Article

Sexualities
16(5/6) 604–621
In defense of danger: ! The Author(s) 2013
Reprints and permissions:
Sex, schools and the sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1363460713487365
politics of discourse sex.sagepub.com

Sarah A Miller
University of Massachusetts, USA

Abstract
In 2004, Ashbourne High School1 staged the first school-sponsored student perform-
ance of The Vagina Monologues, sparking a community controversy covered in the local
and national media about the sexuality of minors. Through a content analysis of archival
documents and media coverage, this study examines the discursive politics of this
community debate over sex, youth, and schools. The author finds that underlying this
community’s abundant and atypical support for sexual speech in school was a pervasive
gendered discourse of sexual risk, one that transposed teen talk about sex into cultur-
ally defensible, protective social action.

Keywords
Discourse, gender, media, sexuality, youth

Introduction
On 13 February 2004 an adolescent girl stood on the Ashbourne High School
stage. Met with laughter and loud applause from an audience of over 800 teachers,
family members, and peers, she completed her monologue:

I lay back and closed my eyes . . . I came into my own muscles and blood and cells and
then I slid into my vagina . . . There was a little quivering at first . . . then the quivering
became a quake, an eruption, the layers dividing and subdividing. The quaking broke
open into an ancient horizon of light and silence . . . as I lay there thrashing around on
my little blue mat. (Ensler, 2001: 17)

Along with a cast of teen girls, this young woman spent the evening performing the
first US high school sponsored production2 of The Vagina Monologues, which

Corresponding author:
Sarah A Miller, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Thompson Hall, 7th Floor, 200 Hicks Way, Amherst,
MA 01003, USA.
Email: sarahm@soc.umass.edu
Miller 605

provided students with a school-based forum to speak unabashedly about sexual

pleasure, violence against women, and non-heterocentric sexuality.
Not surprisingly, the play, billed as ‘a celebration of female sexuality in all its
complexity and mystery’ (Ensler, 2001), sparked a community controversy covered
in the local and national media about the sexuality of minors. Yet it was the out-
pouring of community support that makes this case unique among US contests over
sex, youth, and schools. This article examines the politics of discourse embedded in
the language of adult supporters, adult opponents, and the youth caught in between.
Employing a content analysis of media coverage, the script, and archival documents,
this study investigates what was ‘speakable’ and, ultimately, ‘printable’ in this con-
troversy about adolescent female sexuality and what was left unspoken. I will show
that underlying this community’s abundant and atypical support for sexual speech
in school was a pervasive gendered discourse of sexual risk, one that transposed teen
talk about sex into culturally defensible, protective social action.

Girls, culture, and the politics of discourse

Ashbourne’s controversy was a contemporary case of discursive politics. Comprising
sexual speech, rhetoric, and culture, sociologist Janice Irvine conceptualizes discur-
sive politics as ‘national and local contests over how we think, talk, and feel about
sexuality’ (Irvine, 2002: 3). I use this concept to interrogate the underlying cultural
politics present in the language used in this debate, and to position the community’s
strategic uses of discourse as a process of meaning making and social action. While
seemingly a small-town local matter, the content of this debate maps onto national
discourses prevalent in extant controversies over sexuality and schools present for
many years in the US. The culture wars of the 1990s laid the groundwork for con-
temporary local contests over sexuality (Duggan and Hunter, 1995; Irvine, 2000,
2002; Stein, 2006), particularly in progressive communities such as Ashbourne.
At the time of the AHS controversy, community debates over sex education had
been circulating in the media for many years and remained a site where the residue of
the culture wars maintained their relevance. The discourses present in sex education
contests have foregrounded schools as a central location for the regulation of ado-
lescent sexuality (di Mauro and Joffe, 2007; Irvine, 2002; Levine, 2002) and research
on the discussion of sexuality in schools has shown that institutionalized sexual
speech often reflects and upholds gender, race, class, and sexual hierarchies (Bay-
Cheng, 2003; Fields, 2008; Fine, 1988; Fine and McClelland, 2006; Garcia, 2009). As
I will show, the discursive politics of this debate were distinctly gendered, revealing
meanings held within this community and also circulating in US contemporary pol-
itics about heteronormativity, cultural constraints on femininity, and the role of
schools and families in the regulation of adolescent sexuality.
The most central of these meanings was articulated through the gendered dis-
course of sexual risk. Over the past 30 years, talk about adolescent female sexuality
among politicians, policy makers, academics, and health professionals has increas-
ingly been constituted through a discourse of risk (Michaud, 2006; Schalet, 2011)
606 Sexualities 16(5/6)

