Dude, You're A Fag Part 6

I see it every day, I don't care, I'm like, whatever, but if I think about it it's different and I feel different, that's the only time I think about it.

But the students often felt that this s.p.a.ce was under threat due to both administrative negligence and peer hara.s.sment. For instance, students expressed fears of being disrupted or attacked by other students.

Genevieve said that she believed that a h.o.m.ophobic student would probably disrupt one of their meetings. During a GSA meeting, Natalia, a white bis.e.xual girl with multicolored hair and baggy pants, shared a nightmare that she had had the previous week. She told the GSA she had dreamt that a bunch of "jocks" had come into a meeting and started "shooting up the place." The other students laughed, but some also commented that they wouldn't be surprised if that happened. The GSA meetings were a safe place and a s.p.a.ce that was constantly under threat.

Even in the context of these h.o.m.ophobic experiences, Genevieve described her school experiences before coming to River High as even more h.o.m.ophobic. She had lived with her mother in Minnesota and her father in Arkansas before moving in with her grandmother in California.

"In Arkansas, whenever people would find out that I was gay, I couldn't walk down the hall without someone being like, 'f.a.ggot,' 'f.u.c.kin' d.y.k.e,'

or whatever." She tried to start a club at her previous high school because "they didn't have any sort of support group or club, but they said no." Before living in Arkansas she had attended school in Minnesota, where stu-144 dents were less vitriolic but generally unsupportive because the town was "hard-core Christian." While she repeatedly noted the h.o.m.ophobia at River High, she said that the presence of the GSA made a big difference.

She described being surprised when she came to River High and found out that "wow, there's a GSA. What's a GSA?" She hastened to tell me that the students at River High "don't like the GSA."

Though other students at River High didn't readily describe the GSA Girls as "girls who act like boys," the GSA Girls themselves often described their own gender practices as masculine. Genevieve dressed masculine, although in a different way than the Basketball Girls. Much to the consternation of her conservative, religious grandmother, her fas.h.i.+on trademark was her ever-present tie.

I don't wear ties around my grandma. She asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I said, "I want a tie." She's like, "You already look like a boy enough." I said, "Grandma, I do not look like a boy. I have b.r.e.a.s.t.s and I don't hide them, and I don't wear big baggy boy clothes." But she's like, "You have those boy s.h.i.+rts."

Genevieve's clothes were form fitting, but they were also masculine. She routinely wore b.u.t.ton-down s.h.i.+rts with pants and ties. She identified these ties as masculine. In the hallway one day she ran up to me and grabbed her tie, excitedly bouncing up and down as she exclaimed, "Look at my masculinity!" then added a little strut as if for emphasis. She did have large b.r.e.a.s.t.s, which seemed a bit at odds with the boy's clothes she wore. She said that she wore the ties because she thought "they're very cute. I feel masculine. I feel bigger and better." Genevieve combined masculine and feminine gender markers in her appearance, wearing typically masculine attire-jeans, b.u.t.ton-down s.h.i.+rts, and ties-while making sure they accentuated her curves.

Genevieve also refused to wear makeup, a key signifier of femininity, and put down girls who did wear it: I hate it when girls can't leave their house without putting makeup on.

I hate that! I went out of my house without makeup on. Just like I feel Look at My Masculinity! / Look at My Masculinity! / 145 145 like wearing a tie. But some girls are like, "I can't leave the house without makeup." Three hours later they're finally coming out.

Genevieve claimed she was not going to wear makeup because "I'm not going to hide who I really am." Makeup, for Genevieve, not only was too feminine but also was a lie about her true self.

Genevieve discursively worked to recast herself as masculine by attributing a phallus to herself (much like Rebeca's claiming a "jock"). She described the boys at River High by saying, "They can suck my c.o.c.k.

They're rude. I'm serious. I just don't like them." By claiming a phallus Genevieve symbolically regendered her body. Importantly, Genevieve claimed a penetrative phallus, much like the boys in chapter 4. Like them she exercised dominance through a s.e.xualized discourse in which she framed herself as a powerful penetrator and the boys as feminized receivers. She turned their language upon themselves by reappropriating it defiantly.

Genevieve, Lacy, and Riley self-consciously played with gender at ritualized school events such as the prom and Winter Ball. For the GSA Girls, these events were not a time for the enactment of normative gender codes but rather a time to challenge gendered norms. Instead of joking about and superficially dismissing feminine dress, the GSA Girls talked about the gendered meanings of clothing. As a result, they invented gender-blending outfits featuring masculine and feminine markers.

When the girls talked about going to Winter Ball, Genevieve and Lacy playfully argued over who was going to wear the dress. Genevieve told me that she wanted to wear a suit to Winter Ball but complained that her grandma would prevent her: "I'd have to sneak because my grandma would be like, 'Nope.' " Lacy told me, at one point in their negotiations, that she was upset because Genevieve wouldn't wear a dress. Lacy said, "I made her try on this black velvet dress and she looked sooo hot! It came down to here and up to here! [motioning down to her chest and up to her thigh]. She finally said she'd wear it if I found her shoes. So now she can just say 'no' to any pair of shoes!" Lacy concluded by sighing in 146 mock frustration, rolling her eyes, and smiling. Both of them smiled at the end of this discussion.

At the dance, Genevieve was in fact quite proud as she ran up to me in this same long black dress, saying "I'm wearing a dress!" When I asked her why she had decided to wear a dress, she pointed at Lacy and said, "'Cause she wanted me to look s.e.xy." She quickly added with pride, as she pointed to the jewelry on her neck, "But I'm still wearing a tie!" Around her neck was a black velvet choker with a prominent cubic zirconia tie in the middle.

