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



significant. Molly describes Nicola’s interactions with boys as being tactile, having
sexually explicit verbal content, and involving the making of sexual promises. Nicola
appears initially to be amused by these reports. As Molly’s description proceeds,
however, Nicola disputes the account with increasing vigour and eventually concedes but
defends herself by asserting that she is “joking around” and “just having a laugh”.

This concession and justification leads to Molly’s „warning’. Nicola may well be “just
having a laugh” but she is not sovereign in this context. What „counts’ is how boys will
“take it”. Certain boys, whose performative interpellations appear to be understood as
having particular authority, will constitute Nicola as a “right little slapper”. That is, if
these boys constitute Nicola as slapper this is likely to be felicitous and Nicola will
be
slapper. Molly presents the virgin/whore dichotomy as being established by boys, yet her
„warning’ exposes the role that girls play in policing the boundaries of this dichotomy
and implicates girls in the constitution of themselves and other girls within its terms.

The threat of slapper implicit in Molly’s „warning’ leads Nicola to concede ultimately
that she is not a virgin. This „admission’ is not an acceptance of the constitution slapper.
Rather it an attempt to differentiate herself from slapper and pre-empt this naming.

Nicola asserts that she only has sex with boys if “I love them and trust them”, that is, if
she is in a relationship. In making this assertion she attempts to constitute a heterosexual
feminine desire that is acceptable within the moral scale suggested by scene 3.

Furthermore, Nicola’s refusal to volunteer this information until it is necessary
demonstrates her compliance with the requirement for silence contained in the moral
scale.

In the opening moments of scene 4, Molly asserts that “people don’t give a shit” whether
or not other students are virgins. My discussion of scene 4 might be taken to indicate
simply that Molly’s assertion is false. I would suggest, however, that Molly’s comment
offers particular insight into the constituting role of virgin. It is not the „fact’ of being or
not being a virgin that is crucial. Rather, it is the constitutive force of a discourse of
virginity, and the ways in which the deployment of this constrains the possibilities for
intelligible hetero-femininities, that is significant within the students’ discursive
practices. Yet, while the citation and inscription of the virgin/whore discourse is evident
through the scene, in some moments the girls appear to be involved collectively in
attempts to constitute a sexually active heterosexual femininity that is not whore. Such
female-hetero-femininity would allow sexual activity while avoiding and/or rendering



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