the extent to which this troubles the heterosexual matrix is limited - the image is a
moment of inscription of the hetero/homo binary, indeed, if we imagine a girl-sized
forward-slash superimposed onto image 1 between the hetero-femme on the left and
Toni, the very image of these bodies can be read as a representation of this binary.
Pipa’s bodily adornment in image 2 also suggests a knowing - Pipa „knows’ her attire
and adornment cite the vaudeville dame and the contemporary drag queen as well as the
„real’ hetero-femmes of image 1. Yet this is a different kind of knowing to that of image
1 - it is a knowing citation that inscribes ironically and, therefore, inscribes differently.
As such, Pipa might be read here as a girl „in drag’ as a (particular sort of) woman (or, as
drag queen, even man?). This masquerade suggests the deployment of a sophisticated
sexuality/identity politics inclusive of gay, lesbian, bisexual and, perhaps, queer. This,
then, is not the practice of „real’ hetero-femininity. Yet to map the available alternatives -
lesbian, bisexual, queer - onto Pipa’s practices would be to impose a categorical frame
and short-circuit the performative excess of these practices. Refusing categorisation
might leave any sex-gender-sexuality constituted inaccessible, but it might also be to
refuse incorporation into the heterosexual matrix. Yet ultimately, the refusal of such a
categorical location may prove impossible and, indeed, undesirable. Pipa’s practices are
constitutive of sex-gender-sexuality, they do cite female/male, hetero/homo,
masculine/feminine binaries. These ironic citations, however, might constitute a sex-
gender-sexuality that unsettles the usual terms of the heterosexual matrix.
These middle-class girls, already excluded from the mainstream student sub-culture,
deploy the liberal/feminist/identity politics discourses available to them and constitute
female bodies, hetero- and homo- sexualities, femininity and (un)femininity that exceed
the bounds of the prevailing discourse of hetero-femininity. It seems clear that their social
class location, and the combined institutional protection and sub-cultural exclusion that
this brings with it in this school context, is crucial here.
Conclusion
This paper has sought to demonstrate how multiple, but enduring discourses of
heterosexuality and femininity circulate in school, how these frame what sex-gender-
sexuality identities are intelligible, and so how these constitute girls in particular ways.
The paper has demonstrated some possibilities for shifting these bounds of intelligibility,
for interpellating Other sex-gender-sexuality constellations, but has indicated the limits of
these possibilities. By tracing specific enduring sex-gender-sexuality discourses and the