Dilemmas of Desire: Teenage Girls Talk About Sexuality (13 page)

Sheepishly elaborating aspects of her desire that she considers unflattering, she tells me that desire “is a big deal for me in terms of boyfriends. I think that the reason, this may sound really bitchy and really like awful, but the reason a lot of times that I break up with someone is because I’m not attracted to them anymore ... if they’re not attractive to me anymore then I just can’t ... if I’m not attracted to them I don’t wanna fool around, it’s almost like a chore.” She describes this quality as “a criterion that I haven’t been able to overcome... it’s just kind of important to me.” Emily demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of the central role

that her desire plays in providing her with information about a relationship. This insight is coupled with her embarrassment over how important feeling “attracted” to a boyfriend is for her, calling her sentiments “really bitchy” and “awful,” intimating that the loss of feeling attracted to someone is not an appropriate female “crite- rion” for breaking up. At the same time, she realizes that having a sexual experience when she is not attracted to her partner, some- thing she is doing for negative reasons that do not include her own wish to “fool around,” feels like a “chore” for her. Her sense that the absence of her desire is a problem collides with her knowledge of how its presence puts her at risk for being labeled a bitch. I begin to see the kind of no-win situation that Emily’s desire, either having it or not, creates for her in the quicksand of aspirations of femininity. Emily does not speak about sexual violence. She says that she does not worry about pregnancy because she is using contracep- tion in a committed relationship, and she does not mention any concern about HIV. Although sex does not “just happen” to Emily, her own desire appears to be unreliable as a guidepost for her behavior. For instance, Emily does not feel entitled to explore her sexuality through masturbation because “it’s not accepted for women to masturbate.” Even though she knows that “girls should,” and even though Emily has stated that she wants to understand and experience her sexuality more than she has been able to up to now, she “can’t” engage in the simple act of touching herself sexu- ally, the safest of all sexual practices, in private and out of range of the judgment of others. Thus it is not the rejection by others that concerns Emily; for her, the discomforts of desire come from

inside.

The source of this discomfort lies in her ambivalent embrace of gendered sexuality. While on the one hand she can describe feel- ing and acting on her desire and how important it is to her to inte- grate her sexuality into her growing sense of who she is and how

relationships go, on the other she is keenly aware of the potential danger that sexuality opens up for girls. She describes how she has been socialized into this view: “Maybe it’s that all through growing up, [adults tell you] he’s gonna try to get this off you, and he’s gonna try to do, you know, when you’re little, and he’s gonna try to kiss you and you have to say no, you know, stuff like that, not that you have to say no, but be prepared for that, and stuff like that.” She realizes that she often feels “self-conscious using ‘I’ ” as we talk; she observes, “I don’t like to think of myself as feeling really sexual... I don’t like to think of myself as being like someone who needs to have their desires fulfilled.” When I ask what she thinks about the contradiction between this self concept and her explicit descrip- tions of feeling desire as a positive part of her relationship, she expresses her ambivalence. She just does not feel comfortable acknowledging that she “need[s] this kind of a thing,” despite also having a sense that “it’s wrong [not to acknowledge her needs] and that everybody has needs.” Emily has offered a picture of adoles- cent sexuality that does not include her sexual feelings. In fact, it requires her to protect herself from a boy’s assumed desire for her; she is responsible for holding his feelings at bay. So it is not surpris- ing that Emily feels “self-conscious” when she speaks about and claims her “sexual needs.” Emily remembers hearing “he’s gonna try to kiss you”; she does not speak of hearing that she might want to kiss him. She demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of how she has been guided through “societal” means out of her body and into “self-conscious[ness],” perceiving the vulnerability of girls who have needs in a world where boys are assumed to be sex- ual aggressors. Despite having a pleasurable sexual relationship with a boy who is not a sexual predator, and despite knowing that her feelings are or at least should be considered normal, she is unsure if she can have desire and be safe, given the constant threats of social repercussions and male sexual aggression that have been

ingrained in her. The gap between “everyone has needs” and what she knows and fears happens to girls who do has not yet been filled in.

