Power and Desire: The Embodiment of Female Sexuality

Author(s): Janet Holland, Caroline Ramazanoglu, Sue Sharpe and Rachel Thomson
Source: Feminist Review , Spring, 1994, No. 46, Sexualities: Challenge & Change (Spring,
1994), pp. 21-38
Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1395415

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 POWER AND DESIRE: The Embodiment
of Female Sexuality1

Janet Holland, Caroline Ramazanoglu, Sue Sharpe

and Rachel Thomson

In recent years the study of the body has blossomed from a

area of social science to a focus of attention from feminists and others
(e.g., Turner, 1984; Featherstone etal. 1991, Sawicki, 1991; Shilling,
1991; Scott and Morgan, 1993). Recently, feminists have been attracted
to the work of Foucault and others which emphasizes that although
physical bodies exist, bodies are primarily social constructions (e.g.,
Bordo, 1988).
Looking on the bodies which engage in sexual activities as socially
constructed has been a very productive way of thinking about how
femininity and masculinity can be inscribed on the body. It has seemed
to offer an escape from the trap of seeing sex as essentially biological.
Feminists, however, have disagreed quite profoundly on how to take
account of the physicality or embodiedness of social encounters
(Ramazanoglu, 1993). There has been a tendency to associate any sense
of bodies as material with a naive biological essentialism. This has
pushed feminist theorists away from thinking about sex as both a
gendered and an embodied experience, in which female embodiment
differs from male embodiment (Bartky, 1990:65). The perceived oppo-
sition between essentialism and poststructuralism perpetuates a con-
ceptual dualism between a natural, essential, stable, material body and
a shifting, plural, socially constructed body with multiple potentialities.
We do not have space to explore the debates over essentialism, but
Fuss usefully points out that theories of the social construction of female
sexuality do not escape the pull of essentialism: one can talk of the body
as matter without assuming that matter has a fixed essence (1989:5,
50).
In this paper we argue that there is no simple conceptual dualism
which allows us to distinguish the material, biological, female body from
the social meanings, symbolism and social management of the socially

Feminist Review No 46, Spring 1994

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22 Feminist Review

constructed feminine body. The material body and its social cons
tion are entwined in complex and contradictory ways wh
extremely difficult to disentangle in practice. This complexity ca
it difficult for young women to manage heterosexual encounters
practise safer sex. Sexual encounters are clearly bodily experie
well as social relationships. We cannot though simply lift the
patriarchal ideology to discover an essential truth of female se
beneath, so we have a problem both in knowing how best to thin
the social management of bodies and in managing them.
Foucault (1980:120) has suggested dissolving the appearan
two separate sides to sexuality - an essential versus socially
structed sexuality, but this should not be taken as meaning t
physical body can simply be dissolved into the social. Women live
the physicality of bodily encounters, and often with physical viol
ways which Foucault did not examine.
Practices of feminine heterosexuality embody the power rela
through which masculinity and femininity are constructed
women are able to take control of their sexuality in an active fem
they can bring the social shaping of their material bodies into con
ness, and govern their own sensuality. The problem we explore h
why young women do not generally do this.

The Women, Risk and AIDS Project

This paper is based on reflections on research carried out by the Women,

Risk and AIDS Project (WRAP) and, specifically, on interpretations of
interviews in which young women gave accounts of their sexual
encounters.2 With a few exceptions (which we do not discuss here) these
were heterosexual encounters with a single partner.
The WRAP team interviewed 150 young women aged 16-21,
between 1988 and 1990. A pre-selection questionnaire (completed by
500 young women) provided a statistical profile of a (non-random)
sample from which we generated two purposive samples (one in London,
one in Manchester, UK). The defining variables gave a sample (which
roughly approximated to the national characteristics of young women in
this age group) stratified by social class, power (based on level of
educational attainment and/or type of work experience), ethnic origin
and type of sexual experience.
The main technique used was an unstructured interview, which
was tape-recorded, transcribed and analysed using the Ethnograph
program. The interviews were informal and intensive, covering sensi-
tive areas about sexual experience.3
In this paper we consider how the embodiment of sexuality is
experienced by young women.4 The broad findings of the WRAP
research indicate high levels of sexual activity among the young women,
but limited perceptions that they are putting their bodies at risk. Of
these young women, 62 per cent were sexually active by their sixteenth