Genevieve and Lacy both claimed masculine and feminine attributes in their clothing styles, interactional styles, and interests. While, with her long flowing skirts, Lacy appeared normatively feminine, at times at least she proudly talked about ways she saw herself as masculine. One day, when we were sitting in the drama cla.s.s room, Lacy told me, "My car is my manhood. Ask anyone. Guys talk about d.i.c.k size. I'll talk about my car." She told me that Genevieve teased her about her car obsession: "You're such a butch guy. It's just a car." Like the Basketball Girls, the GSA Girls lightheartedly teased each other about gender maneuvering.

The GSA Girls talked with ease about relations.h.i.+ps among a butch-femme aesthetic, romantic relations.h.i.+ps, and gendered oppression. Romantic relations.h.i.+ps were a frequent topic of conversation during GSA meetings. Talking about their relations.h.i.+ps in this club provided both a forum for personal advice and a place to talk about these relations.h.i.+ps in terms of larger meanings about masculinity and femininity. For instance, during one GSA meeting Ally said, "I think no matter who you date there is always one who is more masculine and one who is more feminine."

Riley responded, I totally don't think that is true! Gender roles suck! When I was dating Jenny sometimes I wanted to wear pants and walk on the outside of the sidewalk. She wouldn't let me. It's weird dating in gender roles if you are not particularly in one. I would wear something and she would be like, "You look too butch. Take that off."

Look at My Masculinity! / 147 147 Talking a.n.a.lytically about "gender roles" was something that really only happened among the GSA Girls and during GSA meetings. This sort of political engagement and social criticism probably elaborated the GSA Girls' vocabulary about complex issues of gender, ident.i.ty, and s.e.xuality.

Not surprisingly, Genevieve found the school not only hostile to her relations.h.i.+p but hostile to any politicization around same-s.e.x relations.h.i.+ps. Genevieve, Lacy, and Riley experienced antagonism from both the students and the administration at River High school in terms of their gendered and s.e.xual identifications. Genevieve hated it "when guys are like, 'Oh, I'm okay with two chicks in bed, but I'm not okay with two guys.'" She saw the boys' seeming acceptance of lesbians as an indication of s.e.xism, not antih.o.m.ophobic att.i.tudes. Genevieve did not see herself as a s.e.xual object for these boys but rather rejected their s.e.xualization of her and her relations.h.i.+p. Conversely, Rebeca's friends talked about guys desiring her as a badge of pride. Unlike Rebeca, Genevieve felt antagonism from the students and the administration at River High school in terms of both her gendered self-presentation and her lesbianism.

Genevieve told me, "I've been getting really dirty looks from that guy, some guy in authority at our school. I don't know what he is. I don't care what he is. All I know is that he looks at me and Lacy really rude."

Interactions between the Basketball Girls and the GSA Girls were rare.

Though the girls of both groups engaged in gender maneuvering, they were at opposite ends of the social hierarchy and had very different political and interactional styles. Often when I was around they would come together in order to talk to me. I sometimes tensed during these interactions, realizing that their different ideologies about gender and politics might conflict and fearing that I would have to mediate. One afternoon their different approaches did appear during an interaction. As the school bell rang Rebeca yelled "It's C. J.!" as she and her girlfriend, Annie, ran up to me. I congratulated them on their three-month anniversary as Lacy and Genevieve walked up holding hands. An uneasy tension hung in the air, since the two groups usually didn't interact with one another. To ease 148 the tension I spoke first. I asked the group if they were planning to attend Winter Ball. Rebeca responded excitedly, "I am! I'm wearing a dress!"

Genevieve piped up, "Me too!" Surprised that after all of her talk about wearing a tux Rebeca planned to wear a dress, I asked her why. "My mom is so gay!" she responded. "She won't let me out of the house in a suit!"

Lacy challenged her, "Why are you calling something you don't like gay?"

Rebeca stated, "I always do that. I always call people I don't like gay." As if unable to continue with this line of discussion, the girls dropped the subject and began to talk about Rebeca's shoes. Lacy's question to Rebeca demonstrated her politicized understanding of s.e.xuality, challenging Rebeca's use of a h.o.m.ophobic epithet. It was as if Rebeca couldn't make the connection between h.o.m.ophobia at River High (which she didn't experience) and her own derogation of the term gay. gay.

The GSA Girls also challenged this casual, daily h.o.m.ophobia at inst.i.tutional events. In chapter 2 I doc.u.mented how River High endorsed heteros.e.xuality and gendered difference through school-sponsored rituals.

The school's resistance to expressions of non-normative feminine ident.i.ties was made clear when National Coming Out Day fell on the same day as homecoming, a day when the school celebrates heteros.e.xual pairings through the Homecoming a.s.sembly and football game (resulting in the GSA Girls' joking references to National Homecoming Out Day). Several of the students from GSA had been busy creating special s.h.i.+rts that read "n.o.body Knows I'm a Lesbian" or "n.o.body Knows I'm Gay" for National Coming Out Day. They wore them proudly to the Homecoming Rally, which, just like the Mr. Cougar Rally, consisted of the six homecoming princesses competing in skits to be voted as that year's homecoming queen. These s.h.i.+rts were planned to contrast sharply with the celebration of heteros.e.xuality that was the Homecoming Rally. As with Mr. Cougar, the weeks leading up to the Homecoming Rally, game, and election were filled with student compet.i.tions, spirit days, and votes for homecoming princesses and queens.

