I. Found(ing) Discourses of Desire: Unfettering Female Adolescent Sexuality

Abstract

This special feature takes stock of the current landscape of theory, practice and research on female adolescent sexuality in the wake of Michelle Fine’s seminal 1988 Harvard Educational Review article, ‘Sexuality, Schooling, and Adolescent Females: The Missing Discourse of Desire’. Using a bevy of feminist analyses of how the oppression of female sexuality functions as a primary force in the overall oppression of women, Fine’s paper opened many new doors for feminist scholars of sexuality. This paper interjected feminist analyses into mainstream psychology’s perspectives on sexuality as a key feature of female adolescent development and education. Relying on multiple methods that rested heavily on the voices of actual girls, in a richly contextualized ethnography Fine avoided the simplistic blaming tactics – blaming the ‘victims’, blaming the teachers – so often lurking below the surface of such research. The denial of female adolescent sexuality through the sanctioned discourses of victimization, vulnerability and morality was laid bare, and the missing discourse of girls’ sexual desire is now a significant discourse of research, theory and practice focused on girls’ sexuality. The inclusion of, indeed the reliance on, the perspectives of young women marginalized by race (African-American and Latina) and class (poor) as positive informants rather than subjects of surveillance or suspected ‘bad girls’ marked another notable turn. Fine, in offering a model for weaving together primary empirical research with policy analysis in a new and significant way, also made not-so-subtle demands on feminist scholars to find more multidimensional approaches for putting pressure on existing systems through radical scholarship. In acknowledgement of the recent 15-year anniversary of its publication, this special feature explores and illustrates the new avenues of research and theory, as well as the inclusion of new forms of practice, that have sprung from Fine’s