Dude, You're A Fag Part 1

Dude, You're a f.a.g.

Masculinity and s.e.xuality in High School.

C. J. Pascoe.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

Writing this book has been anything but an individual project. As I write these acknowledgments I realize the impossibility of including all those who have shepherded me along this journey. So to those I have recognized and those I haven't, thank you.

I am exceedingly grateful to the following organizations for providing generous financial support for this research. The Graduate Division, the Center for Working Families, the Center for the Study of s.e.xual Cultures, the Center for the Study of Peace and Well-Being, the Abigail Reynolds Hodgen Fund, and the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, have all funded the research and writing of this project. My affiliations with the Center for Working Families and the Center for the Study of s.e.xual Cultures provided me with varied intellectual communities with whom to share my work.

It is fitting, given that high school is the topic of this book, that I too return to high school in these acknowledgments. I doubt that this book would exist were it not for the support and mentoring of my two high school English teachers, Mrs. Sheila Kasprzyk, who, quite simply, taught me how to write, and Mrs. Sharon Spiers, who introduced me to the social topics that still drive my research-power, inequality, gender, psychological processes, and feminism. Not surprisingly, during my time at ix River High I often thought back to the a.n.a.lysis of Lord of the Flies Lord of the Flies that I had written while in her cla.s.s. that I had written while in her cla.s.s.

While I was an undergraduate at Brandeis University, talented, caring, and insightful mentors introduced me to sociology and feminist theory.

Eli Sagan, Gordon Fellman, Michael Macy, Bernadette Brooten, Pamela Allara, Karen Hansen, and Irving Zola all taught me important lessons about being a scholar, thinking about the social world, and addressing inequality.

I was similarly blessed to work with brilliant mentors during my graduate career at the University of California, Berkeley. Barrie Thorne, Raka Ray, Dawne Moon, Nancy Chodorow, Arlie Hochschild, Kim Voss, and Michael Burowoy all guided me through the Berkeley graduate program and the writing of this book in one way or another. From the initial stages of my research, Barrie Thorne encouraged me to think about this project as a book. While I worked on this ma.n.u.script she served as a sociological mentor, a feminist role model, and an academic mother. Her expertise in feminist theory, theories of interaction, and theories of childhood largely influenced my approach to the youth of River High. I am forever grateful that she encouraged me to both build on and challenge her own approaches to the social world.

Countless other scholars have informally mentored me as I crafted this ma.n.u.script. Warm thanks to Michael Messner, Michael Kimmel, Karin Martin, Amy Best, and Neill Korobov for reading various portions of this ma.n.u.script and providing invaluable comments on my a.n.a.lysis of gender, youth, and s.e.xuality. I also thank Naomi Schneider, my editor at UC Press, for her guidance and enthusiasm about this project.

Colleagues, students, and dear friends have shaped my thinking, my research, and my a.n.a.lysis of teenagers' experiences of gender and s.e.xuality. Youyenn Teo, Orit Avishai-Bentovim, Marianne Cooper, Beth Popp, and Mark Harris all listened to various incarnations of this project, acting as much-needed sounding boards. My students in the courses "The Sociology of Gender," "Gender and Education," "Masculinities,"

and "Sociology of s.e.xualities" gave me invaluable feedback as I crafted Acknowledgments / Acknowledgments / xi xi this project, asking insightful questions and keeping me up to date on teen culture.

David Tremblay, Rebeca Burciaga, Sarah Stickle, Joanne Chao, Libby Heckman, and Scott Tipping always asked about how the ma.n.u.script was coming along, even though it must have seemed that I was working on it for an inordinately long time! Thankfully, in various ways, they all reminded me that I was a whole person and not just a researcher or author. Brooke Warner helped me navigate the world of publis.h.i.+ng. Special thanks to Gabriella and Antonio for keeping a smile on my face as I wrote the final stages of this ma.n.u.script.

Two writing groups provided intellectual, emotional, and nutritional sustenance as I wrote this book. The members of Thursday Night Writing Group-Teresa Sharpe, Rita Gaber, and Chris Neidt-not only provided tasty meals but also helped shape the final form of this ma.n.u.script.

Teresa Sharpe's close readings and Google searches for answers to pressing, yet random questions improved both my writing and the writing process.

The D-Group sustained me during my often emotionally trying research, encouraged me as I wrote, and provided much-needed critique at all stages of writing. Members of the D-Group-Natalie Boero, Leslie Bell, and Meg Jay-read draft after draft of various chapters in this ma.n.u.script. Both Leslie and Meg, trained psychotherapists, encouraged me to pay attention to my subjects' emotions and internal conflicts about gender and s.e.xuality. Natalie has the dubious distinction of having read and commented on every version of every chapter in this ma.n.u.script.

Without her insights this book would certainly not be as comprehensive, as engaging, or as insightful.

I'm so happy to thank my partner, Megan Sheppard, for her role in bringing up this book. I can't put here all the ways she made this ma.n.u.script possible. Megan kept me grounded, reminded me that fun and relaxation are important parts of the creative process, and, because of her job as a teacher and mentor to youth much like those at River High, constantly challenged me to think in new ways about my material.

