Dude, You're A Fag Part 4

Christina, a strikingly good-looking white junior with long blonde hair, donned Tim's wrestling letterman's jacket. Darnell asked her if she was a wrestler. In response she pretended to be a wrestler and challenged him to a wrestling match. They circled each other in mock-wrestling positions as Darnell, dressed in baggy jeans and a T-shirt, yelled, "I don't need a singlet to beat you, lady!" She advanced toward Darnell, performing karate kicks with her legs and chops with her arms. Darnell yelled, "That's not wrestling!" and grabbed her torso, flipping her flat on her back. She pulled him down and managed to use her legs to flip him over so that he ended up underneath her on his back while she straddled him, sitting on his waist. Graham yelled out, watching in fascination, "What is going on?!" Many of the students had gathered around to watch and laugh at the faux wrestling match. Finally Darnell won the match by picking Christina up and throwing her over his shoulders. He spun her around as she squealed to be put down.

The general pace and sequence of this interaction were mirrored in many boy-girl touching rituals. Boys and girls antagonized each other in a flirtatious way. The flirtatious physical interaction escalated, becoming increasingly violent, until a girl squealed, cried, or just gave up. This sort of daily drama physically engendered meanings of power in which boys were confirmed as powerful and girls as weak.

While the "wrestling incident" between Darnell and Christina expressed seemingly harmless notions of dominance and submission, other "touching" episodes had a more explicitly violent tone. In this type of touching the boy and the girl "hurt" each other by punching or slapping or pulling each other's hair until in the end the girl lost with a squeal or scream. Shane and Cathy spent a large part of each morning in government cla.s.s beating up on each other in this sequence of domination.

While it was certainly not unidirectional, the interactions always ended with Cathy giving up. One of the many instances in which Cathy ended up submitting to Shane's touch began when Shane "punched" Cathy's chin. Cathy, trying to ignore the punch, batted her eyelashes and in a Compulsive Heteros.e.xuality / Compulsive Heteros.e.xuality / 99 99 whiny voice pleaded, "Take me to In and Out for lunch." In response Shane grabbed her neck with one hand and forehead with the other, shoving her head backward and forward. Cathy squealed, "You're mess-ing up my hair!" As he continued to yank her head around, Cathy tried to do her work, her pen jerking across the page. While this sort of interaction regularly disrupted Cathy's work and actually looked exceedingly painful, she never seriously tried to stop it. When I asked Cathy why they interacted like that, she answered, "He has always been like that with me.

We used to have a cla.s.s right on the other side of that wall together, and he always beat me in there, too. I don't know. He just beats on me." Her response echoed Karin Martin's (1996) finding that adolescent girls, especially working-cla.s.s girls, don't have a strong sense that they control their own bodies. While some girls, such as Shawna, were able to a.s.sert subjectivity and deny the primacy of boys' desire-as when she confronted Darnell's "Mixed girls are for me!" comment-not all girls felt ent.i.tled to or expressed alternative definitions of gender. It may be that Shawna, with her baggy pants, hip-hop style, and "tough girl" demeanor, found it easier to confront Darnell than did a normatively feminine girl like Cathy, whose status depended on her electability to the homecoming court. Cathy's affectively flat response to my question revealed that she simply didn't have access to or couldn't express her own bodily needs, desires, and rights.

Interactions such as the one between Cathy and Shane rarely drew the notice of teachers (except to the extent that the two were disrupting cla.s.s time), most likely because these encounters were read as harmless flirting. But in the larger context of the school's gender and s.e.xual order they reflected a more serious pattern in which both heteros.e.xuality and masculinity presumed female pa.s.sivity and male control. River boys often physically constrained girls in a s.e.xual manner under the guise of flirtation. For instance, in the hallway a boy put his arms around a girl as she was walking to lunch and started "freaking" her, rubbing his pelvis against her behind as she walked. She rolled her eyes, broke away, and continued walking. What really undergirded all of these interactions is 100 what some feminists call a "rape paradigm," in which masculinity is predicated on overcoming women's bodily desire and control. A dramatic example of this "rape paradigm" happened between cla.s.ses during pa.s.sing period.8 Walking between government and drama cla.s.ses, Keith yelled, "GET RAPED! GET RAPED!" as he rhythmically jabbed a girl in the crotch with his drumstick. She yelled at him to stop and tried to kick him in the crotch with her foot. He dodged and started yelling, "CROTCH!

