Abstract
This article explores how the life course boundary between children/adults is constructed and disciplined in terms of gendered sexuality and sexual pedagogy. Using the debate surrounding the publication of the novel Doing It by Melvin Burgess, I examine the cultural field of literature for young people (sometimes referred to as the ‘young adult’ or YA market), seeing this field as a variety of sites where sexual learning occurs and where the boundaries between adulthood and childhood are governed and contested. Looking at reviews by adults and young people, and the re-branding of the book under an adult imprint, I explore how hetero-gendered transitions between childhood, teenage and adult are constructed within discussions of what and where young people should learn about sexuality. I suggest that throughout the Doing It debate an essentialized ‘male mind’ is assembled through claims to social realism, morality, and shared identity that are founded in a particular classed, raced, and heterosexualized, ‘hegemonic masculinity’ (Connell 2005). I conclude with a discussion of the possibilities and limitations of using literature in a liberal sexuality education.
Introduction
‘Everything you never wanted to know about sex and boys – but probably should’ was how the Sunday Telegraph (Hall 2003: 13) summarized Melvin Burgess’ teen novel Doing It when it was first published in the UK in May 2003. There was a huge controversy generated around the release of this book for young people that explicitly dealt with issues of sex and relationships from the perspective of a group of teenage boys. As a result, following the adage that no publicity is bad publicity, the publication date was brought forward to take advantage of the heightened media interest. It was not the first time that one of Burgess’ novels had received significant media attention. Junk (1996) a story about teenage drug addicts, and Lady – My Life as a Bitch (2001) the tale of a young woman who is transformed into a promiscuous dog, both drew criticism and praise for their frank depictions of desire, sex, and hard drug use. Although the majority of his published work could be considered standard fare in terms of Anglophone literature for young people, it is these titles in particular that have earned Burgess a reputation as one of the most controversial contemporary writers for teenagers (Burgess 2004b).
This article uses the debate surrounding the publication of Doing It to explore the cultural field of children’s literature as a variety of sites where sexual learning occurs and where the boundaries between adulthood and childhood are governed and contested. The novel is considered within its wider social context, which means that I will explore the following key points: how Doing It is positioned within contemporary debates about young people, sex and sexuality; how the child/adult boundary is unstable within the field of children’s literature; how the book was reviewed by adults and children; and the significance of its re-branding under an adult imprint. I suggest that the debate about Doing It shows that literature for children and young people is an important area where the child/adult boundary is constructed, particularly through depictions of gendered sexuality. As I go on to discuss, the value of such literature for sexuality education is therefore important to consider. However, while claims for the social realism of Doing It might suggest that it is an ideal text for this purpose, I argue that this assertion is problematic because the book does not ultimately trouble the essentialized heterosexual ‘male mind’ and does not appear so socially realistic when considered in the light of current research with young people.
Teenage literature and young sexualities
Doing It chronicles the lives of three teenage boys beginning their first heterosexual relationships. One boy is frustrated by a girl who will not have sex with him, one faces the dilemma of whether to date (and have sex with) a girl whom he considers to be over-weight, and one has a sexual relationship with a teacher. The book is also peppered with crude and humorously framed conversations about the desirability of various female characters. For example, Burgess writes about Ben’s thoughts on the consequences of his relationship with the teacher Miss Young in the following way: ‘ … what if his sex drive got worn out? What if some sweet, shy girl came along and offered herself to him and he had to get her to swing from the light fittings with a telescope up her fanny and pegs on her tits before he could get it up?’ (Burgess, 2003a: 60). Ben is worried that his desire is a scarce resource that might run out through too much exotic pleasure, which would be signalled by his inability to get an erection. As this brief example indicates and as I discuss in detail later, Burgess troubles but ultimately sustains and supports a particularly dominant range of heterosexual masculinities through his narrative.
The sensationalist interest that surrounded Doing It reflects the way that the combination of issues about children/young people and sex/sexuality exist as what Buckingham (2000: 4) has termed an ‘ambivalent fascination’ in the media. Children and young people’s knowledge about sex and sexuality is ‘dangerous’ (and therefore fascinating for the media and the public) because it upsets and disrupts many culturally dominant ideas about sexuality and childhood innocence (Epstein and Sears, 1999; Kitzinger, 1988). Any knowledge that children have concerning sexuality is unsettling to the commonly held ‘truths’ that position them as untainted by the ‘adult’ world. As such, the boundaries between the relational categories of adulthood and childhood are constantly developed, constructed and contested across a range of sites and within numerous practices. It is the socially constructed border between the asexual and the sexual – between ‘innocence’ and ‘experience’ – that most pervasively and insistently demarcates the child from the adult (Stainton Rogers and Stainton Rogers, 1998).
