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Resisting the Taint, Marking the Slut: Middle-class Lesbian Girls and Claims to Sexual Propriety

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Children, Sexuality and Sexualization

Abstract

The good girl/slut or virgin/whore binary is a central characteristic of heterofemininity (Tolman, 2006; Bryant & Schofield, 2007; Charles, 2010) and has a long history of disciplining bodies and desires of Western women and girls, regardless of sexual orientation and identity (Payne, 2010). This binary positions women’s ‘sexuality dichotomously as morally good or bad’ with the former requiring ‘sexual passivity’ and the latter attached to sex involving ‘women’s initiation and/or active participation’ (Bryant & Schofield, 2007: 324). To be a woman of value means to be a ‘good girl’ in compliance with Western and local culture’s moral expectations based upon sex, gender and presumed future heterosexuality — expectations which are inherently raced and classed. Good girls express no sexual agency, deny desire, postpone sexual exploration or confine it to committed heterosexual relationships (within which they subjugate their own needs to those of male partners) and participate in judging themselves and other young women through the patriarchal lens of the virgin/whore binary (Tolman, 2006). Compliance with expectations for hegemonic femininity is linked to cultural rewards for ‘correctly’ aligning sex and gender, and to a moral discourse surrounding the standards for being both ‘good’ and a female-bodied person (Payne, 2013). That compliance includes adherences to ‘age-appropriate’ sexuality (McClelland & Hunter, 2013).

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Authors
  1. Elizabethe Payne
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Cardiff University, UK

    Emma Renold

  2. Institute of Education, University College London, UK

    Jessica Ringrose

  3. St Lawrence University, New York, USA

    R. Danielle Egan

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© 2015 Elizabethe Payne

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Payne, E. (2015). Resisting the Taint, Marking the Slut: Middle-class Lesbian Girls and Claims to Sexual Propriety. In: Renold, E., Ringrose, J., Egan, R.D. (eds) Children, Sexuality and Sexualization. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137353399_14

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