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 Power and Desire 23

year and 96 per cent by or at age 21. Seventy per cent of the samp
had sexual intercourse unprotected against HIV or sexually t
mitted diseases, and 45 per cent had had sexual intercourse unpro
against pregnancy. This level of risk-taking was associated wit
general inequalities of gendered power in their accounts of their
relationships.5
Although women can negotiate the terms of such encounters, their
negotiations are subject to social constraints which legitimate sexual
pressure from men, including violence, and provide a model of sexual
behaviour for young women which can be described as passive feminin-
ity. We have identified this dominant version of femininity as an unsafe
sexual strategy since first, it makes women responsible for male
sexuality without being able to control it; second, it has no concept of the
autonomy of women's bodies or of female sexual desire; third, it makes it
difficult for young women to practice safer sex. Young people's variable
responses to these pressures make their sexual practices contradictory
and unpredictable (Holland etal., 1991), but very generally dominated
by a social construction of men's sexual needs.6
We have assumed that after infancy our material bodies cannot be
experienced independently of ideas about them. It is more problematic,
however, to assume that these ideas and our desires are always and
wholly independent of our biology. The consequent problem of how we
can think about the body runs divisively through feminism. Lois McNay
usefully summarizes the problems feminists face in adopting Foucault's
theory of bodies as effects of power. She argues that this does not allow
'the libidinous force of the body' to oppose sexual power. 'In this respect,
there is a tension in Foucault's work between his explicit statements
about not wishing to deny the materiality of the body and his failure to
show in what way such materiality manifests itself (1992:40).
We have explored 'manifest materiality' through trying to make
sense of young women's accounts of managing embodied sexuality. We
draw on both feminist theory and women's experience to consider the
ways in which the disembodiment of feminine sexuality regulates
women's bodies and reproduces conventional gender relations, while at
the same time the materiality of bodies can disrupt these relations. This
possibility of disruption can offer some space for women's resistance to
men's sexual power.

Disembodied femininity

It was striking, if not surprising, that in spite of the focus on sexuality

and sexual encounters, reference to and discussion of the body is almost
absent from the interview transcripts; female sexuality is present in the
interviews but is largely disembodied. The young women's accounts,
however, do indicate points of tension in which physical bodies interrupt
idealized relationships in ways which may be violent, disappointing,
sensual, surprising, boring, lovely, disgusting. The subject body, in the

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24 Feminist Review

sense of an active but hidden, secret, unexpected, female sex

confronts the romantic object, in the sense of the overt, highly
social construction and disembodiment of femininity.
Young women are under pressure to construct their materia
into a particular model of femininity which is both inscribe
surface of their bodies, through such skills as dress, make
dietary regimes, and disembodied in the sense of detachment fro
sensuality and alienation from their material bodies. Explo
connexion between embodiment and disembodiment through
particularly difficult.
The topic of sexual activity set both the young women a
interviewers limits on how they could talk about sex, since the d
culture has no acceptable language for discussing sex in ways wh
not clinical, obscene or childish. The available language is one
in terms of relationships: 'making love', 'sleeping with', or
phemisms and obscurities: 'going to bed', 'down there', 'you k
which bodily sexual activities become veiled.
Talking about what women do with their bodies, and what is
their bodies, exposes and threatens the careful social constru
disembodied sexuality. Sex talk is itself sexy, so accounts o
activity, or discussions of bodily states, can in themselves be ph
arousing, erotic, titillating, voyeuristic. This can shift the defin
an interview - or an article - from a social to a potentially
context.7
The interviewers and the young women were involved in ma
ing precarious boundaries between the social and the sexual
Emerson, 1970). The extracts from transcripts which we draw o
paper indicate something of the oblique and disconnected talk u
young women about their bodies. This lack of explicit lang
connected to the social pressures on young women to keep their
knowledge and sexual prowess concealed in order to be decent, j
evidence of menstruation must be completely hidden, even b
girls (Prendergast, 1989). To reveal sexual knowledge and
physical sexual desires (as opposed to wanting a relationshi
boyfriend) threatens a girl's reputation. Socially constructed fem
ity, for young women in the UK, must combine the allure necess
attracting and holding a male partner, with concern for
reputation.

A: With girls you're brought up to be ladylike, because if you start being

rampant you're called a slag or a slut or whatever, but with the boys
they can get away with anything, like they won't really get called no
major names, they just get called Casanova and things like that, but
that's not really going to hurt them, like if a girl gets called a slag.
(Aged 16, Afro-Caribbean, working class, London)

A modest, feminine reputation requires a young woman to construct a

disembodied sexuality. The woman becomes a passive body, rather than

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 Power and Desire 25

actively embodied. Something of this is indicated in the follo

extract where explicit acknowledgement of physical sexuality
expressed as 'all that business'.