that both emphasizes girls’ ‘sexual vulnerability and their concomitant culpability’
(Bay-Cheng et al., 2011: 3). While their culpability is problematically reinforced by
gendered discourses of morality and the sexual double standard (Crawford and
Popp, 2003; Espiritu, 2001; Greene and Faulkner, 2005; Hamilton and Armstrong,
2009; Martin, 1996), the emphasis on US girls’ sexual vulnerability is not mis-
placed: 3 in 10 US girls become pregnant at least once by age 20 (National
Campaign, 2010), nearly 50% of all sexually transmitted infection diagnoses are
among adolescents (Gavin, 2009), and 30% of girls aged 14–23 report having an
unwanted sexual experience (Rickert et al., 2004).
Yet in the face of these risks, the cultural emphasis of female sexual danger is
problematic for the development of girls’ sexual subjectivity (Martin, 1996; Schalet,
2010; Tolman, 2002). Social scientists have argued that the persistent and negative
gendered discourse of risk undermines young women’s ability to make informed,
agentic sexual decisions (Fine and McClelland, 2006; Schalet, 2011), forecloses
girls’ experiences of desire (Tolman, 2002), and leads girls to assign individual
blame for outcomes of gender inequality (Bay-Cheng et al., 2011). Sexual risk
rhetoric is also routinely heterocentric, often effacing lesbian, gay, bisexual, and
transgender teens’ experiences (Fields, 2008). In addition, research has shown that
in both comprehensive and abstinence only sex education classrooms, female
sexual desire is evaded while male desire and female risk are emphasized (Fine,
1988; Fine and McClelland, 2006; Hirst 2013) and when female desire and pleasure
are actually included in curricula, they are routinely coupled with sexual danger
discourses (Lamb et al., 2013). In place of what psychologist Michelle Fine calls the
‘missing discourse of desire,’ discourses about girls’ (hetero)sexual victimization are
institutionally speakable in schools and have been found to transform ‘socially
distributed anxieties about female sexuality into acceptable, and even protective,
talk’ (Fine, 1988: 55). As this article will show, a parallel social process takes place
in the rhetoric of this controversy.
This case is also an example of how communities use culture as a tool for social
action. Central to this debate was a culturally powerful, multivocal text (Griswold,
1987) that set the stage for community response. As reception of cultural texts is a
site where meaning is made in context and through interaction (Hall, 1997; Storey,
1996), the Monologues became a work of popular culture used by community
members as a tool to deal with varying social problems articulated as present
and pressing (Swidler, 1986). While adult supporters and opponents used the
play to mobilize their disparate agendas in compelling ways, ultimately, I believe
its use tells a more important story about adolescent girls. As the catalysts for this
debate, it was girls who first advocated that the play be performed at their high
school. Instigating the intergenerational reception of this cultural text, these young
women articulated that they were drawn to the Monologues because of the mean-
ings they drew from it, meanings that were central to making sense of their ado-
lescence. As I will argue, this is a case where youth used popular culture as a
political tool, a mechanism for engaging with the cultural politics of their worlds
(Best, 2000) and negotiating the constraints embedded within them.
Miller 607

Setting the stage

Like many controversies about the sexuality of minors, the discursive battles over
The Vagina Monologues were concrete and local (Irvine, 2000). Ashbourne High
School (AHS) is located in a mid-sized town, bound by rural communities in the
north east and home to a large university and two liberal arts colleges. A micro-
cosm compared to the majority of communities in the US, Ashbourne is self-
described as politically progressive, influenced by the many institutions of higher
education that serve as employers, as well as the feminist principles that are
reflected in the community at large. Both Ashbourne and neighboring
Greenwood are home to a vibrant lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender community
that is frequently represented in both local businesses and politics. The population
is largely democratic or unaffiliated and the average median household income for
the school district is $70,206, with only 8.6% living below the poverty line. The
AHS student body’s racial composition is 68% Caucasian, 9% African-American,
9% Asian, 10% Hispanic, and 4% Multi-Racial. Additionally, in comparison to
most high schools in the US, and no doubt, as a result of the surrounding local
culture, AHS has a dynamic approach to sexuality and gender education: the
school offers a course in gay and lesbian literature, a long-standing comprehensive
sexuality education curriculum, and houses a Gay–Straight Alliance and a
Women’s Rights Club. Indeed, in support of the play, the school administration
routinely emphasized that the production was in keeping with the local progressive
culture and feminist community values, including their support for young women’s
public expression. For example, in a letter to the school board, Superintendent
James Ryan expressed that ‘[Ashbourne] (is) a high school that prides itself in
bringing real world issues to students in school. . . In [Ashbourne], free expression
and academic freedom are expectations and standards. We do not isolate our stu-
dents and our schools from the real world.’ This approach, combined with the self-
described progressive politics and wealth of the community no doubt set a unique
context where The Vagina Monologues could be thought possible for a high school
stage.
Central to this analysis are the media, the primary location where the discursive
politics of this controversy were archived. The news media are part of the nego-
tiated process of political meaning making (Gamson, 2004), and play a dialectical
role in framing and documenting public controversies (Crane, 1992). Local media,
in particular, have been found to reinforce community norms, and influence policy
decisions and community perceptions of what social problems are (Kaniss, 1991).
Much of the data analyzed in this study are letters to the editor and opinion pieces,
found to be an archive of central platforms for public debate (Wahl-Jorgensen,
1998). Notably, my data only tell a portion of this story: the opinions of those who
were willing to speak out as well as the framing strategies of the local and national
media. Yet as a discursive reflection of local culture (Earl et al., 2004) and a central
archive of community rhetoric, the media prove to be a productive site for study of
the discursive politics of controversies past.
608 Sexualities 16(5/6)

Given the biases of media outlets, it was also essential to triangulate data col-
lection (Earl et al., 2004). This study engages a content analysis of the script used
by AHS, and data produced before, during and after the Monologues production
including television transcripts, newspaper reports, online editorials, letters to the
editor and opinion pieces, and archival documents. Every attempt was made to
collect all relevant media or archival sources available online or in print. In add-
ition, the data include a community archive of letters, fliers, printed emails, and
unpublished editorials, as well the high school’s archive of student newspapers. In
all, my data included 113 documents for analysis, in which 71 individuals were
represented. I began analysis by reviewing the data as a whole, categorizing all
documents into those written by individuals who support or oppose the play, and
evaluating for consistent themes that appeared across documents. I then used an
inductive process to generate thematic analytical categories to fit the theoretical
concepts that emerged in repetition. Among the numerous themes that emerged,
including the discussion of free speech and community politics, the discourse of risk
was most prevalent across data. I then evaluated the variations and boundaries of
each theme, paying attention to any biographical information I could attain and
including an analysis of the nuances of supporters and opponents’ rhetoric. Due to
the limitations of my data, it was impossible to know certain important character-
istics about individuals, such as race or ethnicity, socio-economic background, or
family status, all of which would have added important dimension to this study.
However, I was able to determine who were parents, students, community mem-
bers, non-community members, and school representatives (see Table 1). I begin

Table 1. Biographical data.

