Many of the studies I have discussed so far have illustrated how young people's sexual subjectivities and experiences are shaped by sexual discourses. They have shown how young people's subjectivities are moulded by multiple discourses - dominant discourses, as well as counter-discourses - which circulate within society and which socially construct sexuality. Researchers who use discursive theory have commonly suggested an alignment between young people’s sexual experiences and these discourses, or an active resistance, that is, a reactive response and engagement with counter-discourses, on the part of a young person toward them.
In their book ‘Changing the Subject’, Henriques et al. (1984) disregarded the theory that a subject was simply the sum of discourses they encountered from birth, and theorised that multiple positions could be held together in complex ways by any one subject. In recent years, some empirical publications have emphasised how young people’s sexual experiences are seemingly not fully captured by the discursive. In their research on young women’s sexual experiences, Claire Maxwell and Peter Aggleton (2010) noted that their experiences are complex and cannot be generalised. While some young people express desire vividly, others feel ambiguous; while some lack confidence, others do not. I have already noted how Renold and Ringrose (2008) reported that some teenage girls in the U.K. reject the notion that girls’ bodies exist only as heterosexual objects of desire, and refuse to silence the complexities of their experiences.
Renold and Ringrose (2008) argued that in order to adequately explore young people’s sexual subjectivities it is necessary to also look at the ways in which experiences may exceed (hetero)normative discourses. They suggest exploring ‘alternative configurations’ (Braidotti 1994) of youth sexuality. These are crucial if we are to map the complexities, malleability, and multiplicity of young people’s sexual experiences and subjectivities.
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2.4.3.1 Foregrounding desire, pleasure, and sensuality
McClelland and Fine (2008) have suggested that traditional research methods may encourage the rehearsal of dominant discourses, and are therefore inadequate in capturing complexities, and experiences which rupture or exceed (hetero)normative discourses. In their influential work, McClelland and Fine (2008) focused on the inadequacy of psychological and discursive research studies to allow for the emergence of young women's narratives of desire. They argue that our current cultural context, where young women’s desires and pleasures are contested (see chapter one), makes it difficult for young women to express their own desires and pleasures. The majority of social research methods, they argue, are unable to neutralise these “cultural brakes” (McClelland and Fine 2008, p. 232). McClelland and Fine (2008) use the term ‘methodological dilemma’ to refer to this phenomenon. They argue that one of the ways in which to allow female adolescent desire to emerge in research is to further foreground desire, and to represent adolescent sexuality as normative, including for girls. This construction of sexuality as normative was born out of and suited their psychological approach.
Several feminist researchers found that foregrounding desire and pleasure in surveys (Impett and Tolman 2006; McClelland 2011; McGeeney 2013) and individual and group interviews (McClelland and Fine 2008; Tolman and Szalacha 1999; Tolman 2002; McClelland 2011; McGeeney 2013) did indeed seemingly allow for such experiences to emerge more commonly. However, Tolman (2002) found that desire often emerged subtly and in hidden places in individual interviews with young women. McClelland and Fine (2008) noted that accounts of desire and pleasure only surfaced in group interviews with young women once seemingly obligatory narratives of the dangers attached to sexuality, including potential pregnancy and STIs, had been discussed.
As well as allowing for the exploration of a broader range of experiences, McClelland and Fine (2008) argued that emphasising desire in research may act as an emancipatory strategy. Accordingly, sexual desire, and desire for equality more generally, are linked. Fine and McClelland (Fine and McClelland 2006a; McClelland
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and Fine 2014) use the term 'thick desire' to refer to a sense of entitlement to a broad range of yearnings, including sexual and productive freedom; protection from racialised and sexualised violence; meaningful intellectual, political and social engagement; the possibility of financial independence; and a way to imagine living in the future tense. They argue that if young women are given a sense of entitlement to sexual desire and pleasure (for example in research), this may also incite political demands. Similarly, in order to increase young women's sexual wellbeing, young women may be encouraged to express and embody desire more generally.