A: ... when anyone ever said sex before, all I ever thought was sex
intercourse. That's what it is isn't it?
Q: Well, do you think of anything else as being sex?
A: No, I never thought of- I didn't think foreplay or anything was sex.
But it is, isn't it, in some way. Oral sex -
Q: Oral sex can be part of it as well.
A: Yeah, it's like, like that, and I didn't know - I never ever connected
sex with the touching and - all that business.
(Aged 16, Asian, working class, London)

Here the conception of sex is explicitly disembodied in the disconnexion

between sex and touching.
While explicit accounts of sexual activity are largely missing, the
interviews can be read as implying complex interconnexions of power
and resistance, in which young women experience social pressures to
construct their bodies as passive and fragmented sexual objects. These
can become eroticized, but this is within a 'masculine appropriation of
desire in a society that renders desire as power' (Goldstein, 1990). Emily
Martin has shown that women do tend to see their bodies as separated
from themselves, as needing to be controlled. She reported a 'fair
amount of fragmentation and alienation in women's general concep-
tions of body and self of which they did not seem to be aware (1989: 89).
The detachment of many young women from the possibilities of
their bodies meant that they simply did not know, or even wish to know
initially, about some sexual activities. Questions in the interviews, for
example, about oral sex did get responses, but often came up against the
boundaries of disembodied femininity.

Q: Is there a risk with oral sex?

A: What's that?
Q: When a woman goes down on a man or a man goes down on a woman
A: Oh yeah. I wouldn't do that, nothing like that ... disgusting.
Q: Would you have oral sex?
A: I don't think so, no.
Q: Have you thought about it?
A: Yes I have thought about it but I don't think so, I don't fancy the id
(Aged 16, Afro-Caribbean, working class, Manchester)

Where young women did enjoy oral sex they found it difficult to do
than hint at this in an interview, but their accounts did indicat
contradiction. Although young women might find cunnilingus m
pleasurable than vaginal penetration it could be difficult to get men
accept this as 'proper sex', or to share their feelings about it.

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26 Feminist Review

Q: And if he still - if he thinks it's dirty down there, does that mea
he doesn't kind of have oral sex .. .?
A: Well, he - he said - he has, we have, yeah, we have, you know like,
but he said - like once he said that he didn't like doing it. But when he
said that, you know, I thought, well, I'm not going to ask you to go
down there if you think - you know, you don't like it, you know. 'Cos I
suppose if I didn't like doing it to him then maybe I wouldn't want
him saying, 'I want you to give me a blow job', or something, if I didn't
want to do it; so I wasn't going to press it. But he has since then. And I
was thinking, you know, 'you said you didn't like it', you know - you
know, I thought maybe, you know, maybe he's doing it 'cos he thinks
he has to or something. But I suppose - saying you talk about things,
I suppose you - even though you might think you talk about things
you don't talk about them that much really.
(Aged 19, ESW8, working class, London)

Where oral sex was pleasurable and permissible in a sexual relation-

ship, this permission came from the man, and usually a man who was
older or more sexually experienced than the young woman. This was a
difficult area for women to negotiate with men because of the need for
recognition of their bodies, and the level of communication with a
partner required for shared pleasure. Lynne Segal (1992) has pointed
out that even when women know how to experience pleasure, they are
still constrained by the social construction of heterosexuality.

Power, control and desire

Feminist studies of heterosexuality can be interpreted as having

identified the physical body as a social site where Foucault's conceptio
of the 'micro physics' of power (Foucault, 1979) can be applied to mal
domination (Coveney et al., 1984; Thompson, 1990; Hite, 1987; Jackson
1982). This identification of power as gendered, links the disciplining
bodily activity to institutionalized heterosexuality, the 'beauty system
and women's consent and resistance to male hegemony (Bartky, 19
Bordo, 1990: Martin, 1989: Lesko, 1988; MacCannell and MacCanne
1987).
The WRAP research provides support for Foucault's theory that t
body is the site where the larger scale organization of power is connec
to the most minute and local practices, but Foucault fails to explain t
link between male domination of sexual encounters and male pow
(Ramazanoglu and Holland, 1993). Foucault does not distinguish
between men's and women's bodily experiences (Bartky, 1990), nor did
he investigate the reasons for the creation and persistence of male
domination.
Sexual practices can be seen as linked to the large-scale organiz
ation of gendered power, but identifying this link still leaves problems
explanation: first, whether the body is in any sense fixed, how far, f

