å Saturday, September 30th, 2017

As Pascoe discusses in her book, the ideations of gender and sexuality begins forming during childhood, and is further explored during the adolescent years. When students enter high school, a highly sexual place full of raging hormones, new feelings of self-discovery begin at a rapid speed and it is during the school environment when teens are most impressionable. The beginning Mr. Cougar contest was an example of how gender lines are drawn by our peers within our society. Excluding girls from the competition, gives the feeling that there is no mutual respect for the girls in the school. Having their Mom’s escort them, demonstrates a machismo attitude where the boys are seen as men of the house, and are cared for and given away by women (Pascoe, 26) It is during the second chapter that the most examples of fear, division, bias, and hate occur. One of the parts I found to be most disgusting was when the art teacher jokes with the auto shop teacher about the student flipping him the bird. Telling him that he should be fucking girls and not giving him the finger was childish and ignorant (Pascoe, 37). It felt to me as though the art teacher was asserting his own masculinity towards the auto shop teacher, by showing him he can be “one of the guys”, with his locker room banter. It makes me believe that he probably speaks about the girls in the school the same manner. I am surprised that Pascoe failed to speak up to the derogatory comments made by the art teacher, I would not have been able to hold myself back from letting him know how his comments are not appropriate for a teacher, who is supposed to be a positive role model. The popular social science teacher Ms. Mac missed the mark, by not turning the awkward and debatable condom subject, into a positive learning experience about sexual conduct. Instead she fell into her feminine role, shying away from talking about sex or anything related to it, because that is not what nice girls do. She had a great opportunity, to use her popularity as way to reach the students, to teach them about the risks involved, as a matter of fact she should have just let Arturo teach them because he seemed to have a better way of handling it. This experience, along with the inappropriately named Man Party, the political club designed by the students which basically made a mockery of women’s rights, and River High School’s White Heritage clubs are disturbing examples of how uneducated people are imposing negativity and social division, regarding gender and identity

Gender and sexuality at River High is mostly shaped by the environment to which students are exposed to. C.J. Pascoe claims how students begin to explore their identity through sexual conversations and activities. The interactions adolescents have everyday structures their actions accordingly to a fall under a category of gender. She uses various examples to show how the system employed in the River High molds the gender and sexuality of their students. One of the scenarios she mentions is when they are performing in the Mr.Cougar competition. The response from the audience is key to the outcome of the competition and molding of gender. When the behavior of the student seem too feminine or too masculine the crowd will cheer or laugh. This shows that the gender is categorized by the way their voice sounded, or the body movements they made that somehow fulfill the expectations of the audience. Also, teachers played a role in the formation of the gender and sexuality of the students. When the principal places a dress code for the students it creates a form of inequality and a division between gender. There were times when teachers made jokes about sexuality to their students to address the topic but at the same time not being open to the students views on sexualitty. Mr.McNally was the only teacher that freely explained his students about classifying gender. However, he continue to joke about another student physical appearance looking too feminine. His interactions with the student vary but it created an environment where students were able to create their own definition of themselves.  Furthermore, the comments teachers made based on their experiences in the dances showed how they somehow allowed the students to dance how they wanted. But before the dance students were given the dance rules. Limitations were constantly made by the teachers but students always behaved expressing their own identity. There are various environment by which gender is defined based on each individual own persperctive.