Finally, I'd like to thank the youth at River High for putting up with my constant lurking and questioning. You were all just trying to have a good time in high school, and there I was, sticking my nose in the middle of it. I will be forever inspired by some of you-Ricky, Lacy, Genevieve, Riley, Jessie, Rebeca, Mich.e.l.le, and Valerie. This book is dedicated to you. Thank you for working to make this world a better place for all of us.

CHAPTER one

Making Masculinity

Adolescence, Ident.i.ty, and High School REVENGE OF THE NERDS REVENGE OF THE NERDS Cheering students filled River High's gymnasium. Packed tightly in the bleachers, they sang, hollered, and danced to loud hip-hop music. Over their heads hung banners celebrating fifty years of River High's sports victories. The yearly a.s.sembly in which the student body voted for the most popular senior boy in the school to be crowned Mr. Cougar was under way, featuring six candidates performing a series of skits to earn student votes.

Two candidates, Brent and Greg, both handsome, blond, "all-American" water polo players, entered the stage dressed like "nerds" to perform their skit, "Revenge of the Nerds." They wore matching outfits: yellow b.u.t.ton-down s.h.i.+rts; tight brown pants about five inches too short, with the waistbands pulled up clownishly high by black sus-penders; black shoes with white kneesocks; and thick black-rimmed gla.s.ses held together with white tape. As music played, the boys started dancing, flailing around comically in bad renditions of outdated dance moves like the Running Man and the Roger Rabbit. The crowd roared in laughter when Brent and Greg rubbed their rear ends together in time to the music. Two girls with long straight hair and matching miniskirts 1 2 and black tank tops, presumably the nerds' girlfriends, ran out to dance with Brent and Greg.

Suddenly a group of white male "gangstas" sporting bandannas, baggy pants, sports jerseys, and oversized gold jewelry walked, or, more correctly, gangsta-limped, onto the stage. They proceeded to shove Brent and Greg, who looked at them fearfully and fled the stage without their girlfriends. The gangstas encircled the two girls, then "kidnapped" them by forcing them off the stage. After peering timidly around the corner of the stage, Brent and Greg reentered. The crowd roared as Brent opened his mouth and, in a high-pitched feminine voice, cried, "We have to get our women!"

Soon a girl dressed in a sweat suit and wearing a whistle around her neck carried barbells and weight benches onto the stage. Greg and Brent emerged from behind a screen, having replaced their nerd gear with matching black and white sweat pants and T-s.h.i.+rts. The female coach tossed the barbells around with ease, lifting one with a single hand. The audience hooted in laughter as the nerds struggled to lift even the small-est weight. Brent and Greg continued to work out until they could finally lift the weights. They ran up to the crowd to flex their newfound muscles as the audience cheered. To underscore how strong they had become, Brent and Greg ripped off their pants. The crowd was in hysterics as the boys revealed, not muscled legs, but matching red miniskirts.

At first Greg and Brent looked embarra.s.sed; then they triumphantly dropped the skirts, revealing matching shorts, and the audience cheered.

Brent and Greg ran off stage as stagehands unfurled a large cloth sign reading "Gangstas' Hideout." Some of the gangstas who had kidnapped the girlfriends sat around a table playing poker, while other gangstas gambled with dice. The nerds, who had changed into black suits accented with ties and fedoras, strode confidently into the hideout. They threw the card table in the air, causing the gangstas to jump back as the cards and chips scattered. Looking frightened at the nerds' newfound strength, the gangstas scrambled out of their hideout. After the gangstas had fled, the two miniskirted girlfriends ran up to Brent and Greg, hugging them Making Masculinity / Making Masculinity / 3 3 gratefully. Several African American boys, also dressed in suits and fedoras, ran onto the stage, dancing while the former nerds stood behind them with their arms folded. After the dance, the victorious nerds walked off stage hand in hand with their rescued girlfriends.

I open with this scene to highlight the themes of masculinity I saw during a year and a half of fieldwork at River High School. The Mr. Cougar compet.i.tion clearly illuminates the intersecting dynamics of s.e.xuality, gender, social cla.s.s, race, bodies, and inst.i.tutional practices that const.i.tute adolescent masculinity in this setting. Craig and Brent are transformed from unmasculine nerds who cannot protect their girlfriends into heteros.e.xual, muscular men. This masculinizing process happens through a transformation of bodies, the a.s.sertion of racial privilege, and a shoring up of heteros.e.xuality.

The story line of the skit-Brent and Craig's quest to confirm their heteros.e.xuality by rescuing their girlfriends-posits heteros.e.xuality as central to masculinity. Brent and Craig's inability to protect "their women" marks their physical inadequacy. Their appearance-tight, ill-fitting, outdated clothes-codes them as unmasculine. Their weakness and their high-pitched voices cast them as feminine. Their h.o.m.oerotic dance moves position them as h.o.m.os.e.xual. By working out, the boys shed their weak, effeminate, and possibly h.o.m.os.e.xual ident.i.ties. Just in case they didn't get their message across by bench-pressing heavy weights, the boys shed their last remnants of femininity by ripping off their matching miniskirts. They become so physically imposing that they don't even have to fight the gangstas, who flee in terror at the mere hint of the nerds' strength.