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 Power and Desire 27

example, women are able to take control of their bodies and de

second, how men's sexual domination is reproduced both in large-sc
and in intimate institutionalized practices. Susan Bordo (1990:66
pointed out that Foucault's conception of power (unlike that of som
his followers) does not mean that there are no dominant social posi
social structures or ideologies, but that power is not held; rather p
are differently positioned within it. The problem for feminists is t
is not clear what this means in relation to gendered power. B
suggests that it is the everyday habits of masculinity and feminin
which socially constitute male dominance. Male hegemony ma
technically precarious but since resistance either by women or men
effort and struggle, it remains strong.9
To understand men's power to appropriate female desire, and
part women play in accepting or resisting this power, we nee
understand issues of control in relation to the body. The embodime
heterosexuality is paradoxical in that it entails both exercising cont
and losing control. This issue of control when two bodies meet canno
disconnected from gendered power relations. A young woman who
reflected a great deal on sexuality after being violently raped said
she was now conscious of control in ways that she had not experien
before:

A: I mean, because sex can be quite violent so I mean, it can be quite

scary - scary or painful. Whereas, I mean, touching people and ora
sex and whatever, I mean, that's quite intimate. I mean, it's a lot
more intimate and you can talk and - I don't know.
Q: And do you have it?
A: Yeah, and I prefer it now because I feel like I've got more control o
the situation whereas with sex, I mean, especially if you're on your
back, I really do feel sometimes like I'm going to lose control. Not a
going to have an orgasm but actually like, 'could I stop this right n
if I wanted to?' Because, I mean, that's really important for me now
All the time I've got to be aware that I'm not necessarily in control
being dominant but just that if I get scared, you know, can I stop it
(Aged 21, ESW, middle class, London)

Accounts of sexual violence or pressured sex were given by ab

quarter of the young women interviewed, and clearly indicate p
and force in sexual encounters. But it is too simple to argue that m
general directly and deliberately control women in patriarchal rela
ships. This can be the case, but even where violence or pressure is u
control is a complex and contested process (Holland et al., 1992b). W
men may benefit from male domination in sexual encounters, they
also constrained by the social construction of heterosexuality (Holla
et al., 1993). Women are both sexually subordinated by men, and dr
into the constitution of heterosexuality as male dominated in
through the efforts they put into the construction of passive femin
which effectively silences their own desires.

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28 Feminist Review

One young woman claimed to be in control in sexual relation

and to like to choose when and how to end relationships. The
asserts her claim, however, illustrates some of the problems sh

A: I think I always make sure I'm in control. The person that I wa

out with, I went out with my last boyfriend's best friend befor
out with my boyfriend, and he said to me that I was totally in
and that I had all the power in the world really. I do believe th
general women have more power in relationships than men do
Q: You do?
A: Yeah, I believe they've got more power to manipulate.
Q: Mm. How?
A: I just think that women in general are more cunning than men, I
think we can - I don't know - it's just we can use - it sounds awful,
feminine wiles to make people do things. Or I think - I think that's
what I've done in a way. I think a lot of the time I use sex in that way.
Q: Yeah. And you haven't felt that they've put pressure on you to do
things that you don't want to do in the relationship?
A: That has happened, yeah, I mean this last relationship's dragged out
longer than I would have wanted it to. It's been quite painful for me
which doesn't - I don't normally get so affected ... but maybe I didn't
have quite as much control as what I would have liked. This person
was a lot more independent of me than I would have liked, that's why
I got very frustrated in the end. So - he didn't seem to need me, that
was clear, he didn't seem to need me as much as I'd been needed
before.
(Aged 21, ESW, middle class, London)

In the course of this extract her claim to be in control is transformed into

a claim to be needed. Elsewhere in her interview she revealed that she
was receiving treatment for depression and had an eating problem:

A: I don't think I've ever found anything completely sexually satisfying

I think my main reason for actually having physical relationships is
the cuddling and the affection and everything, I don't really get a
great deal out of the sex, because I think I cut myself off a lot of the
time. I don't seem capable of actually closing my mind and I always,
sometimes - well, most of the time I start thinking this is really dirt
I think probably from what I was brought up with as a child, I just
think - it just always seems wrong to me, although I'm probably sort
of very liberal and I don't feel anything like that is wrong, it just
seems to come into my mind all the time, it makes me feel guilty so -
it's mostly for the affectionate side of it...

In interpreting her account we draw, first, on her own words, t

meanings she offers to us; second, on the interviewer's notes an
reflections on the interview; third, on discussion within the resea
team in the light of feminist theory. Through these levels of analysis

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 Power and Desire 29

show her version of control as a feminine strategy of survival in soc

situations in which her efforts to lose control of her body fail her.
conception of her sexual needs has to be kept secret.
According to the dominant discourses of sexuality, masculine a
feminine sexualities are natural essences, and sexual encounters a
rational negotiations between responsible and equal individuals.
central paradox is, then, that sex is supposed to be a biological urge,
sexual encounters are supposed to be rational decision-making p
cesses (see contributions to Aggleton and Homans, 1988). In medi
and common-sense thought, men have uncontrollable sexual urg
which are not shared by women. 'Normal sex' then entails active m
satisfying passive women in the satisfaction of their own 'natu
desires. Women's sexuality is defined as finding fulfilment in meetin
men's needs (Coveney etal., 1984; Jackson, 1982). As the followi
extract suggests, women are then socially constrained to control the
own bodily appetites and suppress their own desires, since these
deemed 'unnatural' or at least unseemly.

