretical tools in order to better
understand and interrogate these subtle and often taken for granted processes as they
are lived daily inside school.
This paper also picks up recent concerns with sexuality and schooling. Schooling
and sexuality sit in an uncomfortable relationship. It has been argued that schools and
sexuality are constructed as fundamentally discrete and that the people who populate
schools—students and teachers—are constructed as intrinsically non-sexual (Epstein
& Johnson, 1996). Epstein and Johnson’s (1996) work makes a significant contribution
to a small but expanding body of work that uses post-structural theorizations of the
subject to examine the experiences of gay and lesbian students. Similarly, Nayak and
Kehily (1996) make sophisticated use of these ideas to argue that homophobic practices
in schools are central to the ongoing constitution of heterosexual masculinities.
Wayne Martino’s (1999) research explores the policing of hegemonic masculinity in
school while Mairtin Mac an Ghaill (1994) demonstrates the fluidity of young men’s
identity and sexual practices. Much of this work proceeds from a critical understanding
of the reach of hetero-normativity in schools. This has underpinned school research
into the ways in which heterosexual identities are constructed as normal while lesbian,
gay and bisexual identities are constructed outside acceptability (Mills, 1999).
While there has been a tendency in research into sexuality and schooling for gender
and sexuality to be treated as discrete categories or for the relationship between these
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252 D. Youdell
to be taken as self-evident, this is changing. Emerging work is problematizing the relationship
between gender and sexuality inside school. For instance, James Butler
(1996) notes the connections between masculinity and sexuality and highlights the
apparent absence of lesbian identities in schools. David McInnes and Murray
Couch’s (2001) analysis of ‘working class sissy boys’ provides a sophisticated
exploration of the intersections between masculinities and sexualities and social class
identities. The significance of the intersections of sexual and ethnic identity markers
has also been stressed (Pallotta-Chiarolli, 1996).
There exists, then, both a substantial resource of research concerned with gender
and schooling and a growing body of work that engages with young people’s sexual
identities. This work on sexualities attempts to understand the connections between
sexuality and other identity categories. As such, research concerned with sexualities
and schooling is located within the broader endeavour of the sociology of education.
Building on these developments, this paper aims to understand the connections
between sex, gender and sexuality, as well as other categorizations such as race
and social class; demonstrate the inseparability of these; and show how schooling is
implicated in these processes.
Analytical framework
The theoretical framework that guides the analysis offered in this paper is underpinned
by Foucault’s understanding of power, discourse and subjectivation (Foucault, 1990,
1991). The paper engages extensively with Judith Butler’s work with these ideas.
Specifically, it takes up Butler’s understanding of the subjectivated subject who is
simultaneously rendered a subject and opened up to relations of power (Bulter,
1997b) through ongoing discursive processes of performative constitution (Butler,
1990, 1993, 1997a). The paper also makes use of and builds on Butler’s rearticulation
of Bourdieu’s notion of habitus and Althusser’s understanding of interpellation
(Butler, 1997a, b). Finally, the paper takes up Butler’s assertion that with subjection
comes discursive agency and, therefore, the possibility of a politics of performative
resignification (Butler, 1997a).
This framework suggests that identity categories, including those of gender and
sexuality, constitute subjects. These categorical names are central to the performative
constitution of the subject who is unintelligible, if not unimaginable, without these.
To be called, for example, ‘dyke’, is to be simultaneously interpellated as a subject
and as a particular (but equivocal) sort of subject. It is also to be simultaneously
subjected to relations of power circulating within the discursive matrices that frame a
particular context. Such a naming joins a citational chain that inevitably inscribes
hierarchical binary relations (Derrida, 1988). These citational chains not only act to
constitute the identity named, they also constitute the identity that is the silent partner
in the dichotomy: the identity ‘dyke’ silently constitutes hetero-femininity. This
paper does not seek to overcome these performative chains by abandoning categorical
identities. Rather, it recognizes that the interpellation of such identities constitutes
the subject and that it is their simultaneous constitutive force and equivocacy that
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Sex-gender-sexuality 253
opens up the possibility for the subject’s discursive agency. Understanding these
performative names as bearing equivocal meanings suggests that they are open
to strategic reinscription—they can take on non-ordinary meanings and they can
function in contexts where they have not belonged (Butler, 1997a).
The work of Foucault and Butler has made significant contributions to queer theory
and research into the production of social inequalities and exclusions in which sexual
identities/sexualities are pivotal markers. Some of this work has responded to
Foucault’s (1990) call to resist the incitement to discourse on sex-desire with a
concern for bodies and pleasures. Such responses have explored possibilities for thinking
bodies and pleasures separated from categories of sex, gender and sexuality. For
instance, the notion of polymorphous perversity has been taken up as a potential site
of such fragmented bodily pleasure (see, for instance, Weeks, 1991). Recently,
however, Butler (1999) has returned to Foucault’s injunction and questioned whether
it is possible, in the contemporary moment, to separate sex-desire and jettison
categories of sex and sexuality. According to Butler, sex and desire are so deeply
entwined in prevailing discourses that they remain fundamental to the constitution of
intelligible subjects. As such, while a shift to bodies and pleasure remains a theoretically
useful, if problematic goal, the moment of such a move is not imminent.
The analysis offered here, then, proceeds from the understanding that school
practices are permeated by enduring hetero-normative discourses that inscribe a
linear relationship between sex, gender and (hetero-)sexuality within the ‘heterosexual
matrix’ (Butler, 1990, 1993). Indeed, as I have argued elsewhere (Youdell,
2000, 2004), the school is a key site for the proliferation, modification and incessant
inscription of these discourses and, therefore, the production and reproduction of
‘compulsory heterosexuality’ (Rich, 1980). The paper accepts provisionally Butler’s
(1999) assertion, discussed above, that sex and desire cannot be either easily separated
or jettisoned in a historical moment in which sex-desire continue to be tied
together as central constituents of gender and sexuality. Building on these ideas, the
title of this paper and the analyses offered within it suggest that sex, gender, and
sexuality are joined together in complex constellations. Such constellations join
together the body and discourse—sex–gender–sexuality is necessarily bodily,
concerned as it is with bodily pleasures and practices, but it is also discursive, given
the inscribed nature of the body and the impossibility of a ‘return’ to a pre-discursive
or pre-modern body untainted by gender and/or sexuality (Butler, 1999; also see
Grosz, 1995).