This skit lays bare the ways racialized notions of masculinity may be enacted through s.e.xualized tropes. The gangstas symbolize failed and at the same time wildly successful men in their heteros.e.xual claim on the nerds' women. Their "do-rags," baggy pants, s.h.i.+rts bearing sports team insignias, and limping walks are designed to invoke a hardened inner-city 4 gangsta style, one portrayed on television and in movies, as a specifically black cultural style. In representing black men, the gangstas symbolize hypers.e.xuality and invoke a thinly veiled imagery of the black rapist (A.

Davis 1981), who threatens white men's control over white women. But in the end, the gangstas are vanquished by the white, middle-cla.s.s legit-imacy of the nerds, turned masculine with their newfound strength. The skit also portrays black men as slightly feminized in that they act as cheerleaders and relieve the white heroes of the unmasculine practice of dancing.

Markers of femininity such as high voices and skirts symbolize emasculation when a.s.sociated with male bodies. The girlfriends also signal a relations.h.i.+p between femininity and helplessness, since they are unable to save themselves from the gangstas. However, the female coach symbolizes strength, a sign of masculinity the nerds initially lack. The students in the audience cheer her as she engages in a masculinized practice, lifting weights with ease, and they laugh at the boys who can't do this.

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

Drawing on phenomena at River High such as the Mr. Cougar a.s.sembly, the goal of this study is to explain how teenagers, teachers, and the inst.i.tutional logics of schooling construct adolescent masculinity through id-ioms of s.e.xuality. This book investigates the relations.h.i.+ps between gender and s.e.xuality as embedded in a major socializing inst.i.tution of modern youth: high school. I ask how heteronormative and h.o.m.ophobic discourses, practices, and interactions in an American high school produce masculine ident.i.ties. To examine the construction of masculinity in adolescence, I follow the deployment of, resistance to, and practices surrounding s.e.xuality and gender in high school. I focus on the gender and s.e.xuality practices of students, teachers, and administrators, with an emphasis on school rituals.

5 5 My findings ill.u.s.trate that masculinity is not a h.o.m.ogenous category that any boy possesses by virtue of being male. Rather, masculinity-as const.i.tuted 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. Masculinity, in this sense, is a.s.sociated with, but not reduced or solely equivalent to, the male body. I argue that adolescent masculinity is understood in this setting as a form of dominance usually expressed through s.e.xualized discourses.1 Through extensive fieldwork and interviewing I discovered that, for boys, achieving a masculine ident.i.ty entails the repeated repudiation of the specter of failed masculinity. Boys lay claim to masculine ident.i.ties by lobbing h.o.m.ophobic epithets at one another. They also a.s.sert masculine selves by engaging in heteros.e.xist discussions of girls' bodies and their own s.e.xual experiences. Both of these phenomena intersect with racialized ident.i.ties in that they are organized somewhat differently by and for African American boys and white boys. From what I saw during my research, African American boys were more likely to be punished by school authorities for engaging in these masculinizing practices. Though h.o.m.ophobic taunts and a.s.sertion of heteros.e.xuality sh.o.r.e up a masculine ident.i.ty for boys, the relations.h.i.+p between s.e.xuality and masculinity looks different when masculinity occurs outside male bodies. For girls, challenging heteros.e.xual ident.i.ties often solidifies a more masculine ident.i.ty. These gendering processes are encoded at multiple levels: inst.i.tutional, interactional, and individual.

To explore and theorize these patterns, this book integrates queer theory, feminist theory, and sociological research on masculinities. In this chapter I address the current state of sociological research on masculinity. Then, using feminist theories and theories of s.e.xuality, I rework some of the insights of the sociology of masculinity literature. I conclude by suggesting that close attention to s.e.xuality highlights masculinity as a process rather than a social ident.i.ty a.s.sociated with specific bodies.

6 WHAT DO WE MEAN BY MASCULINITY?.

Sociologists have approached masculinity as a multiplicity of gender practices (regardless of their content) enacted by men whose bodies are a.s.sumed to be biologically male. Early in the twentieth century, when fears of feminization pervaded just about every sphere of social life, psychologists became increasingly concerned with differentiating men from women (Kimmel 1996). As a result, part of the definition of a psychologically "normal" adult came to involve proper adjustment to one's "gender role" (Pleck 1987). Talcott Parsons (1954), the first sociologist to really address masculinity as such, argued that men's "instrumental"

role and women's "expressive" role were central to the functioning of a well-ordered society. Deviations from women's role as maternal caretak-ers or men's role as breadwinners would result in "role strain" and "role compet.i.tion," weakening families and ultimately society.

