14

Resisting the Taint, Marking the Slut:

Middle-class Lesbian Girls and Claims
to Sexual Propriety
Elizabethe Payne

Introduction

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 cul-
tural rewards for ‘correctly’ aligning sex and gender, and to a moral discourse
surrounding the standards for being both ‘good’ and a female-bodied per-
son (Payne, 2013). That compliance includes adherences to ‘age-appropriate’
sexuality (McClelland & Hunter, 2013).
Cultural norms for ‘proper girl behavior’ create resources for divisions
between ‘self’ and ‘other’/ed women (Charles, 2010: 37). Most often, middle-
class identities such as ‘good girl’ establish moral standards against which
working- and lower-class identities are measured (Jackson, 2011). Sexual
behaviour and its marking is then ‘used as the currency through which
other differences are articulated’ (Charles, 2010: 37) and evaluated. Current

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‘sexualization panics’ draw on classed and raced expectations for sexual pro-
priety, heteronormative patriarchal assertions that female sexuality must be
contained and that ‘sexual liberation’ has been damaging to girls (Ringrose,
2013: 42). Today’s girls are seen as even more ‘at risk’ as increased ‘bad influ-
ences’ in modern life threaten to transform ‘middle-class white girlhood into
something monstrous and pathological’ (Egan, 2013: 7).
These moral discourses reaffirm a cultural history that negates girls’ sexual
autonomy and the validity of their desires while reasserting links between
chastity and the goodness of girls. Such heteronormative standards for
girl ‘goodness’ can create conflict for lesbian-identifying girls who wrestle
with tensions between the sexualized and marginalized identity of ‘lesbian’,
the cultural imperative to ‘be good’ and their efforts to see themselves as
valuable individuals (Payne, 2013).
This chapter will explore the ways Southern, White, middle-class lesbian
young women stake their claims to lesbian moral goodness by making
repeated value-laden distinctions between those – straight and lesbian –
who keep their sexual desire in check and those who do not (Payne, 2010).
While actively resisting their own sexualization, they both ‘other’ sexu-
ally experienced young women and reassert their middle-class privilege as
tools to distance themselves from the raw sexuality associated with working-
and lower-class female sexualities, masculinized sexualities and the taint of
lesbian desire.

Good girls, sexuality and social class

In recent decades, ‘lesbian’ as a sexual identity has been framed as one of

potential liberation from the confines of heterofemininity, from the sup-
pression of sexual desire (Rich, 1980) and from the limitations of social class
(Heapy, 2012). It has been argued that by the late 20th century, lesbian and
gay identities had become ‘post-class’, shaped by a move towards individ-
ualized identities and away from collective, materialist ones (Heapy, 2013).
While possibilities for living lives of sexual and gender diversity are indeed
increasing, that increase is not experienced in monolithic ways. Lived expe-
rience of gender and sexual diversity is shaped by sociocultural contexts
and positionalities, including gender, race, social class, age and geography
(McDermott, 2011). Sexual ‘morality’ has long been ‘class specific’ (Jackson,
2011: 17). ‘Idealized American girlhood privileges the traditional’, middle-
class values of monogamy and abstinence – ‘values which are historically
linked and inextricably tied to whiteness, heterosexuality, and normative
femininity.’ ‘The good girl’, by adhering to these standards, becomes a
‘beacon of morality’ (Brown, 2012: 162) for those around her.
‘Class is part of the micropolitics of people’s lives. It is lived in and through
people’s bodies and permeates their thinking’ (Reay, 1998: 265). Middle-class
girls’ acceptance of the imperative to deny sexual desires and delay sexual