Support Individuals

Parents 12
Community 11
AHS Staff & Faculty 4
Students 21
Non-Community Adults 3
Support Total 51
Opposition
Parents 6
Community 5
AHS Staff & Faculty 0
Students 0
Non-Community Adults 9
Opposition Total 20
Total 71
Miller 609

with an analysis of the script and then move to findings on the discursive politics of
those in opposition and support.

The Vagina Monologues: Starkly sexual or risky reality?

First published in 1996, The Vagina Monologues was written during a time in US
history when cultural and political anxieties were rising about gender-based violence,
shifting gender norms in the midst of third-wave feminism, and the growing promin-
ence of ‘girl power’ discourse among academics, advertisers, and the media (Douglas,
2010; Reger and Story, 2005). The Monologues engaged the public in a discussion that
had long been taking place among feminist academics about how female sexuality is
culturally framed through a dialectic of pleasure and danger (Vance, 1984), where
women experience sexuality as ‘simultaneously a domain of restriction, repression,
and danger as well as a domain of exploration, pleasure, and agency’ (1984: 1). By
2004, the play was circulating in cities and college towns across the globe, promoted
simultaneously as a response to violence against women and a celebration of female
sexuality. The Monologues has also been criticized in the past, largely on its global
sisterhood approach (Cooper, 2007) and attention to sexual violence (McElroy, 2000).
Based on over 200 interviews with adult women about their memories and experi-
ences of sexuality, the play mainly addresses societal constructions of the female
body, and includes references to gender-based violence. Yet analysis reveals that it
includes far more references to positive aspects of female sexuality than sexual vio-
lence, including explicit talk about female orgasms and sexual desire. In all, the play
had 32 references to sexual pleasure, only five references to sexual violence, and three
references to female genital surgeries. Notably, each of the monologues that depicts
sexual violence also extensively portrays sexual pleasure. Additionally, the majority
of pleasurable sexual encounters portrayed took place either through masturbation
or in sex acts between women. As I turn to my analysis to the Ashbourne debate, this
textual analysis helps to situate opponents’ reliance on the sexual language and
situations in the script to make their case. It also illuminates supporters’ avoidance
of the text itself as a framing strategy, silent about the play’s ample positive sexual
content while emphasizing the play’s minimal attention to (hetero)sexual risk.

Starkly sexual opposition

The one thing that I didn’t anticipate going into it was the crowd reaction or probably
should I use the term ‘interaction’, especially the . . . one scene where the girl works
herself into a frenzy and then has the surprise triple moan orgasm at the very end of it.
And at that precise second, the entire crowd erupted into loud applause as though it
were a hockey game scoring winning goal or something like that . . . applauding vig-
orously for a 16-year-old girl on stage who had just simulated an orgasm.

Adam Murphy on The Bill O’Reilly Factor (O’Reilly, 2004a)

610 Sexualities 16(5/6)

In his nationally televised account of the Monologues performance, parent Adam

Murphy made it clear that teen girls were talking about sex in the AHS audi-
torium that February night. Throughout the media coverage and in archival
documents, Murphy and other local opponents reiterated repeatedly that the
play was inappropriate for the high school stage precisely because of its sexual
content. Importantly, the opposition was the primary place in this debate where
the play’s sexual speech was openly discussed. While less than a third of those
represented in this controversy spoke out in opposition (n ¼ 20), nearly half (9) of
whom were not from the community, their rhetoric is of interest because it expli-
citly articulates cultural anxieties about adolescent sexuality, feminism and les-
bianism. As resistance to a graphic high school play about female sexuality is to
be expected in the US, those in opposition had ample discursive frames to rely
on, prevalent in local and national debates over the sexuality of minors. Not
surprisingly, the play’s ‘starkly sexual’ nature became a primary platform for
opponents, emphasizing the cultural assumption that sexuality is harmful to
minors.
In their dissent, opponents suggested that the play forced sexuality onto other-
wise innocent youth. Parent Jeff Rainey extrapolates this point, claiming that ‘the
simple presence of the production infuses the topic into the student body, engen-
dering discussions of the work’s graphic nature, its titillating language, and thrust
obscenity and pornography (known to hold a relation to crime and other antisocial
behavior) into the world of minors.’ Including Rainey, local parents expressed the
fear that such content might be sexually suggestive to youth both during and after
the performance, and accused AHS of promoting, according to parent John
Delgano, an ‘intentional eroticization of the high school environment.’
Community members and parents also expressed their concern about the ‘trickling
down’ effect the production would have on younger children. Even national talk
show host Bill O’Reilly criticized AHS for introducing sexuality to youth too early
and potentially ‘destroying’ their innocence:

I mean there are a lot of really, really confusing situations for children. So the children
who do go to see it, and their loony parents allowing them to – I don’t think the venue
of the high school is the right place. You know, it is going to filter down to the 12 and
13-year-olds and there, I think, is the destruction. (O’Reilly, 2004b)

Openly in the national and local media, the opposition held the school, AHS par-
ents, and the ‘politically correct’ culture of Ashbourne responsible for the potential
outcomes that the play would have on the youth of Ashbourne’s innocence.
In addition to its sexual content, opponents also criticized the play’s negative
approach to masculinity. Here parents and community members claimed that
boys and men were over-portrayed as aggressors. Parent Isabelle Little argued
that the play set up ‘boys as evil doers,’ and non-community member John
Folsom alleged that the play ‘reinforces the belief that males are expected to grow
up as dangerous louts.’ For these concerned adults, the play’s depictions of
Miller 611

