Sex-gender-sexuality: how sex, gender, and sexuality constellations are constituted in secondary schools



women both as individuals and as a group.

Scene 4: virgin girls, slapper girls and other girls

DY (the researcher, mid/late twenties, woman, White)

MOLLY, NICOLA, DIANE, ANNIE, MILLI (year 11 students, girls, White)

Sitting in a group around a table in the year base while the rest of the tutor group
are in a PSE lesson. The group are debating whether or not particular boys are
virgins.

DY: How do you know if people are virgins or not?

MOLLY: I dunno, because people don’t give a shit.

DIANE: (indicating NICOLA) she ain’t.

NICOLA: (shouting, high pitch) I am Diane!

MOLLY: (laughing) she ain’t.

DY: How do you know?

MOLLY: It’s just the way she goes round.

DY: What about...?

MOLLY: (interrupting) Puts herself across to boys.

DY: What does she do?

MOLLY: She goes running up to them and cuddling them and (impersonating NICOLA)
„Oooh’.

NICOLA: (screeching) No I don’t!

DY: She flirts a little bit?

MOLLY: Yes, and she goes, „Ah, I’ll have sex with you later if you open the door’.

NICOLA: (laughing) I do not say things like that!

[...]

MOLLY: And [boy] goes „Ok come on then, lets go’ and she actually walks up to him and
goes „Come on’.

NICOLA: (more serious, agitated) But I’m still joking around, I’m just having a laugh
Molly!

MOLLY: Yeah but people like [boy] and [boy], they’ll take it differently and think „Ah, she’s
a right little slapper’ and that. Think about what happened to [girl].

NICOLA: Sorry, I ain’t gonna spend the night shagging someone if I don’t love them and
trust them, I ain’t gonna shag anyone that I ain’t going out with.

(Interview)

In Scene 4 Diane and Molly assert that Nicola is not-virgin, and, by extension, at risk of
being slag or whore. Nicola begins by contesting vigorously this constitution. Diane and
Molly do not suggest that Nicola has told them of her sexual activity. In the light of the
imperative for silence detailed in Scene 3, it is unclear whether Nicola has divulged this
information directly and she is not offering me this information. Given the risk of slag,
the silencing of feminine desire, and the centrality of virgin to the constitution of
valourised heterosexual femininities discussed above, it is unsurprising that Nicola denies
the charge laid by the other girls.

The scene illustrates that it is not simply the „fact’ of virgin/not-virgin (whore) that is at
stake. The “way” Nicola “goes around” and “puts herself across to boys” is also



More intriguing information

1. Tobacco and Alcohol: Complements or Substitutes? - A Statistical Guinea Pig Approach
2. Globalization, Redistribution, and the Composition of Public Education Expenditures
3. A parametric approach to the estimation of cointegration vectors in panel data
4. IMMIGRATION POLICY AND THE AGRICULTURAL LABOR MARKET: THE EFFECT ON JOB DURATION
5. Luce Irigaray and divine matter
6. PROJECTED COSTS FOR SELECTED LOUISIANA VEGETABLE CROPS - 1997 SEASON
7. Modelling the health related benefits of environmental policies - a CGE analysis for the eu countries with gem-e3
8. Perceived Market Risks and Strategic Risk Management of Food Manufactures: Empirical Results from the German Brewing Industry
9. The name is absent
10. Synthesis and biological activity of α-galactosyl ceramide KRN7000 and galactosyl (α1→2) galactosyl ceramide
11. Improving the Impact of Market Reform on Agricultural Productivity in Africa: How Institutional Design Makes a Difference
12. The name is absent
13. WP 1 - The first part-time economy in the world. Does it work?
14. Weak and strong sustainability indicators, and regional environmental resources
15. The name is absent
16. Word Sense Disambiguation by Web Mining for Word Co-occurrence Probabilities
17. Natural Resources: Curse or Blessing?
18. Om Økonomi, matematik og videnskabelighed - et bud på provokation
19. What Drives the Productive Efficiency of a Firm?: The Importance of Industry, Location, R&D, and Size
20. Backpropagation Artificial Neural Network To Detect Hyperthermic Seizures In Rats