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14. Girl-on-Girl Sexuality
- NYU Press
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14 Girl-on-Girl Sexuality Ritch C. Savin-Williams First Same-Sex Encounter Girls have sex with girls. Such encounters can be meaningful, trivial, pleasurable , shaming, intentional, and accidental. They are lustful and romantic , motivated by desire, by love, by curiosity, and by acceptance. Sex is with a childhood playmate, an adolescent friend, or a young adult romantic partner. It is with one other girl, with multiple girls, or with girls and boys. Yet these assertions are more speculative than empirically verified because investigators have generally ignored the same-sex experiences of girls. One alternative, to generalize from the far more studied sexual experiences of boys, would lead to misunderstanding about the same-sex experiences of girls. Among the questions addressed in this chapter are: Who are the same-sex partners of girls, and what is their relationship? What happens sexually, who initiates it, and who has an orgasm? Why this girl at this point of time? Is the sex wanted, pleasurable, or meaningful? Does it influence her sexual self-perceptions? To answer these questions, I review findings provided by contemporary social and behavioral sciences and by the life stories of 78 young women I interviewed. Others (e.g., Tolman, 1996) have also listened to the sexual voices of female adolescents, but primarily from the girls’ heterosexual perspective. Research Design Seventy-eight young women between the ages of 17 and 25 years (mean = 20.8 years) participated in a research project on the developmental life his301 tories of sexual-minority young adults (for male findings, see SavinWilliams , 1998, 2004; for gender comparisons, see Savin-Williams & Diamond , 2000). All young women met the inclusion criterion of claiming physical or romantic interest in same-sex others. The young women were recruited through announcements in college classes on gender and sexuality , flyers to campus social and political organizations, postings on Internet list-servs for sexual-minority students on several college campuses, and referrals from other participants. To increase geographic diversity, a posting of the research was listed on several southern and eastern college campus list-servs. This multiple recruitment strategy drew participants along the spectrum of same-sex sexuality. For example, college courses on gender often draw students who tentatively recognize the complexity of their sexual attractions; campus political organizations, those who openly identify their same-sex sexuality. To volunteer, women contacted the principal investigator by telephone or electronic mail. Special efforts were made to include young women who might not feel comfortable identifying as lesbian or bisexual by assuring them that such identifications were not necessary for participation and that the interviews were confidential and would be neither audio- nor videotaped. Due to the research design, response rate could not be calculated because it is unknown how many potential participants who met selection criteria did not volunteer for the study. However, 9% of women who originally made contact either did not return efforts to contact them or did not show up for the interviews. Due to human subject considerations , no attempt was made to contact these individuals or to discover reasons for their refusal to participate. Procedures and Measures The young women were interviewed in person or by telephone by the principal investigator (median time = 45 minutes) in a location chosen by youth that afforded privacy and confidentiality. The nature and aims of the research project were explained, questions were answered, and consent was secured in accordance with human subjects’ stipulations. All participants understood in advance that the interviewer was a gay male researcher. Whether and how this fact affected responses is unknown; however, several women spontaneously offered at the close of the interview that it was a relief to talk about sexual matters with a perceived disin302 c h a p t e r 1 4 [3.92.1.156] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 06:22 GMT) terested male. One young woman said, “If you were a woman, especially an attractive one, I’d be trying to impress you.” Initial questions ascertained the young women’s age, ethnicity, hometown community size, and family social class (based on occupational status of parents). The remainder of the interview focused on developmental milestones, from earliest memories of same-sex attraction to current feelings about one’s sexuality (Savin-Williams, 1998). For purposes of this project, only data concerning first same-sex contact were analyzed. Sex was defined as an act in which there was “genital contact on the part of either you, your partner, or both.” Women could also use their own definition...