17
A genuine discourse of desire would invite adolescents to explore what feels good and
bad, desirable and undesirable, grounded in experiences, needs, and limits. Such a
discourse would release females from a position of receptivity, enable an analysis of the
dialectics of victimization and pleasure, and would pose female adolescents as subjects of
sexuality, initiators as well as negotiators.
49
Later she adds that adolescent girls ought to focus “their energies in ways that are
sexually autonomous, responsible, and pleasurable.”
50
While I remain sympathetic to her
aspiration to build confidence and self-respect in female students, arguing that adolescents ought
to experiment sexually to see what feels good and autonomously direct their own sexuality strikes
at the heart of DaFoe’s (and many traditionalists’) legitimate concerns with the anti-traditionalist
approach. Coupling “autonomy” with “adolescence,” especially in the realm of sexuality, is a
suspect combination – one that places an enormous burden on young citizens who are unlikely to
be able to handle all of the ramifications (emotional, physical, psychological, and financial) that
come with it.
It is not only teenage girls whose emotional and psychological development needs
seriously to be considered when thinking about sexual autonomy. Take, for example, a study of
fifteen- and sixteen-year-old boys in Australia, in which one researcher found that boys’
perceptions of masculinity were based primarily on what men were not, that is, women. Boys
tended to jockey for status positions in the classroom, with the achievement of higher status
linked to which boy could display the most contempt for women and anything deemed feminine.
Disdain for women was openly displayed through the use of particular words used to reference
them (e.g. slut, whore, tart, chick) and also by the teasing of individual boys who were thought to
be too effeminate – a sign of weakness, passivity, and vulnerability.
51
The exploratory research
of Lynda Measor, involving thirteen- to fifteen-year-olds from southeast England, supports these
findings. Measor paints a troubling and sad picture of young men who must “repress and stamp
49
Fine, Michelle. "Sexuality, Schooling, and Adolescent Females: The Missing Discourse of Desire," in
Lois Weis and Michelle Fine, ed, Beyond Silenced Voices (New York: SUNY Press, 1993), 79.
50
Fine, 83.
51
Szirom, 17-20.
Convention