Competent Sexual Agency and Feminine Subjectivity: How Young Women Negotiate Discourses of Sexuality by Brandy Michelle Wiebe A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULLFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (SOCIOLOGY) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) January 2009 © Brandy Michelle Wiebe, 2009 Abstract Building upon feminist and sexual health research, this dissertation shows how the positioning of women in various discourses as somehow „lacking‟ actually constrains what researchers are able to hear in their sexual stories. Using interviews with 26 heterosexually active young women, I seek to upset traditional approaches to understanding young women‟s sexual stories and theorizing heterosexuality. To analyze the interviews, I first employ a Foucauldian-inspired discourse analysis that focuses on the power that circulates through discourses and our positioning within them. Our positioning in various discourses both enables and limits various courses of action, understandings and experiences. This power of discourse is illustrated by an emergent hybrid discourse that is apparent in young women‟s sexual narratives. I discuss what I call the „competent feminine sexuality‟ discourse and show how this discourse smoothes over contradictions between liberal and gendered discourses. Secondly, I show how psychoanalytic insights allow us to explore the processes of subjectification by which young women constitute themselves as (hetero)sexual women. Specifically, this dissertation explores processes of abjection, disavowal and ambivalence in participants‟ narratives. In conclusion, the dissertation outlines the practical implications for sexual health education in Canada. ii Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ iv Dedication ............................................................................................................................v Chapter One: Bringing the Agent into Young Women‟s (Hetero)Sexual Negotiations - Meeting the Researcher and Participants .............................................................................1 Chapter Two: Are Women Always and Everywhere Lacking?! .......................................36 Chapter Three: Theory and Methodology - Questioning the Subject and the Interview Process ...............................................................................................................................67 Chapter Four: Women‟s Negotiation of Dominant Discourses of Gendered (Hetero)Sexuality .............................................................................................................103 Chapter Five: Abjection and Gendered (Hetero)Sexuality ..............................................154 Chapter Six: Disavowal, the Subject and the Spectre of Violence ..................................190 Chapter Seven: Ambivalence and the Desiring Subject ..................................................226 Chapter Eight: Young Women as Desiring, (Incoherent) Subjects in Sexuality Education ........................................................................................................................260 Conclusions: Imagining a Future .....................................................................................295 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................313 Appendices .......................................................................................................................325 Appendix A: Participant Information Chart ........................................................325 Appendix B: Interview Schedule .........................................................................329 Appendix C: Ethics „Certificate of Approval‟ .....................................................333 iii Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisory committee, Dr. Tom Kemple and Dr. Becki Ross, and my supervisor, Dr. Dawn Currie, for their unwavering support over the course of this dissertation. Their enthusiasm and guidance took this project farther than I could have imagined. Thank you for taking the time to spend with me challenging my ideas and pushing me past my limits to produce a dissertation of which I am academically and personally proud. I would also like to thank my writing group and academic peers, Bonar Buffam, Jacqueline Shoemaker Holmes, Rachael Sullivan, Shelly Ketchell, and Elizabeth Bruch for their invaluable contributions and willingness to read and critically comment on my work. iv Dedication Thank you to my dear family, Sean, Ramona, Paul, Terrrance, and Adriana, and my dear friends for being there to support me and laugh with me through the joys and the periodic tears that occurred over the many years of my PhD. Like all things in life, you have made this process an adventure. I dedicate this dissertation to you. v Chapter One: Bringing the Agent into Young Women’s (Hetero)Sexual Negotiations - Meeting the Researcher and Participants What do young, heterosexually active women have to say about their sexuality? How do they see understand themselves as sexual subjects? What do they see as sexually possible for themselves? What is not possible sexually? In light of my own experiences, I have concluded that current theoretical understandings of women‟s heterosexual experiences fail to grasp the complexity of sexuality, rarely accounting for feelings of excitement, passion and joy alongside the potential pitfalls and dangers of these experiences. This feeling motivated me to speak with twenty six heterosexually-active young women. We talked about sex, relationships, the contradictions young women face, and how they learn(ed) about sex and sexual relationships. In this chapter I begin with a brief overview of my research and the structure of this dissertation, I then discuss my own positioning as a researcher, how and why I came to do this research, my political orientations towards the research, and introduce the young women who participated. My theoretical orientations will be outlined in the next two chapters. While I will go into greater detail about my methodology, theoretical framework, analysis, and findings throughout this dissertation, a brief introductory overview of this project will help orientate the reader. This dissertation is based on semi-structured interviews with twenty six heterosexually-active young women. In both my methodology and my analysis I focus on discourse and language. Using the interview transcripts as narratives, I explore how the young women understand themselves as sexual beings, how they negotiate everyday sexual interactions, and what issues and concerns are most salient in their decisions around sexuality. The central theme in the narratives is the participants‟ desire to establish their discursive authority by articulating themselves as 1 „competent‟ (intelligent, autonomous, „successful‟) sexual subjects. In my analysis I explore how various discourses are drawn on such that women can position themselves as competent sexual agents who are skillfully able to negotiate the sexual contradictions they often experience. I also go on to problematize participants‟ understanding of themselves as sexual beings and explore moments when their narratives are riddled with contradictions and complexities. Here psychoanalytic concepts emerged as useful tools to explore social processes of young women‟s subjectification within discourse. I show how the psychoanalytic processes of abjection, disavowal, and ambivalence offer sociologists novel insight into understanding the reiteration and disruption of systems of gendered inequality and sexual subjectivity. In the final chapter of this dissertation I attempt to use the theoretical insights I highlight in the participants‟ narratives to illuminate and critically engage with the issue of how sexual health education is provided in Canadian public schools. My use of Foucauldian poststructural and psychoanalytic theoretical insights make the transition to attempting to outline some „best practice‟ implications for sexual health educators in Canada is fraught with tension. Although I acknowledge this basic tension, and will discuss it in more detail in Chapter Eight, I attempt to make this transition as a conscious choice and purely out of my own political commitments. While it seems impossible to translate theoretical insights that assume a fragmented and incoherent subject, as a psychoanalytically-informed poststructural approach does, to an educational and cultural context that bases its pedagogy on the Cartesian liberal subject, I do so because to be paralyzed by this daunting task is not an option. As a critical feminist sociologist, I hope to establish the relevance of my research to people‟s everyday lives and to contribute positively to them. Because of this basic tension, my efforts to discuss 2 education in Chapter Eight remain tentative but I feel that this effort, no matter how problematic, is important. My personal negotiation of sexuality led me to research young women‟s negotiations of (hetero)sex. As an undergraduate in university