“It’s Like Doing Homework”

Abstract

Young women's narratives of their sexual experiences occur amid conflicting cultural discourses of risk, abstinence, and moral panic. Yet young women, as social actors, find ways to make meaning of their experiences through narrative. In this study, we focused on adolescent girls' (N=98, age 12-17 years) narratives of their first experiences with oral sex. We document our unexpected findings of persistent discourses of performance which echo newly emergent academic achievement discourses. Burns and Torre (Feminism & Psychology 15 (1): [21][22][23][24][25][26] 2005) argue that an extreme and high stakes focus on individual academic achievement in schools impoverishes young minds through the "hollowing" of their sexualities. We present evidence that such influence also works in the opposite direction, with an achievement orientation invading girls' discourses of sexuality, "crowding out" possible narratives of pleasure, choice, and mutuality with narratives of competence and skill usually associated with achievement and schooling. We conclude with policy implications for the future development of "positive" sexuality narratives.

Boobs, back-off, six packs and bits: Mediated body parts, gendered reward, and sexual shame in teens' sexting images

“…During the first focus group with year 8 girls, they discussed an image of a boy in the year above getting 'blows' (fellatio) from a girl, which was his current Blackberry profile photo. Girls were concerned that they could be caught on film performing fellatio and be exposed and how this would generate a 'reputational risk' (Burns, Futch, and Tolman 2011). Even girls' promise of a blow job on text or private message could be used without consent as evidence of sexual reward for boys through 'screen munching' where the text is captured and displayed.…”

(Hetero)sexual Compliance with Unwanted Casual Sex: Associations with Feelings about First Sex and Sexual Self-Perceptions

“…Moreover, in a U.S. sample, Mahay et al (2001) found both fellatio and cunnilingus were less appealing to young women than men. According to Burns et al (2011), fellatio involves active performance demands and anxieties in which adolescent girls in the U.S. are Bstudents^who need practice and boys are Bteachers^who provide evaluative feedback (p. 246). Likewise, cunnilingus may evoke physical body self-consciousness in girls and women in the U.S. (Bay-Cheng et al 2009), New Zealand, and the U.K. (Braun and Wilkinson 2001).…”

Latina Girls, Sexual Agency, and the Contradictions of Neoliberalism

“…While researchers have found that among some adolescent girls who are heterosexually active, sex is often described as something that Bjust happened,^in-dicating an absence of sexual agency (Luker 1975;Tolman 2002), scholars have also attended to the myriad ways teenage girls assert sexual agency by examining their narratives of sexual feelings, behavior, and relationships ( Albanesi 2010;Bay-Cheng and Fava 2014;Burns et al 2011;García 2012;Maxwell and Aggleton 2010;Schalet et al 2003;Schalet 2010). This scholarship emphasizes the role that girls' social contexts play in fostering both how and to what extent they articulate sexual agency.…”