CROTCH!" Indeed, the threat of rape was what seemed to underlie many of these interactions where boys repeatedly showed in cross-gender touching that they were more physically powerful than girls.

In all-male s.p.a.ces some boys talked angrily and openly about accusa-tions of rape. In auto shop Jay told a story about how a girl had accused him of holding a gun to her head and forcing her to have s.e.x with him.

For this offense he was put under house arrest for the better part of a year. He angrily reported the injustice of this accusation but followed this with one of his relatively frequent threats about rape. He talked about a girl he thought was "h.e.l.la ugly" but had "t.i.tties": "She's a b.i.t.c.h. I might take her out to the street races and leave her there so she can get raped."

All the other boys in auto shop, as usual, responded in laughter.

This sort of thing happened more frequently in predominately male s.p.a.ces. In the weight room, an extremely physical s.p.a.ce, girls were routinely physically restrained or manipulated. Often boys teamed up to control a girl. One day Monte wrapped his arms around a girl's neck as if to put her in a headlock and held her there while Reggie punched her in the stomach, albeit lightly. She squealed and laughed in response. Another day Malcolm and Cameron held a girl down on the quadriceps press machine while she screamed a high-pitched wail. They let her up, but moments later Malcolm snuck up behind her and poked her in the behind. She screamed and laughed in response. These examples show how the constraint of female bodies gets translated as masculinity and femininity, embedding s.e.xualized meanings in which heteros.e.xual flirting is coded as female helplessness and male bodily dominance.

Compulsive Heteros.e.xuality / 101 101 s.e.x TA LK.

As Chad noted in his interview, boys needed to ensure their masculinity by talking about s.e.x in a way that was perceived by other boys as au-thentic so that they wouldn't look like "clowns." Boys' s.e.x talk involves talking about bodies, dating, and girls in general. Often it takes the form of "mythic-story telling" in which boys tell larger-than-life tales about their s.e.xual adventures, their bodies, and girls' bodies (Kehily and Nayak 1997). At River High, these sorts of "s.e.x talk" compet.i.tions often erupted in predominately male environments but also occurred in mixed-gender groups.

Sometimes, in their desperate attempts to show they knew about s.e.x, some boys misspoke, revealing themselves, in Chad's words, as "clowns."

Standing outside the weight room one day, Jeff desperately tried to maintain a convincing, s.e.xually knowledgeable stance. Pedro and Jeff were discussing the merits of various hair replacement therapies such as Rogaine.

Pedro mused about alternative hair replacement strategies, saying, "You could take hair from your b.u.t.t!" Laughing, Craig suggested "p.u.b.e," or pubic, hair. This began a debate about the s.e.xual efficacy of shaving "down there." Jeff, looking wary, said, "I don't like sharp objects down there."

Josh, having long since established himself as s.e.xually experienced, looked at Jeff incredulously, crying, "You don't like b.l.o.w. .j.o.bs?!" Jeff, realizing he had said something wrong but still looking confused, quickly stammered, "Sure I do!" Josh, looking at Jeff disdainfully said, as if speaking to a child, "Teeth." Jeff, quickly trying to recover from his mistake, alleged with hol-low bravado, "Oh, if they don't know what they're doing." Josh, with the a.s.surance of experience, argued, "Even if they do!" In this instance, Josh treated Jeff's comment as an inadvertent revelation of s.e.xual inexperience.

Of course, whether it actually revealed anything about his past history with b.l.o.w. .j.o.bs was not really the point. The point was that he sounded, for a moment, s.e.xually incompetent. Even his attempts at recovery sounded shallow as Josh discursively trumped Jeff's knowledge of b.l.o.w. .j.o.bs.

102 a.s.serting s.e.xual dominance was, somewhat paradoxically, fraught with danger. On the one hand, overpowering a girl s.e.xually was masculine (as indicated earlier in the rituals of cross-s.e.x touching). On the other hand (as indicated through interviews with boys about the importance of girlfriends), girls' s.e.xual desire undergirded a boy's masculinity.

The following example indicates that many boys must tread lightly when talking about how much persuasion they need to deploy in order to con-vince a girl to have s.e.x with them. In talking about their plans for Winter Ball, Josh told Reggie, "I'll be f.u.c.king p.i.s.sed if I don't get some." Reggie advised him, "That's why you take a girl who's gonna do something."