With the advent of the women's movement, feminist gender theorists examined how power is embedded in these seemingly neutral (not to mention natural) "gender roles" (Hartmann 1976; Jaggar 1983; Rosaldo and Lamphere 1974; Rubin 1984). Psychoa.n.a.lytic feminist theorists explicitly addressed masculinity as an ident.i.ty formation const.i.tuted by inequality. Both Dorothy Dinnerstein (1976) and Nancy Chodorow (1978) argued that masculinity, as we recognize it, is the result of a family system in which women mother. Identification with a mother as the primary caregiver proves much more problematic in the formation of a gender ident.i.ty for a boy than for a girl child, producing a self we understand as masculine characterized by defensive ego boundaries and repudiation of femininity. Feminist psychoa.n.a.lytic theorists equate contemporary masculinity with a quest for autonomy and separation, an approach that influences my own a.n.a.lysis of masculinity.

Recognizing the changes wrought for women by feminist movements, sociologists of masculinity realized that feminism had radical implications for men (Carrigan, Connell, and Lee 1987). Frustrated with the paucity of non-normative approaches to masculinity, and what they 7 7 saw (a bit defensively) as feminist characterizations of masculinity as "un-relieved 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 a.n.a.lysis in which individual men or men collectively were not all framed as equal agents of patriarchal oppression.

The emergent sociology of masculinity became a "critical study of men, their behaviors, practices, values and perspectives" (Whitehead and Barrett 2001, 14). These new sociologists of masculinity positioned themselves in opposition to earlier Parsonian theories of masculinity, proffering, not a single masculine "role," but rather the idea that masculinity is understandable only in a model of "multiple masculinities"

(Connell 1995). Instead of focusing on masculinity as the male role, this model a.s.serts that there are a variety of masculinities, which make sense only in hierarchical and contested relations with one another. R. W.

Connell argues that men enact and embody different configurations of masculinity depending on their positions within a social hierarchy of power. Hegemonic masculinity, Hegemonic masculinity, the type of gender practice that, in a given s.p.a.ce and time, supports gender inequality, is at the top of this hierarchy. the type of gender practice that, in a given s.p.a.ce 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; describes men who benefit from hegemonic masculinity but do not enact it; subordinated masculinity subordinated masculinity describes men who are oppressed by definitions of hegemonic masculinity, primarily gay men; describes men who are oppressed by definitions of hegemonic masculinity, primarily gay men; marginalized masculinity marginalized masculinity describes men who may be positioned powerfully in terms of gender but not in terms of cla.s.s or race. Connell, importantly, emphasizes that the content of these configurations of gender practice is not always and everywhere the same. 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). describes men who may be positioned powerfully in terms of gender but not in terms of cla.s.s or race. Connell, importantly, emphasizes that the content of these configurations of gender practice is not always and everywhere the same. 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).

This model of multiple masculinities has been enormously influential, inspiring countless studies that detail the ways different configurations of masculinity are promoted, challenged, or reinforced in given social situations. This research on how men do masculinity has provided insight into practices of masculinity in a wide range of social inst.i.tutions, such 8 as families (Coltrane 2001), schools (Francis and Skelton 2001; Gilbert 1998; Mac an Ghaill 1996; Parker 1996), the workplace (Connell 1998; Cooper 2000), the media (Craig 1992; Davies 1995), and sports (Curry 2004; Edley and Wetherell 1997; Majors 2001; Messner 2002). This focus on masculinity as what men do has sp.a.w.ned an industry of cataloguing "types" of masculinity: gay, black, Chicano, working cla.s.s, middle cla.s.s, Asian, gay black, gay Chicano, white working cla.s.s, militarized, transnational business, New Man, negotiated, versatile, healthy, toxic, counter, and cool masculinities, among others (Messner 2004b).

While Connell intends this model of masculinities to be understood as fluid and conflictual, the multiple masculinities model is more often used to construct static and reified typologies such as the ones listed by Michael Messner. These descriptions of masculinity are intended to highlight patterns of practice in which structure meets with ident.i.ty and action, but they have the effect of slotting men into masculinity categories: a hegemonic man, a complicit man, a resistant man (or the mul-t.i.tude of ever-increasing types of masculinities catalogued above). While these masculinities may be posited as ideal types, they are sometimes difficult to use a.n.a.lytically without lapsing into a simplistic categorical a.n.a.lysis. Because of the emphasis on masculinities in the plural, a set of types some men can seemingly step in and out of at will, this model runs the risk of collapsing into an a.n.a.lysis of styles of masculinity, thereby deflecting attention from structural inequalities between men and women.

In other words, we must always pay attention to power relations when we think in pluralities and diversities; otherwise we are simply left with a list of differences (Zinn and Dill 1996). Additionally, the category of "hegemonic masculinity" is so rife with contradictions it is small wonder that no man actually embodies it (Donaldson 1993). According to this model both a rich, slim, soft-spoken businessman and a poor, muscular, violent gang member might be described as hegemonically masculine. At the same time neither of them would really be hegemonically masculine, since the businessman would not be physically powerful and the poor gang member would lack claims on inst.i.tutional gendered power. Be- 9 cause of some of these deployment problems, those studying masculinities have for some time called for a more sophisticated a.n.a.lysis of masculinity (Messner 1993; Morgan 1992).