The final skit of the Homecoming Rally, ent.i.tled "All for You," starred Jessica and Angelica, two Latina seniors. Clad in tight jeans and black tank Look at My Masculinity! / Look at My Masculinity! / 149 149 tops, the two princesses began dancing to a popular dance song by Janet Jackson. Their dance moves consisted of repeatedly gyrating their hips in s.e.xually suggestive dance moves. During the song that followed, seven girls, including Jessica and Angelica, each grabbed a boy as Janet Jackson sang, "How many nights I've laid in bed excited over you / I've closed my eyes and thought of us a hundred different ways / I've gotten there so many times I wonder how 'bout you . . . If I was your girl / Oh the things I'd do to you / I'd make you call out my name . . . " The gi rls walked up behind the boys and ran their hands down the front of the boys' bodies.

Then they turned the boys around and made them kneel in front of them so that the boys were face to face with the girls' crotches. The girls took the boys' heads in two hands and moved them around as the girls wiggled their hips in the boys' faces. The dance ended with the boys getting up and the group posing together with Jessica and Angelica lying down in front with one leg jutting into the air, crotches exposed. This skit followed two other skits featuring homecoming princesses performing similar, only slightly less s.e.xually explicit, dances.

After the Homecoming Rally and its celebration of girls' heteros.e.xual availability, Lacy, Genevieve, and Riley ran up to me wearing all black with rainbow pins and belts. Given the GSA's preparations leading up to National Coming Out Day, I was wondering why they weren't wearing their special gay pride T-s.h.i.+rts. I didn't have time to ask where their s.h.i.+rts were as they tumbled over each other, indignantly explaining to me what had happened. Lacy angrily unb.u.t.toned her sweater revealing her black and white "n.o.body Knows I'm a Lesbian" T-s.h.i.+rt, and said, "Mr. Hobart came up to me and said I have to cover this s.h.i.+rt up.

I couldn't wear it!" Riley and Lacy, equally resentful, cried, "He made me take mine off too!" Riley unfolded the s.h.i.+rt she had painted in rainbow colors. Neither of them was wearing a gay pride s.h.i.+rt anymore.

Lacy, incensed, cried, "And look what they can do up there! All grinding against each other and stuff! And I can't wear this s.h.i.+rt!"

When I asked Genevieve later why the girls couldn't wear the s.h.i.+rts, she explained, 150 'Cause this school says that if you are wearing a s.h.i.+rt saying that you're a lesbian that says that you are supposedly having s.e.xual acts with the same s.e.x. I find that stupid, because what if someone was walking around saying, "Hey, I'm a heteros.e.xual," does that mean that you're s.e.xually active? I was very very very angry that day. 'Cause that was the Homecoming a.s.sembly day, my G.o.d! Did you see what those girls were doing?

Not that I was complaining, but I did have a complaint toward the authority of the school. The school will let chicks rub their crotches and shake their a.s.ses in front of all these students in the school. Like nasti-ness, but my girlfriend can't wear a "n.o.body Knows I'm a Lesbian" s.h.i.+rt.

While the princ.i.p.al argued that the problem was not h.o.m.os.e.xuality but s.e.xual activity, the explicitly s.e.xual displays in the homecoming skits seemed to indicate that something more than concern over s.e.xual activity was going on. The girls argued that equality, not s.e.x, was the point of their T-s.h.i.+rt slogans. It seems the school had very little problem with students addressing s.e.x as long as they focused on girls' heteros.e.xual availability. Mr. Hobart had effectively set up a two-tiered system in which explicit expressions of heteros.e.xuality such as sensual dance moves, skits that told stories about heteros.e.xual relations.h.i.+ps, and an entire ritual based on male and female pairings were sanctioned, whereas expressions that challenged such an order, such as T-s.h.i.+rts expressing alternative ident.i.ties, were banned.

By engaging in a variety of gender practices that challenged s.e.xism and h.o.m.ophobia, the GSA Girls actively reconstructed gender. Instead of giving in to a binary gender system and identifying as either male or female, they drew upon a variety of gender markers. They purposefully wore gender-bending clothing. They saw themselves as agents of social change as they challenged school norms about gender and s.e.xuality. Similarly they self-consciously rejected strict gender roles in dating relations.h.i.+ps, moving in and out of feminine and masculine identifications.

Their anger at inequality and injustice was a powerful tool that they expressed through politicized gender maneuvering.

Look at My Masculinity! / 151 151 EMBODYING MASCULINITY.

The non-normative gender activities in which these girls engaged may be considered a form of what Geertz calls "deep play" (1973). Their gender practices reveal larger tensions around gendered inequality, s.e.xualized power, and contemporary American notions of youth. This sort of cross-gendered dressing and behavior is a way of challenging currently held notions of masculinity and femininity as well as challenging the idea that youth are pa.s.sive recipients of socialization rather than active cre-ators of their own social worlds (Thorne 1993). The Basketball Girls, Jessie, and the GSA Girls were recognized by others as masculine because of the way they "did gender" (West and Zimmerman 1991): their clothes, their lingo, the way they held themselves, their romantic relations.h.i.+ps. However, none of them fell into the category of "boy." Rather their gender displays drew on tropes and practices of masculinity in such a way that these girls were categorized as masculine by themselves and others. In this way they destabilized, to a certain extent, the s.e.x/gender binary and the easy a.s.sociation of masculinity with boys and femininity with girls. The girls' gender transgressions opened up s.p.a.ces for social change. As Judith Butler (1993) points out, "doing gender" differently can both reinscribe and challenge the gender order by destabilizing gender norms. This sort of activity challenges the naturalness of the categories of masculinity and femininity by destabilizing the a.s.sociation of these ident.i.ties with specific bodies.

The Basketball Girls, Jessie, and the GSA Girls all engaged in gender resistance, but they did it in different ways. The Basketball Girls' and Jessie's doing of gender both resisted and reinscribed gender norms; the GSA Girls' doing of gender more consistently challenged an unequal gender order in which femininity, to a large extent, was defined by submission and masculinity by dominance. Their different gendered and s.e.xualized practices show that a politicized understanding of gender is central to challenging the gender order.