As she pursues her identity as a “good” and “nice” girl who is liked, respected, and not exploited, Emily lives in a constant state of fear that she will “get used” and feel like a “slut,” that is, a “bad” girl who has no defense against being mistreated. Espousing the com- plementary belief that boys and men are sexual predators makes it hard to question the social, relational, or psychological dangers that are meant to keep her desire in check. When she capitulates to these interlocking gendered notions, she comes into conflict with what she knows about girls from her own embodied experience and about boys from her own relational experience. While strong feelings of desire do not sit easily with her self-image as a “people pleaser,” who must discount her own feelings to avoid conflict, ironically, it is when she takes on this identity that she becomes vulnerable.

For instance, she describes pretending to have enjoyed a time when a previous boyfriend, in whom she was rapidly losing inter- est, put a lot of his fingers in her vagina:

enjoying yourself ?

by just pretending, it was no big deal, I mean, I wasn’t getting hurt by it.

Describing herself as “bored,” “[not] really attracted to him,” and not “hav[ing] the energy to put off his come-ons” in this story, Emily renders her own sexual feelings irrelevant to, and absent from, the situation. Her sexual behavior is fueled by her desire to stop an unpleasant experience; her strategy for doing so is to fake her own pleasure and engage in a sexual behavior that is empty of feeling. She explains that this pretense of pleasure keeps her from feeling “mean” and “uncaring”—undesirable qualities for a nice girl who thinks of herself as a “people pleaser.” It is ironic that to get a boy to stop hurting her in a failed attempt to provide her with pleasure, rather than asking him to stop or do it differently, she covers up her displeasure with pretend pleasure, which, she says, did not cause her to get “hurt.”

It is when, and only when, her sexual subjectivity is discounted, by herself or by someone else, that her talk turns to being exploited or “used” or being considered a slut. This fear is a pall even over her current relationship; her uncertain reflection “I don’t feel used, particularly,” suggests her suspicion that having sexual experiences in which she does not feel “fulfilled” while her boyfriend gets “more satisfaction” might mean she is being used. In another situ- ation, a boy she “fooled around with” one night at a party “jumped out of the bed and walked out of the room as soon as he had come.” When I ask her why she might get into a situation like that, her explanation includes her lack of desire and her wish to avoid conflict: “because it’s usually in front of other people and like, why you, I’ll say no, no, the first time and then they’ll do it again or something like that, and I’ll just feel bad and I’ll just say okay. I mean it’s not a big deal to me, so in a way I’m letting myself be used.” Not only does her resolve fold under the pressure of her

wish to evade “feel[ing] bad” by embarrassing a boy “in front of other people,” she also takes the blame for “letting [her]self be used,” letting the boy off the hook for his coercive behavior. Inter- estingly, while she says that being used makes her feel like a “slut,” she does not say she worries about getting a reputation. In a way, social repercussions are superfluous, since she beats her peers to the punch by being so punitive with herself.

Emily is negotiating a complex set of messages that do not line up neatly with her own experiences. Hearing that boys will assert their sexual needs is contradicted by her boyfriend’s reticence about having sex. The notion that “everyone has needs” is chal- lenged by how her sexual feelings are overlooked by others and her own ambivalence about them. The contradiction between being a “people pleaser” and a girl with desires of her own leaves her with no clear direction about how to deal with her embodied sexuality in a landscape that is dotted, inside and out, with the possibility of being a “slut” who will always and forever be in danger of being used.

For Emily, her own desire has led both to humiliating and scary encounters she regrets and to powerful experiences of connection with someone she loves. It has led to exciting, unexpected mo- ments tinged with taboo and to frustrating, disappointing interac- tions that leave her confused. Emily is not sure if or how she can rely on her desire, or when it is and is not safe to do so. Yet these contradictory experiences of desire are not compartmentalized; each hangs over the other, casting shadows and shining light on possibilities for danger and glints of pleasure.