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. Defining masculinity as "what men do" reifies bi-ologized categories of male and female that are problematic and not necessarily discrete categories to begin with (Fausto-Sterling 1995). In the end, masculinity is framed as a social category based on an a.s.sumed biological difference that in itself is const.i.tuted by the very social category it purports to underlie. This is not to say that sociologists of masculinity are biological determinists, but by a.s.suming that the male body is the location of masculinity their theories reify the a.s.sumed biological basis of gender. Recognizing that masculinizing discourses and practices extend beyond male bodies, this book traces the various ways masculinity is produced and manifested in relation to a multiplicity of bodies, s.p.a.ces, and objects. That is, this book looks at masculinity as a variety of practices and discourses that can be mobilized by and applied to both boys and girls.

BRINGING IN s.e.xUA LITY.

Heeding the admonition of Carrigan, Connell, and Lee (1987) that "a.n.a.lysis of masculinity needs to be related as well to other currents in feminism" (64), I turn to interdisciplinary theorizing about the role of s.e.xuality in the construction of gender ident.i.ties. Building on studies of s.e.xuality that demonstrate that s.e.xuality is an organizing principle of social life, this book highlights intersections of masculinizing and s.e.xualizing practices and discourses at River High.

Thinking about s.e.xuality as an organizing principle of social life means that it is not just the property of individuals. s.e.xuality, in this sense, doesn't just indicate a person's s.e.xual ident.i.ty, whether he or she 10 is gay or straight. Rather, s.e.xuality is itself a form of power that exists regardless of an individual's s.e.xual ident.i.ty. Thinking about s.e.xuality this way can be initially quite jarring. After all, usually we discuss s.e.xuality as a personal ident.i.ty or a set of private practices. However, researchers and theorists have increasingly argued that s.e.xuality is a quite public part of social life (Foucault 1990). Though s.e.xuality was initially studied as a set of private acts, and eventually ident.i.ties, by physicians and other medical professionals intent on discerning normal from abnormal s.e.xuality, social theorists are now doc.u.menting the ways inst.i.tutions, ident.i.ties, and discourses interact with, are regulated by, and produce s.e.xual meanings.

In this sense, s.e.xuality s.e.xuality refers to s.e.x acts and s.e.xual ident.i.ties, but it also encompa.s.ses a range of meanings a.s.sociated with these acts and ident.i.ties. The meanings that vary by social cla.s.s, location, and gender ident.i.ty (Mahay, Laumann, and Michaels 2005) may be more important than the acts themselves (Weeks 1996). A good example of this is heteros.e.xuality. While heteros.e.xual desires or ident.i.ties might feel private and personal, contemporary meanings of heteros.e.xuality also confer upon heteros.e.xual individuals all sorts of citizens.h.i.+p rights, so that heteros.e.xuality is not just a private matter but one that links a person to certain state benefits. Similarly contemporary meanings of s.e.xuality, particularly heteros.e.xuality, 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. refers to s.e.x acts and s.e.xual ident.i.ties, but it also encompa.s.ses a range of meanings a.s.sociated with these acts and ident.i.ties. The meanings that vary by social cla.s.s, location, and gender ident.i.ty (Mahay, Laumann, and Michaels 2005) may be more important than the acts themselves (Weeks 1996). A good example of this is heteros.e.xuality. While heteros.e.xual desires or ident.i.ties might feel private and personal, contemporary meanings of heteros.e.xuality also confer upon heteros.e.xual individuals all sorts of citizens.h.i.+p rights, so that heteros.e.xuality is not just a private matter but one that links a person to certain state benefits. Similarly contemporary meanings of s.e.xuality, particularly heteros.e.xuality, 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 s.e.xuality has primarily taken the form of "queer theory." Like sociology, queer theory destabilizes the a.s.sumed naturalness of the social order (Lemert 1996). Queer theory moves the deconstructive project of sociology into new areas by examining much of what sociology sometimes takes for granted: "deviant" s.e.xualities, s.e.xual ident.i.ties, s.e.xual practices, s.e.xual discourses, and s.e.xual norms (Seidman 1996). In making the taken-for-granted explicit, queer theorists examine s.e.xual power as it is embedded in different areas of social life and interrogate areas of the social world not usually seen as s.e.x- 11 uality-such as the ways heteros.e.xuality confers upon an individual a variety of citizens.h.i.+p rights (A. Stein and Plummer 1994). The logic of s.e.xuality not only regulates intimate relations but also infuses social relations and social structures (S. Epstein 1994; Warner 1993).

This book uses queer theory to frame bodies, desires, s.e.xualities, and ident.i.ties in a way that isn't necessarily or solely about the oppression or liberation of the h.o.m.os.e.xual subject but rather about how inst.i.tutional and interactional practices organize s.e.xual life and produce s.e.xual knowledge (Seidman 1996). Queer theory draws on a postmodern approach to studying society that moves beyond traditional categories such as male/female, masculine/feminine, and straight/gay to focus instead on the instability of these categories. That is, we might think of "heteros.e.xual" and "h.o.m.os.e.xual" as stable, opposing, and discrete ident.i.ties, but really they are fraught with internal contradictions (Halley 1993). To this end, queer theory emphasizes multiple ident.i.ties and multiplicity in general. Instead of creating knowledge about categories of s.e.xual ident.i.ty, queer theorists look to see how those categories themselves are created, sustained, and undone.