masculinity only evidenced the devaluation of boys in public schooling, and did not
reflect some of the detrimental effects of a cultural emphasis on aggressive mascu-
linity in the US. In so doing, opponents emphasized that the boys and men in their
community were not culpable or capable of sexual violence. However, they were also
silent on the capacity that boys and men have to demonstrate non-violent masculi-
nity, or their agency in appropriately addressing other men’s aggression.
Interestingly, while there was much discussion about what was seen as the unfair
and negative portrayal of masculinity in the opposition, there was little discussion
about the play’s treatment of femininity aside from opposition to the play’s depiction
of female homosexuality.
While opponents rarely discussed the play’s content regarding violence against
women, they did articulate resistance to the play’s homosexual content in their dis-
sent, though locally this theme was found only in unpublished archival documents.
Parents Kathy and Michael Hopper wrote that ‘we are sad that people are allowing
teenage girls to be manipulated by adult lesbians in reducing their womanhood to a
single body part’ and non-community member Amber Parson warned that exposing
youth to the ‘pornographic lesbian scenarios’ depicted in the play would lead
Ashbourne girls to be ‘non-sensual, hardened, feminist-minded, thuggish creatures
for the rest of their lives.’ Expressed here was the contention that the play under-
mines heterosexual relationships, promotes lesbianism and potentially ‘recruits’
Ashbourne young women into ‘non-normative’ lifestyles through feminist propa-
ganda. Implied also was the notion that girlhood is always already heterosexual.
In a letter to the school board, parent Jeff Rainey also articulated his concern
about the effects that the Monologues’ devaluation of heterosexuality would have
on the high school itself. He describes the following scene as the female performers
rehearse the sexually explicit play at AHS: ‘Meanwhile, my son, a junior, walks
past the health classrooms, sees ‘Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, Bi-sexual Safe Zone’
stickers and comes home in all seriousness to ask ‘where am I supposed to go?’ An
implicit condemnation of heterosexual validity. A sexually offensive educational
environment has been created.’ Apparently, according to Rainey’s inflammatory
words, when teen girls talk openly about sexuality ‘heterosexual validity’ is on
shaky ground. Implicitly he also emphasizes that it is the school’s responsibility
to reinforce the dominance of heterosexuality among the student body. While
homophobia was clearly present in this debate, it took place backstage, as those
in opposition were either unable or unwilling to publicly air this aspect of their
contention with the play to the local media. However, the opposition was notably
the only place where the play’s ample homosexual content was discussed in this
debate, as supporters also proved either unwilling or unable to bring to bear argu-
ments that affirm the play’s positive representations of lesbian sexuality.
As in many debates over sexuality, youth, and schools, Ashbourne’s opposition
relied on the discursive politic of child protection, a rhetoric with logic embedded in
cultural anxieties about the unfixed nature of adolescent sexuality (Irvine, 2002,
2000; Levine, 2002; McCreery, 2008). While the portrayal of masculinity was cen-
sured, the titillating aspects of the play were cast as corrupting to young women’s
612 Sexualities 16(5/6)

sexual and gender identities. Adolescent girls were regarded as sexually innocent
prior to the introduction of such ‘pornographic material.’ Additionally, homopho-
bic commentary insinuated that the Monologues threatened both girlhood and
heterosexuality, while the hegemonic masculinity that undergirds violence against
women was left unquestioned.
While local parents in opposition felt they needed go outside the ‘politically
correct’ community and entreat the national media in order to build support for
their side, it proved easy to find outlets that sided with their outrage at the play’s
‘vulgarity.’ However, unlike the supporters, the opposition was able to build their
offense explicitly on the play’s sexual content. In fact, the opposition was the pri-
mary place in the debate where sexuality was discussed. While limited in their scope
of what is possible for young people, they mobilized anxieties about adolescent
(hetero)sexuality itself, not about the risk of sexual violence. Though small in
number, opponents won a key aspect of this debate: by relying on the dominant
cultural logic that sexuality is harmful to minors, prevalent in US culture and
evident in contemporary national politics, the opposition shaped the discursive
frame that necessitated supporters’ use of sexual risk as their central platform.

Supporters voicing realities

The 51 individuals who voiced their support of the Monologues production were
limited by the discursive opportunity structure set by the opposition and supported
by prevailing narratives about the gendered sexuality of youth. While supporters
(48 of whom were community members) far outnumbered opponents, they lacked a
dominant cultural frame for articulating girls’ sexuality as anything but risky. As a
result, adults largely voiced their support for the play through a discourse of gen-
dered sexual risk that emphasized the play’s value as an antidote to sexual violence.
Risk discourse provided adults a means of rhetorically protecting AHS girls from
both danger and judgment.
For example, in response to the possibility that his daughter might attend the
production, parent and school board member Matt Harris told reporters ‘I’m
happy to have my daughter in a school that might help prevent her from being . . .
part of [a] statistic of women who are abused.’ Harris was not alone in articulating
the risk discourse. During his interview on national television, school board
member and parent Chris Stern expressed what he viewed as the risks affecting
AHS youth:

In high school, theoretically, we are training these young people – and we are not
talking children here. We are talking about people who are supposed to be ready to
deal with the real world when they get out of high school. And in the real world, there
is violence against women, there is rape.

According to Stern, by staging the Monologues AHS was protecting girls from
the inevitability of sexual risk early in their lives. Others followed in suit,
Miller 613

particularly school representatives, who frequently described the play as defensible

because it fostered spaces for dialogue about the risks at hand. Superintendent
James Ryan referred to the play as an opportunity for students ‘to find their
voice,’ within a school setting: ‘We are condoning a student’s right to discuss
these topics . . . and are supporting a forum for that discussion. And, we are sending
a message that school is a place to talk about the real world in the right context and
setting.’ Ryan noted also that it would ‘send a hypocritical message’ to the students
if the school wouldn’t produce the play, as AHS would not be living up to the
surrounding community’s standards of progressive liberalism and social activism,
standards that promote non-violence and free speech.
In addition to their claims that sexual risks were part of the ‘real world,’ and
that the play was bringing voice to the reality of these risks, supporters were also
explicit about their gendered nature. Throughout their statements, many sup-
porters spoke of the importance of bringing ‘voice to women’s issues.’ To
parent Amy Clark, women’s issues involved ‘sexual repression, abuse, self
esteem and body image,’ and for superintendent James Ryan, they included ‘vio-
lence toward women, date rape, domestic violence, health and other topics.’
Adults also argued that the play was particularly useful as a means of waking
men and boys up to ‘women’s reality.’ Parent Rich Olson described the AHS’s
production of the Monologues as a much needed intervention by making men
acknowledge:

. . . how little (they) know about the dangerous world their mothers and daughters,
wives and sisters live in: a world where sexual harassment and sexual assault are
commonplace. A world where personal security means checking the back seat of
your car before getting into it. A world where going out at night means carrying a
whistle, or a can of mace.

