Dilemmas of Desire: Teenage Girls Talk About Sexuality (8 page)

It has been made clear to Janine that one of the most fearsome dangers is boys’ sexuality. Having a boyfriend means exposing her- self to a boy’s sexual desires and the possibility of pregnancy, which would bring shame not only upon herself, she states, but also upon her family. When her sisters talk of danger, the possibility that her own sexual feelings could be a source of risk is not even men- tioned; it seems to be simply assumed that her desire would not be a threat. She explains: “Why do I not have a boyfriend now is...I wanna take my time, and plus my sisters, they, they don’t like that so, they don’t like me to have a boyfriend, so and they trusting on me, so I just wanna be me, you know, I just don’t wanna disappoint them.” To keep them happy, she has had no boyfriends nor any sexual experiences. Having been deeply schooled in the impor- tance of her ability to realize danger in order to avoid it, Janine has a clear vision of the problems that her sexuality might invite, and it appears that she avoids these difficulties by not “having feelings to know.”

Given what she stands to lose—school, the love and respect of her sisters—it is no wonder that her body is silent. Janine says she does not think about sexuality because “I’m always busy in my school.” It is hard to know if she is operating on the principle that such an exclusive focus on her education will keep her body silent and safe, or if she feels that her body’s silence enables her concen- tration. Yet as we talk about desire, the notion that she has no de- sire because she is not curious comes undone; in fact, her curiosity

emerges instantly. It seems that curiosity about sexuality, precursor to desire, floats not too far below the surface of her consciousness; it is also possible that the safe space of our interview created a new opportunity for her, igniting curiosity that she may not have felt previously. When I ask her what happens when girls in her school do sexual things, whether she has noticed what, if any, conse- quences there are when girls evidence sexuality, she laughs quietly and in the softest whisper says, “I don’t know, you can tell me though.” Her willingness to share what amounts to a secret and eager wish to learn about girls’ sexuality and what really happens in its wake suggests that, while she is pleasing others and also stay- ing safe, something important is missing for her.

Janine then tells an incredibly terse story about a time when she came close to having a conversation with a boy that could have been or become tinged with romance or desire; while her own desire never quite makes it into the story, it is indeed a story about desire. She tells me about how her sister chased him away, an act Janine explains as her sister “protecting me.” However, she also says that her sister’s vigilance in this situation made her feel “bad.” While she says she wants to “take [her] time” in having a boyfriend, her story suggests that a part of her wants to find out what such relationships might be like. She seems to have no way to do so safely.

So what does Janine lose by living in a silent body? Janine de- scribes an isolated and lonely life; she is “always by myself... all my friends, they always talk about boys and stuff, so they just don’t talk to me no more ... It’s not that I don’t like to talk about, it’s just I don’t have feelings to talk about.” For Janine, having a silent body is associated with a rupture in her relationships with other girls, who are more engaged with their developing sexuality. I won- der what other feelings Janine may be sacrificing unintentionally in her effort to evade the dangers of desire. In spite of her silent

body, she seems to struggle with a tension between herself—her curiosity, her wish for intimacy, her bashfully admitted wish to have a boyfriend—and her intense desire not to jeopardize either her relationship with her sisters or her understanding of herself as “good.”

Janine speaks in a hushed voice; everything about her is sub- dued. I wonder if her demeanor is typical for Haitian girls, but I think of how her low energy contrasts with other Haitian girls I have interviewed. Janine is missing a certain vitality, a certain ado- lescent excitement, engagement, and intensity. She lacks strong feelings of passion or anger—or curiosity. Her voice recalls the adolescent girls of color Fine described in a study of poor, urban school dropouts (1986). Fine observed that many of the girls who did stay in school or were not pregnant were compliant, passive, and visibly depressed, perhaps trading in educational benefits for psychological and relational losses.