One of the ways a queer theory approach can bring studies of masculinity in line with other feminist theorizing is to uncouple the male body from definitions of masculinity. The masculinities literature, while attending to very real inequalities between gay and straight men, tends to look at s.e.xuality as inherent in static ident.i.ties attached to male bodies, not as a major organizing principle of social life (S. Epstein 1994; Warner 1993). As part of its deconstructive project, queer theory often points to disjunctures between pairings thought of as natural and inevitable. In doing so queer theorists may implicitly question some of the a.s.sumptions of the multiple masculinities model-specifically the a.s.sumption that masculinity is defined by the bodily practices of boys and men-by placing s.e.xuality at the center of a.n.a.lysis. Eve Sedgwick (1995), one of the few theorists to address the problematic a.s.sumption of the centrality of the male body to academic discussions of masculinity, argues that sometimes masculinity has nothing to do with men and that men 12 don't necessarily have anything to do with masculinity. As a result "it is important to drive a wedge in, early and often and if possible conclu-sively, between the two topics, masculinity and men, whose relation to one another it is so difficult not to presume" (12).

a.s.suming that masculinity is only about men weakens inquiries into masculinity. Therefore it is important to look at masculinizing processes outside the male body, not to catalogue a new type of masculinity, but to identify practices, rituals, and discourses that const.i.tute masculinity.

Doing so indicates the centrality of s.e.xualized meanings to masculinity in relation to both male and female bodies.

Dislodging masculinity from a biological location is a productive way to highlight the social constructedness of masculinity and may even expose a latent s.e.xism within the sociological literature in its a.s.sumption that masculinity, as a powerful social ident.i.ty, is only the domain of men.

Judith Kegan Gardiner (2003) points out in her review of gender and masculinity textbooks "the very different investments that men, including masculinity scholars, appear to have in preserving masculinity as some intelligible and coherent grounding of ident.i.ty in comparison to the skepticism and distance shown by feminists towards femininity"

(153). Indeed, gender scholars who study women have not been nearly as interested in femininity as scholars of men have been in masculinity.

It is not that bodies are unimportant. They are. Bodies are the vehi-cles through which we express gendered selves; they are also the matter through which social norms are made concrete. What is problematic is the unreflexive a.s.sumption of an embodied location for gender that echoes throughout the masculinities literature. Looking at masculinity as discourses and practices that can be mobilized by female bodies under-mines the conflation of masculinity with an embodied state of maleness (Califia 1994; Halberstam 1998; Paechter 2006). Instead, this approach looks at masculinity as a recognizable configuration of gender practices and discourses.

Placing s.e.xuality at the center of a.n.a.lysis highlights the "routinely un-questioned heteronormative expectations and proscriptions that exist as 13 13 background context in contemporary U.S. culture," a.s.sumptions that "emerge when traditional normative gender boundaries are crossed"

(Neilsen, Walden, and Kunkel 2000, 292). Examining these heteronormative structures and how masculine girls and feminine boys challenge them gets at contemporary constructions of masculinity in adolescence.

Studying gender transgressions in adolescence provides empirical evidence to bolster and extend some of the claims of queer theory, an approach that often relies on literary or artistic examples for its data (Gamson and Moon 2004, 49).

RETHINKING MASCULINITY,.

s.e.xUA LITY, AND BODIES.

Attending to s.e.xuality and its centrality to gendered ident.i.ties opens insight into masculinity both as a process (Bederman 1995) and as a field through which power is articulated (Scott 1999) rather than as a never-ending list of configurations of practice enacted by specific bodies. My research indicates that masculinity is an ident.i.ty that respondents think of as related to the male body but as not necessarily specific to the male body.

Interviews with and observations of students at River High indicate that they recognize masculinity as an ident.i.ty expressed through s.e.xual discourses and practices that indicate dominance and control.2 As scholars of gender have demonstrated, gender is accomplished through day-to-day interactions (G. Fine 1989; Hochschild 1989; Thorne 2002; West and Zimmerman 1991). In this sense gender is the "activity of managing situated conduct in light of normative conceptions of att.i.tudes and activities appropriate for one's s.e.x category" (West and Zimmerman 1991, 127). People are supposed to act in ways that line up with their presumed s.e.x. That is, we expect people we think are females to act like women and males to act like men. People hold other people accountable for "doing gender" correctly.

The queer theorist Judith Butler (1999) builds on this interactionist approach to gender, arguing that gender is something people accomplish 14 through "a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being" (43). That is, gender is not just natural, or something one is, but rather something we all produce through our actions. By repeatedly acting "feminine" or "masculine" we actually create those categories. Becoming gendered, becoming masculine or feminine, is a process.

Butler argues that gendered beings are created through processes of repeated invocation and repudiation. People constantly reference or invoke a gendered norm, thus making the norm seem like a timeless truth.