Q: Would you say that you enjoyed sex, the physical part?
A: I wouldn't say - well, sometimes its nice and other times I would say
no. I do like sex, I think I have a higher sex drive that - he's like that
- 'behave!' - He's embarrassed.
(Aged 19, ESW, middle class, Manchester)

Women lose control of sexual encounters to men through self-

surveillance of their own bodies and desires. Male power constrains and
controls, like a corset, but in accepting this constraint, in tightening the
laces to enhance femininity, women lose the power of their muscles - the
power of expressing their desire.
Tension is located at the point at which women are supposed to stay
in control, for example by taking responsibility for contraception, while
losing control through orgasm. This tension is one factor contributing to
unsafe sex (Holland et al., 1991). The social construction of male sexual
arousal means men are supposedly in control at a rational level, but also
physically out of control, while women must respond to male arousal,
but also control the rational man.

A: It was like as soon as he got an erection, that was all right no matter
how I was feeling, whether I was aroused or not, you had to do things
because that was the point when things happened, when he was
aroused, not when I was aroused.
(Aged 19, Asian, middle class, Manchester)

For sex to be 'normal', the woman must lose control of the encounter so
that the man can stay rational (Waldby, etal., 1991).
Female desire is then both in the body, and socially constructed. A
young woman is under social pressure (which she may or may not resist)
to present male sexual partners with her idealized but material body for

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30 Feminist Review

his pleasure. Any discourse which legitimates her pleasure, ac

ledges her sexual knowledge, values her performance and pl
under her control, is potentially threatening to his masculinity.
The young women clearly indicated that they defined he
sexuality in terms of'proper intercourse' which starts with penet
and ends when the male achieves his orgasm - with the man
bodily control, but still in control. This male-centred heterose
requires that the woman also ought to have an orgasm to make it
sex and to demonstrate his power. Faking orgasms is one way in
women use their bodies sexually in order to meet this aspect o
construction.

A: I did fake a few orgasms, just to make him happy, 'Cos - 'cos it - it -
he was very considerate, I know, it's like he wouldn't - he wouldn't
have an orgasm until I had, so I thought - I thought, go 'ooh, ooh, ooh'
a bit, then he might hurry up and finish.
(Aged 18, EWS, working class, London)

One young woman who had been sexually abused as a child and ha
never had an orgasm regularly faked orgasms to satisfy her partners:

A: But I can remember one guy, I went to bed with, turned and said to
me - Did you have an orgasm? - And I was just not in the mood, and I
said - 'No'. Just... - 'You must have had an orgasm, nobody goes to
bed with me and doesn't have an orgasm!', I said ...
Q: Oh yeah? That's what they tell you.
A: I said - 'Oh well there's a first time for everything'. I really did used t
think that there's something wrong with me.
(Aged 20, ESW, working class, Manchester)

Deconstructing these tensions between control/loss of control/giving u

control, shows the complexity of managing the sexual encounters into
which the material body intrudes. Empirical study here begins to open
up questions about the fixity/stability of male hegemony. When wome
fake orgasms they are defining the sexual encounter as one which i
defined by men's physical sexual needs. The woman's own bodily sta
then has to be concealed. One young woman was caught out by her bod
when she unexpectedly had her first orgasm in a relationship in which
she was accustomed to fake orgasms, and regarded this faking as part o
'normal sex'.

A: ... everyone I know does that, you know, you - you know, sort of like
there they are, you know, and if you ... sort of like, they go, 'you
didn't come, did you?' and if you say, 'no', they go, 'ohh' [sigh], and
they sort of feel like they're so - not a man, you know. You know, you
might enjoy sex but just 'cos you didn't have an orgasm it's not the
end of the world, but to them it is, you know, and they - I mean I
suppose they equate it to them, you know, if they didn't -
Q: Yeah.