In pursuing these concerns, the paper takes as its focus girls and the production of
femininities and female sexualities, although given the crucial part of man/woman,
masculine/feminine binaries in these productions (Cixous, 1986), these analyses inevitably
also touch on masculinities and male sexualities. A concern with the terms and
reach of compulsory heterosexuality and, in turn, how particular hetero-femininities
come to be authorized and prevail and the apparent absence of lesbian girls in schools
is key here. The paper is not looking for lesbians in school, but exploring the sex–
gender–sexuality constructions of/by girls in school. In doing this, the paper also
begins to suggest why it is so hard to ‘see’ ‘lesbians’ in school contexts.
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254 D. Youdell
Methodology
The paper draws on data generated through a school ethnography undertaken with
Year 11 students (aged 15–16) in a south London secondary school during the
1997–1998 academic year. This school ethnography was informed by methodological
debates concerning the importance of understanding practice in context; the role
and status of the researcher and the researched; and the potential for reflexivity to
strengthen the insights offered by ethnography (see Delamont & Atkinson, 1995;
Hammersley & Atkinson, 1995). These methodological insights from what might be
characterized as the traditions of interpretive and critical school ethnography were
supplemented and, indeed, scrutinized, in the light of the theoretical framework
outlined above and accounts of more recent adaptations of qualitative methods
informed by post-structural theory (see Silverman, 1997; Stronarch & MacLure,
1997; Alvesson, 2002). Such theoretical and methodological developments insist
that data is generated, not collected. They also insist that those data generated
be understood as discursive monuments whose content and generation can be interrogated
in order to identify the discursive practices embedded in them and the
potentially constitutive force of these.
This framework also suggests that rather than attempting to minimize, make
visible, or reflexively interpret the effects of the researcher, research practice is wholly
implicated in processes of ongoing subjectivation (of both the researcher and the
researched) even as these subjectivities form the objects of study. Reflecting the theorization
of the subject outlined above, this methodological framework rejects an a
priori, authentic, or essential self who undertakes research, instead understanding the
subject, including the researching subject, to be perpetually but provisionally constituted
through discourse. Given the centrality of visual economies to prevailing
discourses of gender and race (see Seshadri-Crooks, 2000), my own location within
these discourses (woman, White) is undoubtedly ‘visible’ to and taken as immutable
by the students involved in the research. Yet my social class, sexuality and subcultural
locations are perhaps less singular or ‘obvious’ and, therefore, less tightly constrained.
In line with the wider theorization of discourse and subjectivation that frames this
study, identity categorizations are seen to be as mobile as the discursive circuits
through which they are performatively constituted. For instance, in the context of
prevailing hetero-normative discourse, it is likely that students locate (constitute) me
as heterosexual—the unspoken Same of the heterosexual/homosexual Same/Other
binary—as long as an alternative sexual identity is not asserted. However, once such
Other positions are suggested (as they were during this research in some circumstances
and with some students), the circulation of previously absent, marginalized or
unrecognized discourses becomes evident, as do the possibilities and limits for Other
subjectivities that these discourses offer. Introducing such discourses into a research
setting has the potential to subjectivate the researcher and the researched in ways that
may well be unfamiliar, at least in the school context, even as these are recognized as
being contingent, provisional and fragile. It is these contingent, provisional and fragile
constitutions with which this paper is concerned.
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Sex-gender-sexuality 255
Bodies being female-hetero-feminine and male-hetero-masculine
Scene 1: sitting
Year 11 (aged 15–16) assembly. Each tutor group in the year group forms a single line
seated on the wooden hall floor. Teachers are seated on chairs/benches or stand leaning
against the wall. The room is full and students sit close together. A degree of body contact
is unavoidable. Girls sit cross-legged, with upper bodies drooping over the legs. They hold
their hands in their laps, those wearing skirts hold the fabric and/or their hands to conceal
groins. Girls also sit with touching knees bent up close to the chest, feet flat on the floor
and chin resting on knees. They wrap their arms around their bent legs, either over the
shin or between the calf and the thigh. Again, girls wearing skirts hold the fabric and/or
their hands to conceal groins. Where space will allow, girls sit with legs close together and
outstretched, leaning the upper body either forward over the legs or backward resting on
a straight arm with hand flat to the floor. Boys also sit with legs crossed, bent up or
outstretched. Bent knees are rarely touching, pulled up close to the chest, or hugged.
Outstretched legs lie apart. Boys also sit with one leg bent up and one lying on the floor,
outstretched if space will allow. Bent knees are used to rest forearms or elbows. Boys often
lean backwards and prop themselves up with braced arms. Boys at the back of the hall
recline further, leaning on one forearm flat to the floor with outstretched legs crossed.
(Fieldnotes)
This scene illustrates how the most mundane bodily practice—sitting—is constitutive
of multiple identities. That teachers stand or sit in chairs while students sit on the floor
in rows is a ritualized practice of bodily differentiation through which hierarchical
teacher/student, adult/child binaries are cited and inscribed (Derrida, 1988; Butler
1997a, b). It is an occasion for the observation, classification and judgment of bodies
(Foucault, 1991). While there is some overlap between the ways in which boys and
girls sit in this scene, it nevertheless demonstrates how this simple bodily activity cites
and inscribes multiple discourses of the sexed body. Overall, the girls sit in ways that
minimize the space taken up by their bodies. Their postures cite and inscribe a discursively
constituted heterosexual femininity in which the feminine body is small, tidy,
restrained and deferential. A common feature of the girls’ varied ways of sitting is the
concealment of genitals. This is both a literal and a symbolic concealment: while girls
wearing short skirts ‘need’ to hold the fabric and carefully position their hands in order
to obscure a view of the underwear covering their genitals, the bodies of girls wearing
long skirts and trousers assume similar positions. Yet these acts of concealment, by
signaling the need for concealment, are also acts of symbolic display. This genital
concealment/display highlights a contradiction within the discursive constitution of
heterosexual femininity. That is, it cites and inscribes the requirement for the female–
feminine body to deny its desire, to take responsibility for the control and constraint
of the body in general and sex in particular. Simultaneously, however, it cites and
inscribes the requirement for the feminine body to display sexuality, to be the repository
for the body, sex and desire. This is a double bind that is underscored by, cites
and inscribes the dichotomy of the virgin/whore central to now secularized discourses
of feminine (hetero-)sexuality that can be traced back to Eve’s fall (Brant & Purkiss,
1992). This genital concealment also highlights a contradiction between heterosexual
femininity and student identity. The literal challenge is to be a student (child), that
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256 D. Youdell
is, sit in a row on the floor, and be a girl (proto-woman?), that is, maintain an appropriately
feminine bodily posture, including concealing the genitals whether wearing a
short skirt or not. The girls’ ways of sitting illustrate their bodily responses to this challenge.