Similarly, people continually repudiate a "const.i.tutive outside" (Butler 1993, 3) in which is contained all that is cast out of a socially recognizable gender category. The "const.i.tutive outside" is inhabited by what she calls "abject ident.i.ties," unrecognizably and unacceptably gendered selves. The interactional accomplishment of gender in a Butlerian model consists, in part, of the continual iteration and repudiation of an abject ident.i.ty. The abject ident.i.ty must be constantly named to remind individuals of its power. Similarly, it must be constantly repudiated by individuals or groups so that they can continually affirm their ident.i.ties as normal and as culturally intelligible. Gender, in this sense, is "const.i.tuted through the force of exclusion and abjection, one which produces a const.i.tutive outside to the subject, an abjected outside, which is, after all, 'inside' the subject as its own founding repudiation" (Butler 1993, 3). This repudiation creates and reaffirms a "threatening specter" (3) of failed gender, the existence of which must be continually repudiated through interactional processes.

Informed by this interactionist approach to gender, in which gender is not just a quality of an individual but the result of interactional processes, this study examines masculinity as s.e.xualized processes of confirmation and repudiation through which individuals demonstrate mastery over others. Building on the insights of the multiple masculinities literature, I emphasize that this definition of masculinity is not universal but local, age limited, and inst.i.tutional and that other definitions of masculinity may be found in different locales and different times. Examining masculinity 15 15 using Butler's theory of interactional accomplishment of gender indicates that the "f.a.g" position is an "abject" position and, as such, is a "threatening specter" const.i.tuting contemporary American adolescent masculinity at River High. Similarly, drawing on Butler's concept of the const.i.tution of gender through "repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame"

elucidates how seemingly "normal" daily interactions of male adolescence are actually ritualized interactions const.i.tuting masculinity. These repeated acts involve demonstrating s.e.xual mastery and the denial of girls'

subjectivity. The school itself sets the groundwork for boys' interactional rituals of repudiation and confirmation, like those ill.u.s.trated in the opening vignette.

Butler also suggests ways to challenge an unequal gender order. Individuals who deliberately engage in gender practices that render them culturally unintelligible, such as practices that are at odds with their apparent s.e.x category, challenge the naturalness and inevitability of a rigid gender order. Some girls at River High engage in precisely this sort of resistance by engaging in masculinizing processes. While challenging an unequal gender order at the level of interactions does not necessarily address larger structural inequalities, it is an important component of social change. That said, doing gender differently by engaging in gender practices not "appropriate" for one's s.e.x category, such as drag, also runs the risk of reifying binary categories of gender. Resistance, in this model, is fraught with danger, since it is both an investment in gender norms and a subversion of them. Sometimes it challenges the gender order and sometimes it seems to bolster it.

METHODOLOGY.

Adolescence as a Social Category Because of the intense ident.i.ty work that occurs during adolescence, it is a particularly fruitful site for illuminating and developing these theoretical issues. In contemporary Western societies the teenage years are often ones in which youths explore and consolidate ident.i.ty (Erikson 1959/1980).

16 The issue of whether adolescence is a universal developmental stage or a creation of modernity has been debated in historical, psychological, and sociological literatures (Suransky 1982; Tait 2000). Regardless of its universal, timeless, localized, or temporal features, adolescence is currently constructed as a time in which teenagers work to create ident.i.ty and make the transition from childhood to adulthood. It is also constructed as a tur-bulent time psychologically, biologically, and socially.

Since the "invention" of the adolescent in the United States in the early twentieth century (Ben-Amos 1995), teen cultures have emerged as a unique cultural formation where varied forms are characterized by gender differentiation and s.e.xuality. In fact, G. Stanley Hall, the psychologist who created and popularized the concept of adolescence, described it as a time when boys engage in masculinizing activities that set them apart from girls (Kimmel 1996). One of the primary ways teen cultures evolved was through heteros.e.xual rituals such as courts.h.i.+p, which became en-shrined and ritualized through the emergence of large public high schools (Modell 1989). Such rituals began with the popularization of the private automobile and continued to be set up as a cultural norm through school yearbooks, school newspapers, and the organization of school activities encouraging heteros.e.xual pairings, such as dances and proms. Given the historical tie between adolescence, s.e.xuality, and gender, it seems a fitting life phase in which to study the formation of gendered ident.i.ties.

Levels of a.n.a.lysis To explore masculinity as a process, I attend to multiple levels of a.n.a.lysis, including individual investments in and experiences of gendered and s.e.xualized ident.i.ties, inst.i.tutional discourses, and collective gender practices.

Social processes can be understood through the experiences of individuals who live them (Chodorow 2000). Social processes and cultural categories are also instantiated at the level of personal meanings, which are created in a "tangle of experience" (Briggs 1998, 2). Although gendered meanings are often contradictory, gender is also experienced and 17 17 talked about as a real and stable category. Gender is personally created, understood, and negotiated through individual biography, fantasy, and projection (Chodorow 1995). To get at individual meanings of masculinity, I pay attention to teens' voices in one-on-one interviews where they discuss the role of masculinity in their lives.

However, looking at masculinity in adolescence without paying attention to larger structural patterns results in overly individualized and psychologized a.n.a.lyses that distort larger issues of inequality. 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 sh.e.l.l 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 a.s.sumption that has been critiqued by gender researchers (American a.s.sociation 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.