"I got JD!"9 Josh countered, "I got a big bag of marijuana. The sooner I get her drunk, the sooner I get laid." Reggie laughed. "You have to get her drunk to get laid?" The other boys turned to laugh at Josh. Sean admonished Josh, "You have to change your confidence level." Reggie triumphantly bragged, "I can get laid any time, anywhere." Thus, while overpowering girls' control over their own bodies certainly confirmed masculinity, it was apparently much more masculine simply to overpower them by sheer virility, so that the girls couldn't help desiring a given boy.

The sort of "date rape" talk that Josh exemplified simultaneously confirmed and cast doubt upon a given boy's masculinity. As in other practices of compulsive heteros.e.xuality, boys showed that they could overpower girls' desire, will, and bodily control by convincing them (in this case through the use of drugs) to have s.e.x. But if a part of being successfully masculine was, as Chad indicated, being desired by girls, then in this case Reggie and Josh indicated that they were not fully successful at being masculine, since the girls didn't necessarily desire them.

A popular topic of conversation in these male s.p.a.ces was how and when a given boy was going to have or had had s.e.x. In weight-lifting cla.s.s, Pedro especially loved to share his exploits. Josh frequently joined in. Often by the end of cla.s.s a group of boys had gathered around them either staring in amazement or desperately trying to keep up with the tall tales flowing from Josh and Pedro. One afternoon, egged on by the other boys' excited responses to his story about how badly Brittany "wanted" him, Pedro pro-Compulsive Heteros.e.xuality / 103 ceeded to act out his previous night's s.e.xual adventures: "Dude, I had s.e.x with my girlfriend last night. She tied me to the bed! I was like, d.a.m.n!" Josh chimed in, shaking his head knowingly: "Never let a girl tie you up." Pedro laughed and added proudly: "I did her so hard when I was done she was bleeding. I tore her walls!" He acted out the story as he told it, leaning back up against the wall, legs and arms spread above him, thrusting his hips back and forth as he turned his head side to side. In this sort of fantastical storytelling boys a.s.sert their heteros.e.xuality by sharing often incoherent s.e.xual fantasies (Wood 1984). Curry (2004) calls these "women-as-objects-stories" in which female bodies serve as the crux of a heteros.e.xual performance designed to bolster a boy's claim on heteros.e.xuality.

Telling stories about s.e.x confirmed boys' knowledge of s.e.x. Sometimes these mythic stories became a contest in which one boy tried to beat out the previous story with an outlandish tale of his own. One day in the weight room, for example, Rich sat down on a weight bench and five boys gathered around him as he told a story, after much urging, about s.e.x with his now ex-girlfriend. He explained that they were having s.e.x and "she said it started to hurt. I said we can stop, and she said no.

Then she said it again and she started crying. I told her to get off! Told her to get off! Finally I took her off," making a motion like he was lifting her off him. Then he said there was "blood all over me! Blood all over her! Popped her wall! She had to have st.i.tches." Boys start cracking up and moaning. Not to be outdone, other boys in the circle begin to chime in about their s.e.xual exploits. Even those who didn't have stories about themselves a.s.serted their knowledge of s.e.x through vicarious experiences. Troy joined the discussion with a story about his brother, a professional basketball player for a nearby city. He "brought home a twenty-four-year-old drunk chick! She farted farted the whole time they were doing it in the other room! It was the whole time they were doing it in the other room! It was h.e.l.la h.e.l.la gross!" All the boys cracked up again. gross!" All the boys cracked up again.

Adam, not to be outdone, claimed, "My friend had s.e.x with a drunk chick. He did her in the b.u.t.t! She s.h.i.t all over the place!" The boys all laughed raucously and yelled out things like "h.e.l.la gross!" or "That's disgusting!" Finally, Travis seemed to top all of their stories with his. "I 104 had s.e.x with this one girl and then the next week she had s.e.x with her cousin!" The boys fell backwards in laughter, yelling "Eeew! Gross!"

Eventually they moved back to lifting weights. These stories expressed boys' heteros.e.xuality by demonstrating that they were fluent in s.e.x talk, knew about s.e.x acts, and desired heteros.e.xual s.e.x. Girls' bodies, in this sense, became the conduit through which boys established themselves as masculine.

None of these stories were about s.e.xual desire or how attractive the girls were; rather, they were quite gross, about farts, feces, and blood.

