7.3.1 Micro-‐ and macro-‐narratives of gender, sexuality, education and cultures
A methodological contribution of the study is the use of a narrative analytical approach which considered Plummer’s (1995) sexual stories within Andrews’ (2014) political narratives framework. As Plummer (1995) has noted, sexual stories told by individuals are always ‘part of the wider discourses and ideologies abroad in society’ (1995: 6). In my study, considering the social and ideological nature of sexual stories in terms of ‘the relationship between macro and micro narratives’ described by Andrews (2014: 86) provided a means of closely examining the co-‐construction of stories within research encounters, considering how participants ‘use[d] culture in doing narratives’ (Andrews 2014: 86), and how this could be linked to their sense of ‘what it means to be’ from a particular place and a ‘sense of belonging and/or alienation’ (Andrews 2014: 88). Paying attention to the performative work within micro-‐narratives and particular positionings (whether conscious or unconscious) within macro-‐narratives therefore meant that it was possible to explore the ways in which young people and their teachers performed particular gendered, sexual, classed, national and global identities within research encounters.
Overall, examining ‘the relationship between the stories of individuals and the stories of the communities in which they live’ (Andrews 2014: 86) meant that interrelations between local experiences and national and international understandings could be examined (RQ2). The narrative analytical framework adopted meant that it was possible to go beyond simply identifying a gap between ‘official’ understandings of gender, sexuality and education in India and young people’s ‘unofficial’ understandings and everyday experiences. Instead, I could explore the possibilities, new expectations, frustrations and confusions which arise from young
people’s daily engagement with contradictory macro-‐narratives of gender, sexuality and education in contemporary India.
Chapter Two explored some of the macro policy narratives through which gender and education have been understood in post-‐independence India. Since the late 1980s, a dominant narrative within education policies has identified increasing girls’ access to primary schooling as a means of achieving gender equality. This has developed alongside post-‐liberalization, middle-‐class narratives in which the educated, professional woman has been seen as ‘the icon of the new India’ (Dasgupta 2014: 135); in these narratives, girls’ and women’s education is seen as a measure of family, community and national progress (Phadke, Khan & Ranade 2011). Macro-‐narratives of aspirational femininity can be linked to can-‐do narratives of girlhood, which strongly shaped teachers’ and students’ expectations of girls’ education in the study schools. Previous studies have highlighted the value of education among Indian middle-‐class families (Sancho 2012; Donner 2008), but a key finding of my doctoral research is that the urban, middle-‐class girls who participated in this study shared equal aspirations of higher education and professional careers with their male classmates. This suggests that these macro-‐ policy, popular and middle-‐class narratives of gender and education may have had a positive effect on middle-‐class girls’ perceptions of their capabilities.
However, following the December 2012 gang rape case and the pervasive media coverage of sexual violence cases in 2013, these can-‐do narratives of girlhood were significantly challenged. Tensions between aspirational narratives of femininity and persistent concerns about young women’s ‘virtue, sexual choices and matrimonial alliances’ in post-‐liberalization India have previously been identified (Phadke, Khan & Ranade 2011: 23). It has been argued that narratives emphasizing protection and ‘safety’ are in fact motivated by attempts to control female sexuality; restricting young women’s access to public spaces not only ‘protects’ them from sexual violence, but also prevents them from forming unsanctioned romantic and sexual relationships (Phadke, Khan & Ranade 2011). These concerns were apparent through narratives of vulnerable girlhood in the study schools, which were reinforced by teachers, families, and the girls themselves, who internalized notions of their vulnerability when in public spaces. Gilbertson (2014) has characterized the tensions between these can-‐do and vulnerable narratives of girlhood in terms of young women’s attempts to find a ‘fine balance’ between modern freedoms and traditional restrictions. However, my findings suggest that tensions between contradictory macro-‐narratives of femininity also encourage girls to vociferously challenge attempts at restriction. Many of the girls spoke passionately about their equal rights to safety in public spaces, and the Indian government’s responsibility to fulfil
these rights. This suggests that girls’ expectations of greater freedoms, encouraged by narratives of can-‐do femininity, can lead them to politicized understandings of citizenship and rights in terms that go beyond the ‘consumer citizenship’ among young middle-‐class people in contemporary India identified by Lukose (2009) and Phadke, Khan & Ranade (2011)