To avoid this sort of emphasis on individual and idiosyncratic experiences, I examine relational and inst.i.tutional gender processes, emphasizing how gender happens in groups. Friends.h.i.+ps, peer groups, and cliques are exceedingly important to the formation of ident.i.ty in adolescence (Bettie 2003; Hallinan and Williams 1990; Kinney 1993). 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.

18 At the level of the inst.i.tution, schools are a primary inst.i.tution for ident.i.ty formation, development, and solidification for contemporary American youth. They are important sites for the construction of race, cla.s.s, and gender inequalities as well as pivotal locations of social change in challenging these inequalities (Tyack and Hansot 1990). Social groups in schools, such as cliques, provide one of the ways that youth begin to identify and position themselves by social cla.s.s (Eckert 1989; Willis 1981), gender (AAUW 2001; Adler, Kless, and Adler 1992; Eder, Evans, and Parker 1995; Thorne 1993), and race (Eckert 1989; Eder, Evans, and Parker 1995; Perry 2002; Price 1999). The categories most salient to students have varied historically and regionally-cowboys and preps may be salient in one school, whereas jocks and goths may be organizing groups in another. Furthermore, schools play a part in structuring adolescent selves through the setting up of inst.i.tutional gender orders, or the total-ity of gender arrangements in a given school-including relations of power, labor, emotion, and symbolism (Connell 1996; Heward 1990; Skelton 1996; Spade 2001). This book examines the way gendered and s.e.xualized identifications and the inst.i.tutional ordering of these identifications in a California high school both reinforce and challenge inequality among students.

Research Site I conducted fieldwork at a suburban high school that I call River High.

(Names of places and people have been changed.) River High is a suburban, working-cla.s.s, fifty-year-old high school in a town I call Riverton in north central California. With the exception of median household in-come and racial diversity (both of which are higher than the national average due to Riverton's location in California), the town mirrors national averages in the proportion of those who have attended college, marriage rates, and age distribution. Riverton's approximately one hundred thousand residents are over half white and about a quarter Latino or Hispanic. The rest identify in relatively equal numbers as African American 19 19 or Asian (U.S. Bureau of the Census 2000). It is a moderate to conservative religious community. Most of the churches are Baptist, Pentecostal, Evangelical, or nondenominational. Many residents commute to surrounding cities for work. The major employers in Riverton are the school district, the city itself, medical centers, and large discount retail-ers such as Wal-Mart or Target.

On average Riverton is a middle-cla.s.s community. However, residents are likely to refer to the town as two communities: "Old Riverton" and "New Riverton." A busy highway and railroad tracks bisect the town into these two sections. River High is literally on the "wrong side of the tracks," in Old Riverton. Exiting the freeway and heading north into Old Riverton, one sees a mix of old ranch-style homes, their yards strewn with various car parts, lawn chairs, appliances, and sometimes chickens surrounded by chain-link fences. Old Riverton is visually bounded on the west and east by smoke-puffing factories. While effort has clearly been made to revitalize the downtown, as revealed by recently repainted storefronts, it appears sad and forlorn, with half of its shops sitting empty.

Driving south under the freeway and over a rise, one encounters New Riverton. The streets widen and sidewalks appear. Instead of a backdrop of smokestacks, a forested mountain rises majestically in the background.

Instead of old run-down single-story houses with sheets hanging in the windows for curtains, either side of the street is lined with walled-off new home developments composed of identical stucco two-story homes with perfectly manicured lawns. The teens from these homes attend Hillside High School, the other high school in the Riverton district.

River High looks like many American high schools. It is made up of several one-story buildings connected by open-air walkways, though the students cram into closed hallways to find their lockers in between cla.s.ses. Like many schools unable to afford new buildings to accommo-date their burgeoning student populations, River relies on mobile cla.s.srooms, which are continually encroaching on the basketball courts. It is an open campus where students can come and go as they please, though they can't get far in this suburban community without a car. Many of the 20 students stay on campus to eat and socialize in one of the two main "quads" made up of gra.s.s, concrete, and benches, or in the noisy and overcrowded cafeteria.

Roughly two thousand students attended River High during my time there. Its racial/ethnic breakdown roughly represented California at large: 49 percent white, 28 percent Latino, 10 percent African American, and 6 percent Asian (as compared to California's 59, 32, 7, and 11 percents respectively) (U.S. Bureau of the Census 2000). The students at River High were primarily working cla.s.s, though there were middle-cla.s.s and poor students.3 Lauren Carter, the guidance counselor, described it as an archetypical American high school emphasizing tradition, sports, and community. She ill.u.s.trated this focus by telling me of the centrality of football to the social life of both Riverton and River High. "There's all these old-timers who come out to the football games. Which I think is pretty funny. It's like Iowa. This school could be straight out of Iowa."

The princ.i.p.al, Mr. Hobart, had played on the football team when he had attended River. Lauren told me that Mr. Hobart's career path was a common one: "You go to River. You go to Carrington State for college. You come back to River and teach." She also told me that the historically industry-based economy of Riverton (which had manufactured a variety of chemical, oil, metal, and paper products) was faltering and that con-sequently poverty rates were rising. In fact, only one of the factories that had historically provided jobs for residents was still in operation.