The construction of the developmental category of ‘adolescence’ within mainstream psychology illustrates how the boundary between child and adult is characterized by the disciplining of sexuality, in terms of both identities and practices. Under this rubric, sexual knowledges should be offered to young people in the controlled environment of official ‘sex education’, or from within the heterosexual nuclear family (another key concept of mainstream psychology, which sustains a particular set of gender power relations) (Parker, 2007). The practice of sex education both in schools and homes is, of course, highly politicized (Alldred and David, 2007), and where this is recognized by educationalists the more accurate term ‘sexuality education’ is rightly preferred (Redman, 1994).
Doing It offers a limited yet undeniable challenge to the innocence/experience ideology, as it presents a sexual learning that is ‘inappropriate’ because it occurs outside established and monitored sexuality education practices (Mellor and Epstein, 2006). Moreover, it offers a ‘sexual pedagogy’ that disrupts the notion that young people are without such knowledge, and contests the idea that they should not be presented with knowledge about sex/sexuality in their literature. Here I am drawing on the model of pedagogy presented by Epstein and Sears (1999). They explain,
We wish to think of pedagogy in terms of all the myriad ways in which we learn and are taught to position ourselves within regimes of truth through which we understand our gendered, heterosexualized, racialized and classed world; the punishments for transgressions as well as the rewards for conformity. In this sense, pedagogy can take place through and within a number of institutional sites other than those, like schools and universities, which are formally concerned with education. (Epstein and Sears, 1999: 2)
Consequently, I have not undertaken a straightforward textual analysis of Doing It; nor have I undertaken research with young people about their interpretations of the text (although both projects would undeniably prove insightful). Rather, this article draws on material available in the public domain and within the media in order to consider certain aspects of the ‘cultural life’ of the text across the cultural field of children’s literature. This entails focusing on the book in relation to media debates about young people’s sexual knowledge, its existence as an economic product, and considering how it may function as an ‘unofficial’ (hetero)sexual pedagogy. The media debate surrounding Doing It represents a struggle over young people’s ‘dangerous knowledge’ of sexualities, and amounts to a reconstitution of the boundaries between adulthood and childhood. These methods of analysis therefore allow for the text to be examined as a social object within a cultural field of relations, where its value and meanings can be contested and changed.
I begin by looking at arguments within the media about Doing It, outlining the opinions of adult and teenage reviewers concerning the book’s supposed social realism, morality, and the necessity of its publication as a book about relationships that is specifically (but not exclusively) for boys. I then detail the re-branding of the novel with its paperback release, showing its promoted conversion from teenage or ‘young adult’ fiction to adult fiction. Finally, drawing on some recent arguments from critical pedagogy, I consider how Doing It and other examples of teenage literature might be used in formal school-based sexuality education.
The text and its context
Contemporary gendered childhoods
An early episode in Doing It involves the boys organizing a party, hoping that Dino will be able to lose his virginity.
‘She’s been stringing me along for weeks, it’s not fair.’ He appealed to them. ‘It could be the perfect chance. Do you want me to stay a virgin forever?’ He convinced Jon and Ben, but Jackie was another matter. When she heard about the empty house, she favoured the party. Dino stared sulkily at her. ‘What?’ she said. ‘It’s just, you know. An empty house. You and me.’ Jackie chewed her lips and looked at him. ‘You stand more chance of getting a girl into bed if she’s had a few drinks first,’ she told him, and smiled. ‘Party’s on,’ said Dino. (Burgess, 2003a: 41)
Consequently, as Epstein et al. (2003) argue, the ‘straighter than straight’ or ‘normative’ version of young heterosexuality that results is representative of a white, middle-classed position, which marginalizes or pathologizes other forms of sexuality, including non-normative heterosexualities. Moreover, because of the dominance of masculinity within heterosexuality, it has even been claimed that heterosexuality is masculinity, as it is the ‘male-mind’ that is central to defining sexuality for both women and men (Holland et al., 1998). This dominant ‘male-mind’, which is similar to what Connell (2005) has termed ‘hegemonic’ masculinity, is an assortment of practices and cultural resources that define and regulate socially approved modes of being male, thereby setting the ‘rules’ by which both support and resistance can be mounted. Although it is not straightforward and alternates between and within cultures, the influence of hegemonic masculinity, Connell argues, is pervasive. This has been well documented in research with young people. For example, Frosh et al. (2002) show how boys aged 11–14 have their ‘gendered repertoires’ severally limited by hegemonic masculinity, and further studies have shown that both younger (Renold, 2005) and older boys (Jackson, 2003) struggle to construct their identities under the considerable influence of hegemonic ideals. Moreover, as Holland et al. (1998) illustrate, girls are also strongly influenced by hegemonic masculinity in the negotiation of their own sexual identities. This process of negotiation begins in the peer cultures of young children and is reinforced by both families and schooling (Paechter, 2007).
