High school and the difficult terrain of sexuality and gender identity are brilliantly explored in this smart, incisive ethnography. Based on eighteen months of fieldwork in a racially diverse working-class high school, Dude, You're a Fag sheds new light on masculinity both as a field of meaning and as a set of social practices. C. J. Pascoe's unorthodox approach analyzes masculinity as not only a gendered process but also a sexual one. She demonstrates how the "specter of the fag" becomes a disciplinary mechanism for regulating heterosexual as well as homosexual boys and how the "fag discourse" is as much tied to gender as it is to sexuality.
Contents
Acknowledgments
1. Making Masculinity: Adolescence, Identity, and High School
Revenge of the Nerds
What Do We Mean by Masculinity?
Bringing in Sexuality
Rethinking Masculinity, Sexuality, and Bodies
Methodology
Organization of the Book
2. Becoming Mr. Cougar: Institutionalizing Heterosexuality and Masculinity at River High
River High's Gender and Sexuality Curriculum
Pedagogy: The Unofficial Gender and Sexuality Curriculum
School Rituals: Performing and Policing Gender and Sexuality
Gender and Sexuality Regimes
3. Dude, You're a Fag: Adolescent Male Homophobia
What Is a Fag? Gendered Meanings
Becoming a Fag: Fag Fluidity
Embodying the Fag: Ricky's Story
Racializing the Fag
Where the Fag Disappears: Drama Performances
Reframing Homophobia
4. Compulsive Heterosexuality: Masculinity and Dominance
A Stud with the Ladies
Getting Girls
Touching
Sex Talk
Girls Respond
I'm Different from Other Guys
Females Are the Puppets
5. Look at My Masculinity! Girls Who Act Like Boys
Tomboy Pasts
Rebeca and the Basketball Girls
The Homecoming Queen: Jessie Chau
The Gay/Straight Alliance Girls
Embodying Masculinity
6. Conclusion: Thinking about Schooling, Gender, and Sexuality
Masculinity at River High
Theoretical Implications
Practical Steps
Appendix: What If a Guy Hits on You? Intersections of Gender, Sexuality, and Age in Fieldwork with Adolescents
Notes
References
Index
About The Author
C.J. Pascoe is Postdoctoral Scholar with the Digital Youth Project at the Institute for the Study of Social Change, University of California, Berkeley.
Awards
Outstanding Book Award, American Education Research Association
October 10, 2008
Men, Sex and Mateship: How homosociality shapes men's heterosexual relations
Dr Michael Flood
Abstract
Cutting-edge scholarship in Women’s Studies and Sexuality Studies recognises that gender and sexual relations are organised in part by local contexts and communities, personal and social networks, and other axes of social differentiation. Yet these insights only rarely have been applied to or tested among heterosexual men. This paper extends contemporary theorisations of gender, sexuality, and social life by examining the homosocial organisation of men’s heterosexual relations. Qualitative research among young straight men finds that their sexual relations with women are structured and given meaning by their social relations with other me n. Homosociality organises the male- female sociosexual relations of some young heterosexual men in at least five ways. First, male- male relations take priority over male-female non-sexual relations, and platonic friendships with women are dangerously feminising and rare if not impossible. Second, sexual activity is a key path to masculine status. Third, other men are the audience, always imagined and sometimes real, for one’s sexual activities. Fourth, heterosexual sex itself can be the medium through which male bonding is enacted. Lastly, men’s sexual storytelling is shaped by homosocial masculine cultures. Assessing the workings of male homosociality is significant in theorisations of both heterosexuality and masculinity.
Bionote
Dr Michael Flood is a Lecturer in the Centre for Women’s Studies at the Australian National University. His research interests include feminist scholarship on men and masculinities, sexualities and especially heterosexuality, interpersonal violence, sexual and reproductive health and HIV/AIDS, and boys and youth cultures.
Citation
Flood, Michael (2003) Men, Sex and Mateship: How homosociality shapes men’s heterosexual relations. Paper to (Other) Feminisms: An International Women’s and Gender Studies Conference, University of Queensland, 12-16 July.
Abstract
Cutting-edge scholarship in Women’s Studies and Sexuality Studies recognises that gender and sexual relations are organised in part by local contexts and communities, personal and social networks, and other axes of social differentiation. Yet these insights only rarely have been applied to or tested among heterosexual men. This paper extends contemporary theorisations of gender, sexuality, and social life by examining the homosocial organisation of men’s heterosexual relations. Qualitative research among young straight men finds that their sexual relations with women are structured and given meaning by their social relations with other me n. Homosociality organises the male- female sociosexual relations of some young heterosexual men in at least five ways. First, male- male relations take priority over male-female non-sexual relations, and platonic friendships with women are dangerously feminising and rare if not impossible. Second, sexual activity is a key path to masculine status. Third, other men are the audience, always imagined and sometimes real, for one’s sexual activities. Fourth, heterosexual sex itself can be the medium through which male bonding is enacted. Lastly, men’s sexual storytelling is shaped by homosocial masculine cultures. Assessing the workings of male homosociality is significant in theorisations of both heterosexuality and masculinity.
Bionote
Dr Michael Flood is a Lecturer in the Centre for Women’s Studies at the Australian National University. His research interests include feminist scholarship on men and masculinities, sexualities and especially heterosexuality, interpersonal violence, sexual and reproductive health and HIV/AIDS, and boys and youth cultures.
Citation
Flood, Michael (2003) Men, Sex and Mateship: How homosociality shapes men’s heterosexual relations. Paper to (Other) Feminisms: An International Women’s and Gender Studies Conference, University of Queensland, 12-16 July.
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