While Olson urged that AHS girls should be praised for their potential to inspire
their male counterparts to challenge hegemonic masculinity, parent Karen Lopez
described the production as ‘a powerful message to men to reexamine their assump-
tions about women and their place in society.’ These adults were not misinformed –
sexual risk does exist for youth, and raising awareness does promote prevention.
However, by rhetorically gendering sexual risks as feminine, they positioned girls as
both vulnerable and responsible for their own protection. This finding is not sur-
prising given the failure of society at large to adequately ensure young women’s
safety and address violence against women at both local and national levels. Given
this cultural context, by default girls are responsible for self-protection. Rather
than challenging this paradox, and emphasizing instead adults’ responsibility to
make the world a safer and more conducive place for all youth to develop sexual
subjectivity, and to address the systemic inequalities that structure the landscape of
gender-based violence, adult supporters positioned adolescent girls as the appro-
priate and ‘courageous’ agents of change, leaving Ashbourne’s young women with
a large cross to bear and little guidance.
614 Sexualities 16(5/6)

Like their adult counterparts, adolescents fluently articulated to the media that
they supported the play because of the importance of voicing the risks of ‘women’s
issues.’ However for girls, the issues weren’t simply ‘women’s,’ they were claimed as
their own. As explained by an AHS girl:

Is the content of The Vagina Monologues appropriate for high school students? No.
Absolutely not. Teenagers should not be dealing with issues of rape, domestic violence
and abuse . . . However . . . we already deal with these problems on a daily basis . . . It is
absolutely appropriate for women (and men) to have a forum to deal with these issues
in a safe and positive environment.

To this student, as well as many others, it was clear that the risk-based content of
the play was a reality. Repeatedly girls asserted that violence against women is real,
that they are in ‘the most vulnerable group,’ and that ‘stuff like this happens
around us.’ Young people additionally expressed that creating a safe space for
dialogue about ‘stuff like this’ was the purpose and benefit of the production. As
one student wrote: ‘The Monologues are not glorification of inappropriate behav-
iors. Conversely, they urge appreciation of women’s bodies and, most importantly,
their voices.’ The ability for young women to ‘voice their realities’ was frequently
cited as the play’s benefit. Yet, in this debate the ‘inappropriate behaviors’ depicted
through the play’s sexual content were not a reality teens could defend.

Empowerment through the danger-pleasure principle

While verbose about sexual risk, adults and youth were largely either unwilling or
unable to articulate their support for the play’s diverse representations of female
sexuality. Adult supporters did not discuss Monologues’ content that depicted
pleasure, self-exploration or female sexuality uncoupled from heterosexuality.
In fact, only two hinted at the play’s sexual content at all. In a letter to the
editor of the Ashbourne Bulletin parent Deborah Harrison expressed that, ‘The
purpose of the play, I believe, is to empower young women to reclaim their
bodies and assert their ownership of their selves and their sexuality.’ This statement
is similar to how the play was initially framed by its author. Ensler notably was the
only other adult to speak in defense of the play’s sexual content, mentioning that
‘the earlier we come to consciousness. . . the more possible intimacy becomes’ when
interviewed about the Ashbourne controversy on The Today Show.
Yet, underneath these two allusions to positive sexuality, was the ever-present
specter of sexual risk. For Ensler, ‘coming to consciousness’ was explicitly about
becoming aware of sexual violence. In Harrison’s case, sexual risks were described
immediately prior to her praise of the play’s promotion of sexual autonomy:

Research the statistics. . . One out of three women are sexually assaulted in their
lifetime and one out of four of them are under age 18 according to the FBI. Talk
to the teachers these young women confide in when they are pressured to have sex
Miller 615

against their will . . . Closing our eyes to the real dangers that face young women only
serves to perpetuate the abuse they suffer.

Notably, no adults attended to what it might mean for adolescent girls to ‘assert
their ownership of their selves and their sexuality,’ or why such ownership might be
important for young women beyond helping them to protect themselves from
sexual violence. While pleasure was a large part of the content of the play, it
was largely evaded in supporter’s rhetoric.
Like their adult counterparts, ‘stuff like this’ had more to do with sexual danger
than with sexuality. While young people said more about the play’s sexual content
than adults, it was also always coupled with sexual risk. For example, student
Nikki Magubane wrote that ‘the Monologues explicitly describe the dangers,
joys, tragedies and celebrations of sexuality. . . they also revealed true stories of
women who have endured painful experiences that related to students of any age or
background.’ The joys and celebrations of sexuality were not articulated further,
but youth spoke of the dangers, tragedies and true stories of ‘painful experiences’
frequently to the media.
Senior Brad Connelly chided opponents’ attack on the play’s sexual content
because they failed ‘to mention any other scenes from the production that,
though brutally honest, deal with examples of female empowerment, like
women’s experiences with domestic violence, rape, self-hatred, and the slow road
to self acceptance and love.’ Here, Connelly associated recovery from experiences
of violence with female empowerment, implying that women’s empowerment
comes from overcoming the risks they are faced with and not from sexual
agency. He was not the only one to share this message. In an example recounted
in notes from a town hall meeting, two AHS girls responded to an adult’s objection
to the production’s portrayal of sexuality by explaining that the performance was a
means to publicly raise the issue of sexual violence and that ‘there was no desire
within the group to flaunt anything.’ For these young women, while sexual danger
was justifiable, ‘flaunting’ female sexuality was clearly not an element of the play
that they could defend.
In addition, the play’s many representations of lesbian sexuality appeared to
also be indefensible. One of the performers of the Monologues, Heidi Wilson, was
the only individual out of 51 supporters to address the play’s homosexual content,
by stating in an interview on The Today Show that ‘the issues of rape, violence
against women and lesbian sex are very, very real’ to girls her age. Notably, even
this minimal mention of the play’s homosexual content was also collapsed
with risk. Beyond this sentence, adults and youth were silent on the subject, evi-
dencing their inability to support the play on the grounds of its diverse represen-
tation of female sexuality.
As Wilson articulated, the dangers of sexuality were well defined and very real
for AHS girls. On the same episode of The Today Show, student Kayla Minor
explained that these dangers touch home: ‘I have a friend who four years ago was
raped and got pregnant. One in five girls (nationwide) is sexually or physically
616 Sexualities 16(5/6)