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 Power and Desire 31

A: - if every time they had sex, you know like, for five years, and they
never ever come, you know, they'd sort of like be out killing
themselves, wouldn't they? But, you know, women do it for years a
years, you know, it doesn't bother us, you know - well, as much as i
might bother them, and - you know, like so when I did... I couldn't
say to him 'oh, that's the first time I've had an orgasm' [laugh], you
know, so - but I was a bit surprised. I thought, 'oh, my God'.
Q: Yeah. But was that with actual intercourse or was that with other
things?
A: No, that was - but it was - it was 'cos I was on - I was on top, you
know, so I suppose I got more stimulated that way, you know. But it's
surprising actually, how much they don't - that's why they're so -
why maybe they might not be able to please a woman. It's because
they don't know nothing about our bodies. Like I don't know if it's 'cos
they don't read or they didn't take any notice of the biology lessons,
but I mean it's like quite easy to learn about what makes - you know,
what a bloke's private parts, you know, do and everything.
(Aged 19, ESW, working class, London)

These extracts signal a very clear definition of sex as penetrative sex for
men's pleasure in which women find fulfilment primarily in the
relationship, in giving pleasure, and only secondarily in their own bodily
desires or in communicating with their partner about shared pleasure.
Foucault (1980:57) has argued that 'nothing is more material,
physical, corporal than the exercise of power', but that the ponderous
forms of nineteenth-century control are no longer necessary since
industrial societies can manage with much looser forms of power: 'one
needs to study what kind of body the current society needs .. .' (58). If we
ask what kind of female body is required for the reproduction of male
domination in intimate social relations, then the disembodied, disci-
plined female body implicit in the young women's accounts of their
sexuality is one socially appropriate response.

Q: Have the men that you've been involved with, have they actually
given you pleasure?
A: No. No, actually I haven't had an orgasm through, you know, through
intercourse ...

Q: Have you had it through other ways?

A: Yeah. I think.
Q: What, through yourself doing it or sort of someone -
A: Well through myself doing it or somebody else doing it, but not
through inter - sexual intercourse. I haven't tried actually.
Q: Do you see pleasure as having to come through intercourse?
A: No, not at all. I mean intercourse is just, you know, it's somethin
that - men's sexual - having sex - but it's not the most important
thing. I don't think it's the centre of the pleasure in a sexual
relationship.
(Aged 19, ESW, middle class, London)

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32 Feminist Review

The question of how men exercise power does not then require t
are conscious of women disciplining their own desires. Procedur
subordinating women in sexual encounters are complex and subt
a key factor is the extent to which young women expect men t
both the type of encounter and the boundaries of what is
pleasurable, clean, permissible.
One young woman contrasted two of her relationships, neith
which was wholly fulfilling. In the first, although the sex was w
('lust with potential') she said she had hated her partner. In the
she had settled for a more loving relationship in which 'nor
lacked passion so she had to dampen down the expression of her
and try to value other aspects of the relationship. Tension is ind
when she says both that it is brilliant to be able to sleep at nigh
also that she lies awake wondering when or if he is going to
sexual advance.

A: I couldn't believe I'd gone from this really hot, sizzling relationship,
you know like, I mean, if I ever played about in stockings or anythin
he just went, 'tut', you know like, - passion - you know I can't believ
it, and I'm like awake all night thinking any minute now, you know,
it's just the difference but it's - I mean, I know it sounds daft saying
well how you can have a purely sexual relationship, which is like lu
with potential, and I prefer to go out with Dave and be able to talk t
him and like, just have a normal sex life, which you ...
Q: But not that quick to have sex and that, and not that enjoyable -
A: To be able to go to sleep, I think it's brilliant to be able to go to sleep.
Q: Yeah right, I mean do you think you get a lot of enjoyment out of sex
or has sex, or as much as your partner is getting out of it, as a woma
- I mean do you think that you know the difference?
A: I know what you're saying - um - well I think that I don't enjoy sex
for what it is right, when a fella is like going away, I'm not enjoying
that, the actual intercourse, I like enjoyment from, I know it sounds
like a typical woman statement, but them actually doing it and them
enjoying themselves, and -
Q: What, you, you enjoy him enjoying himself, right, you get pleasure
from his pleasure ...
A: And also, like eh, oral sex, right.
Q: Right, so things that, that usually, that are sort of called foreplay
that's what you get your pleasure out of?
A: Yeah, the actual, I mean not a lot of women, I don't think - I mean
they've got to be very lucky to give you an orgasm, 'cos they've got to
hit something quite a few times.
(Aged 21, ESW, working class, Manchester)

We take this extract to be an account of the silencing of female desi

without the man being aware that this is happening. He determines

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 Power and Desire 33

level and type of sexual activity in the relationship. She help

reproduce dominant masculinity by her acceptance of 'normal
primarily men's pleasure, and the initial sexual advances as his
than hers. Although she is plainly aware of her own sexual pleasur
has disciplined her body to fit her expectations of what it is to ha
boyfriend. This provides a connexion between the 'micro phys
power at the level of bodily sexual intimacy and the social constru
of masculinity and femininity which underpins male dominance m
generally.