The cost of failure here is high—a blasé approach to feminine posture and the
genital concealment intrinsic to it would be potentially constitutive of the whore, or
even unintelligibility (Butler, 1997a). Simply by sitting in particular ways, then, these
girls’ bodies cite and inscribe particular discourses of heterosexual femininity and
simultaneously constitute themselves as embodied subjects within these terms.
Boys’ bodies are not compacted like those of the girls, knees are not pressed
together or hugged to the chest. Unlike the feminine body, the masculine body does
not need to be reigned in or controlled—it is in control. Its genitals regions do not
have to be literally or symbolically concealed. Many of these boy-bodies cite and
inscribe a heterosexual masculinity which is comfortable and entitled but which
abides by its location in the teacher/student binary. Other boy-bodies, however, cite
a hyper-masculinity which is large and imposing, with individual body parts instruments
for maximizing the comfort of the body as a whole and genitals areas which
need not be concealed.
These bodily practices are the practices of the performative habitus (Butler, 1997a,
b)—at once formed by and formative of discourses of bodily femininity and masculinity.
Such practices are both intentional and tacit. A girl’s clutching at her skirt hem
or a boy’s occupation of space may or may not be self-aware activities in this moment.
A girl may be thinking ‘I hope my knickers aren’t showing’, a boy may be thinking
‘get out of my way’. But these bodies are not simply the neutral instruments of selfconscious
subjects. They are bound up with signification and the continued viability
of the subject. A girl cannot clutch her hem one day, secure her femininity, and then
give it up for the greater comfort of relaxed, spread legs. These bodily practices are
necessarily repetitious and citational—this is evident simply by looking around the
assembly hall and recognizing the embodied subjects who sit. The practices of these
bodies are sexed, gendered and sexualized—the female body is already feminized, the
feminine is already heterosexual, the hetero-feminine is already female. Sex–gender–
sexuality, then, are not causally related; rather, they exist in abiding constellations in
which to name one category of the constellation is to silently infer further categories.
Making sense of how female (hetero-)femininities and male (hetero-)masculinities
are constituted through the bodily practice of sitting on the assembly hall floor is
relatively straightforward. When these bodies are active, moving, engaging and
exchanging the provisional and contested nature of tacit bodily performatives, as well
as the costs and constraints of these, becomes evident.
Bodies doing hetero-masculine and hetero-feminine
Scene 2: seduction/assault
Year 11 (aged 15–16) food technology lesson. Students are engaged in both practical and written
work and there is a degree of free movement around the room. Lucy (girl, White) is
watching Mridula and Avtar (girls, Indian) cook. Owen (boy, White) stands behind Lucy
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Sex-gender-sexuality 257
and wraps his arms around her head. The front of his body is pressed up against her back.
Lucy exclaims: ‘Owen!’ as she wriggles. He removes his arms. As they continue to watch
Owen continually touches Lucy, he pulls her by the arms and shoulders and moves her
from one standing position to another. Lucy wriggles and giggles as Owen does this. At
another moment in the lesson Lucy watches Manny (boy, White) cook. Stuart (boy, Black)
approaches her and hold her by the arm, he tugs at her, exerting enough force to pull her
towards him. As he moves her around he tries to punch her upper arm. Lucy pulls against
Stuart and dodges to stay out of reach of his punching arm. Eventually one of Stuart’s
punches makes contact with Lucy’s upper arm. Lucy exclaims in pain ‘Arrrgh, Stuart!’
Stuart releases his hold on Lucy, chuckles and wanders away. (Fieldnotes)
This scene is one of contact between masculine and feminine bodies in which particular
heterosexual masculinities and femininities are cited and inscribed. The heterofeminine
body inscribed here is unavoidably passive, while the hetero-masculine
bodies inscribed are active and capable, entitled and authoritative and, in the case of
Stuart, aggressive.
Owen assumes the right to access Lucy’s body and moves her around through his
bodily force. Yet his bodily practices of masculinity include a degree of gentleness and
seduction along with their authority and entitlement. When Lucy’s body encounters
Owen’s body her wriggled and giggled resistance is part of a bodily script, a tacit
enactment of bodily dispositions of (virgin-hetero-)femininity rather than an attempt
to extract her body from Owen’s. When Owen presses his body into Lucy’s back and
covers her eyes, however, her objection is serious—her location in the virgin/whore
binary is risked by this potentially genital contact. This risk is tacitly recognized by
Owen and he responds by releasing her, thereby inscribing again her virgin-hetero-
femininity.