Sexuality and children’s literature
Jonathon started nagging to open the beers and get stuck in. ‘There’s not enough as it is,’ said Dino, ‘We don’t want to get too pissed before the party’s even begun.’ ‘Don’t we? said Jonathon, who seemed genuinely surprised. Ben wagged his finger at him. ‘What about the girlies, Jon? We don’t want to be out of action for them.’ Jonathon, uncomfortable with a subject he felt unequal to, nodded and shrugged and tried to look cool. (Burgess, 2003a: 61–62)
Some books for children do challenge normative heterosexuality and gendered stereotypes (see Davies, 2003a, 2003b for example) but this has not affected the predominance of an institutional gendered heterosexuality in children’s literature. This is evident in the style and content of the majority of children’s books, including literature for the under 12s (Walter, 2005) and reading materials in early years education (Jackson and Glee, 2005). As characters within stories and as consumers of these stories, children are positioned as heterosexually asexual; they are gendered and indeed heterosexualized, but their knowledge of relationships is not ‘dangerous’ because of their aheterosexuality. The sexual pedagogy of the mainstream press and children’s literature reflects dominant trends of informal cultural learning about gendered sexuality. This is no ‘hidden’ curriculum, but one that is at the forefront of how children learn to construct and maintain the ‘correct’ identity (Epstein et al., 2003).
‘Young adult’ publishing, aimed broadly at young people aged 12 or 13 and older, is a burgeoning market, but one that lacks well-defined borders or a clear demographic. This lack of definition has created a liminal site between literature that is clearly demarcated as either adult or child, where struggles over the definition of generational categories are particularly strong. Currently, in the UK, teenage/young adult publishing is sometimes situated as physically, symbolically and virtually separate from both adult and children’s books, giving the impression that it is a clearly defined category in its own right. In branches of the major high street booksellers Waterstones, for example, books for teenagers can sometimes be found on shelving at the end of the children’s section following the 9–12 age range, and in other cases ‘young adult’ books can be positioned in a different section altogether. However, the Amazon.co.uk website has a 12–16 age range that can be found under the category of ‘children’s books’. Moreover, as content of the Children’s Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook (A & C Black, 2008) illustrates, agents and publishers position young adult fiction within the broader market of children’s fiction. Therefore, ‘young adult’ fiction remains symbolically and economically separate from adult fiction and, despite some marketing efforts, is commonly positioned as a subcategory in the cultural field of children’s literature.
Publishing for young people, then, reflects broader societal and cultural trends where the adult–child binary exerts considerable influence, even when the practices and identities of young people do not fit comfortably into either category. Indeed, there are many ways that ‘the child’, ‘young people’, ‘childhood’ and ‘youth’ can be defined, all of which can and have been contested within the political sphere, the media, and the social sciences (see Hockey and James, 2003 for example). This is not the place to rehearse those arguments, but what the continuing debates over definitions of this early stage of the life course demonstrate is that the categorization of childhood/youth is unstable, subject to constant reinforcement, and is constructed by social, cultural and economic forces. These struggles over categorization, as in the case of Doing It, are most emphatically contested when the definitions of ‘appropriate’ and ‘dangerous’ knowledges – especially sexual pedagogy – are at stake. As noted, not all sexual pedagogies in young adult fiction are challenged, as in the case of Doing It. By contrast, in the recent and hugely popular Twilight saga (Meyer, 2006) about teenage vampires, dominant notions of hetero-gender are writ large in the unfulfilled desires of the central heterosexual characters, their gendered relationship practices, and the sexually charged symbolism of vampirism. Yet because the characters’ sexuality practices (like dating and attending the prom) do not become overtly ‘sexual’ practices – they remain apparently aheterosexual – the books have not been surrounded by an equivalent ‘moral panic’ to that which met the initial publication of Doing It.
