Dude, You're a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School, With a New Preface

by C.J. Pascoe

princess getting “one upped”—penetrated from behind—by a Mario brother.

Eewww

ask about the role of masculinity in all of these tragedies. This is what the conversation needs to be about, not some generic discussion about bullying or homophobia.

The Mr. Cougar competition clearly illuminates the intersecting dynamics of sexuality, gender, social class, race, bodies, and institutional practices that constitute adolescent masculinity in this setting.

This masculinizing process happens through a transformation of bodies, the assertion of racial privilege, and a shoring up of heterosexuality.

In representing black men, the gangstas symbolize hypersexuality and invoke a thinly veiled imagery of the black rapist (A. Davis 1981), who threatens white men’s control over white women.

Male femininity, in this instance, is coded as humorous, while female masculinity is cheered.

the goal of this study is to explain how teenagers, teachers, and the institutional logics of schooling construct adolescent masculinity through idioms of sexuality.

between gender and sexuality as embedded in a major socializing institution of modern youth: high school.

masculinity is not a homogenous category that any boy possesses by virtue of being male. Rather, masculinity—as constituted and understood in the social world I studied—is a configuration of practices and discourses that different youths (boys and girls) may embody in different ways and to different degrees.

for boys, achieving a masculine identity entails the repeated repudiation of the specter of failed masculinity. Boys lay claim to masculine identities by lobbing homophobic epithets at one another. They also assert masculine selves by engaging in heterosexist discussions of girls’ bodies and their own sexual experiences.

conclude by suggesting that close attention to sexuality highlights masculinity as a process rather than a social identity associated with specific bodies.

feminist characterizations of masculinity as “unrelieved villainy and all men as agents of the patriarchy in more or less the same degree” (64), these sociologists attempted to carve out new models of gendered analysis in which individual men or men collectively were not all framed as equal agents of patriarchal oppression.

Not all men lol

multiple masculinities” (Connell 1995).

Hegemonic blah?

Hegemonic masculinity, the type of gender practice that, in a given space and time, supports gender inequality, is at the top of this hierarchy. Complicit masculinity describes men who benefit from hegemonic masculinity but do not enact it; subordinated masculinity describes men who are oppressed by definitions of hegemonic masculinity, primarily gay men; marginalized masculinity describes men who may be positioned powerfully in terms of gender but not in terms of class or race.

Very few men, if any, are actually hegemonically masculine, but all men do benefit, to different extents, from this sort of definition of masculinity, a form of benefit Connell (1995) calls the “patriarchal dividend” (41).

To refine approaches to masculinity, researchers need to think more clearly about the implications of defining masculinity as what men or boys do. This definition conflates masculinity with the actions of those who have male bodies.

sexuality is itself a form of power that exists regardless of an individual’s sexual identity.

heterosexuality is not just a private matter but one that links a person to certain state benefits.

It’s not just a marriage but benefit behind that ppl are fighting for

Similarly contemporary meanings of sexuality, particularly heterosexuality, for instance, eroticize male dominance and female submission (Jeffreys 1996, 75). In this way what seems like a private desire is part of the mechanisms through which the microprocesses of daily life actually foster inequality.

Interdisciplinary theorizing about sexuality has primarily taken the form of “queer theory.” Like sociology, queer theory destabilizes the assumed naturalness of the social order (Lemert 1996).

The logic of sexuality not only regulates intimate relations but also infuses social relations and social structures (S. Epstein 1994; Warner 1993).

To this end, queer theory emphasizes multiple identities and multiplicity in general. Instead of creating knowledge about categories of sexual identity, queer theorists look to see how those categories themselves are created, sustained, and undone.

Bodies are the vehicles through which we express gendered selves; they are also the matter through which social norms are made concrete.

Recently a spate of psychological books have called for more attention to be paid to the “real” victims of the so-called “gender wars.” These authors claim that boys are forced by families, peer groups, schools, and the media to hide their “true” emotions and develop a hard emotional shell that is what we know as masculinity (Kindlon and Thompson 1999; Pollack 1998; Sommers 2000). William Pollack’s book rightly encourages parents and other caregivers to listen to the “boy code” in order to hear boys’ emotions and struggles. Sommers and Kindlon and Thompson, among others, either overtly or tacitly treat gender as a zero-sum game in which gains for girls must equal losses for boys, an assumption that has been critiqued by gender researchers (American Association of University Women [AAUW] 2001; Kimmel 1999). None of these volumes address larger issues of gender and power in adolescence and childhood; instead, they focus on the idea that boys and girls are naturally different and that boys are the ones suffering from discrimination, not girls.