Stuart’s bodily practices, in contrast, are aggressive as well as authoritative. While
the bodily contact between Stuart and Lucy may also be sexually charged, it does not
include the seduction implicit in her encounter with Owen. When Stuart restrains and
handles Lucy, he does not seek consent or respond to her bodily attempts to extricate
herself. The masculine entitlement to access and take the (implicitly heterosexual)
feminine body is cited and inscribed. When he ‘plays’ at punching Lucy, it is his
success and her exclamation of pain that leads to him to end the ‘game’. It seems here
that Lucy may well not be consenting to this bodily encounter, that is, it may well be
an assault. Lucy’s response to Stuart is informative. She does not call the teacher or
make any other serious attempt to interrupt Stuart’s hold on her body. This may be
indicative of her tacit awareness that any interruption here will simply be a deferral of
Stuart’s ‘game’ and that neither she nor the (woman) teacher has the authority within
a gender-dominated discursive field to prevent subsequent re-enactments of this
encounter. Furthermore, Lucy may well be in a double-bind here. Her encounter with
Stuart underscores and is a further moment in the constitution of her heterosexual
femininity—along with a bruised upper arm, Lucy provisionally ‘gains’ desirable
heterosexual femininity through this bodily encounter. This is a moment in Lucy’s
ongoing constitution as a viable subject. While the encounter cites and constitutes the
constraints of heterosexual feminine subjection, to attempt to interrupt Stuart might
be to risk this femininity and the subjecthood it confers.
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258 D. Youdell
Scenes 1 and 2 demonstrate a complex interaction between intentional, tacit and
unintentional bodily practices. Students may knowingly cite their own and others’
prior bodies, they may have a practical sense, a tacit awareness, of the potentially
performative force of their bodily practices, or their bodily performatives may be unintentional,
cited and inscribe implicitly. Furthermore, whether bodily practices are
deployed intentionally, with a tacit awareness, or unintentionally, their efficacy is not
guaranteed. Bodily performatives, like linguistic performatives, always run the risk of
misfire. These bodily practices are not somehow inherently female-hetero-feminine
or male-hetero-masculine. Rather, these bodies are designated within these terms
through discourse—their meanings are cited and inscribed. Just as the historicity of
discourse is sedimented through its citation within linguistic practices, so it is
sedimented through its citation within bodily practices. The virgin/whore binary that
has been key in the analysis of Scenes 1 and 2 is explored further in the section that
follows. Here, the performative force of both bodily and linguistic performatives is
made evident while the part that girls themselves play in policing the virgin/whore
binary and inscribing the discursive limits of hetero-femininity is exposed.
Naming and making hetero-femininities and the virgin/whore dichotomy
Scene 3: slag
Dy (the researcher, mid–late 20s, woman, White)
Marcella (Year 11 student, girl, African)
Molly (Year 11 student, girl, White)
Juliet (Year 11 student, girl, mixed-race)
Jasmine (Year 11 student, girl, mixed-race)
Sitting in a group around a table in the year base while the rest of the tutor group are in a
PSE lesson. The group is discussing Su Lin, a Chinese girl in the tutor group.
Marcella: I mean, what is she, she’s 15, the problems that she’s had …
Molly: [Simultaneously] She’s got a lot of problems.
Juliet: [Simultaneously] She’s like 30 isn’t she?
Marcella: Yeah.
Dy: What sort of problems?
Molly: [Gravely] preg–nan–cy.
Juliet: She’s got herself into so much trouble and then she comes to us to sort it out
for her, she wants us to sort it out for her, and that’s the problem.
Marcella: [Simultaneously] She goes with so many different boys.
Marcella: She’s got to be careful. Like, when you’ve got a boyfriend you don’t come and
tell everyone, it gets twisted and then …
Juliet: She’s lost so many friends over it, she’s got hardly any friends left now, it’s
only us lot now that talk to her.
All: Yeah.
Dy: What’s made this happen, because she has so many boyfriends or she talks
about it?
Juliet: [Simultaneously] She’s slaggy.
Marcella: Yeah, she sleeps around.
Molly: [Simultaneously] It’s all coming out now!
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Juliet: [Slight laugh in voice] She’s my friend and everything but I’ve told you she’s
a slag.
Marcella: She sleeps around and she needs to control …
Juliet: She don’t even know these people. … She does her own thing now.
Marcella: Clubbing.
Juliet: She’s like up Chinatown all the time, so like … [laughing] I wouldn’t feel
welcome up there and that.
[…]
Dy: Is it the number or turnover of boyfriends that concerns you or is it that …?
Marcella: At her age she shouldn’t be sleeping with so much people.
Juliet: [Simultaneously] Leave it to, like, later.
Dy: So it’s the number of people she’s sleeping with?
Marcella: She shouldn’t be sleeping with anyone at all if you really think about it, but I
mean whether she chooses to do it, that’s her business.
Juliet: But then she shouldn’t be telling everyone about it, that’s how she loses
friends.
(Interview)
Scene 3 demonstrates the virgin/whore dichotomy and illustrates both its boundaries
and the ways in which girls inscribe and police this. Within the scene the status of
Su Lin as not-virgin is quickly inferred when her ‘problems’ are identified as ‘preg–
nan–cy’. The group indicates that telling people, including girls who are friends,
about sexual activity with boyfriends is a justified and common reason to lose these
friends. It seems that it is the combination of being sexually active with a succession
of boys and talking about this that leads to the naming ‘slag’.
The discursive practices of the group suggest that the discourse of feminine sexual
morality (and immorality) underpinning the students’ constitutions of heterosexual
femininities is based on a familiar moral scale. In the terms of this moral scale, a girl
should be a virgin: she should ‘leave it to later’, ‘she shouldn’t be sleeping with anyone
at all’. If she is not-virgin, she should only have coitus with a boy with whom she has
an (implicitly monogamous) relationship (her boyfriend). The number of these
relationships should be limited. Sex outside a relationship—‘sleeping around’—is
unacceptable. A girl should not discuss her sexual activity with anyone, including
friends who are girls. The greater the number of boys a girl has had sex with (coitus
or not), the greater the imperative for silence.
The girls’ moral discourse and the virgin/whore binary that it cites is not just a
prohibition of sexual activity. Rather, some possibility for sexual activity is retained,
although this is tightly bounded and the risk of ‘slag’ is ever present. In the girls’
constitution of heterosexual femininities, sexual activity is only protected from the
performative interpellation slag if a girl does not talk about this sexual activity. That
is, feminine sexual desire must be silenced. Sexual activity outside a relationship states
boldly this feminine sexual desire. This is the apex of active (and, therefore, immoral)
heterosexual femininity—the slag or whore of the virgin/whore dichotomy—and is
censured most strongly. The implications of this moral discourse for the availability
of viable heterosexual femininities are significant.