These stories were about what boys could make girls' bodies do. That is, the s.e.xual tall tales these boys told when they were together were not so much about indicating s.e.xual desire as about proving their capacity to exercise control on the world around them, primarily through women's bodies by making them bleed, pa.s.s gas, or defecate. These stories also highlighted femininity (much like the f.a.g) as an abject ident.i.ty. Girls had out-of-control bodies, whereas boys exhibited mastery not only over their own bodies but over girls' bodies as well.

These sorts of girl-getting rituals and storytelling practices const.i.tute "compulsive heteros.e.xuality." While on the surface they appear to be boys-will-be-boys locker-room talk in which boys objectify girls through bragging about s.e.xual exploits or procuring a kiss, a closer look indicates that they are also about demonstrating the ability to impose a s.e.xualized dominance.

GIRLS RESPOND.

Girls frequently colluded in boys' discourses and practices of compulsory heteros.e.xuality. When interacting with boys, many girls emphasized their own s.e.xual availability or physical weakness to gain and maintain boys' attention. Because a girl's status in high school is frequently tied to the status of the boys she dates, this male erotic attention is critical. Of course, gender practices like this are not limited to teenagers. Grown Compulsive Heteros.e.xuality / Compulsive Heteros.e.xuality / 105 105 women "bargain with patriarchy" by submitting to s.e.xist social inst.i.tutions and practices to gain other forms of social power (Kandiyoti 1988).

The day before winter break, I handed out lollipops shaped like Christmas trees and candy canes to thank students for their help with my research. In government cla.s.s Cathy took a Christmas tree lollipop, tipped her head back, and stuck the long candy down her throat, moaning as if in ecstasy. Jeremy and Shane laughed as Cathy presumably showed off her roomy mouth or throat and her lack of a gag reflex, both highly prized traits by boys when receiving "b.l.o.w. .j.o.bs." Cathy responded with a smirk, "I don't think I'm that that good." The group laughed at her conclusion. It seems that the social power girls gained from going along with this behavior was more than they gained by refusing. A way to gain male attention and thus in-school status was to engage in these boys' discourses and practices about s.e.xuality. good." The group laughed at her conclusion. It seems that the social power girls gained from going along with this behavior was more than they gained by refusing. A way to gain male attention and thus in-school status was to engage in these boys' discourses and practices about s.e.xuality.

This approach, ill.u.s.trating s.e.xual prowess, was danger laden for girls at River and is dangerous for teenage girls in general as they tread the shifting and blurry boundary between s.e.xy and s.l.u.tty (Tanenbaum 1999). To negotiate this boundary, girls invoked a variety of gender strategies. Some, like Cathy, promoted their own s.e.xual prowess or acted as if the boys' comments were compliments; others suffered quietly; and some actually responded angrily, contradicting boys' claims on girls' s.e.xuality. Teresa, like most girls, quietly put up with boys' daily practices of compulsive heteros.e.xuality. She was one of the few girls who had en-rolled in the weight-lifting cla.s.s. While she told me that she signed up for weight lifting because "I like to lift weights," she continued by saying she didn't like exercising in a cla.s.s with all boys. "It's really annoying because they just stare at you while you lift. They just stare at you." Like many girls, she quietly put up with this treatment. I didn't see her confronting any of the boys who stared at her.

Other girls developed a more defensive response, though not one couched in feminism or in opposition to s.e.xism. In auto shop Jay expressed frustration about his upcoming eighteenth birthday, saying that 106 soon he couldn't "have s.e.x with girls younger than eighteen. Statutory rape." He continued angrily (presumably referring to his rape charge), "Younger girls, they lie, stupid little b.i.t.c.hes." He laughed, "G.o.d, I hate girls." He saw Jenny, the female student aide in the cla.s.s, look at him as he said this. So he looked directly at her and said loudly, "They're only good for making sandwiches and cleaning house. They don't even do that up to speed!" She just looked at him and shook her head. Brook, another auto shop student, said to me, "Write that down!" Jay continued to hara.s.s Jenny by throwing licorice at her and yelling, "I agree, her sister is a lot hotter!" Jenny looked at him and shook her head again. Jay commanded, sitting back and folding his arms, "Make me a sandwich!" At first she ignored him with a "whatever." Then Jenny carried back the licorice he threw at her and dumped it on him. Jay responded dismissively, shaking his head and muttering, "f.u.c.king crybaby." In this instance Jenny both acquiesced to and resisted Jay's s.e.xist treatment. She sort of ignored him while he made blatantly s.e.xist remarks and tried to get even with him by dumping licorice on him. Like the girl who tried to fight back as she was being jabbed in the crotch with a drumstick, Jenny developed an off-the-cuff response to let the boys know she didn't appreciate their s.e.xism.

