That is, breaking the rules of the game is, in fact, within its terms. Pipa’s response to
being laid on the floor and stepped on is also noteworthy. While her lack of resistance
might be seen as passivity, her response might also be seen as a counter-move that
neutralises William’s bodily domination of her. If William expected/intended Pipa to
squeal and beg for mercy (as Lucy did in response to Stuart), her making herself
comfortable might be a partial rejection of the requirement for the feminine body to at
once defer to and fear the strength and authority of the masculine body. Pipa’s bodily
activity in this scene, then, can be understood as constitutive of an active and consenting
hetero-femininity - a consenting activity that reflects that inferred by her recent sexual
encounter with William.
Such active sexuality is at odds with the virgin/whore binary of the prevailing discourse
of hetero-femininity that I have discussed above. That is, in terms of this prevailing
discourse Pipa „should’ be the “slag” or “slapper” that Nicola seeks to navigate. Yet there
is no suggestion either that she is constituted in these terms, or that she (or her friends)
are concerned that she might be. This can be understood by Pipa’s middle-classness and
her subsequent location outside the mainstream working-class student culture. This is
likely to operate in two ways. First, Pipa’s middle-classness offers her both institutional
protection and an alternative liberal/feminist discourse of sexual liberation and gender
equality through which to constitute herself as feminine and desiring. Second, her
middle-class-liberal-ness may also constitute her as beyond the realm of interest of the
student majority whose practices are central to policing the virgin/whore binary in this
context. This dismissal, while a potentially annihilating silence, may simultaneously open
up the discursive space for the active-hetero-femininity that Pipa practices.
Scene 6. crops and combats
Year 11 Resistant Materials lesson. The class comprises 13 boys and 5 girls. The girls sit
together in one group of 3 and one pair. One of these girls is Toni (girl, White, middle
class). Toni wears her hair in a short crop. She wears oversized green-grey combat
trousers, a sweatshirt and green Doctor Martens boots hand-decorated in orange paint.
In one boot there is a red shoelace, in the other a rainbow shoelace. Toni has black-
rimmed rectangular glasses, a silver sleeper in one ear, and a plain black watch and a
studded wristband on one wrist. Her school bag is army-surplus with a sewn-on red
ribbon, a VW badge, and the names of indie bands (hole, Nivana and Placebo) and a
woman symbol drawn on in marker pen.
The class is involved in practical work. A girl along the workbench from Toni struggles to
position and secure a piece of wood in a vice. Toni sees this and, unasked, moves along
the bench and inserts the wood correctly in the vice. Little verbal exchange is evident and
Toni returns to her own work.
[...]
The teacher asks Toni, along with 2 boys, to collect specific tools. She waits while a boy