In naming Su Lin ‘slag’—or whore—the group members implicitly constitute their
own heterosexual femininities in hierarchical opposition to this: virgin. The reference
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260 D. Youdell
to ‘Chinatown’ is also significant. Juliet is distancing herself from her one-time friend
by implicitly constituting her as the racial Other. This also implicitly entwines Sue
Lin’s heterosexual femininity—slag—with her Chineseness. Juliet is citing and
inscribing the discourse of the sexually promiscuous and exotic Other. That this is a
discourse which has also been deployed to denigrate Black and mixed-race heterosexual
femininities seems to go unrecognized in the group’s own implicit deployment
of it.
The moral discourse of heterosexual femininities deployed by the group cites and
inscribes both paternal discourses of heterosexual femininity and the religious
discourses in which these are rooted. Within what has become a secularized
discourse, the girls are citing and inscribing a discourse of prized feminine virginity
which must be ‘saved’ in order to be gifted to, or taken by, the ‘right’ man. These
overlapping religious and secular discourses of feminine (im-)morality also entail the
necessity for this (im-)morality to be policed. A policing that is discursively positioned
as being in the interest of girls and women both as individuals and as a group.
However, girls do not necessarily subscribe straightforwardly, either explicitly or
tacitly, to this virgin/whore binary. Rather, some girls appear cognizant of the limits
for acceptable femininity that this implies, and endeavour to constitute themselves
otherwise. It is these efforts that Scene 4 explores.
Scene 4: virgin girls, slapper girls and other girls
Dy (the researcher, mid–late 20s, woman, White)
Molly, Nicola, Diane, Annie, Milli (Year 11 students, girls, White)
Sitting in a group around a table in the year base while the rest of the tutor group are in a
PSE lesson. The group is debating whether or not particular boys are virgins.
Dy: How do you know if people are virgins or not?
Molly: I dunno, because people don’t give a shit.
Diane: [Indicating Nicola] she ain’t.
Nicola: [Shouting, high pitch] I am Diane!
Molly: [Laughing] she ain’t.
Dy: How do you know?
Molly: It’s just the way she goes round.
Dy: What about …?
Molly: [Interrupting] Puts herself across to boys.
Dy: What does she do?
Molly: She goes running up to them and cuddling them and [impersonating Nicola]
‘Oooh’.
Nicola: [Screeching] No I don’t!
Dy: She flirts a little bit?
Molly: Yes, and she goes, ‘Ah, I’ll have sex with you later if you open the door’.
Nicola: [Laughing] I do not say things like that!
[…]
Molly: And [boy] goes ‘OK come on then, lets go’ and she actually walks up to him
and goes ‘Come on’.
Nicola: [More serious, agitated] But I’m still joking around, I’m just having a laugh
Molly!
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Molly: Yeah but people like [boy] and [boy], they’ll take it differently and think ‘Ah,
she’s a right little slapper’ and that. Think about what happened to [girl].
Nicola: Sorry, I ain’t gonna spend the night shagging someone if I don’t love them and
trust them, I ain’t gonna shag anyone that I ain’t going out with.
(Interview)
In Scene 4 Diane and Molly assert that Nicola is not-virgin and, by extension, at risk
of being slag or whore. Nicola begins by contesting vigorously this constitution. Diane
and Molly do not suggest that Nicola has told them of her sexual activity. In the light
of the imperative for silence detailed in Scene 3, it is unclear whether Nicola has
divulged this information directly and she is not offering me this information. Given
the risk of slag, the silencing of feminine desire and the centrality of virgin to the
constitution of valorized heterosexual femininities discussed above, it is unsurprising
that Nicola denies the charge laid by the other girls.
The scene illustrates that it is not simply the ‘fact’ of virgin/not-virgin (whore) that
is at stake. The ‘way’ Nicola ‘goes around’ and ‘puts herself across to boys’ is also
significant. Molly describes Nicola’s interactions with boys as being tactile, having
sexually explicit verbal content, and involving the making of sexual promises. Nicola
appears initially to be amused by these reports. As Molly’s description proceeds,
however, Nicola disputes the account with increasing vigour and eventually concedes
but defends herself by asserting that she is ‘joking around’ and ‘just having a laugh’.
This concession and justification leads to Molly’s ‘warning’. Nicola may well be
‘just having a laugh’ but she is not sovereign in this context. What ‘counts’ is how boys
will ‘take it’. Certain boys, whose performative interpellations appear to be understood
as having particular authority, will constitute Nicola as a ‘right little slapper’. That is,
if these boys constitute Nicola as slapper this is likely to be felicitous and Nicola will
be a slapper. Molly presents the virgin/whore dichotomy as being established by boys,
yet her ‘warning’ exposes the role that girls play in policing the boundaries of this
dichotomy and implicates girls in the constitution of themselves and other girls within
its terms.
The threat of slapper implicit in Molly’s ‘warning’ leads Nicola to concede
ultimately that she is not a virgin. This ‘admission’ is not an acceptance of the constitution
slapper. Rather it an attempt to differentiate herself from slapper and preempt
this naming. Nicola asserts that she only has sex with boys if ‘I love them and trust
them’, that is, if she is in a relationship. In making this assertion she attempts to
constitute a heterosexual feminine desire that is acceptable within the moral scale
suggested by Scene 3. Furthermore, Nicola’s refusal to volunteer this information
until it is necessary demonstrates her compliance with the requirement for silence
contained in the moral scale.