152 Historically, differences in gender practices in American lesbian communities largely fell along cla.s.s lines: in general, working-cla.s.s lesbians tended to be more invested in dual gender roles and less invested in linking a (largely middle-cla.s.s and white) feminist agenda with their s.e.xual ident.i.ties (Faderman 1991; A. Stein 1997). Although the Basketball Girls and the GSA Girls conformed to this pattern in the two different sets of gender practices that they displayed, they complicated it with respect to their backgrounds. The Basketball Girls tended to have stable working-or middle-cla.s.s families and lived with married parents where either both worked or one was a stay-at-home mother. Conversely, the GSA Girls were from homes where one parent had died and the other was unemployed (Riley), a parent had committed suicide (T-Rex), both parents were absent due to drug use and neglect (Genevieve), or one parent was alcoholic (Lacy). While their economic cla.s.s status might not be that different, the girls were divided between "hard living" and "settled living"

families (Bettie 2003).5 "Settled living" families have predictable, orderly lifestyles with some modic.u.m of job security. "Hard living" families are characterized by less stable employment, marital strife, and, often, drug use. Life for them is not as stable or predictable. In fact, the GSA Girls'

experiences of injustice in their families might have catalyzed their political activism around social inequality.

While all of these girls were aligned with masculinity, they were aligned differently. The Basketball Girls were seen by others as masculine; in fact, other students usually held them up as an example of girls who "acted like boys." The GSA Girls were only occasionally cited by other students as masculine, though they self-consciously discussed themselves as masculine. For the most part the Basketball Girls and Jessie firmly rejected fully feminine identifications-stopping short of changing their names or self-referential p.r.o.nouns. The GSA Girls occupied a more self-consciously ambiguous gendered position, alternately purposely rejecting and embracing markers of femininity and masculinity. Several axes of comparison between the two groups-clothing, dominance, rejection of femininity, and s.e.xuality-provide new Look at My Masculinity! / Look at My Masculinity! / 153 153 ways to think about relations.h.i.+ps between masculinity, femininity, s.e.xuality, and bodies.

All the girls resisted, to different extents, normatively feminine clothing. Rebeca and Jessie wore masculine clothing on a regular basis, except at highly gendered school rituals. Genevieve, however, wore masculine and feminine clothing daily and at highly gendered school events, such as the prom. Her clothes-b.u.t.ton-down s.h.i.+rt, ties, and pants-drew on traditionally masculine styles. However, she wore them tailored in such a way that her form-fitting pants and b.u.t.ton-down s.h.i.+rts accented her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and hips. As a result her clothing displayed a playful ambiguity of gender rather than a strict adherence to a binary gender system.

Genevieve reflected on her clothing choices and took explicit pride in her "masculinity," as she called her tie. Even when she went to highly gendered events such as the prom she took pains to mix gendered attributes, such as wearing her cubic zirconia tie with a slinky velvet dress. Rebeca and Jessie refused explicitly gendered interpretations of their masculine clothes, simply claiming that they wore them because they were comfortable. Others required that they account for their clothing practices (teasing them for their clothing) in ways they wouldn't have if they had actually been boys dressing in the exact same clothes. Though their logic wasn't explicitly feminist, Rebeca's and Jessie's desire to be comfortable was, in itself, a critique of femininity and the confining and oppressive nature of women's clothing.

Both Rebeca and Genevieve routinely denaturalized the s.e.xualized re-ceptivity of a female body by claiming a phallus and positioning themselves as s.e.xualized penetrators rather than receivers of s.e.xual activity.

Rebeca repeatedly disavowed a feminine body by saying that she had girls on her "jock" and arguing that she had "muscles" instead of b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She also made sure that her girlfriend did did have "b.o.o.bs" and not muscles. have "b.o.o.bs" and not muscles.

Genevieve also claimed a phallus, but she did so only to insult boys she saw as h.o.m.ophobic or s.e.xist. She actually sounded like boys in the River High weight room who talked in lewd terms about their s.e.xual adventures with girls. Genevieve used masculine, penetrative insults ironically 154 (if they had come from a boy she probably would have considered them h.o.m.ophobic or s.e.xist) and turned them back upon the boys much as gay activists have reappropriated the word queer queer in their rhetoric. in their rhetoric.

The Basketball Girls and Jessie also partic.i.p.ated in organized sports, a practice a.s.sociated with boys, masculinity, and dominance (Adams and Bettis 2003; Edley and Wetherell 1997; Griffin 1995; Heywood and Dworkin 2003; Parker 1996; Shakib 2003; Theberge 2000). These girls were able to experience their bodies as agentic and powerful, much as boys might experience their bodies, because of their partic.i.p.ation in sports. Their bodies weren't just objects to be ogled but active and powerful. Thus their sports partic.i.p.ation, in large part, may have provided them with a different sense of their bodies than other teenage girls had.

The Basketball Girls', Jessie's, and the GSA Girls' different experiences of school status and different perceptions of the River High administration's h.o.m.ophobia lay in their collective levels of politicization (or lack thereof ) about their s.e.xuality and gender presentation as well as their ability to redefine themselves as actors in their social worlds. While none were strangers to the disciplinary system, they seemed to get in trouble for two very different reasons. The Basketball Girls got in trouble because they acted like boys. They were loud and disruptive and flouted basic school rules and teachers' authority. While they drew on hip-hop styles a.s.sociated with African American males, they didn't embody this racialized or s.e.xed status, so their "cool pose" was less of an actual threat.

