It’s Like Doing Homework: Academic Achievement Discourse in Adolescent Girls’ Fellatio Narratives

Young women’s narratives of their sexual experiences occur amid conflicting cultural discourses of risk, abstinence, and moral panic. Yet young women, as social actors, find ways to make meaning of their experiences through narrative. In this study, we focused on adolescent girls’ ( N = 98, age 12–17 years) narratives of their first experiences with oral sex. We document our unexpected findings of persistent discourses of performance which echo newly emergent academic achievement discourses. Burns and Torre ( Feminism & Psychology 15(1):21–26, 2005 ) argue that an extreme and high stakes focus on individual academic achievement in schools impoverishes young minds through the “hollowing” of their sexualities. We present evidence that such influence also works in the opposite direction, with an achievement orientation invading girls’ discourses of sexuality, “crowding out” possible narratives of pleasure, choice, and mutuality with narratives of competence and skill usually associated with achievement and schooling. We conclude with policy implications for the future development of “positive” sexuality narratives.