Pleasure and propriety: Teen girls and the practice of straight space

Abstract

Heterosexuality is often perceived by geographers to be a dominant social force in the production of space, yet the ways that heterosexuality achieves this domination have not been scrutinized. In this paper I focus on two straight girls' narratives to explore, first, how they sexualize space and thus make space heterosexual; and, second, how space and spatiality imbue their everyday social and sexual practices and thus exist as a central component of subjectivity. I argue that considering the spatiality of their sexual practices presents a theoretical advantage over current feminist conceptualizations that place girls in gendered relationships in which boys maintain control. Instead, I suggest that a close reading of the pleasures and proprieties of sex and sexuality in these two girls' stories illustrates how the girls become invested with and perform social-sexual norms and meanings through spatialized practices.