5 Assignment 05

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.

The author’s field work at River High exemplifies the ways our understandings of gender and sexuality are culturally constructed. Pascoe gives multiple examples of the ways administrators act as both regulators and facilitators of the creation of sexual identities and genders. One of her first examples is the Mr. Cougar competition where male students put on a skit and take part in a ceremonial event that Pascoe explains as a sort of coming of age ceremony. In the skit the boys are transformed, through the acquisition of physical strength, from weak nerds who can’t protect their girlfriends to strong macho men who act as saviors of damsels in distress. This skit enforced various ides about gender and sexuality. First, it centered successful heterosexuality as the ultimate goal and what is most celebrated. Second, it casts femininity as weak through the boys’ use of a feminine voice before the gaining of physical strength and the fact that their girlfriends in the skit were waiting to be rescue and could not defend themselves against the gangsters.  The second part of this event was equally encoded in cultural meanings about gender and sexuality. Pascoe likens this part of the competition to a wedding. The boy circles the gym going from bleacher to bleacher to receive the cheers of the audience as he leads his female escort and mother around the room. The mother then sits and the son gives her a kiss on the cheek before proceeding to walk the rest of the way with his date. This is similar to the way a bride’s hand is given off to the groom at a traditional wedding. It once again reinforces hetero-normativity in the need for a ceremonial display of the contestants in such a clearly sexualized way. It’s important to remember that this is a school event meaning that it is hosted and approved by the school administration. In this way the administration displays an agenda towards creating gendered meanings within the school walls and aims to show what is deemed as appropriate gender displays and sexuality rituals.

After reading the first chapter of C.J. Pascoe book, I started to think how society dictates the way men and women have to behave in life. In the skit, that was the beginning of the book, Pascoe, as I understood, tried to show how people think and how there are determined to believe in a cultural norm created by society. If we take the subject of masculinity and sexuality and try to apply it in one person’s life. So we probably can see how parents, teachers and other people have an influence on one’s life.

In childhood, parents often decide to buy a blue colored clothes for a boy and pink colored clothes for a girl. In some families’ boys are taught to be brave and fearless and being strong and girls are taught to be care full, hospitable and kind. On the other hand, some other families give their child a right for a self-discovery. Little boy or a girls decide for themselves how and who the want to be. However as soon as a child gets to a school, the situations changes completely. Sometimes teachers take too much responsibility and try to tell a child who they have to be. A child is exposed to other children around him or her. In school a child interacts with other children and it brings some understanding what his or her place is. In case of boys they understand what it means to stand up for himself because conflicts always happen in the school environment. Thus, masculinity topic ascents. Sexuality begins with interactions between both genders. Teachers also play a huge part in this because they can explain these topics to the students. In the outside world adolescents are exposed to media, which often shows them who they need to be. Sometimes it’s a good thing, if there is a very good role model. However, other times media can give a bad influence and a bad role model. Thus I believe that parents, school and the environment plays  a huge role in defining masculinity and sexuality for girls and boys.

Semir Mulic

10-1-17

In C.J. Pascoe’s book ‘Dude You’re a Fag’ we’re able to see that there a couple different outlooks on gender and sexuality in River High.  A main setting I want to focus on was the play, it really pushed gender norms. With the girls being kidnapped and having to need saving from the male nerds it seemed as though the girls were helpless and needed sort of a “big strong man” trope. The boys would be seen as weak even when they spoke because they spoke in feminine voices. The boys were then “turned into men” when they did some weightlifting, an interesting thing here was that the female weightlifter would be applauded for lifting these weights as it was seen as breaking the gender norm, the boys were laughed at when they ripped off their pants to expose skirts, they laughed at the feminine qualities but applauded the masculine. The play in it’s entirety seemed innocent but played on the gender bias of the students.

The teachers were a different story, they placed dress codes on girls , promoted pairings with dances, rallies and prom. a couple teachers stand out, Ms. Mac for example would promote abstinence and encouraged heterosexuality through the pictures she kept of male and female pairings at the school’s events, she even in her teachings drew on heterosexual concepts. Ms. Mac wasn’t the worst offender of pushing gender norms, that would go to Mr. Ford and Mr. Kellog. They would go up to a student named Huey and make fun of his lack of success with females, even going from one class room to another just to tease him about it. Mr. Kellog had even said after Huey flipped off Mr. Ford that he should be having doing that with girls and not Mr. Ford. They pushed this agenda that he HAD to have relations with girls or else he was a failure.