The GSA Girls, in contrast, were punished for opposing the school in a more subtle and politicized way that revealed the embedded s.e.xism and h.o.m.ophobia embodied in the school's day-to-day activities. Their distinctive ability to connect h.o.m.ophobia and s.e.xism landed them in a different place in the school system than that occupied by Jessie and the Basketball Girls. At homecoming, the GSA Girls directly confronted the school's heteros.e.xism during one of its most heteros.e.xual rituals. The Basketball Girls and Jessie, on the other hand, partic.i.p.ated wholeheart-edly in various school rituals, and the Basketball Girls actively mocked Look at My Masculinity! / Look at My Masculinity! / 155 155 National Coming Out Day and used the word gay gay as a pejorative on a regular basis. as a pejorative on a regular basis.

A close examination of the girls who challenged gender conventions in interaction and personal style demonstrates that theorists of masculinity need to take seriously the idea of female masculinity because it ill.u.s.trates masculinity as practices enacted by both male and female bodies instead of as the domain of men. However, to look at girls who "act like boys" only as a challenge to a binary gender system is to miss the complex and contradictory ways gendered and s.e.xualized power operates. A variety of masculinity practices enacted by these girls seemed to combat the equation of male bodies and masculinity on several fronts.

The Basketball Girls and Jessie garnered students' respect, notice, and admiration for bucking gender expectations. However, their gender practices sometimes came at the cost of dignity for normatively gendered girls as they engaged in dominance practices of fighting and objectifying girls that sometimes looked like boys' masculinity practices. The GSA Girls provided a coherent and sustained critique of the relations.h.i.+p between gender oppression and h.o.m.ophobia through their activism and gendered practices. That said, they didn't have the social power of the Basketball Girls and Jessie to call attention to this political critique of gender and s.e.xual norms at River High. So it seems that, taken as a whole, their varieties of gender maneuvering all called attention, in the world of River High, to the fact that masculinity cannot be easily equated solely with male bodies.

CHAPTER six

Conclusion Thinking about Schooling, Gender, and s.e.xuality Walking through the bustling hallways at River High, watching letterman jacketclad students rush past, and listening to the morning announcements, I often felt as if I had stepped into a filmic representation of the archetypal American high school. Teachers, students, and administrators let me know I wasn't alone in this perception of River High, as they spoke proudly of "tradition" and "Cougar Pride." They demonstrated this pride through their energetic investments in school rituals of homecoming, Mr. Cougar, prom, sports games, and a.s.semblies. This sense of normality rendered River High a particularly helpful case with which to think through contemporary constructions of masculinity, s.e.xuality, and inequality.

Up until this point, I realize, the story of masculinity at River High must seem quite grim. Many of the behaviors students recognized as masculine were s.e.xist and h.o.m.ophobic and at best generally involved insulting others. In this concluding chapter I recap central themes in my a.n.a.lysis of masculinity at River High. I also return to the theories of gender and s.e.xuality I set out at the beginning of the book, adding to and reworking them to better account for the masculinity processes I observed.

156.

Conclusion / 157 157 I conclude by looking at activism around issues of s.e.xuality and gender in high school and suggesting avenues for social change.

MASCULINITY AT RIVER HIGH.

Repudiation Rituals As psychoa.n.a.lytic theorists of gender ident.i.ty have pointed out, processes of repudiation are central to a masculine sense of self (Butler 1995; Chodorow 1978; Dinnerstein 1976). Through school ceremonies, engagement with pedagogy, and interactional rituals, boys at River continually repudiated femininity, weakness, and, most importantly, the specter of the "f.a.g." Such repudiations were alternatively, and often simultaneously, funny, as in the Mr. Cougar skit when Brent and Greg finally shed their fire-engine-red miniskirts, and earnestly serious, as when Pablo called Mitch a f.a.g for merely inquiring about male dancers. f.a.gs, for all that boys defined them as powerless, weak, and unmanly, seemed to wield an immense amount of power. A f.a.g is profoundly unmasculine, yet possesses the ability to penetrate and thus render any boy unmasculine. More than femininity, more than powerlessness, more than childhood, the abject nature of the specter of the f.a.g required constant, vigi-lant, earnest repudiation. These repudiations const.i.tuted, in large part, boys' daily relations.h.i.+ps and communication rituals. Their humor, in particular, depended on continual joking about f.a.gs, imitation of f.a.gs, and transformation of one another into f.a.gs. The aggressiveness of this sort of humor cemented publicly masculine ident.i.ties as boys collectively battled a terrifying, destructive, and simultaneously powerless Other, while each boy was, at the same time, potentially vulnerable to being positioned as this Other.1 Boys' repudiatory interaction rituals didn't occur in a vacuum. School ceremonies and authorities encouraged, engaged in, and reproduced the centrality of repudiation processes to adolescent masculinity. Mocking the unmasculine was central to school rituals such as Mr. Cougar. Boys ripped off skirts, transforming themselves from nerds to real men, and 158 mocked their weaker, feminized rivals in sporting compet.i.tions. The administration not only approved of but also awarded trophies to the winners of these skits, thus cementing these refutations as synonymous with popularity, dominance, and masculinity. Similar masculinity processes happened in the cla.s.sroom; teachers engaged in or at least tacitly approved of these repudiations by ignoring students' comments, and sometimes, as with Mr. Kellogg or Mr. McNally, teachers engaged in these processes of repudiation themselves.