Contradictory macro-‐narratives of gender, sexuality and education also manifested as tensions within micro-‐narratives of boys’ experiences in the study. For example, media stories of sexual violence consistently invoked narratives of violent, predatory masculinity alongside narratives of vulnerable femininity. Boys and girls who participated in the study invoked middle-‐class narratives which associate education with a greater degree of ‘civilisation’ (Jeffrey, Jeffery & Jeffery 2004) to condemn and distance themselves from such behaviour. These narratives were also apparent in media coverage of sexual violence cases, and are consistent with the rejection of working-‐class, lower caste ‘unbelongers’ in urban spaces (Phadke, Khan & Ranade 2011). Findings from this study also caution against understanding modern Indian masculinity as comprehensively in ‘crisis’ (Dasgupta 2014; Kapur 2012; Roy 2012). Violence was certainly central to ‘hero’ narratives of masculinities within peer cultures (which drew upon narratives of masculinity popularized in Bollywood films), and on an institutional level, ‘boys will be boys’ narratives led to violent disciplinary practices being reserved for boys. Adopting a narrative analytical approach meant it was possible to consider the alternative narratives invoked by boys as they sought to distance themselves from sexually violent behaviour. For example, several boys also invoked ‘good boy’ narratives which repudiated violence, emphasized the importance of respecting women and girls, and viewed education as an essential means of ensuring this level of ‘civilized’ behaviour. Nevertheless, just as tensions between more progressive and restrictive narratives of girlhood led to frustrations among the girls who participated in the study, tensions between these narratives of ‘civilized’ and ‘backward’ masculinities led to considerable confusions among boys. This was most apparent in their struggles to distinguish sexual desire from sexual violence, which led to uncertainties about whether it was possible to both ‘respect’ and be sexually attracted to girls.
The use of a narrative analytical framework, then, has highlighted the ways in which young people directly engaged with contradictory macro-‐narratives of gender, sexuality and education in India, whether evident in policy, media or popular understandings of ‘middleclassness’, within their own micro-‐narratives of everyday experiences in school and beyond. This suggests that a narrative analytical approach, particularly one shaped by considering Plummer’s (1995) (sexual) stories within Andrews’ (2014) political narratives framework, can productively support the exploration of interconnections and tensions
between local understandings and experiences and national-‐ and international-‐level understandings. In my doctoral study, this has specifically led to a consideration of the ways in which young people’s experiences and understandings of gendered and sexual possibilities are shaped by their direct engagement with macro-‐narratives of gender, sexuality and education in contemporary India.
7.3.2 Middle-‐class experiences of learning about gender and sexuality
One of the substantive contributions of the study is to address the lack of research on how young people learn about gender and sexuality in Indian schools, as identified by Bhattacharjee (1999) and reiterated more recently by Thapan (2014). The use of Connell’s (2000) framework has been central to this, as it has enabled me to conceptualize schools both as institutional agents in gendering and sexualising processes, and as sites in which young people act as agents by responding to and shaping these processes themselves. This is a particularly important contribution to the literature, as although recent studies have explored the importance of peer cultures in young people’s gendered and sexual experiences in post-‐ liberalization India (Gilbertson 2014; Twamley 2013; Lukose 2009; Sinha-‐Kerkoff 2003; Abraham 2002, 2001; Osella & Osella 1998), most of these have not examined the key role of institutional contexts within young people’s lives, even when working with school and college students.
My use of Connell’s (2000) framework was therefore particularly important when addressing RQ1, in order to consider the ways in which institutional contexts and peer cultures shape understandings, experiences and processes of learning about gender and sexuality in Delhi schools. The narrative analytical framework discussed above and the concept of ‘sexual learning’ (Thomson & Scott 1991) were also central to the substantive contributions of the study, and to exploring young people’s experiences of gendered, sexual learning beyond schools. Particular macro-‐narratives seemed to dominate formal and informal sources of gendered and sexual learning accessed by young people, but attention to sexual stories (for example, in popular and news media, and stories of school romances and sexual experiences which circulated within peer cultures) meant that the influence of alternative narratives could also be identified. Participants’ understandings and experiences of learning about gender and sexuality have also been considered in terms of their ‘middleclassness’. The research therefore provides a substantive contribution to the existing body of literature on middle-‐class
experiences in post-‐liberalization India, and specifically, highlights the importance of education as a site for middle-‐class young people’s negotiation of gendered and sexual politics.