abused on a date.’ Other girls expressed that they ‘can’t hide from it, it’s there,’ and
that they need ‘safe spaces’ to talk about their experiences with sexual risk. No
doubt, these high school students were right. Young women aged 15 to 24 are in the
most vulnerable group for sexual violence (Perkins, 1997), and safe spaces are vital
for young people to make sense of the complexities of sexuality in their lives and to
develop strategies of resistance. As schools are not often seen as safe spaces for
public discussion of either sexuality or trauma, it is both unusual and important
that the Monologues took place at the high school, and more importantly, that
AHS students had the courage to advocate for a space to voice their experiences
with and concerns about sexual violence. In its potential capacity to promote
young women’s sexual agency, bringing the Monologues to a high school stage
was no doubt a unique and courageous first step among the Ashbourne community
to address some of the many dilemmas sexuality poses for US young women.
However, my findings indicate that this first step had many limitations. Youth
also had the opportunity to speak openly about positive aspects of female sexuality
in this venue, but according to my data, they were unable to publicly defend this
aspect of their experience. Like the adults, there was an important slippage in the
language of young people. Youth did speak to the media about sexuality, but it was
never spoken of on its own terms, outside the context of violence.
In the face of the sexual risks they described, supporters were insistent that the
play fostered girls’ empowerment. For adults, empowerment talk positioned AHS
young women as agents of change: by empowering girls to take action, they would
now have the ability to change societal attitudes, ‘wake men up to their reality,’ and
resist sexual violence. However, in so doing, adults rhetorically placed the respon-
sibility of societal change squarely on the shoulders of young women. In addition,
like the play’s opponents, supporters were also silent about boys’ and men’s cap-
acity to demonstrate and advocate for male agency in confronting violence against
women. Notably, students were more articulate than adult supporters about the
play’s transformative capacities, perhaps because, as they made clear, they had
more at stake. For youth, the rhetoric of empowerment represented opportunities
for resistance. Girls frequently referred to the strength they gained through their
experience with the play, and claimed that voicing women’s issues empowered
them, as junior Sarah Hess expressed, to ‘transform the culture we live in.’
Ultimately, performer Kayla Minor described the play’s emancipatory capacity
as such: ‘If you create a dialogue, whether you solve anything or not, you’re
allowing yourself to create realities.’ For Minor, and others, voicing reality offered
youth the promise of their capacity to create new realities, tying their language to
social action. Yet in this debate, young women were limited to articulating only the
realities of female sexuality understood as socially acceptable to voice.

In defense of danger
Embedded in the language of adult supporters were shared meanings that pos-
itioned AHS girls as inherently at risk and heterosexual, revealing their collective
Miller 617

ambiguity over what was speakable about female sexuality. Adults’ strategic use of
the discourse of risk maintained their legibility as commendable school adminis-
trators, competent parents and concerned community members. By claiming that
the Monologues empower young women to resist sexual violence, adult supporters
upheld the community’s dedication to progressive politics, and avoided rhetorically
linking Ashbourne’s daughters’ good intentions with the stain of female sexual
empowerment. Through their rhetoric, adults discursively protected AHS girls’
bodies and their virtue, preserving their assumed innocence by emphasizing their
vulnerability.
And no doubt, given the very real sexual dangers that girls face as they come of
age, the young women who spoke out in this debate felt vulnerable. The rhetoric
employed by girls revealed how clearly they viewed sexual risk as a reality that was
culturally written on their own bodies. Youth also proved unable to speak about
the play’s sexual content to the media, but this silence was distinct from the adults
in their lives. It was young women who brought this play to their high school,
because, as they claimed, they felt it needed to be performed. If we understand this
artifact of popular culture as a tool AHS girls used to make sense of the cultural
politics of their worlds (Best, 2000), we gather from these findings that the cultural
politics these young women were exposed to privilege the sexual dangers defined as
pervasive in their lives, at the expense of their emergent sexualities. In this debate,
the discursive strategies of youth reveal how sexuality has been framed for them,
not only by the play, but by a culture that surrounds them that often does put
young women at risk, reflected by the media, their school, and the language of the
adults in their lives. How young women’s ‘reality’ was constituted through the
rhetoric of this debate exposed some of the very real institutional, interpersonal
and discursive constraints that adolescent girls experience regarding their sexuality
in contemporary US culture.
This conclusion is understandable, given that teen girls come of age in a cultural
context that often does not support or acknowledge adolescent female sexual
agency. Sexuality is a terrain found to be fraught with ‘dilemmas’ for US young
women, and girls are often left with limited community and institutional support to
negotiate the complexities of pleasure and danger in their lives (Phillips, 2000;
Tolman, 2002). Youth are frequently met with adult discomfort over young people’s
public expression, especially about sexuality, and especially in regards to girls’ sexual
agency, pleasure, and empowerment (Irvine, 2002; Levine, 2002). In addition, young
women are routinely objectified in the public sphere, daily confronting media that
equate female sexual agency with self-objectification, as popular culture emphasizes
girls’ value as objects but not subjects of sexual desire (APA, 2007; Douglas, 2010;
Lamb and Brown, 2006). Finally, in both sex education and engagement with med-
ical professionals, young people routinely confront a pervasive public health model
that emphasizes sexual risk and risk prevention in its’ approach to adolescent sexual
health (Bay-Cheng et al., 2011; Michaud, 2006; Schalet, 2011), framing girls’ bodies,
in particular, as always already in danger. As such, evidenced through both the
present and missing discourses of this debate, young women are met with many
618 Sexualities 16(5/6)

challenges as they engage with the cultural politics of their worlds, even in progres-
sive communities, and even within the context of a feminist intervention.

