THE EARLY-ADOLESCENT GIRL: SEXUAL FANTASIES
Her sexual fantasies change during early adolescence from being relatively impersonal to being more explicit and more excitingly personal. Usually the fantasies of early adolescent girls are of a fairly vague nature, frequently involving situations such as stripping, prostitution and rape. Girls of this age may search for newspaper items and books about these things and then discuss their findings with their friends at school in the hope of understanding what they are about. It is a paradox that a girl of this age is likely to assume that she is a sex expert and may reject sex information from her parents and teachers. This is perfectly normal.
Fantasies may be suppressed because they are seen as disgusting and any that involve her father or a father-like figure are nearly always severely suppressed. A girl’s behaviour may, however, be the exact opposite of what she really wants because of her attempts to control herself. For example, it is common for girls who unconsciously want to be close and loving to their fathers to consciously avoid all contact with them at this stage.
During early adolescence masturbation usually increases in intensity and frequency but does not change much in form. Any bad masturbation habits a girl has already acquired tend to become further entrenched and fixed at this stage. Girls who rub their vulvas to have an orgasm usually further refine their own particular pattern of stimulation but new features often emerge. One technique, for example, is to clasp the whole vulva when arousal has reached a certain stage and then to count to ten before resuming stimulation.
Very guilty girls who want to get it over with as quickly as possible do not use delaying tactics such as these, often to the detriment of their ultimate enjoyment of sex.
The other change that occurs is a considerable increase in shame as the full sexual significance of masturbation dawns on a girl. This comes about because her sexual experience seems to contradict all that she has previously supposed to be ‘nice’ in a girl. Some girls accept the situation easily but others have more difficulty. Some repress their sexuality so completely that they actually give up masturbation in early adolescence. Others struggle against it and try to keep it under strict control. For example, some girls promise God they will never do it again. Some reinforce their control by telling themselves that they are doing themselves harm or that they will change sex as a result. This last fear arises from the fact that until the last forty years or so masturbation was spoken of as being essentially a thing boys did. Many a girl therefore used to believe (and some still do) that she was the only girl who did it, and even if she asked her friends (which was rare), to try to get reassurance, they too denied masturbation because they had been made to feel guilty about it.
This rise in shame about masturbation can lead to changes in behaviour and some of these can be annoying. Common examples are frequent hand-washing for fear — amongst other
things — that others may be able to detect that she has been masturbating, and a neurotic
over-concern about spots. A girl may become even more secretive about her sexual interests and is often easily embarrassed when sex is mentioned by adults. Her mother’s sexuality can also lead to embarrassment and even frank hostility. If her mother becomes pregnant, for example, she can feel compromised and ashamed.
Of much more concern though are those early adolescent girls who somehow dissociate themselves from their sexuality and try to find ways to indulge it whilst denying to themselves that they are doing so. The deception does not take the form of straightforward lying — it is really an internal self-deception based upon a psychological trick. Examples are endless. One is to separate fantasy from its associated masturbatory activity – in this way it is possible to deny to oneself the sexual nature of the act. On the other hand, fantasy alone may be used as a masturbatory act or the fantasy may be highly symbolic and apparently non-sexual. Another way is either to deny that an orgasm has occurred or to experience it only after the physical act is complete. Yet another is to displace the orgasm from the genitals to some other part of the body, especially to the oesophagus (gullet) or the stomach. Some incidental activity such as rope climbing or cycle riding may be utilised to produce an orgasm. These and many other ways may be used, both at the time and in adulthood, to deny that there is (or was) a sexual content to the early-adolescent stage. This denial has poor implications for the girl’s future.
Although early-adolescent girls talk about sex to each other, it is usually in a non-personal way. It is rare for girls, unlike boys, at this stage to involve their own sex physically in their sexual activities, although they often develop emotional crushes on admired older girls or school-mistresses. A helpful way of thinking of this is to understand that the girl usually thinks of the older person as being successful in an area of concern to her. This is often in sophistication and attractiveness to men. The girl wants closeness, partly to learn the secret of success and partly to be held in esteem, almost as a friend, by someone she admires. True lesbian activity at this age is very rare indeed and parents need not fear that crushes will mean that their daughter will become a lesbian.
The majority of girls are keen to test out the effectiveness of their changing bodies in attracting male attention. Most girls first experience kissing and perhaps breast fondling during this stage. Some relate wildly exaggerated stories to their friends with the aim of emphasising their desirability.
Although some girls display little or no open interest in boys at this stage, for a variety of reasons, most of which need cause no concern, others become over-involved. Apart from rebellion, other motives for early intercourse include the inability to face up to masturbation. Unless she renounces sex altogether and regresses to childhood, the only other course is to seek sexual stimulation from others, usually boys. Such a girl may well intend to go no further than allowing the boy to masturbate her but since these girls usually go for considerably older, more experienced boys, intercourse is likely to result.
However, very few girls of this age experience intercourse in any adult way, and the danger is that this pattern of inadequate and unsatisfactory response to intercourse becomes fixed. Girls should be advised, not warned, against too early intercourse for this reason. Experience shows that the vast majority of girls are not ready for intercourse at this stage of their development.
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