Janine’s own critique of adult silence about girls’ sexuality sug- gests that she may have misdiagnosed her “problem.” Rather than having no curiosity, perhaps Janine has nowhere she can safely be conscious of and express her curiosity, not necessarily to act on or even to have sexual feelings but simply to wonder out loud, in some kind of relationship, about this part of her developing self. Without anyone to whom she can speak or who might respond to her questions and her wish to know about sexuality with answers rather than judgment or fear for her safety, Janine’s curiosity appears not to exist, even to her. But Janine’s puzzled observations about the absence of her curiosity, coupled with its instant appear- ance when the coast is cleared, indicate that these are feelings she herself is keenly missing. Curiosity that is dissociated from the self and has no relationship in which to flourish will not go away; like any dissociated knowledge, it will find an indirect, more protected way to express itself (Herman, 1992). Having no one with whom to

talk nor any way to express her curiosity, to know what her own desire feels like and the various ways in which she could choose to express it or not, could ultimately put Janine at risk of having sex “just happen.”

Jenny: How Being Good Can Be Bad for Girls
Jenny embodies the mainstream image of the “good” girl, both as a foil for the highly sexualized images of teen girls who are desirable but not desiring and as the contradictory fantasy of ongoing female adolescent innocence and purity despite well-defined breasts and full lips. Blonde, fair, and slim, she sits with her legs tensely crossed; she is polite and smiles at me often. Although Jenny has had a number of boyfriends during adolescence, and a number of sexual experiences, she tells me that she has never expe- rienced feelings she calls sexual desire: “I actually really don’t think I’ve ever like, wanted anything, like sexually that bad ... I’ve never really felt that way before, so I don’t know. I don’t really think that there’s anything that I would, I mean want.” She goes on to explain, “I never had like sexual desire when I was in a relationship. Every- thing just sort of happened. I never really had to want it, ’cause it would always just be there.” Echoing Janine, Jenny says, “I don’t have any curiosity about [my sexuality].”

Jenny’s descriptions of her experiences bring to life the sexual passivity that middle-class norms of femininity demand; her body is “appropriately” silent. She expresses a discomfort with and disin- terest in masturbation different from most of the other girls, who explain that they usually have sexual feelings in relation to another person and so they want to respond only to that person. She con- fides that “I just have never really had the desire to do anything to myself...I don’t think I would like doing it... if I’m with some- one else, I allow them to do things to me.” She is so accustomed to being the object of someone else’s desire, “allow[ing] them to do

things” to her, that exploring her sexuality on her own is not only a violation of femininity, it simply does not make sense.

She has told me that getting a bad reputation or getting called a slut happens “a lot” and is “awful.” She has also noticed a confusing difference between boys and girls when it comes to the conse- quences of having sex outside a “long-term” relationship: “when- ever a girl and a guy do something and people find out, it’s always the girl that messed up... the guys like, get praise for it [she laughs] and the girl’s sort of like called either a slut or just like has a bad reputation.” When I ask her what she thinks about that, she says, “it’s awful, I mean it’s just as much the guy’s fault as it is the girl’s fault... we don’t like make fun of the guys, I don’t know why, it’s just sort of a strange thing, it’s just like the guys and girls make fun of the girls but no one makes fun of the guys.” She notices also that there are few consequences for guys, even if they get someone pregnant or hurt someone’s feelings, or a girl gets a reputation. When I ask her how she makes sense of this inequity, she answers, “I really don’t know why it is.” Like most of her peers, she herself judges other girls who have sexual experiences under the “wrong” circumstances in this negative way.

Her silent body is at the center of the tensions and vulnerabili- ties that organize the story she tells about the first time she had sexual intercourse, just days, it turns out, before this interview. Fresh in her mind, this experience was not what she had hoped it would be:

We got alone together, and we started just basically fooling around and not doing many things. And then he asked me if I would have sex with him, and I said, well I didn’t think I, I mean I said I wanted to wait, ’cause I didn’t want to, I mean I like him, but I don’t
like
him so, and I mean he sorta pushed it on me, but it wasn’t like I absolutely said, “no, don’t,” I—it was sort of a

weird experience. I just, I sort of let it happen to me and never like really said no, I don’t want to do this. I mean I said no, but I never, I mean I never stopped him from doing anything...I was so drunk. I don’t really know what was in my mind. I mean I did think about it. I guess maybe I wanted to get it over with, I guess. You can say, ’cause all my friends basically have had sex, and I was one of the only ones who haven’t. And I wanted to get it over with, although I wanted it to be special the first time...