Conclusion
Analysis of the discursive politics of this controversy reveals how language can
function as social action. Adult opponents, who were able to draw from a cultur-
ally powerful and extensive repertoire of negative sexual language, set the terms for
how the Monologues’ sexual content could be discussed. For youth, risk discourse
framed the high school play as an empowering catalyst for teen organizing against
gender-based violence, while talk about risk positioned adult supporters as pro-
tectors of young women’s bodies and virtue.
Notably, adult supporters and opponents were unified in their reliance on child
protection rhetoric to make their claims. Rather than responding to the opposition’s
attack that the Monologues was damaging to the youth of Ashbourne’s innocence
with a defense of its diverse representation of female sexuality, adult supporters
responded in the only manner that was culturally intelligible: by supporting the
play, they were protecting children from risk too. This finding is not surprising.
The endangered child, embodying naturalized sexual innocence, has been a central
icon to mobilize social action over the past century (Fields, 2008; Levine, 2002;
McCreery, 2008; Rubin, 1984). Though adults differed on what aspects of sexuality
they were protecting youth from, their rhetoric implicitly agreed that sex is harmful
to minors and child protection is collectively their responsibility.
Through the strategic use of discourse, talk about gendered sexual risk provided
adults the ability to transpose cultural anxieties about adolescent female sexuality
into socially condoned, protective talk. Yet this rhetorical strategy left Ashbourne
young women with limited options for conceptualizing and claiming sexual agency.
No doubt, sexual violence is a substantial risk in girls’ lives and this case is a unique
and positive first step in opening up a dialogue about the complexities that young
women face regarding their sexuality as they come of age. However, in the absence
of positive talk about female sexuality, risk discourse potentially constrains young
women’s development of sexual subjectivity and isolates them from social support
as they make sense of the complexities of desire within a culture that both objec-
tifies them and places them at risk for sexual violation. While Ashbourne is a
microcosm, the findings of this case allude to a larger discursive paradox for US
young women when talk about danger effaces talk about pleasure: how can ‘no’
mean ‘no’ if girls aren’t institutionally, socially, or culturally supported to say ‘yes’?
How The Vagina Monologues became a cultural tool for the Ashbourne com-
munity to grapple with pressing social problems had to do with collective assump-
tions about the social world young people inhabit. The assumptions supporters
articulated through the discursive politics of this debate cohered around the cul-
tural logic that sexual risk is a pervasive threat for teen girls, one that defines their
sexuality. Cultural logics have the capacity to legitimate social action while con-
straining the strategies that make action possible (Swidler, 1986). In this case, the
Miller 619

defense of danger licensed community support for the sexually explicit high school
play, and yet it was also the pervasiveness of the logic of risk that made it impos-
sible for supporters to defend the play’s sexual content. As a result, the play’s
positive and diverse approach to sexuality remained unspeakable and unprintable
in this controversy, even in a community that prides itself on progressive liberalism
and social activism. Ultimately, for the girls of Ashbourne, ‘voicing risk as reality’
became their only rhetorical option, articulating exactly what was speakable for
them and for the adults in their lives about adolescent female sexuality: that even
among a ‘community of vaginas’ (Ensler, 2001: 3), sex remains to be more about
danger than it is about pleasure for young women.

Notes
1. The names of the school, town, and individuals have been changed except those of
celebrities. References to demographic statistics have been withheld to assure anonymity.
2. Contrary to media reports, AHS was not the first high school to be affiliated with the
play, although it was the first to stage the play on school grounds. Students from Ethical
Culture Fieldstone School in Riverdale, NY performed in a 2002 community-based pro-
duction of the Monologues.

References
APA (2007) American Psychological Association, Report of the APA Task Force on the
Sexualization of Girls. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Bay-Cheng L (2003) The trouble of teen sex: The construction of adolescent sexuality
through school-based sexuality education. Sex Education 3(1): 61–74.
Bay-Cheng L, Livingston J and Fava N (2011) Adolescent girls’ assessment and manage-
ment of sexual risks: Insights from focus group research. Youth and Society 43(2): 1–27.
Best A (2000) Prom Night: Youth, Schools, and Popular Culture. New York: Routledge.
Cooper C (2007) Worrying about vaginas: Feminism and Eve Ensler’s The Vagina
Monologues. Signs 32(3): 727–758.
Crane D (1992) The Production of Culture: Media and the Urban Arts. London: SAGE.
Crawford M and Popp D (2003) Sexual double standards: A review and methodological
critique of two decades of research. Journal of Sex Research 40(1): 13–26.
Di Mauro D and Joffee C (2007) The religious right and the reshaping of sexuality policies:
The cases of reproductive rights and sexuality education. Sexuality Research and Social
Policy 4(1): 67–92.
Douglas S (2010) The Rise of Enlightened Sexism: How Pop Culture Took Us from Girl
Power to Girls Gone Wild. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin.
Duggan L and Hunter N (1995) Sex Wars: Sexual Dissent and Political Culture. New York:
Routledge.
Earl J, Martin A, McCarthy J and Soule S (2004) The use of newspaper data in the study of
collective action. Annual Review of Sociology 30(1): 65–80.
Ensler E (2001) The Vagina Monologues: The V-Day Edition. New York: Villard.
Espiritu YL (2001) ‘We don’t sleep around like white girls do’: Family, culture, and gender
in Filipina American lives. Signs 26(2): 415–440.
Fields J (2008) Risky Lessons: Sex Education and Social Inequality. New Brunswick, NJ:
Rutgers University Press.
620 Sexualities 16(5/6)

