å Sunday, October 1st, 2017

As someone who was once a high schooler, a lot of things mentioned in the book were things that remained quite fresh and relatable. However, hearing the author’s point of view and her take on the meaning behind the traditional rituals of high school was something that never occurred to me in the years I spent in high school. The school administrators definitely had a unique part in creating an environment that allowed superiority over certain aspects of gender and sexuality. Many events that symbolize high school, especially for River High, consist of Homecoming, football games, Winter Ball, Mr. Cougar, and prom, all symbolize the normalization of heterosexuality and the power of masculinity, aspects deemed central in preparation for the upcoming entrance into social life for the senior students (Pascoe, 2007; 39). Mr. Cougar, in particular, is looked upon by the students as a popularity contest, most often targeted towards white boys who are recognized by their peers as being very masculine and strong by partaking in a sports team (Pascoe, 2007; 43). It is hard to imagine what the purpose of such an event is, and why the school would even allow for such a futile event to take place. In hindsight, it may just be the school’s long-standing tradition, yet it singles out certain individuals and reward them with the title of “being the best out of all” in terms of how masculine they are. This forces the students to become someone that is regarded as ideal by society and not particularly someone they want to be. This is exemplified by Huey, a student that Pascoe mentions in her book. Huey is ostracized by his peers because of the way he dress and the way he acts, which falls outside of the theme of masculinity; he is even teased by his teacher for his lacking masculinity (Pascoe, 2007; 36). As a response, he starts to make himself look funny in others so that the other students would laugh at him and regard him as funny, which was, for Huey, better than being ostracized. Social discrimination forces him to act a certain way and give up a part of himself that truly makes him who he is. The school plays a huge part in formulating an environment that allows the growth of certain aspects of gender and sexuality that sets a boundary between the students.

C.J Pascoe discusses how society easily affects topics concerning sexual identity, gender roles, and being able to talk comfortably about these feelings even when they are a large part of a teenagers life. Especially during high school where many students are trying to find themselves and fit in. Teachers and fellow students are imposing roles on people and many times they may not notice or students might follow them in order to fit in. Pascoe initiates the argument of the staff and students affect on gender and sexuality at River High by first informing the us about the skit that the students perform. The skit is about two nerds who are very feminine and are taken advantage of by tough masculine gangsters. The students go through intense training and shed their feminine attributes in order to get their girlfriends back. Throughout the skit since the two boys where first feminine in their dance moves and voices it cause people to laugh at these non gender norms. The nerds also show that they must be masculine in order to be accepted and taken serious. Gender roles are imposed on us since the moment we’re born and if it someone expresses themselves outside of these norms they’re hushed or people may try to “correct” them. Pascoe also tells about the proposal she makes for River High concerning certain interviews she’d like to conduct at the school. Right away the principal told Pascoe that he was concerned about the gender and sexuality questions (Pascoe 28). This shows how students aren’t encouraged to talk about these things because they may make others uncomfortable. Pascoe also includes how one student laughed at the thought of students being questioned about their sexual behavior. Discussions on sexuality is to be avoided at schools and as pascoe says, disruptive.

The student’s idea or understanding of gender and sexuality in River High is shaped much around the environment they were in. The kids there were clearly shown how they should act based of their respective genders, certain action and traits were seen as masculine and some were seen as feminine. CJ really highlights how the school played a huge role in influencing the kids when she brings up Mr.Cougar competition; performances were own shown that really display the qualities a male should have. In one performance, a group of boys loses  their girlfriends to another group of guys and they have to change themselves to get back their girlfriends. The boys that lost their girlfriends in the show were the typical nerdy kid, being skinny, weak, and dorky. A man was suppose to strong, courageous, and able to defend the women in their lives. These kids started to transition and gain the qualities of what the school considers to be fitting for a boy. They grew stronger both physically and mentally eventually winning back their girlfriends. In a sense the play can be viewed as propaganda the school was using to promote their ideas and view on gender role and sexuality. The teachers themselves also play a role in defining gender roles and sexuality in River High, when condoms were being handed out by an third party organization promoting safe sex, the teachers naturally assumed that only the boys were getting the condoms and that engaging in sexual intercourse with the other students. This instant assumption of the boys reveals how the administration sees boys  as they are. The students are simply learning about safe sex and the consequences irresponsible sexual actions could lead to; the staff sees the boys being sexually driven and conducting sexual activities in an unsafe manner. All in all both students and the staff play a significant role in shaping and contributing to the meaning of gender and sexuality.