Doing It – The first time
Polemics, praise and hatchet jobs
Although the publication of Burgess’ previous novels had been hyped in the media, Doing It was to face what the author himself described as ‘the most thorough hatchet job in the history of children’s books’ (Burgess, 2004b: 297) at the hands of the then British Children’s Laureate, Anne Fine. Indeed, Fine’s bellicose polemic, published in the Guardian (29 March, Fine, 2003) was a damning review of Burgess’ work. She began by branding the novel ‘filth, which ever way you look at it’ and proceeded to criticize the book’s sexual content and its explicit and derogatory language (ironically reproducing the ‘worst’ examples), comparing it to a pornographic magazine. Fine’s review culminated in a call for the book to be pulped or at least published under an adult imprint. The basis for this demand was that the book was a text that could facilitate unwanted and dangerous sexual learning. For example, she claimed that when they had read Doing It, ‘young girls will be begging their parents to send them to single sex schools. Reading this will put many off dating for years’ (Fine, 2003: 33).
Many other adult critics asserted support for Doing It. These boys were not the demons Fine had made them out to be, they argued, these were just ‘angels with dirty minds’ (N Tucker, 2003: 29). They did not view Doing It’s sexual content as wholly unproblematic, but the presentation of the boys’ behaviour was accepted as normal for young people of their age, and there were no challenges to the hegemonic masculinity expressed in the text and in much of the debate surrounding its publication and its suitable or correct readership. The overarching reason for their lack of criticism was that the book was viewed as a kind of ‘social realist’ text, which tackled life ‘as it is’ (and the inference is, ought to be). For example, one critic remarked: ‘This is what teenage boys really talk about. They do not talk about Quiddich matches’, 2 later stating that the novel ‘reflects the real situation that though teen boys think about it [sic] constantly, they don’t actually get it constantly’ (Kirsch, 2003). Burgess also makes a case for the social realism of his book, often citing friends, associates and memories that provided much of the source material for his central characters.
Another recurring reason given for the worthiness of the book was its inherent morality. The graphic nature of the sex remained a difficult issue, but at its heart this is ‘a teenage bonkbuster [with] … a powerful message’ (Clarke, 2003) that is ‘ostensibly bordering on Puritanism’ (Furnish, 2003) – claims made on the basis of the boys’ struggles with peer pressure to engage in casual sex, while feeling uncomfortable and uncertain in their abilities. This combined claim for morality and realism lends support to the idea that Doing It has valuable things to teach young men about common experiences, coping effectively with ethical dilemmas, and how to ‘grow up boy’ successfully. The book and its criticism therefore represent a construction of a dominant young masculinity because they combine in making a claim for what must be learned about the supposed common, natural and gendered processes of growing up (hetero)sexually. This has the effect of taking the liminality and ambiguities of teenage sexuality and turning it into a dis-orderly transition, with a normative outcome. In this there is a sense of an interaction between discourses about childhood created by adults for children and discourses about childhood created by adults for adults (Buckingham, 2000). Even though calls in favour of social realism and moralism are made, it is clear that many powerful normative fantasies about childhood, innocence and gender are at work throughout the reports and reviews of the novel. It is here, within the debate, that the boundaries of hetero-gendered childhood are being contested and reconstructed by adults, for consumption by adults and children.