Fine M (1988) Sexuality, schooling, and adolescent females: The missing discourse of desire.
Harvard Educational Review 58(1): 29–53.
Fine M and McClelland S (2006) Sexuality education and desire: Still missing after all these
years. Harvard Educational Review 76(3): 297–338.
Gamson W (2004) On a sociology of the media. Political Communication 21(3): 305–307.
Garcia L (2009) ‘Now why would you want to know about that?’: Heteronormativity,
sexism, and racism in the sexual (mis)education of Latina youth. Gender & Society
23(4): 520–541.
Gavin L (2009) Sexual and reproductive health of persons aged 10–24 years: United States,
2002–2007. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Surveillance Summaries MMWR
58(SS–6): 1–58.
Greene K and Faulkner S (2005). Gender, belief in the sexual double standard, and sexual
talk in heterosexual dating relationships. Sex Roles 53(3/4): 239–251.
Griswold W (1987) The fabrication of meaning: Literary interpretation in the United States,
Great Britain, and the West Indies. American Journal of Sociology 92(5): 1077–1117.
Hall S (1997) Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London:
SAGE.
Hamilton L and Armstrong E (2009) Gendered sexuality in young adulthood: Double binds
and flawed options. Gender and Society 23(5): 589–616.
Hirst J (2013). ‘It’s got to be about enjoying yourself’: Young people, sexual pleasure, and
sex and relationships education. Sex Education 13(4): 423–436.
Irvine J (2000) Doing it with words: Discourse and the sex education culture wars. Critical
Inquiry 27(1): 58–76.
Irvine J (2002) Talk About Sex: The Battles Over Sex Education in the United States.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Kaniss P (1991) Making Local News. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Lamb S and Brown LM (2006) Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters from
Marketers’ Schemes. New York: St Martin’s Press.
Lamb S, Lustig K, and Gralig K (2013). The Use and Misuse of Pleasure in Sex Education
Curricula. Sex Education: Sexuality, Society and Learning 13(3): 305–318.
Levine J (2002) Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Martin K (1996) Puberty, Sexuality, and the Self: Boys and Girls at Adolescence. New York:
Routledge.
McCreery P (2008) Save our children/let us marry: Gay activists appropriate the rhetoric of
child protectionism. Radical History Review 100: 186–207.
McElroy W (2000) Feminists Who Celebrate Rape. Available at: http://www.lewrockwell.
com/orig/mcelroy2.html (accessed May 2009).
Michaud P (2006) Adolescents and risks: Why not change our paradigm? Journal of
Adolescent Health 38(5): 481–483.
National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy (2010) Teen Pregnancy and Childbearing in
the United States: Ten Headlines Available at: http://www.thenationalcampaign.org/
resources/pdf/Briefly_Teen-Pregnancy-and-Childbearing-Ten-Headlines.pdf (accessed
October 2011).
O’Reilly B (2004a) The Bill O’Reilly Factor Reactions to The Vagina Monologues.
FoxNews.com, 17 February 2004. Available at: http://www.foxnews.com/story/
0,3566,111659,00.html (accessed 17 March 2009).
Miller 621

O’Reilly B (2004b) The O’Reilly Factor, Age Appropriate? Vagina Monologues

Update.FoxNews.com, 24 January 2004. Available at: http://www.foxnews.com/story/
0,3566,109089,00.html (accessed 17 March 2009).
Perkins C (1997) Bureau of Justice Statistics: Age Patterns of Victims of Serious Violent
Crime. US Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, July. NCJ–162031.
Phillips, Lynn. 2000. Flirting with Danger: Young Women’s Reflections on Sexuality and
Domination. New York: NYU Press.
Reger J and Story L (2005) Talking about my vagina: Two college campuses and The Vagina
Monologues. In: Reger J (ed.) Different Wavelengths: Studies of the Contemporary
Women’s Movement. New York: Routledge, pp. 139–160.
Rickert V, Wiemann C, et al. (2004) Rates and risk factors for sexual violence among an
ethnically diverse sample of adolescents. Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine
158(12): 1132–1139.
Rubin G (1984) Thinking sex: Notes for a radical theory of the politics of sexuality.
In: Vance C (ed.) Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality. Boston, MA:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, pp. 267–319.
Schalet A (2011) Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens and the Culture of Sex. Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press.
Schalet A (2010) Sexual subjectivity revisited: The significance of relationships in Dutch and
American Girls’ experiences of sexuality. Gender and Society 24(3): 304–329.
Stein A (2006) Shameless: Sexual Dissidence in American Culture. New York: New York
University Press.
Storey J (1996) Cultural Studies and the Study of Popular Culture: Theories and Methods.
Athens: University of Georgia Press.
Swidler A (1986) Culture in action: Symbols and strategies. American Sociological Review
51(2): 273–286.
Tolman D (2002) Dilemmas of Desire: Teenage Girls Talk about Sexuality. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Vance C (1984) Pleasure and Danger: Towards a Politics of Sexuality. In: Vance C (ed.)
Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality. Boston, MA: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, pp. 1–27.
Wahl-Jorgensen K (1998) Letters to the editor in local and regional newspapers: Giving
voice to the readers. In: Franklin B (ed.) Local Journalism and Local Media: Making the
Local News. New York: Routledge, pp. 221–232.

Author biography
Sarah Miller is working toward her PhD in Sociology at the University of
Massachusetts, Amherst where she focuses on the study of youth, culture, and
social inequality. Her current project investigates how bullying and other forms
of peer regulation shape young women’s experiences of gender and sexuality. Prior
to doctoral work, she completed an MA in Women’s Studies from San Francisco
State University and directed a sexual violence prevention program in Chicago.