Other girls, like Cathy, seemed flattered by boys' behavior, responding with giggles and smiles. In the drama cla.s.s Emir, who had imitated a f.a.g by "l.u.s.ting" after the boys on the basketball court, "flirted" regularly with two girls, Simone and Valerie, throughout the cla.s.s period. He made kissing motions with his lips, ran his tongue slowly over his teeth, and l.u.s.tfully whispered or mouthed comments such as "Come on, baby.

Oooh baby. Yeah, I love you." The girls responded with laughs and giggles, occasionally rolling their eyes in mock frustration. Other girls frequently adopted the smile and giggle strategy. While I interviewed Darnell, he yelled at a pa.s.sing girl that he liked her "astronaut skirt." She laughed and waved. I asked him what "astronaut skirt" meant, and he explained, "Oh, it's just a little joke. That's an astronaut skirt 'cause your b.u.t.t is outta this world." As Nancy Henley (1977) points out, this giggle Compulsive Heteros.e.xuality / Compulsive Heteros.e.xuality / 107 107 and smile response signifies submission and appeas.e.m.e.nt, usually directed from a lower- to a higher-status person.10 Though most girls submitted to this sort of behavior, not all of them did. As recounted earlier, Shawna told Darnell, when he was declaring, "Mixed girls are for me!" that girls had a say in the matter too. Darnell didn't listen to her, but she didn't accept this definition of the situation.

The most apparent resisters were the girls in the Gay/Straight Alliance, whom I discuss at length in the next chapter. But even girls without an espoused political orientation sometimes rejected boys' control of girls'

bodies. In the hallway, for instance, Jessica stood behind Reggie as he backed up and rubbed his behind into her crotch. In response, she smacked him hard and he stopped his grinding. Similarly, in the weight room, Teresa sometimes resisted in her own way. Reggie once said to her, "When we gonna go and have s.e.x? When we gonna hit that?" Teresa responded with scorn, "Never!" and walked away. This, unfortunately, happened more rarely than one would hope.

I'M DIFFERENT FROM OTHER GUYS Thus far this chapter has focused on boys who treated girls as resources to be mobilized for their own masculinity projects, but not all boys engaged in practices of compulsive heteros.e.xuality at all times. Most boys engaged in these sorts of practices only when in groups, and some boys avoided them in general.

When not in groups-when in one-on-one interactions with boys or girls-boys were much less likely to engage in gendered and s.e.xed dominance practices. In this sense boys became masculine in groups (Connell 1996; Woody 2002). With the exception of Chad, none of the boys spoke with me the way they spoke with other boys about girls, girls' bodies, and their own s.e.xual adventures. When with other boys, they postured and bragged. In one-on-one situations with me (and possibly with each other) they often spoke touchingly about their feelings about and inse-curities with girls. While the boys I interviewed, for the most part, as-108 serted the centrality of s.e.xual competence to a masculine self, several of them rejected this definition or at least talked differently about girls and s.e.xuality in their interviews.

When alone some boys were more likely to talk about romance and emotions, as opposed to girls' bodies and s.e.xual availability. Darnell, for instance, the boy who had announced, "Mixed girls are for me!" and who had "wrestled" Christina, talked to me in private and with great emotion about a girl with whom he had recently broken up: I never wanted a girlfriend, but I got a girlfriend and I never wanted to lose her. Now I don't go out with that girl any more, but I still see her. We actually live in the same apartment complex. She goes to Chicago High School. She's not supposed to go to Chicago and I'm not supposed to go to River, so we kind of stay apart. It's a little hard.

It's kind of easy if you were that kind of guy you could just have a girlfriend over there and a girlfriend over here.

While in groups with other boys Darnell behaved much like "the kind of guy who could just have a girlfriend over there and a girlfriend over here," claiming things like "Mixed girls are for me!" But in the interview with me he spoke tenderly about his former girlfriend. When I asked him why he thought he was different, he said, "I had a whole bunch of girls when I was little. I know how certain things can hurt their feelings. I don't like hurting people's feelings." Darnell's discussion of girls and his ability to hurt their feelings provided a very different picture of his approach to women than did his proclamations about which women belonged to him.