C.J Pascoe discusses the influences of students, teachers and administrators have on influencing the gender and sexuality norms. She beings Dude You’re a Fag by describing in great detail a skit created by Brent and Greg. Both of the “most popular” senior boys put on a “nerd” persona that obviously did not resemble them. This allowed audience know it was humorous and fine to laugh at them throughout the performance. When the two boys let out a feminine squeal or displayed frustration when lifting barbells- the audience immediately roared with laughter. Notably, when the female coach lifted the barbells with ease the audience rooted and cheered for her. The skit reinforces the idea that boys must be masculine and girls must be feminine. If boys seem feminine or if girls seem masculine the action was instantly seen as comical. The Mr. Cougar assembly was approved by administration indicating that they deemed the skits harmless. Furthermore, River High’s dress code reiterated gender differentiation as they set out different policies for boys and girls. The distinction allowed for boys to show off their midriff and girls could “sag” their pants (Pascoe, 2007: 30). The dress code was reviewed and approved by administration and not a single overseer had thought of the conflicting technicality. Additionally, teachers like Mr.Ford and Mr. Kellogg fed into the notion that boys must act masculine and girls must act feminine. Huey was an outcast who refused to dress like his male peers. He preferred to sport a more unique style that mad him vulnerable to homophobic insults. When Huey flipped Mr. Ford off,  Mr. Ford then further validated their taunts by exclaiming that Huey should be having sexual relations with girls instead of flipping him off. He even added that he is not even sure if Huey knows what that means yet. This was humorous to Mr. Ford and Mr. Kellogg as they strictly believed that heterosexual men should being having sex with girls. These gender norms do not allow for girls to be masculine or boys to be feminine and compel us to believe that femininity and masculinity must coincide with sex. C.J Pascoe highlights that those qualities should be determined by actions not sex.

In the first two chapters of Pascoe’s book, she discusses how student, teachers and administrator contribute to the cultural meaning behind gender and sexuality at River High.  She touches on the subject of masculinity demonstrated throughout the school. She states how the Mr. Cougar competition shows the differences between the dynamics of sexuality, gender, social class, race, and bodies. The idea of gender and sexuality begin to form during childhood and is later develop during the adolescent years. Pascoe states how the theme of masculinity is demonstrated throughout the adolescent phase. Pascoe recalls a skit done at River High where two young boys considered to be “nerds” are transformed from unmasculine males who cannot protect their girlfriends into heterosexual, muscular men. Their outfits automatically branded them as unmasculine as well as their high-pitched voice and their weakness which portray them as feminine. They were viewed as homosexual because of their homoerotic dance moves. In order for them to be seen as masculine they began to workout and changed their appearance. This skit also portrays the girlfriends as being helpless since they are unable to save themselves from the gangstas.  In chapter two Pascoe brings up a good point of how in the United States adults view adolescent sexuality as problematic and disruptive instead of a normal part of life. Adults try to avoid this topic and refuse to talk about it because they don’t want to inspire any sexual behavior of any kind. Pascoe states how the administrator contribute to the cultural meaning of gender and sexuality in how River High dress code emphasized gender differentiation, the dress code prevented both boys and girls from revealing certain body parts but both genders had different prohibitions. Gender differentiation was demonstrated by the different color ropes the students had to wear for graduation, males had to wear black well females wore yellow. Another way in which gender differentiation was shown was how the school had a policy that encourage sexual abstinence and discourage homosexuality, by doing this the school is teaching its kids that heterosexuality is the norm and that being sexual active is a bad thing. It doesn’t allow the student to develop their own gender identity and sexuality because it is teaching them that males should be masculine and female should be femininity.

C.J Pascoe’s Book, “Dude, You’re A Fag” explains how students, teachers and/or administrators contribute to the cultural meanings around gender and sexuality at River High by implementing activities and social orders that are seen as culturally accepted and practiced in a standard ideal society. Social gatherings such as prom and football meetings were used to gather groups of people for a more social setting so people or rather children can be productive by sharing and transferring ideas with one another. In River High the administration rules that follow these social gatherings such as prom would be seen as a progressive measure to ensure that students in their last and final year at the school can make a successful transition into adulthood. This is shown through the yearbook photographs and strict dress code for seniors. Boys were covered up with tuxedos and girls wore an off the shoulder dress with other minor details that showed off cleavage. This would be considered even more evident the emphasis on “sexual differences” because the lower class students, sophomores and juniors, were allowed to wear whatever they wanted to wear. The staff contributed to the cultural meanings around gender and sexuality by disregarding the various kinds of sexual preferences in its yearbook. Under categories of best dressed, best couples, etc were images of heterosexual relationships. This is seen as the ideal image of culture in River High and also places emphasis on the transition to adulthood. The dances that also took place at River High suggested that faculty had a major influence on sexism on these occasions. Promiscuous and vulgar dancing was the most concern for staff in charge of dance, not the music that was being played to students which contained highly graphic and sexual music. Seeing as how this was the seniors final year at River High it was time to transition the students to adulthood by enforcing strict dress policy, filtering pictures that displayed an ideal heterosexual student body and sexist music which also influenced the activity of vulgar heterosexual behavior.