In the opening moments of Scene 4, Molly asserts that ‘people don’t give a shit’
whether or not other students are virgins. My discussion of Scene 4 might be taken
to indicate simply that Molly’s assertion is false. I would suggest, however, that
Molly’s comment offers particular insight into the constituting role of virgin. It is not
the ‘fact’ of being or not being a virgin that is crucial. Rather, it is the constitutive
force of a discourse of virginity and the ways in which the deployment of this
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262 D. Youdell
constrains the possibilities for intelligible hetero-femininities, that is significant within
the students’ discursive practices. Yet, while the citation and inscription of the virgin/
whore discourse is evident through the scene, in some moments the girls appear to
be involved collectively in attempts to constitute a sexually active heterosexual femininity
that is not whore. Such female-hetero-femininity would allow sexual activity
while avoiding and/or rendering infelicitous the performative interpellations slapper
or slag—that is, whore. This constitution is provisionally successful for Nicola, a
success which appears to be derived from its acquiescence to and citation of the moral
scale. Nevertheless, the historicity of the virgin/whore dichotomy, and the intrinsic
dependence of the moral scale on this dichotomy, renders such a constitution fragile
and the risk of whore remains.
While the risk of whore is ever present within the terms of Nicola’s active-heterofemininity,
some girls do appear to constitute selves that, while still risky, suggest the
promise of an irreducibility to the virgin/whore binary. It is these selves with which
the remainder of the paper will be concerned.
Beyond hetero-femininity and the virgin/whore dichotomy
Scene 5: consent
A Year 11 trampolining lesson in a sports hall. A group of girls and boys are taking turns on
two trampolines. While waiting for their turn, students stand around the trampolines chatting
and watching. Pipa (girl, White, middle class) and William [boy, White, working class]
are standing a few meters from the trampoline they have been using. Pipa and William
recently ‘got off’ (but did not have intercourse) with each other at a party. William stands
a meter or so behind Pipa and encourages her to let herself fall backwards into his arms.
Laughing, she consents. They do this several times. Each time William allows her to fall
slightly further than the previous time, crouching to catch her in time. Pipa laughs and
exclaims ‘William!’ as he catches her later and later in the fall. William chuckles in response.
On the final fall, William catches Pipa and in a quick fluid motion turns her and lies her
face down on the floor. Pipa makes herself comfortable on the floor, resting her head on
her crossed arms. William puts one foot on Pipa’s back and rocks his foot, and Pipa, from
side to side. Pipa makes a gurgling sound. William chuckles, takes his foot away and helps
Pipa up, holding her around the upper torso with both arms when she is upright. Pipa
laughs and halfheartedly attempts to elbow William in the ribs. (Fieldnotes)
The capable, controlled and active hetero-masculine body and the trusting, compliant
and receptive hetero-feminine body are seen here. Yet Pipa is also a willing
participant in the scene. This willing participation does not appear to risk whore in
the way that Nicola’s practices do, nor is it deflected by the sort of wriggles and
giggles with which Lucy responds to Owen. It is noteworthy that Pipa is a member of
a distinct middle class minority in the school that is disregarded in the daily practices
of many of the working class students, while William is a relatively high-status working
class boy (see Youdell, 2000). It seems that Pipa’s successful heterosexual femininity
outweighs the ‘uncoolness’ of her middle class status even as this class status
enables her to constitute herself outside, or without regard to, the virgin/whore
binary.
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While Pipa and William are ostensibly playing a trust game, their recent sexual
encounter is implicit here, referring to what they have done and what they might do
in the future. Although William appears to abuse the trust within the game and
ultimately break its tacit rule, Pipa’s response to this suggests that a further set of tacit
rules govern the encounter. That is, breaking the rules of the game is, in fact, within
its terms. Pipa’s response to being laid on the floor and stepped on is also noteworthy.
While her lack of resistance might be seen as passivity, her response might also be seen
as a counter-move that neutralizes William’s bodily domination of her. If William
expected/intended Pipa to squeal and beg for mercy (as Lucy did in response to
Stuart), her making herself comfortable might be a partial rejection of the requirement
for the feminine body to at once defer to and fear the strength and authority of the
masculine body. Pipa’s bodily activity in this scene, then, can be understood as constitutive
of an active and consenting hetero-femininity—a consenting activity that
reflects that inferred by her recent sexual encounter with William.
Such active sexuality is at odds with the virgin/whore binary of the prevailing
discourse of hetero-femininity that I have discussed above. That is, in terms of this
prevailing discourse Pipa ‘should’ be the ‘slag’ or ‘slapper’ that Nicola seeks to navigate.
Yet there is no suggestion either that she is constituted in these terms, or that
she (or her friends) are concerned that she might be. This can be understood by Pipa’s
middle-classness and her subsequent location outside the mainstream working class
student culture. This is likely to operate in two ways. First, Pipa’s middle-classness
offers her both institutional protection and an alternative liberal/feminist discourse of
sexual liberation and gender equality through which to constitute herself as feminine
and desiring. Second, her middle-class-liberal-ness may also constitute her as beyond
the realm of interest of the student majority whose practices are central to policing the
virgin/whore binary in this context. This dismissal, while a potentially annihilating
silence, may simultaneously open up the discursive space for the active-heterofemininity
that Pipa practices.
While it seems that Pipa’s practices of femininity are infused with social class in a
way that minimizes the risk of whore, another way in which the virgin whore binary
can be moved past is by jettisoning heterosexual femininity altogether.
Scene 6: crops and combats
Year 11 resistant materials lesson. The class comprises 13 boys and five girls. The girls sit
together in one group of three and one pair. One of these girls is Toni (girl, White, middle
class). Toni wears her hair in a short crop. She wears oversized green–gray combat trousers,
a sweatshirt and green Doctor Martens boots hand-decorated in orange paint. In one
boot there is a red shoelace, in the other a rainbow shoelace. Toni has black-rimmed rectangular
glasses, a silver sleeper in one ear, and a plain black watch and a studded wristband
on one wrist. Her school bag is army-surplus with a sewn-on red ribbon, a VW badge, and
the names of indie bands (hole, Nivana and Placebo) and a woman symbol drawn on in
marker pen.
The class is involved in practical work. A girl along the workbench from Toni struggles to
position and secure a piece of wood in a vice. Toni sees this and, unasked, moves along
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264 D. Youdell
the bench and inserts the wood correctly in the vice. Little verbal exchange is evident and
Toni returns to her own work.
