Blog #3 – Making Masculinities: Gender Sexuality in Boyhood & Adolescence
1 A) Pascoe, Chapter 1 – Making Masculinity
The story in the beginning of chapter 1 was significant to me because in high school I was in ASB (Associated Student Body) and that same sort of pep rally testing masculinities thing happened at one of our pep rallies. The boys that were nominated for homecoming king dressed up in girl’s homecoming dresses and wigs and the girls that were nominated came out dressed as football players in full football gear. This really got the crowd roaring and cheering. Then the votes were tallied and they all changed and came out in regular clothes to announce the winners and everyone just clapped. While the boys were in the dresses they too were dancing around like girls and pushing up on their wigs or twirling their wigs and the girls were flexing and acting like men. After reading the River High story it made me instantly think of my high school and made me think really how much gender is socialized at high schools. Then Pascoe says on page 5 “boys lay claim to masculine identities by lobbing homophobic epithets at one another.” I completely agree, in high school and now a day at a bar or wherever I am at, I constantly hear other guys calling other guys a fag. “Dude you’re gay or dude you’re a fagget” is all I hear the little high school boys who are servers at my work call each other. I never noticed how much they do that! I don’t really think of it as bad when I hear these straight high schooler’s do it but I only would think its bad if they called someone that who was gay. I guess it doesn’t faze me but I do think its horrible how they all call each other that like its no big deal.
1 B) Pascoe, Chapter 2 –Becoming Mr.Cougar One thing that kind of confused me in this chapter was the story about Huey. Just because he dressed differently than his peers, he got treated different. It seemed to me there was more to the story because even the teachers were saying stuff about Huey, like he should be flipping off girls instead of teachers because flipping off means “fuck you” and then one mentioned that he probably doesn’t even know what that means. It seemed to me that everyone thought Huey was gay just because he dressed differently. Then he talked about how Huey would do masculine stunts in auto shop class to make the boys think that he is manly. I was confused as to why everyone was making so much fun of him based on his outfit he wore to school.
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1C) Pascoe Chapter 3 “Dude You’re a Fag”
ReplyDeleteI think it is so interesting how males call other male a fag if they are doing something “un-cool” or something like that or if they are being wimpy. Then they don’t say that stuff when they get around an actual gay person and they get all uncomfortable around gay people too. It definitely is a case of being homophobic. They are calling other males a fag because they are thinking that being a fag is something bad. Pascoe talks about in chapter 3 how she rarely heard girls use the term fag. I would have to agree with her on that, I rarely hear it coming from girls and never hear girls call other girls that. I guess that’s because girls who are actually gay are called dikes rather than fags.