Gendered disembodiment and the material body

Women have to spend a good deal of time and effort in the skilled
management of their bodies in order to make them socially presentable.
Dorothy Smith (1988) comments on the artful and skilledwork that has to
go into learning and creating the presentation of self as feminine. These
skills are necessary for the successful inscription of disembodied
femininity on an idealized, desirable body, but these efforts do not simply
constitute the corporeal as the social in an easy way. Bartky (1990:72)
argues that ideal femininity requires such'radical bodily transformation'
that virtually every woman is bound to fail, adding shame to her
deficiency. Letting particular aspects of the body emerge, as in 'letting
oneself go', with lank hair, chipped nails, blemished skin, visible body
hair in the 'wrong' places, 'fat', evidence of menstruation, body odour, is to
be unfeminine. Women's material (e.g., hairy, discharging) bodies are
taken socially to be unnatural. In sexual situations there can be a
particularly complex and unstable tension between the material body
and what is socially inscribed on the body, rather than either unity or a
balanced dualism. Although the body which engages in sexual activity is
always socially constituted and managed, it is also always material,
susceptible to pleasure and pain at different levels. It is this materiality,
that in an idealized femininity should not exist, which is in danger of
erupting on to the social scene in young women's sexual encounters.
The physical manifestation of material bodies disrupts the disci-
plined disembodiment of femininity - it connects the disconnexion
between the ideal and physical - between what Adrienne Rich has
called 'the body' and 'my body' (Fuss, 1989). It puts 'my body' at risk,
opens it to the gaze of the other, makes it vulnerable to feelings, arousal
and disease. Sexual activity with a partner, whether as penetrative sex
or not, brings two physical bodies together in a social relationship,
which is also material, corporeal.
Young women's reported reactions varied from the pleasurable, as
in the case of the young woman quoted above who was surprised by her
first orgasm, to the unpleasant, as in many experiences of first sex:

A: ... it wasn't anything romantic, with no clothes on or anything like

that, it was just sort of skirt up, know what I mean, and then you
know by the time he did it, it was all over and done with.

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34 Feminist Review

Q: You didn't get much out of it?

A: No, I didn't get anything out of it actually. Although I remembe
really really did hurt me, you know what I mean, that's what I d
remember.
(Aged 21, Afro-Caribbean, middle class, Manchester)

A sexual relationship, however physical, is always a social experience

We do not intend to imply that physical bodies are clearly distinct from
ideas about the body, but that sexual encounters can bring material
bodies directly into consciousness, and directly into social situations, in
ways for which young women were not always prepared.

Conclusion

The extent of the absence of 'my body' from young women

sexual encounters suggests a strain between the idealize
disembodiment of the interviews and the conscious an
uncontrolled interaction of his and her material bodies. This strain can
provide political space for the disruption of the everyday practices of
femininity, in which women's bodies are cared for, covered, cleaned
deodorized, depilated, made up, decorated, fed, slimmed, starved,
shaped, remodelled or punished for their lack of perfection.10 Th
manifestation of material bodies is an intrusion into the romantic ideal
of something that is smelly, hairy, bloody; prone to spots, discharges,
seepage, hormonal changes; it is arousable, pleasurable, with erogenous
zones. This body is the seat of the physicality of pleasure and pain; the
material of pregnancy, orgasm, violence, abortion, HIV, disease, as well
as of the social images and meanings of these.
Young people embarking on sexual encounters have to make
decisions about the physical place, time and positions; what degree o
lighting and nakedness are appropriate; how to manage bodily fluid
and noises; what is normal, permitted, pleasurable; what is deviant,
dirty, unfeminine, unmasculine or otherwise not decent, and what i
taken to be the start and end or climax of a sexual encounter. There is a
tension here between the order of socially constituted, gendered
identities, and the potential disorder of the uncontrolled body.
The constant reproduction of women's subordination to men is
made possible because, as Waldby etal. (1991) comment, 'women live
out rather than disavow the consequences of their embodiment'. Where
young women were able to discuss their sexual preferences with their
partners, they gave accounts of very positive experiences, but these
were a tiny minority. Underlying the ability to communicate desire to
sexual partners is not an equal femininity which grants women
knowledge and agency, but the complicated ways in which gendered
power is constituted and reproduced in relationships.
Sex connects bodies and this connexion gives women an intimate
space within which men's power can be subverted and resisted. If

