Deborah L. Tolman’s 2002 book Dilemmas of Desire discusses issues surrounding teenage girls and sexuality from a sociological and first hand perspective. When discussing how she chose who to ask about their experiences, Tolman addressed the many confounds of using “girls whose sexuality results in visible problems: adolescent pregnancies and births, school dropout, the “cycle” of poverty” (pg 27). Her sample was chosen from 15 to 18 year olds who were randomly selected from different schools to represent a wide variety of the student bodies. It was not surprising that these girls worried about being labelled (ex. Slut/prude, pg 11), getting pregnant, contracting STIs and being raped or sexually assaulted. From her sample of 31 girls, one was raped, one experienced attempted raped, four were sexually abused as a child, two molested, two were hit by their boyfriends and one was hit by a friend. Although Tolman’s sample is not necessarily a representative sample the adolescent girl population, according to Self Defense for Life (2009), 1 to 1.5 million adolescent girls are raped in the US annually and only five percent of adolescent cases are reported. They also did a study of high school girls that asked why they gave in to sex at a boy’s request. Shockingly, the number one answer was because they did not want to hurt the boy’s feelings by saying “no” (http://www.womens-self-defense-instruction-online.com).
We teach girls and boys different things about sex and as we embrace masculinity and sexuality, we neglect informing girls about their sexuality masking their own desires. It is not surprising that when asked about their sexual experiences, young girls talk about relationships and not about sexual pleasure or desire (pg 25). Feminist theorist Adrienne Rich identified what she referred to as compulsory heterosexuality, a social construction that controls women through patriarchy. She described women’s sexual desire for men as “not a natural state but the result of specific involuntary socialization processes.” These processes inflict a number of rules on gender, and “proper” female sexuality which pressure women to comply with these social rules all the while dehumanizing and oppressing them. As a result, homosexuality, rape and sexual violence, sexual harassment and idealizations of heterosexual romance limits women to think of heterosexuality as an institution (pg 16-17). Tolman points to evidence of the heterosexual institution everywhere including movies, expectations, parents telling girls to be nice and boys not to cry and the list can go on and on.
Tolman’s interview with 17 year old Inez surfaces many feelings of girls who say sex “just happened.” When Inez described her first time who did not describe her desires or discuss her own excitement or pleasure but said her body just went limp. In another interview, Tolman asks a girl name Kim about her sexual experiences which evidently causes her some confusion that she links to “silence about girls’ desires and pleasure” (pg 75.). Kim, who masturbates, discussed her frustration with the stigma surrounding self pleasuring activities for girls and calls it unfulfilling and leaves her mentally unsettled. It is interesting how masturbating is almost an expected act by males but when a female does it it only draws confusion and shame – in Tolman’s sample only three girls admitted to masturbating (pg. 74). The standard that girls have to live up to in terms of their sexual desire is often hard to attain. As a result, Tolman questions how stories of girls who do not feel sexual desire allow us to understand female adolescent sexuality. She reiterated the fact that the girls who talked to her about their frustration and confusion surrounding their experiences did not feel it as “posing a dilemma: they lived it” and continue to live in silence (pg 78).
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