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

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