In interviews boys often posited themselves as "different from other guys," while in public they acted just like the guys they derided. Heath, for instance, told me he was "probably less" like an average guy because "I don't try and get with every girl I see." Like others, Heath became a "guy" in public, not in private interactions. Heath was the boy who had dressed like an elf for Halloween and accosted the pa.s.sing girls in order to procure a kiss. Outside this sort of group setting, Heath dismissed Compulsive Heteros.e.xuality / Compulsive Heteros.e.xuality / 109 109 lecherous behavior as something "other guys" did, but when in public he acted just like these "other guys." As Jace told me, when talking about a generic teenage boy, "By himself, he'd probably be cool. He wouldn't do stupid stuff. But in a group he'd do stupid stuff." When I asked him for an example of stupid stuff, he said, "Well, guys check out girls anyway, yell at 'em, 'Oh, yeah, you look good today, what's up?' " Indeed, looking at the differences between both Darnell's and Heath's behavior in groups and individually indicates that Jace highlights an important component of adolescent masculinity-that it happens in groups.

That said, boys not widely considered masculine did, on occasion, speak about girls and their relationships with girls in kind and non.o.b-jectifying ways, even in groups of boys. In the following example a group of boys shared some tender observations about their relationships in a highly masculinized s.p.a.ce, auto shop. Ryan looked at a note written to him by his girlfriend before he handed it to me. His girlfriend, who was moving away, wrote that she cared about and would "never forget" him, even though she thought he would forget her. She wrote, among other things, "I feel safe in your arms." I asked Ryan if he wrote notes back.

He and his friend Chet both said that they wrote notes to their girlfriends. Both of them also told me they kept their girlfriends' notes in special boxes. They did, however, debate what sort of notes they kept.

Chet said he kept all the notes: "It doesn't even matter if it's important."

Ryan said he only kept the note if it was important. Another friend, John, chimed in, announcing he kept them because "it's h.e.l.la long, they spent all that time writing it." While this might initially sound silly, John's comment actually signaled a sweet acknowledgment of a girl's perspective and experience. K. J., the popular dancer we met at the end of the last chapter, spoke up at this point and rerouted the discussion back to the familiar territory of compulsive heteros.e.xuality. He received multiple notes each day from his legions of female fans. His comments about these notes sounded quite different from the sweet comments of Chet and Ryan. K. J. laughed about a note he had received that read, "Every time you dance I have an o.r.g.a.s.m." As a s.e.xual actor, K. J. was so virile 110 he could cause a girl to have an o.r.g.a.s.m without even touching her. Ryan, Chet, and John laughed, and the conversation soon dissipated. K. J., a high-status, masculine boy, redirected a conversation about girls' perspectives and boys' emotions back to the familiar terrain of boys as s.e.xual actors.

Though discussions among boys like the one between Ryan and Chet were rare, on another occasion I heard a boy, in a group of other boys, refuse to engage in practices of compulsive heteros.e.xuality by claiming that he couldn't talk about his girlfriend like that. Pedro, as usual, was talking to the other boys in the weight room about a variety of s.e.xual practices. He lectured, "You are getting your girl from behind. You spit on her a.s.s cheeks . . . " As he continued he was drowned out by the other boys yelling, "You watched that on a p.o.r.no!" Undaunted, Pedro said, "Next time you get b.u.t.tered, hit her on the back of her head after you c.u.m and it will come out her nose!" The other boys howled in laughter as they pictured this highly unlikely s.e.xual scenario. As Pedro goaded the other boys into promising that they would try this particular s.e.xual practice the next time they had the opportunity, a good-looking African American boy spoke up, saying quietly that he wouldn't: "I got a girlfriend, man." As the other boys scoffed he said, "I wouldn't do that to her." The only safe terrain from which to challenge these s.e.xually oriented definitions of masculinity was a relationship. A boy probably could not have argued that talking this way about girls was derogatory on principle without claiming he was speaking about a girlfriend.