Megan: Confusion in the Face of Contradiction
Megan has questions of her own about girls’ sexual desire, lots of them. Perky, enthusiastic, yet increasingly jittery as our interview progresses, she hits on the contradiction between her awareness of

the social mandates for appropriate female sexuality and her awareness of the vicissitudes of her own sexual desire. She identi- fies herself as bisexual, having joined a group for sexual minority youth, where she is “exploring” her feelings for girls. Her descrip- tions of her experiences of sexual desire differ for boys and for girls. Regarding boys, she offers articulate and evocative descrip- tions of what desire feels like to her; it is Megan who says that her “vagina starts to kinda like act up” when she feels desire. For girls, however, she is in uncharted territory, her mind “block[ing]” her body out as soon as she notices she feels an attraction. She attributes this short-circuiting to the newness of her own accep- tance of her desire for girls. We talk more about her heterosexual experiences.

She is fully aware of how “society” makes no room for girls to feel sexual desire, while boys are expected to feel “horny.” Ground- ing her analysis in her acceptance of her own sexual desire, she thinks this failure to acknowledge or normalize girls’ sexuality pro- duces the pretense among most girls that they do not have such feelings: “I’m not more horny than the next one but [when talking with her brother about sex,] I’m open about it and probably other girls aren’t open about it, so he’s probably like, oh my god, but I think a lot of girls are like that and if a guy said it, it’d be fine, but you know, me saying it, it’s different.” Nevertheless, Megan cannot figure out how to put this awareness to use in her own life. Her consciousness of girls’ embodied desire and her refusal to buy into the notion that it is immoral or abnormal yields an astute social analysis that “maybe reputations like keep you in line, like maybe [girls would] just do whatever the hell they wanted to do if there was no reputation they would get or something.” While she under- stands the dynamics of social control at play, she does not go so far as to reject this social stigma. While Megan is an avid and critical reader of gendered beliefs about adolescent sexuality, she struggles

with her wish to fit in and to be considered, as well as feel, normal under current gender arrangements and mandates that leave her actual feelings out. Her ambivalence about what she knows and what to do about it are tangible.

Megan has had a few boyfriends and a number of heterosexual experiences and has had a range of reactions to and questions about them. Talking it over with her mother, Megan has decided that she is “too young” and wants to wait until she has a “good rela- tionship” to have sexual intercourse.

It’s better to do those kind of things with someone you really care about, you know, it just makes it better, and you just like it more, you know? And that makes sense. I don’t want to like ruin my first experience with someone that I don’t know at all ... I’m just not old enough to have sex...I still have a lot more exploring to do before I do that, you know? I wouldn’t wanna rush it. It’s just not worth it.

Megan’s choice not to have intercourse is grounded not in the con- straints of femininity but in practical considerations about her maturity and her values. Like the majority of girls her age, at this point in her life, her sexuality is in fact not about sexual inter- course, it is about experiencing sexual desire and “exploring” the contours of her sexuality outside the danger zone of intercourse. Therefore, even her mother’s advice, which guides her to make responsible decisions and also to have positive expectations about sexual intercourse with boys, does not help her understand her sexual feelings when intercourse is not the issue. Reflecting on a time when she and a boy were kissing and touching each other, she says:

I don’t know what I wanted. I was so confused the next day, it was like why did I do that? I mean it felt good when we were doing it,

so why wouldn’t you just wanna keep going on and on and on? I stopped him, it felt good, but I am so young, and you just don’t do that...I mean, are you just supposed to ignore those feelings?

Megan is left to her own devices to figure out how she might deal with her desire: Is she “supposed to ignore those feelings?” And the contradiction between her feelings and societal messages confuses her:

It’s so confusing, ’cause you have to like say no, you have to be the one to say no, but why should you be the one to, ’cause I mean maybe you’re enjoying it and you shouldn’t have to say no or anything. But if you don’t, maybe the guy’ll just keep going and going, and you can’t do that, because then you would be a slut...I mean so many of my friends have done it and in a way it’s kinda good if you, like my friends who haven’t ever kissed a guy or they’ve just kissed or something, that’s not cool either, you have to be kinda in the middle, you know, you have to like know what you’re doing but not go that far... There’s so [much] like, you know, stuff that you have to deal with and I don’t know, just I keep losing my thought.