Confirmation Rituals In addition to rituals of repudiation, masculinity processes at River High included interactional and inst.i.tutional rituals of confirmation. Through engaging in rituals of s.e.xualized dominance, boys invested in and reproduced meanings of masculinity as heteros.e.xual and agentic. Like processes of repudiation, confirmation processes were embedded in school ceremonies. Mr. Cougar skits centered on the ability of boys to "get girls," linking male popularity with control of girls' bodies and desires. In cla.s.srooms teachers garnered the favor of male students by drawing upon relations.h.i.+ps between masculinity, heteros.e.xuality, and s.e.xual activity. For instance, Mrs. Mac a.s.sumed that only boys and not girls would be interested in absconding with the condoms after the safer-s.e.x presentation. Teachers ignored dangerous forms of these confirmation processes when boys' s.e.x talk took the form of blatant s.e.xual hara.s.sment. In fact, I never heard a faculty member reprimand a boy for the sometimes offensive (and often nonsensical) ways they spoke about girls'

bodies. Indeed, this type of symbolic violence permeated boys' discussions about girls.

In public s.p.a.ces (though not necessarily when alone with their girlfriends, or even in one-on-one interviews with me),2 boys repeatedly engaged in heteros.e.xual discourses not so much to express desire, longing, or pleasure as to indicate that they could control girls' bodies. They "got girls" in ways that ranged from the seemingly benign to the, quite Conclusion / Conclusion / 159 159 frankly, violent and dangerous. Having a girlfriend seems like a normal and mostly harmless teenage rite of pa.s.sage. But in the context of the public interaction between heteros.e.xuality and masculinity, having girlfriends becomes, in part, a form of "getting girls" through discursive violence and physical force in which having a girlfriend confirms some sort of baseline heteros.e.xuality.

Certainly this does not mean that boys don't have girlfriends for whom they care deeply. Even Chad, the exemplar of masculinity at River High, told me, at length, during our interview, about how much he loved his girlfriend. Possessing intense emotions for one's girlfriend doesn't negate the fact that this same girlfriend may also serve as a masculinity resource, bolstering a boy's claim on heteros.e.xuality. In public contexts, which is where manifestations of compulsive heteros.e.xuality occur, boys tended to close off, hide, or otherwise deny emotional attachments to girls. Instead, many boys physically and verbally hara.s.sed girls s.e.xually.

Under the guise of flirting they manipulated girls' bodies by throwing them around and engaging in games of "uncle" in which girls squealed submissively in order for the "game" to end. While their private interactions with girls or even with each other might involve tender discussions of desire and emotion, public s.e.x talk didn't indicate desire; instead it highlighted boys' control over girls' bodies. These rituals of mythic storytelling included boys' stories about the crazy things they could make girls' bodies do-fart, p.o.o.p, o.r.g.a.s.m, or bleed. These stories were simultaneously information-sharing ventures and masculinity processes. In talking about and interacting with girls this way, boys invested in and reproduced meanings of masculinity characterized and const.i.tuted by eroticized male dominance and s.e.xualized female submission.

Race These processes of confirmation and repudiation were characterized by racialized meanings and, more importantly, are ways of reproducing a gendered racial inequality. The findings in this book echo other research on 160 masculinity indicating that masculinity varies with race and is const.i.tuted by and const.i.tutes racialized meanings (Almaguer 1991; Bucholtz 1999; Fine et al. 1997; Kelley 2004; Majors 2001; Mercer 1994; Riggs 1991; Ross 1998; Zinn 1998). Indeed, racial and gendered meanings often cannot be understood if they are decoupled (Combahee River Collective 1981; Collins 1990; V. Smith 1994; Zinn and Dill 1996). Like many Americans, students at River High understood race primarily in terms of whiteness and blackness.3 While several of the students I observed and interviewed listed a number of racial/ethnic backgrounds-German, Puerto Rican, Hispanic, Chinese, El Salvadorian, Filipino, Irish, and Mexican, for instance- most regularly identified themselves and others as either white or black.

Research indicates that schools treat African American boys differently from white boys ( J. Davis 1999; Ferguson 2000; Majors 2001). I saw several instances at River High in which school officials punished African American boys for behaviors that were expected of white boys.

In part, the economic positionings of many of the African American boys at River rendered them more vulnerable to school surveillance. As Darnell pointed out to me, many African American youth at River didn't have cars, so they couldn't leave campus with the ease of white students.

Thus they were rarely outside the purview of school authorities. Since many of them used relatives' addresses to attend River rather than the nearby Chicago High School, they suffered worse consequences for punishments due to the threat of expulsion. As a result, when they were singled out by school authorities, the threat of "deportation" to the "bad"

school frequently loomed.

While African American boys didn't engage nearly as often in the f.a.g discourse as did white boys, they seemed to suffer more for it, as when Kevin was suspended for accusing the wrestling team of wearing "f.a.ggot outfits." Similarly African American boys' enactments of compulsive heteros.e.xuality were watched more closely as school authorities regulated when and how they could touch girls during the dance show. Finally, s.e.xualized insults such as f.a.g f.a.g took on different meanings among African American boys at River. It was not that these boys were more progres-Conclusion / 161 took on different meanings among African American boys at River. It was not that these boys were more progres-Conclusion / 161 sive, but, because of a different cultural history and reliance on symbolic power as a result of their lack of inst.i.tutional power, they didn't call each other f.a.gs for engaging in several activities considered unmasculine by white boys, such as dancing, touching, or caring about clothing. African American boys' relations.h.i.+ps with the f.a.g discourse and compulsive heteros.e.xuality reflected their positioning in American society as simultaneously hypers.e.xual, dangerous men and utterly failed men (Ross 1998).

They were regarded as s.e.xually threatening to other girls and white boys at River; at the same time they were structurally less powerful and rendered vulnerable by their lack of inst.i.tutional and economic resources.

h.o.m.ophobia Even though the f.a.g discourse is and isn't about h.o.m.ophobia, River High as an inst.i.tution was deeply h.o.m.ophobic. h.o.m.ophobia took the form of blatant antigay practices and, more commonly, the staging of taken-for-granted heteronormative school ceremonies and traditions.