[…]
The teacher asks Toni, along with two boys, to collect specific tools. She waits while a boy
uses a dust brush, which she has been asked to collect. As he uses it, sawdust is flicked onto
Toni’s clothes. A second boy exclaims ‘Don’t be horrible man, that’s rude!’ Toni responds
‘No, it doesn’t matter, I just want the brush’. (Fieldnotes)
This scene illustrates the reach and limits of attempts to constitute the female self
outside, or arguably alternatively within, the heterosexual matrix (Butler, 1990).
Toni’s bodily adornments—her clothes, hairstyle, accessories—are distinct from those
of the majority of girls in the school. Outsized army-surplus combat trousers, studded
wrist bands and cropped hair contrast with the ankle-length stretch tube skirts or thigh
and bum hugging bootleg trousers, coloured silk or semi-precious gem stone friendship
bracelets, and neatly styled mid-length and long hair secured with butterfly clips
and coloured scrunchies worn by the majority of girls in the school. These clothes are
not neutral, waiting to be ascribed meaning when worn (Barthes, 1983). Rather,
clothes, like other cultural artefacts, are imbued with discursive meanings that are
contextually specific, mediated and liable to shift. Toni undoubtedly knows that her
bodily adornments are potentially constitutive of a lesbian identity and the inclusion
of a number of overt signifiers of homosexuality/gay-friendliness/feminism (the rainbow,
the red ribbon, the single ear piercing, the international woman symbol) underscore
this intent. As such, while in 2003 studded wristbands and combat trousers (high
street not army-surplus, with spike heels not DM boots) are must-have items of mainstream
fashion, in a south London classroom in 1998 combats and studded wristbands
breach the bounds of hetero-femininity. Yet while Toni’s practices of bodily
adornment do not conform to the discourse of hetero-femininity prevailing in this
context, they cite another enduring discourse—the unfemininity or impossible masculinity
of the lesbian. In the context of the contemporary London lesbian scene, Toni’s
practices might cite cool androgyny. And this cool androgyny itself both cites and
breaks with older discourses of the masculine lesbian, feminist and female invert,
discourses that are themselves at once potentially injurious and liberatory.
Understood in this way, Toni’s practices of bodily adornment can be understood
to inscribe a female-hetero-feminine/female-homo-masculine binary.
A similar constitutive process, which may require Toni’s prior and ongoing practices
of bodily adornment for their performative force, can be seen in Toni’s practices
within the resistant materials classroom. While Toni is not the only girl who is a
competent member of the resistant materials class, when she assists another girl who
is struggling with a vice her practices cite and inscribe masculine paternalism and
bodily competence and provisionally (but almost impossibly) constitute her in these
terms. At the same time, feminine fragility is cited and inscribed and the other girl is
provisionally constituted in these terms. The tenuous nature of this self-constitution
is later made evident when a boy—himself citing masculine paternalism—intervenes
on Toni’s behalf when another boy flicks saw dust on her. This intervention has the
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Sex-gender-sexuality 265
potential to reconstitute Toni as not physically competent but, instead, as in need of
protection, that is, as feminine. While this intervention could also be seen as lesbianfriendly
support offered in response to flicked sawdust that has been interpreted as an
intentional punishment for Toni’s Otherness, such intent renders the intervention no
more commensurate with Toni’s self-constitutions. The support of a boy/man
given unbidden to a girl/woman is potentially constitutive of their respective heteromasculinity
and hetero-femininity. Toni’s dismissal of the intervention then, is not
only a refusal of a feminized concern for cleanliness, but also a refusal of the heterofemininity
intrinsic to the intervention itself. That is, it is an attempt to resist the
hetero-femininity in whose terms she has been constituted and inscribe herself once
again beyond the bounds of this.
These practices extricate Toni from compulsory heterosexuality, but, as I have
shown, this is not a once and for all extrication. Furthermore, by citing the lesbian
Other her practices inscribe again normative heterosexual femininity. As such, the
extent to which the heterosexual matrix is troubled is limited. Indeed, by constituting
the Other such practices may also act to bolster the heterosexual matrix, underscore
the privilege of the Same, and mark once again the boundaries of this constitutive
binary.
Possibilities
Pipa and Toni’s constitutive practices evidence in different ways the possibility for
female-hetero-femininity to be exceeded. These troubling constitutions are well
illustrated through the girls’ respective outfit choices for the school’s graduation ceremony
which are represented in Figures 1 and 2. Toni’s attire in Figure 1 reflects that
discussed in the previous scene. Flanked here by working class girls adorned in that
summer’s requisite short-skirted two-piece or frock with strappy high-heeled and
neatly styled long hair, the contrast between the bodies of female-hetero-femininity
Figure 1. Toni, andro-dyke flanked by hetro-femmes
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266 D. Youdell
and the body of female-homo-(un)feminine/(impossibly)masculine—the androgynous
dyke—is rendered starkly visible. All three of the girls in this image are surely
cognizant, at least tacitly, of the effects of their outfit choices—the hetero-femmes
‘know’ their dresses ‘are’ feminine, Toni ‘knows’ her cords and t-shirt ‘are’ lesbian/
bi/queer. Yet once again, the extent to which this troubles the heterosexual matrix is
limited—the image is a moment of inscription of the hetero/homo binary, indeed, if
we imagine a girl-sized forward-slash superimposed onto Figure 1 between the
hetero-femme on the left and Toni, the very image of these bodies can be read as a
representation of this binary.
Figure 1. Toni, andro-dyke flanked by hetro-femmesFigure 2. Pipa, hetero-femme drag queen
Pipa’s bodily adornment in Figure 2 also suggests a knowing—Pipa ‘knows’ her
attire and adornment cite the vaudeville dame and the contemporary drag queen as
well as the ‘real’ hetero-femmes of Figure 1. Yet this is a different kind of knowing to
that of Figure 1—it is a knowing citation that inscribes ironically and, therefore,
inscribes differently. As such, Pipa might be read here as a girl ‘in drag’ as a (particular
sort of) woman (or, as drag queen, even man?). This masquerade suggests the deployment
of a sophisticated sexuality/identity politics inclusive of gay, lesbian, bisexual
and, perhaps, queer. This, then, is not the practice of ‘real’ hetero-femininity. Yet to
map the available alternatives—lesbian, bisexual, queer—onto Pipa’s practices would
be to impose a categorical frame and short-circuit the performative excess of these
Figure 2. Pipa, hetero-femme drag queen
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Sex-gender-sexuality 267
practices. Refusing categorization might leave any sex–gender–sexuality constituted
inaccessible, but it might also be to refuse incorporation into the heterosexual matrix.