The discussion of policy narratives in Chapter Two revealed that young people’s sexuality has been understood as a ‘problem’ to be addressed and ideally controlled through education in post-‐independence India, from implicit concerns about co-‐education in the 1950s and 1960s, to population education in the 1970s and 1980s, and HIV prevention-‐focused adolescence education from the 1990s to the present day. The influence of the latter approach was apparent in the main formal source of sexual learning available to students in this study, the Reproduction chapter in the Class 10 Biology textbook, which was dominated by risk-‐based, biologized understandings of (hetero)sexuality. However, the influence of conservative cultural narratives opposing sexual learning was also evident in the silences and euphemisms within this chapter. Additionally, ‘storm and stress’ narratives of adolescence within the schools echoed the implicit anxieties of mid-‐twentieth century policy narratives on co-‐education. Concerns that teenage (hetero)sexuality would disrupt career-‐oriented narratives of education led to disciplinary mechanisms which maintained gender segregation in the schools, while teachers also regularly advised students to remain within their ‘limits’ when interacting with the opposite sex.
These findings are consistent with existing literature emphasizing how young people’s sexuality is constructed as ‘taboo’ in India (Chowkhani 2015; Twamley 2013), and also echo studies reporting the use of disciplinary practices to monitor and control young people’s sexuality in UK schools (e.g. Nayak & Kehily 2008; Alldred & David 2007; Epstein & Johnson 1998). As in those studies, teachers’ anxieties in my doctoral study were based in fears that young people’s discovery of their sexuality would inevitably disrupt academic achievement. Attempts to control young people’s sexuality through gender segregation also reflect the familiar mind/body dichotomy within secondary education, as well as Gandhian narratives of sexuality in which the body is suppressed and controlled in pursuit of loftier, intellectual purposes.
While these storm and stress narratives of adolescence and risk-‐based narratives of sexuality were apparent in institutional practices and formal sources of sexual learning at the schools, informal sources of sexual learning and student peer cultures were also shaped by these narratives. For example, youth-‐oriented TV shows strongly reinforced reproduction-‐and-‐risk, and sometimes reproduction-‐as-‐risk, narratives through storylines associating teenage sexual activity with extreme health and social risks. These findings contradict existing literature on young people’s consumption of popular media in post-‐liberalization India; Chakraborty (2010),
Orsini (2006) and Banaji (2006) have all described Bollywood films as a source of alternative, erotic sexual content, but in this study, sex scenes in Bollywood films were found to fuel existing confusions and anxieties about sex, further reflecting young people’s pervasive understandings of sexuality within risk-‐based narratives.
Risk-‐based narratives of sexuality also shaped young people’s ideas about the kinds of formal sexual learning they should receive in school. The vast majority of student participants indicated that school-‐based sex education was essential for young people in India, and used risk-‐based, health prevention narratives to counter conservative cultural arguments against sex education. Students’ arguments that they needed to protect themselves with accurate information indicated that their understandings of sexual learning were largely shaped by the risk-‐based narratives they already accessed, as well as their sense that existing sources had not provided them with sufficient information so far. Even though students explicitly rejected cultural narratives in which sex education is seen as ‘against’ Indian culture, the influence of conservative narratives of gender and sexuality was also evident within student peer cultures. For example, confirming findings of gender asymmetrical access to sexual knowledge (Nath 2009; McManus & Dhar 2008), many students assumed that boys were more interested in sexual learning than girls, and it also emerged that boys were more likely to access a wider range of informal sources, including online pornography (which girls either did not access, or did not feel comfortable revealing that they did).
Additionally, although students frequently undermined institutional norms of gender segregation in the schools, many shared teachers’ concerns that exploration of teenage sexuality would disrupt the career-‐oriented narrative of education that was so highly valued within schools. As a result, the importance of imposing ‘limits’ on heterosocial relationships, whether in platonic or romantic relationships, was particularly emphasized within peer cultures. Confirming findings from Twamley (2013) and Abraham (2001), this study suggested that sexual activity among student couples was the exception rather than the norm; at least according to the students who participated in the research, ‘appropriate’ levels of intimacy within girlfriend-‐boyfriend relationships did not extend beyond hugging and kissing.