Teenager’s opinions
Teenagers’ views about Doing It are structurally subordinated in relation to adult opinions. On the whole, it is adult critics and not children who write reviews in newspapers and on the major news internet sites. Where children’s voices do appear, it is usually as reported speech within the article of an adult journalist. The internet has, however, provided many opportunities for young people to be able to voice their opinions and has, to a certain extent and with limitations, proved an enabling medium (see Buckingham, 2000; Buckingham and Willett, 2006). Several sites organized as online reading groups provide young people an opportunity to read, discuss and rate books for their peers. Although these internet sites remain structurally subordinated to ‘adult’ sites (appearing many pages down in a search engine’s results) it is here that young people have spoken about Doing It and many other novels. The first examples are taken from a review site called ‘Cool Reads’ (cool-reads.co.uk), which is for 11–15 year olds. The reviews of Doing It written here are by two girls:
Girl 1: This book is great but I agree not 1 to let your parents know your reading. It was so explicit! And in so much detail! IS THIS HOW BOYS MINDS REALLY WORK? lol it was very educational. My dad unfortunately did find it I said it was biology homework. lol. A very exciting read though and 4 the person who was trying to find one u can get them from the library. Girl 2: Very entertaining (especially Jonathon's chapters). This book was definitely an education in the way male minds work, but if you are a girl then you'll probably find yourself hoping that boys can't be quite that obsessed with sex. WARNING: Do NOT, I repeat do NOT let your parents know that you are reading this book. Could well result in disaster if they found out.
The following examples are three extracts from a discussion taken from a reading group on the ‘Teen Today’ website (teentoday.co.uk/readinggroup). Here, three girls and two boys talk about the book and its readership.
Girl 1: It’s like a self-help book for boys dressed up as a novel. Girl 2: Well, it wasn’t even a self-help book cos it never told you what to do about stuff. It was just like, we’re boys, we’ve got dicks and we’re not afraid to use them. … Girl 3: I think it’s good for girls too. Boy 1: Why’s that? Girl 3: So that they can get a glimpse of what it’s like to be a boy. … Girl 2: I’m not a boy and it was written for boys. So really only boys can judge it. Boy 2: That’s sexist! Girl 2: … I simply said girls can’t judge whether it’s good or bad because it’s not written for them.
Some teenage boys are able to resist this discourse. For example, in a review in the Times Educational Supplement, several boys criticize the book as a poor depiction of teenage life. One attacks the portrayal of boys as sexually obsessed, saying that ‘it makes boys out to be dickheads, literally, their heads are in their dicks’, while another criticizes the novel’s language: ‘the writer must be really old, no one talks like that any more, I mean, discos?’ As far as the accusation that the content is near pornographic, another states that, in their opinion, ‘it makes sex seem pretty rubbish’ (Neumark, 2003). For various reasons then, these teenage boys reject and contest the version of hegemonic masculinity presented in Doing It. However, their claims of inauthenticity do not necessarily mean they are rejecting hegemonic masculinity; rather it appears that they define it in different terms (see Frosh et al., 2002 for a detailed discussion on this issue).
Girls have romance, boys need … ?
Burgess (2003b) claims that Doing It is a ‘knobby book for boys’, one which identifies with their specific experiences, with their sexuality, which is ‘visual, rude and far more easily separated from its emotional context [than female sexuality]’. Indeed, one of the persistent arguments running through adult reviews of Doing It is that the book is important because it offers boys a mirror on their own experiences and those of others, who are the same as them. Jessica Dow, director of Puffin books, argues that many teenagers will take comfort and relief from reading it (Frean, 2003). It will, in other words, help them identify with the supposed commonality of their experiences, through presenting a fictional community of masculinity practice that reflects their own life world (Paechter, 2007). The inference then, is that young people need literature that reflects experiences common to them all in terms of their gender, and that this is an important way in which they can learn about growing up. Many reviewers note, for instance, that girls already have an abundance of novels that reflect their own gendered experiences of relationships, books that contain romantic narratives and explore emotional issues – the hetero-gendered fantasy romance of Twilight (Meyer, 2006) provides one recent example (the suitability of these novels and other books within the ‘dark romance’ genre is apparently unquestioned). Because there is ‘chick-lit’ for girls, or ‘chicklet-lit’ (Walter, 2005) there should also be ‘lad-lit’, or boys will be seriously deprived of a vital social education. So the social realism of the books is promoted as a way of learning necessary lessons about ‘normal’ gendered identity, through a moral framework.
Yet the actual readership of particular books – their ‘social lives’ – is not easily reflected in sales figures, market research, or library lending statistics. For example, ethnographic research has shown that boys often read ‘girls’ magazines and that consumption practices are likely to be greatly determined by local friendship cultures, where masculinities are defined in non-hegemonic ways (see for example Renold, 2005). The argument that boys have been deprived by the prior lack of ‘lad-lit’ like Doing It is therefore problematic, and what boys need or want cannot be defined in any straightforward way. In fact, much of the debate about Doing It is affected by much the same panic that surrounds boys apparently ‘failing’ and ‘underachieving’ in schools (Epstein et al., 1998). Within the parameters of the Doing It debate however, the books which boys need and, it is assumed want, are defined in terms of a narrow interpretation of a hegemonic boyhood that is more a product of adult fantasy than the lived experience of teenagers. This means that the sexual pedagogy has been justified as part of the normative heterosexual lifecourse; a phenomenon that is further evident in the way that Doing It was re-branded as a paperback.
