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Assignment 05

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.