Although Megan knows the logic offered by society—that she must “say no” to keep him from “going and going,” which will make her “a slut”—she is also aware of what is missing from that logic, that maybe the girl is the one who is “enjoying it.” The fact that she may be experiencing sexual desire renders the response she is expected to have—to fend him off—virtually nonsensical. The rule does not address her actual question; it precludes such a question. She also has the additional burden of trying to figure out what “be[ing] kinda in the middle,” having some but not too much sexual experience, actually is. Because she does feel her own desire

and can identify the potential of her own pleasure, Megan asks the next logical question: “why should you be the one to [say no]”? She knows the answer that gendered sexuality supplies: because she will be called a slut if she doesn’t apply the brakes, while there are no negative consequences for boys. Because she does not actu- ally pose this question to anyone else, she remains confused by a system that does not make sense, if her own sexual desire is part of what actually happens.

Her questions about the double standard enable her belief, at least in theory, that she is as entitled to sexual pleasure as boys are. Alone with her questions, relying only on herself for answers, she finds that it is hard for her to feel comfortable acting on these countervailing convictions. She tells me, “I do stuff, I feel like I wanna, I wanna do stuff, that I wanna do, but I know that isn’t right for me societally.” When I ask her for an example, she offers masturbation, indicating how the conflict for her is not only with the external social world but also inside herself: “Sometimes I stop myself from masturbating, but usually not. You just kinda, I just kinda struggle with that, you know, I mean, you feel guilty but, so what? No one knows. Except you [laughs]. And, you know, [I read a teen] magazine that said it was okay [laughs] so [laughs].” Laugh- ing through her discomfort with the contradiction between know- ing that desire is not acceptable for girls and reading a magazine that says it is okay, Megan ends up masturbating but struggling with her guilt about it.

Not only has she observed the ways that messages about girls’ sexuality, in their ubiquitous focus on preventing sexual inter- course, leave out or condemn her embodied feelings for boys and even the possibility of sexual pleasure through masturbation, she is also keenly aware of the pervasiveness of cultural norms and images that demand heterosexuality:

Every teen magazine you look at is like, guy this, how to get a date, guys, guys, guys, guys, guys. So you’re constantly faced with, I have to have a boyfriend, I have to have a boyfriend, you know, even if you don’t have a boyfriend, just [have] a fling, you know, you just want to kiss a guy or something. I’ve had that mentality for so long.

In this perfect description Megan brings the concept of compul- sory heterosexuality to life, capturing the pressure exerted upon her to have a boyfriend, which produces inevitable conflict with that other mandate: to say no when with a boy who is supposed to be trying to have sex. She is aware of how her psyche has been shaped into a “mentality” requiring any sexual or relational inter- ests to be heterosexual, which contradicts how she actually feels. Megan explains how compulsory heterosexuality comes between her and her feelings, making her vulnerable to dissociation from her feelings under this pressure.

Megan tells far fewer stories about her desire for girls. Becoming friends with a lesbian girl this year and joining a youth group for sexual minorities “really helped me to, you know, talk about it, just made me feel so much better, like I read my diary from before and I just remember, I came back from this basketball game where I had liked this girl and I was just like so... confused, I don’t under- stand, why do I like this girl, why does this always happen, you know? And I just didn’t like myself for doing that.” Acknowledging her feelings, and having those feelings accepted and validated, has diminished the negative feelings Megan had about herself and her attraction to girls when she was living, as she describes it, in a more “homophobic” environment.

In contrast to Megan’s clarity about her embodied sexual feel- ings toward boys, her desire for girls is much more elusive. She is aware of her own psychological resistance:

I mean, I’ll see a girl I really, really like, you know, because I think she’s so beautiful, and I might, I don’t know. I’m so confused . . . But there’s, you know, that same mentality as me liking a guy if he’s really cute, I’m like, oh my God, you know, he’s so cute. If I see a woman that I like, a girl, it’s just like wow, she’s so pretty, you know. See I can picture like hugging a girl; I just can’t picture the sex, or anything, so, there’s something being blocked.

Megan links her confusion and “being blocked” to the absence of images of lesbian sexuality, in contrast to the heterosexual imagery all around her: “I think that there’s always that little thing in here that, you know, you need a guy, in my head, sometimes I just can’t tell where the line is or whether, you know, I mean physically want- ing a guy or mentally. Or a girl . . . there’s never that mentality to, you want a girl, you want a girl, you want a girl, so I never think of that. But then I’ll see a girl and I’ll like have a crush on her, you know... But I can’t imagine kissing them.”