Yet ultimately, the refusal of such a categorical location may prove impossible and,
indeed, undesirable. Pipa’s practices are constitutive of sex–gender–sexuality, they do
cite female/male, hetero/homo, masculine/feminine binaries. These ironic citations,
however, might constitute a sex–gender–sexuality that unsettles the usual terms of the
heterosexual matrix.
These middle class girls, already excluded from the mainstream student subculture,
deploy the liberal/feminist/identity politics discourses available to them and constitute
female bodies, hetero- and homo-sexualities, femininity and (un)femininity that
exceed the bounds of the prevailing discourse of hetero-femininity. It seems clear that
their social class location, and the combined institutional protection and subcultural
exclusion that this brings with it in this school context, is crucial here.
Conclusion
This paper has sought to demonstrate how multiple, but enduring discourses of
heterosexuality and femininity circulate in school; how these frame what sex–gender–
sexuality identities are intelligible; and so how these constitute girls in particular ways.
The paper has demonstrated some possibilities for shifting these bounds of intelligibility,
for interpellating Other sex–gender–sexuality constellations, but has indicated
the limits of these possibilities. By tracing specific enduring sex–gender–sexuality
discourses and the bounds of intelligibility that these map, and identifying moments
in which these bounds shift or are breached, the paper offers a set of analytical tools
for interrogating how subjectivities are constituted within bounds of intelligibility that
are sedimented and enduring, but not absolute or determined and, therefore, open to
change.
The paper underscores the significance of constellations of particular identity
categories when considering the reach of compulsory heterosexuality. The analysis
offered shows how working class and middle class girls have available to them, and/
or can deploy, different discursive resources, and are subject to and subjected
by different discursive demands—discursive resources and demands that open up
different possibilities and impose different constraints for sex–gender–sexualities.
For instance, the analysis shows how working class girls deploy significant discursive
resources to navigate a virgin/whore dichotomy even as their discursive practices
are implicated in its inscription. It shows how this discourse takes on new forms as
girls struggle to tease a out third space (Cixous & Clement, 1986) that allows heterosexual
feminine desire within the context of a mainstream working class youth
subculture, even as such a subjectivity is rendered unintelligible by the terms of this
dichotomy. The hetero-femmes whose practices are framed by this discourse, and
who are constituted within its terms are not understood to be either anti-feminist
heretics deceived by backlash politics or post-feminist dopes seduced by the promise
of cultural bricolage or the chimera of female privilege in a post-industrial
age. Rather, the analysis offered provides insight into how these girls constitute
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268 D. Youdell
femininities that are required of and sought by them and rewarded within prevailing
discourse, but which come with the price of sex–gender–sexuality constraint and,
ultimately, are impossible to achieve.
In contrast, the analysis shows that discursive resources that render alternative
hetero-feminine and lesbian subjectivities both intelligible and legitimate are available
to/deployed by particular students in ways that are not available to/deployed by
others. That is, in this analysis it is high-attaining girls from liberal middle class
homes—who are already constituted as outside the mainstream student subculture
and who enjoy the institutional protection that their class and attainment profile
confers—whose practices provisionally constitute them intelligibly outside heterofemininity
and/or the virgin/whore binary. Simultaneously, however, the analysis I
offer is subject to the same constraints of discursive intelligibility as the girls’ practices.
When I ‘look’ for alternative hetero-femininities I remain bound by the limits of
meaningful discourse and the concomitant demand that subjectivity make sense in,
and be made through, masculine/feminine and hetero/homo binaries. Likewise, when
I ‘look’ for lesbians in schools I seek a particular sex–gender–sexuality that cites
particular discourses and which is constituted and rendered visible in particular ways.
This sex–gender–sexuality requires a particular discursive frame—a lesbian student,
and her multiple audiences, must have at least a tacit knowledge of this discursive
frame in order to engage in those practices necessary to be meaningfully constituted
in these terms. Indeed, she needs to ‘know’ that she can ‘be’ ‘lesbian’ and ‘be’ this
without being exposed to significant risk in school.
The analysis offered, then, demonstrates the inseparability of sex–gender–sexuality
and shows how these are constrained by particular constellations of identity categories
and the availability of particular discursive resources. In doing this, the paper helps
us to better understand why the constraints of sex, gender, and sexuality are so difficult
to shake off. It provides insight, for instance, into why education policy or curricular
changes that may (or may not) have improved girls’ educational achievement have not
simultaneously simply freed-up or expanded who or how girls can be—what sex–
gender–sexuality demands and is demanded inside school. In turn, this analysis
suggests the limitations of liberal reform and oppositional identity politics. This is not,
however, an unoptimistic analysis, rather, new analytical tools and strategies for
politics are suggested. Deconstructive politics (Butler, 1997a) are evident tacitly in the
discursive practices of students and explicitly in the analyses of these offered. Enduring
discourses and the hierarchical binaries that function within them are identified;
their sedimented meanings noted; their contradictions teased out; and their silences
highlighted. Practices that insist that discourses that have been silenced be intelligible
and legitimate, even if only fleetingly, in school context are explored. And practices
that navigate, resist or undercut enduring discourse; deploy it in new ways; and overlay
it with alternative meaning are interrogated.
These analyses concur with Butler’s (1997a) suggestion that the moment in
which sex-desire might be untethered and replaced with bodies and pleasures has
not yet come. It has been my goal to illustrate theoretical and analytical tools that
others who are concerned with understanding sex–gender–sexuality might make use
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Sex-gender-sexuality 269
of in alternative contexts. In doing this I hope that I have also shown girls opening
discursive spaces for themselves to be otherwise.
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