On the whole, the romantic relationships most highly valued in participants’ peer cultures seemed consistent with those described elsewhere as ‘true love’ relationships (Abraham 2001; Gilbertson 2014), characterized by emotional attachment and limited or no physical intimacy. The celebration of couples who embodied these ideals provided an important source of peer learning about socially sanctioned degrees of physical intimacy, which were in turn influenced by fears relating to the potential costs of teenage sexual activity as emphasized in dominant
risk-‐based narratives of sexuality. Peer romances also reinforced heterosexual and caste boundaries at the schools, and students’ expectations of arranged intra-‐caste marriages (in spite of many students’ own opposition to the enforcement of caste boundaries) are consistent with previous studies which have highlighted the continued importance of caste to ‘sanctioned’ sexuality, particularly in relation to marital practices, among the urban middle-‐ classes (Donner 2008; Mody 2006).
It was apparent, then, that risk-‐based narratives of sexuality dominated formal and informal sources of sexual learning within and beyond school, and shaped young people’s understandings and experiences of gender and sexuality within peer cultures and institutional contexts. However, peer cultures also offered an opportunity for students to contest and re-‐ define certain cultural narratives of gender and sexuality. As in previous studies (Sancho 2012; Sinha-‐Kerkoff 2003; Abraham 2001), I found that acceptable heterosocial interactions were framed in terms of brother-‐sister, ‘rakhi’ relationships in otherwise gender-‐segregated spaces. As Sinha-‐Kerkoff (2003) and Abraham (2001) have found, students in my study also reported that these platonic relationships could turn into romantic relationships, or serve as a cover for romantic or sexual liaisons. However, my narrative analytical framework meant that it was possible to go beyond findings from existing studies. By considering students’ preferences for certain heterosocial dynamics within the context of wider cultural narratives, students’ attitudes towards and ‘use’ of certain heterosocial relationships could be considered in more depth.
For example, the celebration of brothers and sisters through Raksha Bandhan meant that rakhi relationships were tied to notions of Indian culture. However, this nationalistic trope was also playfully undermined in popular culture, with rejection of a brother-‐sister relationship widely read as suggestive of sexual desire. Students often framed their own preferences for heterosocial friendships in terms of rejecting traditional, conservative values; friendships were associated with more modern social patterns, with boys and girls on a more equal footing (unlike the protector/protected binary of rakhi relationships). In turn, heterosocial friendships allowed greater emotional closeness, and left open romantic and sexual possibilities. While Abraham (2001) does not consider distinctions between rakhi relationships and heterosocial friendships, findings from the present study are consistent with Gilbertson (2014), who points to the desirability of heterosocial friendships as markers of modernity in post-‐liberalization India. Findings on heterosocial peer cultures further suggest that young people had not only ‘learned’ the officially sanctioned boundaries for peer interactions in co-‐educational spaces,
but were also adept at actively negotiating and undermining these boundaries in order to define such relationships themselves.
These findings also point to important class distinctions in terms of young people’s ability to ‘choose’ between narratives of tradition and modernity. While rakhi relationships could be re-‐ negotiated and played with among the urban, middle-‐class young people who participated in my study, more violent connotations of rakhi-‐tying have been reported in rural North India, where inter-‐caste marriages are annulled by forcing couples to acknowledge each other as brother and sister (Chowdhry 2007). The fluidity of the boundaries between rakhi relationships and less platonic relationships is arguably enjoyed by those of higher class status; while negotiating tradition and modernity can often be a fraught process for the urban middle-‐ classes (Gilbertson 2014; Phadke, Khan & Ranade 2011), I would argue that the ability to carry out these negotiations with some freedom is a marker of class privilege in itself.
These class-‐related freedoms are also reflected in my findings on coaching centre romances. Kumar (2011) and Sancho (2012) have characterized coaching centres as emblematic of middle-‐class narratives of career-‐oriented education; however, while my student and teacher participants did discuss coaching centres in relation to academic pressure, students’ stories revealed that coaching centres also served as liminal spaces within which new peer cultures could develop. My findings indicate that these ‘definers of middleclassness’ (Kumar 2011) were not only spheres of heightened academic pressure, but also offered opportunities for romance and release.
In light of pervasive risk-‐based narratives of sexuality, stories of couples who sought out liminal spaces for any physical intimacy were filled with a considerable sense of social risk. However, study findings indicated that many students were willing to take these risks, which crucially suggests that through peer romances, students exercised their agency in order to explore experiences of pleasure and intimacy. While risk-‐based narratives of sexuality may