Other boys who refrained from partic.i.p.ating in these sorts of conversations frequently identified as Christian. Though they professed the same religion, they did not const.i.tute a distinct peer group in the school but were scattered throughout the social scene at River High. Sean, a recent convert to evangelical Christianity, talked through much of his interview about struggling to maintain secular friendships while simultaneously practicing Christianity because of his different views on both s.e.xuality and drug use: Compulsive Heteros.e.xuality / 111 111 I know if I wasn't with G.o.d, I'd be doing everything that they are doing. I don't feel like saying that, but it's the truth. I am like them. But I choose not to do as they do.

Before he converted, Sean, a muscular, handsome white senior who identified with hip-hop culture, had been s.e.xually active with several girls. He found it challenging to refrain from having s.e.x after he converted, saying, "That was a hard one. That was really tough." He looked down on boys who tried to "get girls": There will be some guys that they'll go up to a girl, you know? "Hey, girl, come here." And they will keep on bugging them. They'll try to grab and touch them and stuff like this. They're just letting all their, they're acting on emotions pretty much.

Sean saw these boys as out of control. He used a feminized insult, implying that the boys engaged in practices of "getting girls" because they were ruled by their emotions and thus not able to refrain from s.e.xist practices.

Connor, who also identified as a Christian, similarly distanced himself from other boys and their views of s.e.xuality. "I don't care if I have s.e.x or not because I want to save myself until I'm married, because that's something special. I'm really less than most average guys, that's what I think."

Connor saw himself as less interested in s.e.x than other teenage boys because he saw it as inappropriate behavior outside a marriage. Ben also refused to engage in s.e.xualizing discourses of girls. He explained: I remember the first day we were disa.s.sembling a lawn mower and she [Teresa, the only girl in auto shop] was like, right over by me. And there's these two other guys by me. She walks away and then he's like, "Hey dude, can you beat those?" And I'm like . . . "I'm just not into that kind of stuff." He goes, "Oh, okay, good stuff."

Like the boy who refused to engage in compulsive heteros.e.xuality by claiming a girlfriend, some boys claimed a religious affiliation.

112 Christian boys, like Sean, frequently cast themselves as more mature than other boys because of their s.e.xual restraint, drawing on masculinizing discourses of self-control and maturity. Like practices of compulsive heteros.e.xuality, these sorts of gender practices indicated control and mastery, not over others (girls), but over themselves. Talking with Darren and Brook, who both identified as Christian, during auto shop, I asked them if they ever felt left out of conversations with other guys.

Brook responded, "Yeah, sometimes. But I'm not, like, ashamed of what I think, you know?" I asked in response, "Do you ever feel less masculine because of it?" Brook said, "No. If anything, more. Because you can resist. You don't have to give in to it." Darren chimed in, "That was profound, dude!" I then asked, "Do you think other guys ever think, 'Oh, those guys are such p.u.s.s.ies. They just can't get laid and it's an excuse'?"

Brook replied, "Probably, yeah. There are going to be those stereotypical teenage guys again that think that." Unlike other boys, who, for the most part, talked about s.e.x as if it were a recreational activity, both Brook and Darren wanted s.e.x to be "special." Brook said that while "s.e.x is all over the place, I haven't had s.e.x." Like other boys, he hurried to a.s.sure me that "I'm a teenage guy, don't think I don't think about it." But unlike other boys, he exercised will and mastery, not over girls' bodies, but over his own by waiting to have s.e.x. Like these boys, Cid explicitly invoked a discourse of control as he spoke about how "most guys are gawking at the girls. I notice that and I just don't want to be like that. I don't know if I'm controlling myself or if it just happens. Either way I don't want to be like that . . . It makes me feel better about myself, like I don't have to be like them."

Religion played a key role in how or if boys deployed practices of compulsive heteros.e.xuality to sh.o.r.e up a masculine appearance and sense of self. In fact the table at which the Latter Day Saints students convened during lunch was (apart from Gay/Straight Alliance meetings and the drama cla.s.sroom) the least h.o.m.ophobic and s.e.xist location on campus! At first this seems to be a strange finding because many Christian sects or denominations are regarded as conservative and s.e.xist. These boys weren't Compulsive Heteros.e.xuality / Compulsive Heteros.e.xuality / 113 113 necessarily any less invested in a masculine ident.i.ty predicated on gender inequality. However, Christian boys at River High had inst.i.tutional claims on masculinity such that they didn't need to engage in the sort of intense interactional work that Kimmel (1987) claims is characteristic of contemporary "compulsive masculinity." As a result, unlike nonreligious boys, they did not need to engage in the continual interactional repudiation of equality with girls. Their respective religions b.u.t.tressed male power through their teachings such that the interactional accomplishment of masculinity was less central to their ident.i.ty projects. Thus the Christian boys at River may have been less interactionally s.e.xist, but their investment in gender difference and gender inequality was little different from that of the other boys at River. In a society in which the gendered order has undergone a rapid change due to challenges to male power, and men and women are relatively equal under the law, one of the ways to maintain power is through interactional styles. But because the Christian inst.i.tutions of which these boys were a part have remained relatively stable regarding issues of gender difference and equality, these boys had less need for interactional practices of gendered power.