Rallies, yearbook photos, graduation, and dances all celebrated heteros.e.xual gender difference, encoding inequality in what Judith Butler (1993) calls the "heteros.e.xual matrix." In this ferociously heteronormative context GSA members had to struggle to get their club approved and have it recognized in school announcements. Several gay pride events, such as the Day of Silence and the celebration of National Coming Out Day, were barred from the campus. The school authorities didn't protect the most vulnerable gay students, such as Ricky, who was teased, taunted, and eventually threatened out of the school. Indeed, I felt the h.o.m.ophobia so strongly that I took my gay pride sticker off my car while I researched at River High.

Girls' Gender Strategies Girls at River High adopted a variety of "gender strategies"4 (Hochschild 1989) to deal with the masculinity processes of repudiation (the f.a.g dis-162 course) and confirmation (compulsory heteros.e.xuality) in which they were frequently used as masculinity resources-capitulation, subversion, and criticism. Girls' popularity, for the most part, depended on successfully navigating masculine approval mechanisms. They received admiration and popularity by confirming heteros.e.xualized gender ident.i.ties encouraged by school rituals and traditions. Through this sort of capitulation girls traded their own subjectivity for boys' point of view. They giggled and laughed as boys made seemingly offensive comments about their looks, their bodies, and their s.e.xuality. Like other teenage girls, girls at River focused on boys' s.e.xual desire and practices, not their own (Tolman 2005).

Some girls adopted a seemingly subversive approach by engaging in masculinity processes themselves. Rebeca and Jessie were able to escape, to a certain extent, the objectification and dehumanization to which many of the girls at River were subjected. They successfully embodied masculinity themselves by dominating others, dressing like boys, competing like boys, fighting like boys, and dating girls as heteros.e.xual boys did. They were able to draw upon the "cool pose" (Majors 2001) frequently embodied by African American boys identified with hip-hop culture. This embodiment of masculinity, combined with their extroversion and good looks, seemed to have allowed them to avoid being used as resources in masculinity processes.

Other girls also developed a variety of systemic and spontaneous "gender strategies" that allowed them to contest boys' treatment of them and other girls. Most girls who did this deployed a sort of off-the-cuff feminism that labeled individual boys as jerks for their practices of compulsive heteros.e.xuality. The GSA Girls adopted a more systemic approach, linking s.e.xism to issues of h.o.m.ophobia. In their daily interactions with each other, with boys, and with the school administration, the GSA girls bravely confronted s.e.xism by holding poster campaigns and days of activism, celebrating non-normative gender practices, and hap-pily identifying as gay.

Conclusion / 163 163 THEORETICA L IMPLICATIONS.

As I wrote earlier, these findings look pretty bleak. I have detailed the ways boys tortured girls and each other through a barrage of s.e.xualized insults and the ways the school structure itself undergirded such interactions. However, within the rampant hara.s.sment and teasing present at River High, I saw several points of entry for thinking about alternative interactions, rituals, and gendered ways of being-political action, parody, and play. I use the term play play to indicate serious play, like Thorne's (1993) notion of "gender play" or Geertz's (1973) concept of "deep play." Play, in this sense, is not just about fun but is a way of constructing the social world. The theme of play has lurked throughout the book but up until now has remained relatively latent. I found especially illuminating three key instances of gender play and parody at River: Brent and Craig's "Revenge of the Nerds" Mr. Cougar skit, the play of the boys acting in to indicate serious play, like Thorne's (1993) notion of "gender play" or Geertz's (1973) concept of "deep play." Play, in this sense, is not just about fun but is a way of constructing the social world. The theme of play has lurked throughout the book but up until now has remained relatively latent. I found especially illuminating three key instances of gender play and parody at River: Brent and Craig's "Revenge of the Nerds" Mr. Cougar skit, the play of the boys acting in Carousel, Carousel, and the practices of the GSA Girls. and the practices of the GSA Girls.

Brent and Craig opened this book with their award-winning Mr.

Cougar skit, "Revenge of the Nerds." In this miniplay Brent and Greg transformed themselves, with the help of a female personal trainer, from effeminate nerds into muscular, virile men. Through this transformation, which encouraged students to laugh at their effeminate performances and cheer at their dominance over girls and poor men of color, Brent and Craig drew on and reinforced meanings of masculinity through s.e.xualized dominance. While this skit (like the other Mr. Cougar skits) was an example of gender play and parody in which boys imitated masculinity and femininity, their imitations reinforced prevailing notions of gender ident.i.ties. They parodied, not dominant gender ident.i.ties, but the "abject," engaging the student audience in their ritualized repudiations. This sort of "deep play" and parody does not challenge dominant meanings of gender, race, and cla.s.s but rather reflects and reinforces them.

The boys in Carousel, Carousel, while commissioned to perform similarly masculine men, parodied dominant meanings of masculinity. Instead of insulting one another, putting down girls, or trying to establish some sort 164 / while commissioned to perform similarly masculine men, parodied dominant meanings of masculinity. Instead of insulting one another, putting down girls, or trying to establish some sort 164 of masculine dominance, these boys moved between a hypermasculinity and an abjected ident.i.ty, laughing, singing, and dancing. They danced, pirouetted, and squealed but at the same time got to act like tough, swaggering sailors. These masculine and feminine practices did not cohere in one gendered ident.i.ty. Rather, the boys combined gender markers and practices to create fluid and playful selves. Their parody of sailors indicated that masculinity and unmasculinity could exist concurrently. The boys drew alternatively and simultaneously from both masculine and feminine iconography and bodily comportments. This sort of parody highlights the importance of inst.i.tutional s.p.a.ces for such gender play. It was precisely the inst.i.tutional s.p.a.ce of the drama performance, not the football field or the social science cla.s.sroom, that allowed these boys to explore and play with alternative ident.i.ties. Playing with gender through parody in this way can challenge the way gendered power inheres in masculine and feminine ident.i.ties (Richardson 1996).