There’s compelling reasons to believe that gender and sexuality are social constructs when reading through this story. Namely in the form of projection. There’s a strong sense of projection going on through the play where the characters portray typical gender norms, where masculinity is grown into and femininity is seen as weak or inferior. This is shown by the boys growing into their voices, and the girls needing to be rescued as per their roles in the play. Though it’s meant to be nothing more than a play, plays are drawn from representation of reality and to a degree parody the writer’s understanding of reality. In this case, the typical gender norms are greatly exaggerated, perhaps to draw emphasis on the roles and even to draw absurdity to them. This isn’t apparent to the people in the play, but it is painfully apparent to the person reading the story, which is the intended goal of the fictional play, I imagine. There’s also the issue of sexual interests. There’s almost a constant display of typical romantic interests involving men and women to such a degree that anything exceeding that is abnormal and frowned upon. Mrs. Mac in particular is a strong proponent of the constant in-your-face shoving of this idea that only men and women can be together. Though this one is a little more difficult to argue, as biologically speaking men and women are supposed to be paired together, the idea that something else can’t exist outside of that is a little absurd, however. And that’s where this constant shoving of the almost obvious starts to become almost comical and perhaps, even an act to repress something else. What I find particularly interesting about this story, though, is how sexually charged the entire thing is. For a High School that’s meant to nurture young minds, there’s this implicit dialogue of sexuality going on between teachers and students that’s quite literally palpable. Which is not unusual, but given how dated their approach to sexuality is, it makes the whole thing very concerning. There isn’t a questioning approach, there’s just a, “This is how things have always been” approach that offers no further dissection as to why things are the way that they are. Which adds, perhaps, to the repressive nature that I am sure is to come later on throughout the story.

C.J. Pascoe opens the first chapter of her book by recalling an skit that was performed at River High School’s Mr. Cougar Assembly. The skit seemed to offer the definition of masculinity accepted by the students and faculty at River High School, which is this idea of being heterosexual and having physical strength. The skit proved that having a high pitch voice and female clothing on the male body was viewed as humorous and emasculating since everyone erupted in laughter. On the other hand, the female gym teacher in the skit lifting weights recieved cheers, as she was showing her masculinity. In Chapter 2, Pascoe says that the curriculum at River High teaches students to follow normative heterosexual practices, discouraging homosexuality. She also explains how the school board had a sort of contradictory idea about sex- education since they don’t want to explicitly teach it because they don’t want students to engage in sexual activities yet they are so interested in the sexual lives of their students. One of the teachers mentioned, Ms. Mac had a great reputation with her students especially because of her curiosity about their romantic relationships. On one particular instance, she teased friends Angela and Jeremy about being couple of the year (Pascoe, 2007: 32). She contributes to the school’s encouragement of heterosexual romantic relations because she took what is a cross-gender friendship and paired Angela and Jeremy up as if they were a couple. She admired this because it pushed the school’s agenda of discouraging homosexuality. To me, this school’s policies are quite disturbing because they are not trying to be inclusive towards all students and they are forcing students to fit in to a certain mold rather than trying to make and educational institution a safe space for everyone. Ms. Mac had also assigned a class project and one of the groups creates the Safer Sex Party and handed out condoms, their reason being to prevent HIV and AIDS. Ms. Mac went around and collected all the condoms, and saying that she could lose her job because of the distribution of them in her class. Pascoe explains that the condom was a cultural object which signified the importance of heterosexual activity to masculine identities (Pascoe, 2007: 34-35). This whole situation was strange and upsetting to me. Ms. Mac was more concerned about losing her job than proud of the fact that her students were being responsible sexual agents, in wanting to practice safe sex. Also, the student distributing the condoms got them from the Planned Parenthood Office which is in the school so the school board is full of contradictions. Why have condoms available if you don’t want students to use them? The school want to push their heterosexual relations agenda onto the students while also keeping the topic of sexuality taboo which makes absolutely no sense.

In her book Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School, C.J. Pascoe illustrates the influences of River High’s students, staff, and administration in regard to ideas centering around gender and sexuality. It is clear that most of the educators of River High are intimidated by and unwilling to participate in meaningful discussions involving sex and sexuality. They are far more concerned with censoring and minimizing these discussions, rather than taking the necessary efforts to ensure that students are informed and are engaging in safe, protected sex. This is evident through the interactions of several teachers and students within their classrooms.

In “Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School”, C.J. Pascoe discusses how students, teachers, and administrators contribute to the cultural meanings around gender and sexuality. She introduced these concepts through a skit that was performed at River High. In this response, I will discuss how administrators in particular contribute to cultural understandings of gender and sexuality, by examining the case of River High.

At River high, administrators were dismissing topics about sexuality due to their belief that other sexualities would disrupt the normal course of life. To promote heteronormative lifestyles, officials created events in which they can enforce this ideology. For example, this behavior on the part of the administrators can be seen through the school dances and competitions. In these events (which tend to have a sexualized environment) students are assumed to attend as heterosexual or “normal” couples. Thus, by endorsing events that promote heterosexual relationships, administrators can eliminate differences in expressions of sexual orientation. In addition to restricting students of different sexual orientation, they promote gender differences and stereotypes. This can be seen with the policies at River High that were made to emphasize differences in between “boys” and “girls” such as, dissimilar dress code requirements. For examples, while all students are expected to cover up certain parts of their skin, female students are expected to cover up their midriff while male students are not.

To conclude, the administrators contributed to the cultural meanings around gender and sexuality by providing the essential support and space, in which they were able to enforce their own rules that restrict different expressions of gender identity and sexual orientation. By utilizing the power that they have as school officials, administrators created a platform where they are able to influence their students into a particular meaning of gender and sexuality.