Doing It again – but changing the covers
The re-branding, publicity, promotion, positioning
Doing It has had an interesting and varied life as an economic product. When it was originally published in hardback (2003a) the book carried a black cover emblazoned with Burgess’ name and a picture of an unopened condom (Figure 1). The paperback edition of the book (2004a) not only represented a change in format, but also a re-branding of the text as a consumable cultural product. This cover (Figure 2) shows the possibly pre- or post-coital scene of a bed and the legs of a young girl who is pulling on her underwear, accompanied by the strap-line ‘do you remember the first time?’
Hardback cover. (Andersen Press). Paperback cover. (Penguin Books).
Clearly Penguin, the publishers of the latter imprint, realized that the mass market of paperback books was important in terms of sales and the re-branding was, in the main part at least, an economic decision aimed at securing a lucrative crossover readership. What is interesting however, is the manner in which the re-branded Doing It was subsequently publicized and promoted.
The paperback Doing It became part of Penguin’s ‘Good Booking’ campaign, which aimed to get more men reading by claiming that reading made heterosexual men more attractive to women. As such, within the promotion, the ‘sexual capital’ of Doing It was openly recognized and released in a different market, with reviews now appearing in men’s magazines, rather than children’s internet sites. Doing It no longer occupied shelf space in the children’s or young adult sections of bookstores. It was moved to (and remains in) the general fiction (adult fiction) section. In this area of the market then, the boundaries between child and adult were renegotiated a further time, and once again the ‘dangerous knowledge’ of Doing It was sanitized as a normal part of the heterosexual life course and of heterosexual masculinity. The book could ‘travel’ because it supported an important aspect of hegemonic masculinity: the fantasy that all men had an unambiguously heterosexual ‘adolescence’. The new adult male readers were not expected to learn, but to remember, as the book was now nostalgic as opposed to pedagogical, becoming a narrative through which adult, masculine, heterosexual identities could be (re-)negotiated. The re-branding then, can be seen as a ‘policing of the borders’ of age-defined normative heterosexuality (Steinberg et al., 1997), where a previously problematic book was promoted as a story about gendered childhoods written by adults for consumption by adults. This meant that ultimately the book was moved to the ‘safe’ side of the adult/child divide. But it continued to trade on the universalized experience of normative teenage masculine heterosexuality through the discourse of nostalgia, and therefore retained and reinforced the ‘dangerous knowledge’ of young sexuality.
A novel sexual pedagogy?
Doing It is not the first novel for young adults to cause controversy because of its sexually explicit content. Judy Blume’s Forever, originally published in 1975, continues to draw controversy in the USA, and holds the somewhat dubious honour of being the most challenged book in the school libraries of North America. In Forever, readers are introduced to the heterosexual teenage couple Katherine and Michael, and follow their burgeoning emotional and sexual relationship (Blume, 2001 [1975]). Blume has argued that her novel was and continues to be important because it introduces young women to issues and practices that were not openly discussed but are important elements of their lives. 3 Forever contains, for example, a detailed description of Katherine’s visit to the doctor’s surgery and receiving a prescription for the contraceptive pill. In a current edition of Forever, Blume notes in a short preface that a young woman in Katherine’s position would now also need to use a condom to ensure safe and responsible sex. Blume is open about the pedagogic qualities of her book, something she continues in her collection of published letters from children Letters to Judy (1996), where she addressed a range of problems raised by her young correspondents concerning family life and growing up.
