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Assignment 5

In “Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School” by C.J. Pascoe, the author illustrates how the gender and sexuality have been culturally built. The administrators and teachers in River high seems to only have cultural idea of male and female relationship, and they seems like to not want to talk about sexuality. For example, in the first skit, two most popular boys in the school  are dressed as nerd which does not fit them. Then, they showed up with female costume that made a lot of laughter. Moreover, when the female couch lifted the barbells, the audience was cheering. This initially seems like the show is supporting diversity of sex, but it actually illustrates how important to be in the cultural idea of sex because it’s obvious if the two handsome boys dress like girls or the female gym couch lifts the barbell, it must make students feel strange. It implies that boys should be masculine and girls should be feminine. It also makes the students feel like if they are not what people think cool, they will be laughed at. The second example is the teacher Ms. Mac. she had a good reputation in students just because she is so interested in romantic relationship among students. She made a joke about two male and female students being a couple because they are close friends even though they are not dating. However it shows that how she thinks only heterosexual relationships are beautiful and does not think about other students who might not be heterosexual. Further more, by saying that in front of all students, it makes pure high school students think about what they should be. They might think about students, who are not heterosexually attractive, are wired. Moreover, another teacher unbelievably teases a male student about what he said is homosexually.