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 Power and Desire 35

women can recognize and capture this space, they can negotia
relationships with men which upset the gender hierarchy and s
potentially socially destabilizing (Holland etal., 1992a). We sug
that few young women recognize and capture this space because
lack a critical consciousness that they are living a disembodied
femininity. Where women do have a critical consciousness of the
embodiment of their sexuality, and are comfortable with desires of their
own, men's power can be directly threatened. The intrusion of her body
into his desires (rather than his desire into her body) can contribute to
the pressure to tighten or reinforce men's control which might help
explain the prevalence of male violence in sexual encounters. The extent
of male violence, as feminists have long argued, indicates connexions
between personal relationships and the wider institutionalization of
men's power.
We have taken the accounts given by these young women to
indicate that struggles to control women's bodies, and the silencing by
women of women's desires are points at which male power is consti-
tuted, reproduced and resisted. Young women construct their self-
identities through the specific practices of gendered sexuality. Their
own sense of self is deeply embedded in the ways in which they live their
femininity. We have used our data to show how male power is exercised
in the way young women manage the connexions between material
bodies and gendered disembodiment.
Bordo (1990) argues that Foucault insists on the instability of
power relations since resistance is perpetual and unpredictable. In this
theory, male hegemony can exist but is precarious. This view (which is
increasingly being adopted by poststructuralist feminists) raises real
political problems for feminism because it fails to account for the success
and durability of this precarious male dominance. It does not explain
the extent to which women strive to support rather than resist their
subordination.
Both men's power and women's resistance are contested and
unstable, but the successful construction of femininity in relation to
masculinity requires women to enable the exercise of men's power.
Women's empowerment in confronting men's dominance begins with
their ability to reclaim their own experience and claim their bodies as
the site of their own desires. This changes the meaning of sexual
encounters and female sexuality. The embodiment of female sexuality is
necessary for the subversion of men's dominance at the level of the
micro-physical, but is not sufficient to dismantle institutionalized male
power.

Notes

The authors have worked together as members of the Women, Risk and
Project and Men, Risk and AIDS Project: Janet Holland is Senior Re
Officer at the Department of Policy Studies, Institute of Education, Un

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36 Feminist Review

of London, and lecturer in education at the Open University; Ca

Ramazanoglu is a senior lecturer in sociology at Goldsmiths' College, U
of London; Sue Sharpe is a freelance writer and researcher, whose
interests are the lives and experiences of young women; Rachel Th
Senior Development Officer for the Sex Education Forum at the
Children's Bureau.

1 A version of this article was given as a paper at the 'Alice in Wonderlan

First International Conference on Girls and Girlhood: Transitions and
Dilemmas', Amsterdam, June 1992.
2 The Women, Risk and AIDS Project is staffed by the authors and Sue
University of Stirling, working collectively, and has been finance
two-year grant from the ESRC. It has also received grants from Goldsm
College Research Fund and the Department of Health. The Leverh
Trust gave a further one-year grant for a comparable study of young
1991-2, and for comparison of the two studies. Tim Rhodes was a
member on this project.
3 The problems of interviewing on such a sensitive topic, and of interp
accounts are complex issues which we have discussed elsewhere (H
and Ramazanoglu, forthcoming).
4 We have deliberately focused on gender relations rather than other so
divisions, as these are central to intimate heterosexual relations. But t
does not mean that we take gender to be isolated from other social div
(e.g., class, sexual orientation, ethnicity (Holland, 1993)); nor does it m
that we take men's power over women to be undifferentiated (Holland
1993).
5 We do not have space here to discuss this research in any detail. F
analysis is available as WRAP papers, obtainable from the Tufnell Pres
Dalmeny Rd, London N1 ODY. Prices on request.
6 Since neither sexuality nor the body can be taken as fixed and universa
generalizations are limited. They should apply fairly generally to Eng
speaking cultures and to much of Europe, but the nature and exte
variation, across time, cultures and social divisions is not established.
7 The potential sexualizing of the interview through willingness to talk
the body was more evident in the interviews where women interv
young men. Among the young women, a few who had had sexual exper
with women were more open in talking explicitly about sex, in on
leading to what the interviewer describes as a 'steamy interview'.
8 'ESW' indicates 'English/Scottish/Welsh' which was used in our pu
sample as a category of ethnic origin.
9 We have discussed elsewhere the possibilities of the empowerment of
women in sexual encounters with men, and the potency of the obstac
this empowerment (Holland et al., 1992a). The WRAP research is provi
empirical evidence on how male power is exercised and how exten
women contribute to the maintenance or resistance of male domination.
10 Men's bodies are also subject to social pressures, but Mandy McCarthy
suggests that women's self-esteem is tied to appearance more clearly than
for men, while men are less concerned about their own bodies deviating from
the ideal (1990:206). Our initial evidence from interviewing young men
supports this view.

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 Power and Desire 37

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