Burgess (2002), in contrast, has stated that he would prefer for his novels not to be seen as ‘educational.’ Children, he argues, get enough education at school, and while he acknowledges his novels are moral and ethical texts, they are not written with pedagogical outcomes in mind (Burgess, 2004b). However, it is clear from the reactions of both adult critics and teenage readers that Doing It is a text that is used by its readership as an education in gendered sexuality. This is not the ‘official’ education that Burgess has in mind when he states that his novels should not be educational; it is a sexual pedagogy that operates through dominant cultural discourse and is mediated through local culture. For Burgess, there appears to be a distinction to be drawn between ‘telling it like it is’ about the supposedly ordinary life of teenagers (particularly the apparently marginalized ‘normal’ heterosexual teenage boys) and formal instruction about sex and relationships. As a result, the moral core of Burgess’ teenage literature is positioned as an essential ‘telling’; an articulation of an underlying universal ethical code by which relationships should be governed. In its countless re-tellings and negotiations within the cultural field of literature it becomes a narrative of moral instruction that forcefully and compulsively teaches about the heteronormative tale of boyhood. But a critical reading of the debate surrounding the book reveals that it is structured by a model of gendered sexuality that is not essential or universal but is in fact socially constructed, negotiated and maintained.
It is clear then, that sexual pedagogy occurs in the cultural field of literature, making it pertinent to question, by way of a closing discussion, how literature might be used within a formal sexuality education that aims to set about making hegemonic masculinity and normative heterosexuality appear ‘strange’ rather than essential and universal (Epstein et al., 2003). As Halstead and Reiss (2003) show however, values permeate all sexual pedagogies, meaning that there are tensions in any sex education programme between learning about risk reduction and the detailed exploration of sexual experience and diversity. Moreover, Alldred and David (2007) highlight the many challenges in providing good sexuality and relationship education that deals with issues on both classroom and political levels. There is not space to address all these issues here, so I will briefly consider the possibilities for using literature, and Doing It in particular, as a way of engaging with sexual experience in order to ‘trouble’ normative perceptions of heterosexual gender relations.
There have already been some interesting strategies for using literature as a form of sexuality education. Harris (1990) has argued that given that the broad aims of English Literature include a commitment to the personal, social and moral development of students, it would seem appropriate that issues of gender and sexuality were tackled in this area of the curriculum. However, as Gilbert (2004) notes, within school-based sex education there is little room made for ambiguity, even though human sexuality, and in particular desire, is arguably best characterized by its ambiguous nature. Gilbert argues that novels are particularly powerful in demonstrating this ambiguity. The novel Gilbert provides as an example is Jeffrey Eugenides Middlesex (2003), where the central protagonist is intersexed, and therefore draws dramatic tension from the ambiguity caused by a deviation to the heterosexual female/male cultural dichotomy. Middlesex undoubtedly opens up dominant notions about the nature of sex/sexuality and gender to interrogation; the question is whether such ambiguity is necessary and whether there is sufficient ambiguity in Doing It to raise such questions.
HF Tucker (2003) suggests that ambiguity can be useful in teaching because it disrupts the notion of a set of correct answers to questions about literature. Reading in groups opens up numerous possible readings of a text, facilitating discussion about multiple meanings, troubling conventional notions and revealing the constructed nature of categorical boundaries. This could be a useful strategy when working with teenagers, which could be used to confront the liminality of ‘adolescence’ and highlight its cultural rather than the biological nature. But perhaps the major problem with incorporating Doing It into a formal sexuality curriculum is the novel’s sympathetic relationship to discourses of hegemonic masculinity and normative heterosexuality. In this sense it is far from ambiguous about human sexuality. The text itself does provide an interesting reading of how heterosexual masculinities are multiply negotiated, but, as the examples presented here show, it can be and often is read in ways that support or call upon hegemonic masculinity. Such readings restore the sexual singularity where ‘doing it’ is at the core of the ‘male-mind’. This is deeply problematic, not only from the perspective of those who would promote a liberal sexuality education, but also in terms of what research has shown about young people’s relationship practices. Young people’s investments in and understandings of different kinds of relationships vary considerably, even while remaining ostensibly heterosexual (see for example Allen, 2004; Henderson et al., 2007). Put simply, ‘going out’ is not always about ‘doing it’. Importantly, the widespread response to Doing It shows that young people’s literature can play an important role in their learning about sexuality. Aligning education with young people’s consumption practices has been widely recognized as a means for delivering effective sex education that deals with both social and health issues. If literature is to play a part in sexuality education, this strategy must surely be accompanied by a comprehensive understanding and appreciation of children’s and young people’s own conceptions of relationships and their own everyday cultural practices. Although Doing It itself may not be an ideal text for this purpose, the debate about sexual pedagogy that surrounds the book has surely added weight to the argument that literature has a place in sexuality education.