Abstract
Sexuality is a‘notoriously elusive subject’ (Barrett 1980, p. 42). It is suffused in everyday life: ever present yet, somehow, ever absent. It is not always possible to say what is sexual about a particular experience. For these reasons it would be wrong to laden sexuality in itself with the responsibility of explaining all our motivations. Sexuality has no essence, nor can it be put in a field all of its own. Rather, in our society, it is channelled into many areas, into leisure, consumption and work. It may be possible to investigate how this channelling contributes to the moral regulation of people if we pay close attention, first, to the actual practice of genders.
O, what men dare do! What men may do!
What men daily do not knowing what they do.
Much Ado About Nothing, IV, ?,18–19
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NOTES
A very interesting contribution by Valerie Walkerdine (1981), does deal with the issues of sex and power in an actual classroom. The article tries to work with a notion of split subjectivities inspired by discourse theory. What is particularly notable (and alarming) is that the process of ‘dismembering’ women’s bodies should so closely correspond with the sex talk of the boys in this present article.
Advertising, one of the most pervasive forms of representation in our culture, constantly dissects women and uses ‘significant’ parts of them in its attempts to ‘glamorise’ products and manipulate consumption. The extent to which this prompts, or reinforces, the boys’ sexism is still undecided. That question certainly begs others about ideology and cultural production that are beyond the scope of this article. However, at the very least, such representations have a background saturation effect. Certainly, advertising usually heavily emphasises and celebrates sterotypical views of gender roles. For an interesting further discussion of stereotypes see T. E. Perkins (1979).
I am grateful to Phil Cohen for the suggestion that sex talk may have several different ‘functions’. For example it may be confessional, seductive, therapeutic and educative (contributing to competence). It is also important to note that, depending on circumstance, one mode may stand for or promote another. Confessional sex talk may be seductive in some contexts, for instance.
It was most commonly at this point in the article that, I think, feminist friends who read it regretted the absence of a properly political anger. I accept that the case of Eve i? upsetting. Some people felt that she was being made powerless in the situation solely on the basis of her face, and that the boys imagined that they could do what they liked with her without even having to pretend to be friendly. I accept also that I have found it difficult to raise these sorts of issues clearly enough. I still believe, however, that it would be tactically and analytically incorrect to assume that the boys coul? totally ‘scrap’ Eve (in the sense of refuse to relate to). Though the boys’ attitudes are seriously warped in relation to Eve, there is a subtle interplay of repulsion an? attraction. That attraction is ‘sexist’ too and is not held up here as the opposite of rejecting stereotypes. However, if one does not also recognise that the boys wanted to contact Eve, then an important element of contradiction has been lost.
I take Loftus’s (1974) point that school, especially by effectively emphasising the current divide between the genders, must play a fairly important part in reinforcing and ‘teaching’ sexist ideology in general. I think it is also generally correct that the domination of women by men depends partly on having ‘feminine’ women and ‘masculine’ men, and that too much crossing of this divide represents a problem for the system. With reference to the centre, there was a very interesting comment by one of the boys about ‘feminine’ behaviour from other boys. It was very much in keeping with the centre boys’ homophobia and intuitive (repressed?) knowledge of the peripheralness and internal weakness of presently constructed masculinity. They were recounting to me a story of a boy who had been supplicating to a friend after losing a fight with him. Recalling his general demeanour they could find no more damning way of describing it than: ‘he acted really feminine man, really bad’.
For interesting work on the ideological associating of active and ‘delinquent’ girls with promiscuity by the courts see Shacklady-Smith’s article in Smart and Smart (eds) Women, Sexuality and Social Contro? (1978).
Foucault, paradoxically always best on ideologies, has written very well on the ‘speaking sex’ and the biologistic notion of sex drive as implied by theories of repression. See Foucault (1978 edn) especially pp. 3–35.
I dithered for a long time about this section and was in the end persuaded by the good sense and support of my friend Trevor Blackwell. What held me back was precisely that the story showed me in a bad light but at such a safe distance? I precisely did not want a pat on the back for its inclusion: the worst kind of left double think! What about the ‘courage’ of the centre kids who are fifty times more exposed?
There is some interesting work in America on men’s liberation and the problem of inen’s relation to their emotions (e.g. Farrell (1974)). The main argument is that the macho shell that most men hide behind prevents them from acknowledging and using their softer ‘more feminine’ aspects and that this finally makes them insecure and ‘uptight’. One aspect of ideology about men is that they are lusty and liable to want sex anywhere. However they may be confused by the fusion of sex and affection(!) and by the question of what sort of behaviour is required when the two are linked. On male awkwardness I offer, anecdotally, the observation that if you see a heterosexual couple in public and the woman wants to be erotican? affectionate, to kiss and cuddle, it is very often the ma? who is perturbed and starts looking around to see if he is being watched.
It is sometimes suggested that masculinity is in need of the strongest of cultural supports because of the remote or peripheral part played by men in actual production of life. Thus, the argument runs, it is only by subjugating women and appropriating all political power, that men can counter their own uselessness. (See for example Christina Lamer’s 1981 review article.) I think this is a suggestive notion containing more than a grain of truth. My problem with it is that there is a danger of reducing patriarchy to a merely compensatory ideolog? (for weak men) while obscuring the actual power base of the system and the actual oppression of women that continues from these ‘weak’ men.
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© 1984 Erica Carter, Adrian Chappell, Barbara Hudson, Angela McRobbie, Mica Nava, Valerie Walkerdine, Julian Wood
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Wood, J. (1984). Groping towards sexism: boys’ sex talk. In: McRobbie, A., Nava, M. (eds) Gender and Generation. Youth Questions. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17661-8_3
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