The GSA Girls, as I highlighted in the previous chapter, exhibited the most politically coherent and stable form of gender play, parody, and political activism through their serious critique of gender s.e.xual norms.

They continually mixed gendered symbols and bodily practices, backing up these performances with a sense of social justice through which they confronted both s.e.xism and h.o.m.ophobia. They cleverly embodied masculine positionings by turning masculinized insults back upon boys. By mixing gendered symbols, bodily comportments, and discourses, these girls called into question the opposition and even the usefulness of the categories of masculinity and femininity. Their gender was, as Sedgwick (1995) puts it, "orthogonal." Their masculinity and femininity were not ends of the same axis but rather occupied different axes, so that they could mix all sorts of gendered imagery and practices.

As these examples indicate, playing with gender and performative gender transgression are not progressive acts in and of themselves ( Jackson 1996). Boys who dress up as girls on Halloween (as many of them do) don't challenge the gender order. Rather, they highlight exactly how much they are not not girls. Craig and Brent used repudiatory parody and girls. Craig and Brent used repudiatory parody and Conclusion / Conclusion / 165 165 play to highlight the extent to which they were not not f.a.gs or unmasculine. f.a.gs or unmasculine.

The Basketball Girls' form of gender play both reworked notions of masculinity as inherent in male bodies and reinscribed notions of masculinity as dominance. Play and parody can be progressive when they open up opportunities for alternative gender expressions and gender fluidity.

Brady and the rest of the boys in the drama performance moved in and out of typically masculine positions, mocking ideas of masculinity as dominant while also embodying it without repudiating the specter of the f.a.g. They enacted seemingly contradictory gender positions simultaneously. It is important to note that Graham and Heath (who had celebrated getting a kiss from a girl during a ritual of "getting girls") were both involved in drama productions and when in those s.p.a.ces did not engage in the f.a.g discourse or compulsive heteros.e.xuality in the same way.

In this sense, looking at the same boys in a variety of public s.p.a.ces is important to understanding masculinity processes. The GSA Girls simultaneously occupied multiple gender positions, mixing both masculine and feminine styles. These sorts of gender play and parody emphasize fluidity and change while highlighting gender and s.e.xuality as vectors of power and inequality.

Contemporary queer theorists and poststructural theorists see the concept of play (Lugones 1990) as central to social change. Identifying places and practices in which youth can try on different ident.i.ties, explore varieties of gender practices, and mix them up opens possibilities for social change through a proliferation of gender ident.i.ties, instead of locking girls and boys into strict gender ident.i.ty practices that match up with their presumed genitalia. Theater as a symbolic and metaphorical s.p.a.ce is important in this sense. It is a place where it is okay and even required to try on different characters. Boys and girls can step into and out of ident.i.ties at will and in a less threatening way because they are "just acting." In this sense, playing with gender is an answer. But it is not the the answer because masculinity and femininity are not arbitrary categories; rather, they are ident.i.ties required of individuals. As I've shown throughout this book, they are the very ident.i.ties that reinforce inequality ( Jef-166 / answer because masculinity and femininity are not arbitrary categories; rather, they are ident.i.ties required of individuals. As I've shown throughout this book, they are the very ident.i.ties that reinforce inequality ( Jef-166 freys 1998). Thus there are limits to parody, play, and doing gender differently, and, as a result, play, even serious play, is not enough. It needs to be accompanied and undergirded by inst.i.tutional change.

Looking at gender as "deep play" builds on the argument I laid out at the beginning of the book that masculinity isn't so much about men as about processes and practices we a.s.sociate with male bodies. I argued that many theorists of masculinity were so invested in the centrality of the male body to definitions of masculinity that they sometimes missed the ways masculinity was created through s.e.xualized processes among both boys and girls. By listening to what the students at River actually called masculinity and by thinking about masculinity as a process, in addition to looking at masculinity as the property of those with male bodies, I have shown how, in the world of River High, masculinity was defined as s.e.xualized and publicly enacted dominance. This is not to say that youth at River didn't define masculinity as a description of boys' att.i.tudes, behaviors, and interactional styles. They did. But they also defined masculinity as a publicly enacted interactional style that demonstrated heteros.e.xuality and dominance while at the same time repudiating and mocking weakness, usually represented by femininity or the f.a.g.

By attending to students' multiple definitions of masculinity (both as what boys do and as a description of a specific public interactional style), this a.n.a.lysis builds upon the "multiple masculinities" model. Theorists of masculinity have been helpful in identifying how masculinity is multiple-how different men enact different configurations of masculinity.

What the interactional rituals of youth at River High indicate is that these students saw a constellation of behaviors, whether the actor was a boy or a girl, as masculine. Thus it is important to attend to the manipulation, deployment, and enactment of varieties of masculinity, not just as what men do, but as how respondents recognize it. Looking at masculinity this way differentiates studies of masculinity from studies of men and brings these studies of masculinity in line with feminist studies of gender. As such, the a.n.a.lysis of masculinity is moved from an endless categorization of masculinity (which is really more about categories of men) Conclusion / Conclusion / 167 167 into a study of the creation of gendered selves and resistance to normative gender ident.i.ties. Looking at masculinity this way helps integrate the masculinity literature with feminist theory and its focus on inequality and social change.