I thought like, it’s with a friend and it’s not, I don’t know but this is scary, he told me he was wearing a condom and, he wasn’t, and so I was very scared [laughs], for about a week I thought I was pregnant [laughs]... So that’s another reason I’m sort of, I was really upset too, because he lied to me and, told me, and so I don’t know...I didn’t enjoy it at all. It hurt. A lot. I don’t know if you’re supposed to enjoy your first time having sex...I don’t know, I, I just, I mean I could’ve said no, I guess, and I could’ve pushed him off or whatever ’cause he, I mean, he wasn’t, he’s not the type of person who would like rape me or whatever. I mean, well, I don’t think he’s that way at all.

I was always like, well, I want to wait, and I want to be in a rela- tionship with someone who I really like, and I want it to be a special moment and everything, and then it just sort of like hap- pened so quickly... with someone who I didn’t like and who I didn’t want a relationship with and who didn’t want a relation- ship with me, and it was just sort of, I don’t, I don’t know, I regret it...I wish I had just said no. I mean I could’ve, and I did for once but then I just let it go. And I wish that I had stood up for myself and really just like stood up and said “no, I don’t want to do this. I’m not ready or I want it to be a different experience.” I mean I could’ve told him exactly how I felt...I don’t know why I didn’t.

In this story, Jenny is unsure about how to understand her first experience with sexual intercourse. In listening to her, I too am unsure. At first, Jenny knows that she did not want to have sex with this boy, although she did not mind “fooling around.” She in fact said no when the boy asked her if she would have sex with him. There is a clarity to her “no” that she substantiates with a set of compelling reasons for not wanting to have sex with this boy, including she “wanted to wait,” she didn’t “like him” or “want a relationship with him,” and she wanted it to be “a special moment.” After the fact, she continues to say that she had not wanted to have sex. She “regrets it.” She “wish[es] that [she] had just said no.” Given that her story is about a girl who said no, how can she or I understand what exactly happened and why?

Jenny’s story reveals how social constructions of gendered sexu- ality and norms of femininity operated in tandem to yield this confusing experience. Just as she does not know why girls get repu- tations and boys don’t, why she and her friends police and punish girls with the label slut and no one holds boys accountable, Jenny says she “doesn’t know why” she didn’t “tell him exactly how [she] felt.” She gave consideration to whether her “no” had been token resistance, that is, to whether her “no” had in fact meant “yes,” a way to comply with norms of femininity, another cover story for desire (Muehlenhard & Hollabaugh, 1988; Muehlenhard & Rodgers, 1998). The detailed list of reasons why she had meant “no” when she said it, and of what she had hoped her first experience would be like, lend credibility to her repeated statements that she did not want to have sex with this boy at this time. The reasons she gives for why they ended up having sex despite her saying no “for once” is that she “just let it go.” Assuming responsibility, Jenny suggests that she “never stopped him from doing anything,” as if saying no were not sufficient to hold him accountable for refusal to comply

with her stated wishes. Her story suggests that she felt she had no right or reason to expect that he should, would, or could respond to her admittedly uncharacteristic attempt at agency on her own behalf. Her belief that girls are ultimately responsible for boys’ sex- ual behavior stands in the way of her questioning why this boy behaved as though she had not said no; instead she tries to explain what happened in a way that would make sense of his behavior.

One of the few ways to explain his actions is to erase her “no” from the story. By the end of her story, it is as if Jenny no longer knows that she had actually said no to this boy: the definitive “I said no” becomes the uncertain “I sort of let it happen to me and never like,
really
said no, I don’t want to do this,” which eventually transmogrifies into “I mean I could’ve said no, I guess, and I could’ve pushed him off or whatever,” and finally becomes “I wish I had just said no.” Because this boy behaved as though Jenny had not said “no,” in telling this story Jenny loses track of what she knows and what she said, of the reality of her experience, becom- ing confused not only about what she wanted but also about what she said. It is also possible that, since she was drunk, Jenny may not be sure about what she said at which point during this experience, or that she may fear that being inebriated undermined her clarity or credibility. In fact, the confusion she narrates may reflect her confusion at the time about what was happening, due at least in part to drinking. Not surprisingly, she makes no reference to the absence of her own sexual desire in her telling of this story. It is only later in the interview, in response to my direct question about whether she has experienced sexual desire, that Jenny refers back to this story and notes that she “hadn’t felt desire for the person I was with.”