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 & 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 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 hetero-feminine
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