For young men, given the discursive link between masculinity and emotional detachment, it may be beneficial to foreground emotional attachment and sensuality: an embodied, rather than a ‘dys-embodied’ pleasure. This may allow for experiences to emerge which exceed such dominant discourses. As I discussed above, using this technique, Allen (2002; 2007) found that, while narratives still tended to be dominated by cultural ideals of masculinity, such a focus did sometimes allow narratives of embodied pleasure to emerge in her research with young men.
2.4.3.2 Methodological Dilemmas in Psychological and Discursive Sexuality Research
Given the difficulties researchers have had in exploring pleasure and desire with young women, McClelland and Fine (2008) have argued that simply foregrounding 'missing discourses' in traditional research designs is insufficient. Instead, to overcome the rehearsal of dominant discourses relating to youth sexualities, they argue, we need “methodological release points” (p.232): methods which help us to elucidate those experiences which tend to be unspoken. They suggest that such methods may include creative methods, such as the production of videos, asking counter-intuitive questions, problematising 'facts', and encouraging participants to take a leading role in research. I will outline sexuality research which has used creative research methods in chapter three.
Fine and McClelland's (2008) suggestion of a need for new methods to research sexuality with adolescents resonates with the majority of feminist researchers.
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However, Sharon Lamb (2010) has suggested that a more radical shift may be necessary to allow for an exploration of the complexities of young people's sexual experiences. Lamb (2010) argues that the ways in which feminist writers such as Tolman (2002), and Fine and McClelland (2008), have written about adolescent sexuality is once again controlling of young people's behaviours, this time by normalising desire, and defining for young people what constitutes 'normal’ or ‘good’ sex.
In her recent work, Allen (2014) has noted that by emphasising sexual pleasure in SRE or research, there is a danger of certain pleasures not only being tied to a set of pre- defined practices, but indeed becoming mandatory. In this way such research may be linked to a culture in which, as Rosalind Gill (2008) has argued, young women often perform certain pleasures instead of actually experiencing them. For instance, within contemporary ‘girl power’ discourses, there is an expectation that young women should achieve orgasm, to the extent that some ‘fake’ it when they do not experience one (Aapola et al. 2005). Similarly, many young men report feeling pressure to maintain an erection for long periods of time and worry about the adequacy of their penis size (Marston and King 2006).
The quantification of sexual satisfaction in some feminist sexuality research (e.g. Impett and Tolman 2006; McClelland 2011) is problematic both in terms of feasibility and politically, and may be linked to the medicalised discourses of sexuality discussed in chapter one. In addition, Lamb (2010) has criticised the conceptualisation of sexual desire as 'normative' in the work of Tolman (2002), and McClelland and Fine (2008). The reclamation of a right to pleasure and desire in young women, she argues, has been beneficial in the political fight for sexual equality. However, by defining sexual desire as 'natural', its socially constructed character is denied. The dominant cultural understanding of sexual desire10, which is structured by lack in relation to a sexually
and hierarchically differentiated other and hence tied to (hetero)sexism (Butler 1999), is propagated and legitimised.
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Lamb's (2010) critique may be extended to past research on young people's sexuality more generally, including that which has taken a discursive approach and conceptualised sexual desire as socially constructed. This is because by embarking on a research project which focuses on ‘sex’, and by asking participants to inform us about their sexual practices, academic research may, instead of acting as a counterpoint, in fact reproduce the social order. Specifically, such research may reinforce narrow and (hetero)sexist definitions of what constitutes sexuality, and act as a means of surveillance of young peoples' sexual behaviours. Desire may consequentially be channelled even further into normative ways that reinforce unequal power relations between women and men. In my research, I wanted to explore young people’s experiences of sexuality and pleasure without reinforcing established ideas about what counts as ‘sex’ or sexuality. I wanted to move beyond the exploration and reproduction of normative and (hetero)sexist discourses, and explore experiences which exceed such discourses.