Attending to gender as a relational process is important, since peer cultures trump or at least compete with parental influence in terms of setting up conceptions of gender (Risman and Myers 1997). As a result, masculinity processes look very different in groups than they do when teens discuss their own experiences around masculinity.

See the Appendix for a more extensive discussion of the unique difficulties of conducting research in a high school as well as the challenges and benefits of being a woman conducting research on male and female adolescents.

In chapter 3, I continue to link meanings of sexuality to definitions of masculinity. Specifically I examine how a fag identity is continually used to discipline boys into heterosexually masculine positions.

I conclude by showing that the fag identity is, in part, racialized, taking on different meanings and salience in various social groups.

This chapter moves beyond these trite characterizations of testosterone-fueled locker-room talk by reframing it as “compulsive heterosexuality,” in which these sorts of practices are ritualized demonstrations of mastery over girls’ bodies, not necessarily indicators of sexual desire.

In the Appendix, I discuss how these masculinizing processes in adolescence don’t just take place among peers but also happen between a female researcher and (primarily) male respondents. I focus particularly on the ways the boys infused our interactions with sexual content and the ways I managed these interactions so as to maintain rapport while simultaneously enforcing a professional distance and preserving my dignity.

Ewwww

Three cases of girls who act like guys reveal the different ways non-normative sexual identities interact with gender identity and social status. These case studies indicate that masculine girls occupy higher-status social positions than do feminine boys. They also indicate that doing gender differently can, but doesn’t always, challenge gender inequality.

Administrators strove to protect students from exposure to sexualized topics and at the same time were exceedingly interested in students’ sexual practices, expressions, and identities.

Lol Chinese government too

They reflect the twin assumptions that American teens are too innocent to know about sexuality and too sexual to be trusted with information.

According to this dress code a boy could show a belly button and a girl could wear pants below her waistline.

But no boy/girl dress this way. This part is done through peer pressure/ gender norm

Like other teachers, Ms. Mac frequently drew on and reinforced concepts of heterosexuality in her teaching. One day, she was trying to explain to the students the “full faith and credit clause” of the Constitution, which states that one state has to honor another state’s laws.

By calling the use of the word fag homophobia—and letting the argument stop there—previous research has obscured the gendered nature of sexualized insults (Plummer 2001).

But becoming a fag has as much to do with failing at the masculine tasks of competence, heterosexual prowess, and strength or in any way revealing weakness or femininity as it does with a sexual identity.

In this sense it was not strictly homophobia but a gendered homophobia that constituted adolescent masculinity in the culture of River High.

The sort of gendered homophobia that constituted adolescent masculinity did not constitute adolescent femininity.

Surprisingly, some boys took pains to say that the term fag did not imply sexuality. Darnell told me, “It doesn’t even have anything to do with being gay.”

Oh yes, some Chinese men will also say calling women 母人 has nothing to do with sexism. Well fuck you

the laundry list of behaviors that could get a boy in trouble, it is no wonder that Ben felt a boy could be called fag for “anything.” These nonsexual meanings didn’t replace sexual meanings but rather existed alongside them.

“Eminem Exception. Eminem explains that he doesn’t call people ‘faggot’ because of their sexual orientation but because they’re weak and unmanly” (72).

Shit I like Eminem ><

In this literature a homosexual male must be an adult and must be masculine. Male homosexuality is not pathologized, but gay male effeminacy is. The lack of masculinity is the problem, not the sexual practice or orientation.

The war against fags as the specter of unmasculine manhood appears in gay male personal ads in which men look for “straight-appearing, straight-acting men.”

Yes, for example Chinese gay hate 太母的 men. And just look at the wording dehumanizing women again

This concern with both straight and gay men’s masculinity not only reflects teenage boys’ obsession with hypermasculinity but also points to the conflict at the heart of the contemporary “crisis of masculinity” being played out in popular, scientific, and educational arenas.

Yea in China tio

“Fucking faggot!” at no one in particular. None of the other students paid them any mind, since this sort of thing happened so frequently.

Well I wonder Chinese men’s frequent attempt to shoot out of no where three pointers is part of this exhibition too

Ricky embodied the fag because of his homosexuality and his less normative gender identification and self-presentation.

Precisely because African American men are so hypersexualized in the United States, white men are, by default, feminized, so white was a stand-in for fag among many of the African American boys at River High. Two of the behaviors that put a white boy at risk for being labeled a fag didn’t function in the same way for African American boys.

O_O

Because African American boys lacked other indicators of class such as cars and the ability to leave campus during lunch, clean expensive basketball shoes took on added symbolic status.

Because dancing for boys of color, especially African American boys, placed them within a tradition of masculinity, they were not at risk of being labeled a fag for engaging in this particular gendered practice.

Well that’s not the same as Ricky’s feminine dance right