The Discourse of Guarded Femininity authorises the female students‘ construction of femininity against the reductionism of dominant biological and dichotomous versions of gender within the health educators‘ and male students‘ discourses, while simultaneously controlling or restraining their speech and/or behaviour so as not to appear to be contesting or resisting the health educators‘ and male students‘ authorised versions of sexuality. This discourse enables the female students to respond to the health educators‘ closed questions by using the required yes/no answers, quickly followed by personal responses. These strategies enable a variety of complex constitutive processes to occur for the female students. Firstly, the yes/no responses enable the female students to comply with the health educators‘ method of teaching, position of power and authorised version of knowledge. This is a very important issue for the female students as it gives them a voice within the sex education class and it constitutes their performance of femininity in ways which are authorised by the health educators‘ and the male students‘ dominant discourses of knowledge and gender.
Secondly, the use of personal responses enable the female students to resist the reductionist biological version of knowledge and gender authorised by the health educators‘ and male students‘ discourses, while simultaneously constituting the female students as willing to negotiate meaning by offering alternative versions of their lived experiences. These enable the female students to demonstrate their understanding of the complex ways in which knowledge and power operate through discourse to constitute particular versions of reality; it also demonstrates their understanding of the ways in which power operates through knowledge and discourse to position people in different and at times inequitable ways. The following conversation demonstrates how these meanings are conveyed.
Health educator: So do you think condoms can stop STIs/BBVs and things like HIV/AIDS?
mean its not always easy to use condoms.
Female student: Yeh, I mean I was going out with this guy and like there was no way he was gonna use a condom. So condoms aren‘t gonna stop you from getting STIs if you can‘t use em.
Participation in the school‘s sex education program is an important aspect of the production and performance of gendered subjectivity for all students. However, the female students‘ participation in the sex education program is severely restricted by the dominant biological and dichotomous versions of gender authorised by the health educators and male students. This discourse acknowledges the tensions experienced by the female students during the production and performance of femininity when the sex education lessons are held in this limited, and at times hostile, environment. In this context the females‘ role in sex, sexuality and sexual decision-making is constituted by the health educators and male students as non-sexual and the sum of her reproductive parts. She is constituted as passive in the role of conception, but accountable for its consequences due to her biological ability to menstruate, conceive, give birth and lactate. The females‘ psyche is biologically determined by her sex, and is therefore incorporated to position her as psychologically suited to child rearing.
To have a voice within the sexual health lessons, the female students incorporate this view of knowledge within their own discursive practices; however, they are marginalised by its limited version of sexuality and disadvantaged by its objectification of them as reproductive bodies. In this discourse they are able to use their personal experiences to demonstrate how the role of the female in sex, sexuality and sexual decision-making is constituted through a highly complex form of negotiation between personal and social values that resist the simplistic concepts of a yes/no, true/false, good/bad way of knowing. Their concerns are identified in the way they use these experiences to justify and defend alternative versions of femininity, and to problematise the failure of biological discourses to account for social, political and economic influences on how the role of the female in sex, sexuality and sexual decision- making is performed. The following demonstrates how a female student‘s personal experience is used to resist the reductionist versions of femininity and female accountability.
Yeh, but Mr. B ... when my sister did it she had the pill and everything but she still got pregnant. Like it just didn‘t matter, even though she wasn‘t slutty or anything. She never went out and she never went to parties, but she like went out to this new year‘s party and it was the first time, and the first time she‘d had sex and she still got pregnant. But she knew all about this stuff [contraception] so it kind of didn‘t matter, like it wasn‘t cause she didn‘t think about it or anything, it just happened.
This discourse allows the female students the opportunity to talk in detail about their personal experiences, demonstrating they have accumulated a vast amount of knowledge regarding sex, sexuality and sexual decision-making. This knowledge is offered and discussed freely by the female students and is constituted by them as typical of many adolescent females‘ developmental processes. It is discussed by the female students as a matter of fact, and is offered in the small, same sex groups as proof of their capacity to be active participants within the normalised heterosexual society. For example,
I think boys and girls both want to have sex, but it really depends on the person.
Yeh, but I mean you can get really horny girls.
Yeh, I agree, it really just depends on the girl or the boy, you can‘t put people in a box like that.
Yeh, there‘s a perception that boys are hornier than girls, it‘s cause like with guys every second word has to contain something that has to do with sex.
That‘s cause they all want to be like that. They probably think it makes them mature, it‘s the image. But we think it‘s immature.
If there‘s a guy out there who could be accepting of other people‘s different sexuality and still be into heterosexual sex himself, then, I want to know that guy.
However, the implications of having this knowledge are not constituted by the female students as positive; having this knowledge is constituted by the female students as negative.
Girls care about what people think about them, like their parents and friends, but guys think that‘s stupid and weak. But what do they know, I mean boys don‘t have to worry about getting pregnant and all that crap.
If you were in a relationship and you had a lot of sex it wouldn‘t matter, it would be fantastic. But because people think that girls are sluts if they do that when they don‘t have a boyfriend, then you just can‘t, that‘s the way it is.
Yeh, but the guys can. They get labelled as the coolest and the girls get labelled as prostitutes and stuff.
Yeh, like the guys walk around bragging about it and saying, you know, that guy is so cool because he‘s had a lot of action, but no way, not the girls, they just get total put downs. So we keep our mouths shut. Like Betty said, that‘s just the way it is.
In the Discourse of Guarded Femininity there is no place for positive feelings or emotions in reference to having knowledge of sex, sexuality or sexual decision- making, even when it is constructed as a normal phase of development within an authorised heterosexual context. There are no references to the positive physical and psychological implications of sexual activity, no references to the positive physical and psychological implications of sexual relationships, no references to the positive physical and psychological implications of marriage, de facto or long-term relationships.