Of course, these “rules”, along with various other forms of regulation and
133 have discussed the ways Christina and Link kept aspects of their relationships secret in order to evade the pressure of the regulatory gaze. And as we have seen
throughout, many girls negotiated their sexualities in ways that were not seen as appropriate by many of my participants. One rule that has already been mentioned, and was viewed as fundamental, was about the monogamous relationship as the only appropriate site for sexual intercourse:
Natalie: No-one has sex unless they're in a relationship, that's the only thing Rache l: Yeah
Natalie: Like I don't think there's anyone in our year group that has had sex unless they're in a relationship
NH: OK, so it's just stuff before that then?
Natalie: Yeah, like no-one would go that far, even if they were absolutely battered you wouldn't
Again, Natalie presents this rule as unquestioned and unquestionable, and adherence to it as total. Notably, they went on to clarify that this was a “rule” specific to their school:
Rachel: I think it's sort of just our school though, cos like at St Andrews and the High [other state schools in the area] they tend to think it's sort of like – Both: Alright[…]
Rachel: Like we have our own little rules, we don't go that far
This is an indication of the paramount importance of localised contexts in shaping teen social regulation of sexuality, which I discuss further in chapter seven. Natalie and Rachel contrast their own school with others where they see the regulation as more lax. Despite Natalie and Rachel's certainty, however, there was at least talk of people who did not adhere to this rule. Peter, who seemed quite inexperienced in terms of relationships, spoke in hushed and shocked tones about someone he knew:
Peter: Yeah. Like one girl who sits next to me in business studies was talking about how she has a <whispering> am I allowed to say it on the recorder?
NH: Yes. Yes. Peter: A fuck buddy.
He talked about this, sexual encounters at parties, and similar relations, as pointless. His surprise and shock at his business studies' partner's casual relationship, although
134 perhaps on the more extreme end of the scale, was not entirely unique. I have
described how several participants spoke of encounters at parties as repellent or unenticing to them, and although this undoubtedly served as a way of maintaining an identity, as mature and disinterested in parties they weren't invited to, nevertheless their talk also constructed these relations as inappropriate for others.
Zelda and Link told me about a friend of theirs who negotiated her sexual relationships in an unusual way, apparently having casual sex regularly.18
Link: And one of our friends is just insane. NH: One is just insane?
Link: Abigail – she's more like a guy than a girl sort of in the sense of relationships, just going out with anyone. [...]
Zelda: I think she just meets them in town, and then they go off and they have sex or something
I was interested in this story, and in the reactions other people had to Abigail, given my understanding of the majority of participants' attitude to sex that was not in relationships. Their gendered description of her sexuality as masculine also intrigued me. I asked if she was talked about a lot, and they answered:
Zelda: Mm, not really, they just think she's a bit mad.
Link: I think quite a lot of boys in our ye ar are scared of her. [...]
Zelda: I'm a bit scared of her.
Link: Yeah, I think everyone's a bit intimidated by her.
Abigail seemed to be viewed as existing outside the normal rules and regulations of heterofemininity. Despite her unconventional behavio ur, she was not seen as a significant threat to the sexual order. Instead, the extent of her transgression othered her the point that she was viewed as an eccentricity, perhaps in order to suppress the possibility that her example of transgressive femininity might be spread further. The extreme terms (“mad”, “scared”) speak to the power of emotion this transgressive
18
I tried to convince them to persuade her to come and see me, and at their second interview, they said she had just been in town with them and had been thinking of coming along, but to my disappointment she did not.
135 female sexuality is able to arouse, as well as resonating with historical discourses of female sexuality as bound up with madness (Ussher 1997). The discomfort that she engenders is fended off with humour.
The ways in which her sexuality was ignored and downplayed indicate the
limitations of one individual doing sexuality and gender differently, as I discussed in chapter two. While Abigail herself may well have experienced a greater freedom of movement in relation to sexuality (although my speculation on this is very limited, as I have only second-hand accounts), the impact of this on other people, and on broader gendered discourses, was limited. Adrienne and Lucy spoke about a girl in their year who told people herself about a sexual encounter:
Adrienne: Yeah, one girl in our year did something and then she um, she kind of just told everyone straight out about it
Lucy: As if she was proud about it, and then we were just like, bad idea Adrienne: But then, I’m not sure whether that was like, the right thing to do, because it could have got round than like, a worse thing than it was. But then, I guess everyone knew like, exactly what happened.
While the girl in question may have been proud of her sexual expression, or not seen it as a problem, in spreading the rumour her actions are reincorporated within the norm (Youdell 2004). Adrienne and Lucy told me this story in response to a question of mine on whether they knew of anybody’s having had “bad experiences in
relationships”. Their answers were notable in refocussing the question not on experiences within relationships, but on the circulation of experiences beyond the relationship: the readings of experiences. Again, we see the centrality of social surveillance to the understanding of the pleasures and pains of teen sexuality. These girls may have been trying to redraw their own borders of femininity, to do things differently, but their resignification was read by others within the dominant paradigm.