Complicating hetero‐femininities: young women, sexualities and ‘girl power’ at school

Abstract

This paper is concerned with expanding knowledge of how femininity/sexuality intersections are constituted in secondary schools. Existing studies have drawn upon Judith Butler's notion of a 'heterosexual matrix' in order to understand how intersections of femininity/sexuality are produced in schools through normative discourses of heterosexuality and gender. Drawing on 'after-queer' theoretical resources from within cultural studies that focus on the deployment of notions of sexuality within constructions of intelligible citizenship, I explore how the femininity/sexuality intersection within secondary schools might be complicated, when the significance of discourses of 'girl power', linked with successful neoliberal citizenship, is considered. I analyse young women's discussions of key 'girl power' icons in popular culture, generated through fieldwork in an elite girls' school in Australia. Throughout the analysis I explore how understanding intersections of femininity/sexuality in secondary schools requires an analytical framework that can attend to both familiar notions of heterosexuality and gender -and their ongoing currency -as well as how notions of sexuality are mobilized in the production of successful neoliberal girl citizens. I propose that this analytical approach is useful in terms of avoiding the reinscription of sexuality identity categories in education research.

Gender power in elite schools: methodological insights from researcher reflexive accounts

“…In this paper, we explore this data to problematise and examine critically the schools' specific gender regimes and forms of gendered existence (Connell 2000(Connell , 2002. In so doing, we draw on feminist methodological approaches to gender power practices and relations and reflexivity (St. Pierre and Pillow 2000;Frazer 2008;Charles 2010).…”

“…The analysis also recognises the role of individuals' self-positionings in plural and diverse social relations for the social production of gender; and that what it means to be a 'woman' or 'man' and/or to be acceptably 'feminine' or 'masculine' changes as a consequence of discursive shifts in culture and history (Davies and Banks 1992;Proweller 1998;Charles 2010). Accordingly, we view the meanings of cultural concepts such as 'womanhood' as necessarily unstable, open to contestation and redefinition, and the usage of gender concepts as requiring continual vigilant attention to how they are being deployed for different political and cultural purposes by disparate social and cultural groups.…”

“…Researcher reflexivity regarding gender was used as a means of opening up gender norms to critical scrutiny rather than merely, for example, idealising 'certain expressions of gender', such as those of liberal feminism or new masculinities 'that, in turn, produce new forms of hierarchy and exclusion' (Butler 1990, viii, preface, Connell et al 1982Charles 2010). Thus, researcher reflexive accounts developed alternative insights into how the specific school gender regimes are re/constructed in and through each school's practices and what might be learned to inform future methodological considerations.…”

“…Thus, researcher reflexive accounts developed alternative insights into how the specific school gender regimes are re/constructed in and through each school's practices and what might be learned to inform future methodological considerations. It could be seen that, for example, gender norms are policed in support of certain kinds of heterosexual hegemony (or compulsory heterosexuality) (Butler 1990, and see Charles 2010), that particular articulations of gender shape the specific power/knowledge nexuses or 'knots' (Foucault in Gordon 1980) through which power dimensions circulate in these institutions, and that this had effects for researcher positioning and practices. Important to the present analysis has been an openness to adapting planned methods after 'leaving the field', (cf.…”

“…The study reported in this paper is specifically located in studies on gender in independent schooling (see, e.g. Lightfoot 1983;Delamont 1989Delamont , 1996Proweller 1998;Allan 2009Allan , 2010Charles 2010;Aggleton 2010a, 2010b) and also in the Scottish context, following Delamont's sociological study of independent girls' schooling in Scotland, including those reflecting on and recollecting fieldwork at 'St Luke's' (1976.…”