FEMA LES ARE THE PUPPETS.

At a country square dance a few years ago I saw an offensive game between two men on opposite sides of a square, to see who could swing the women hardest and highest off the ground. What started out pleasantly enough soon degenerated into a brutal compet.i.tion that left the women of the square staggering dizzily from place to place, completely unable to keep up with what was going on in the dance, and certainly getting no pleasure from it. The message that comes through to women in such physical displays is: you are so physically inferior that you can be played with like a toy.

Males are the movers and the powerful in life, females the puppets.

It is heartbreaking, thirty years after Nancy Henley (1977, 150) wrote this pa.s.sage, to doc.u.ment the continuing centrality of what she called "female puppetry" to adolescent masculinity. Like these square-dancing men, boys 114 at River High repeatedly enforced definitions of masculinity that included male control of female bodies through symbolic or physical violence.

As a feminist researcher I was saddened and quite frankly surprised to discover the extent to which this type of s.e.xual hara.s.sment const.i.tuted an average school day for youth at River High. Though much of the media and many cultural critics repeatedly claim that we have entered a postfeminist age, these scenes at River High indicate that this age has not yet arrived. In fact gender practices at the school-boys' control of girls'

bodies, almost constant s.e.xual hara.s.sment, and continual derogatory remarks about girls-show a desperate need for some sort of s.e.xual hara.s.sment education and policy enforcement in schools.

Just as in the square dance that Henley described, girls' bodies at River High provided boys the opportunity to demonstrate mastery and dominance. These practices of compulsive heteros.e.xuality indicate that control over women's bodies and their s.e.xuality is, sadly, still central to definitions of masculinity, or at least adolescent masculinity. By dominating girls' bodies boys defended against the f.a.g position, increased their social status, and forged bonds of solidarity with other boys. However, none of this is to say that these boys were unrepentant s.e.xists. Rather, for the most part, these behaviors were social behaviors. Individually boys were much more likely to talk empathetically and respectfully of girls.

Even when they behaved this way in groups, boys probably saw their behavior as joking and in fun (Owens, Shute, and Slee 2005). Maintaining masculinity, though, demands the interactional repudiation of this sort of empathy in order to stave off the abject f.a.g position. It is precisely the joking and s.e.xual quality of these interactions that makes them so hard to see as rituals of dominance. These interactional rituals maintain the "cruel power of men over women by turning it into just s.e.x" ( Jeffreys 1998, 75). The data presented in this chapter make gender equality seem a long way off. The next chapter shows how several groups of girls, much like the boys in the drama performances, provide alternative models of gender practices in adolescence, emphasizing play, irony, and equality rather than dominance and submission.

CHAPTER five

Look at My Masculinity!

Girls Who Act Like Boys "Girls can be masculine too, you know," Genevieve pointed out to me when I told her I was writing a book on teenage boys and masculinity. Indeed, Genevieve had a point: girls can can be masculine. At River High several girls identified themselves and were named by other students (both girls and boys) as masculine or as "girls who act like guys." They dressed, talked, and carried themselves in many ways "like guys." None of their peers identified them as actual boys. In other words, these girls weren't trying to "pa.s.s" as male, nor did students refer to them as "tomboys," the common way we think of boylike girls. None of the girls thought of themselves as boys trapped in girls' bodies or identified as transgendered.1 Several of them, although not all, identified themselves as lesbian. be masculine. At River High several girls identified themselves and were named by other students (both girls and boys) as masculine or as "girls who act like guys." They dressed, talked, and carried themselves in many ways "like guys." None of their peers identified them as actual boys. In other words, these girls weren't trying to "pa.s.s" as male, nor did students refer to them as "tomboys," the common way we think of boylike girls. None of the girls thought of themselves as boys trapped in girls' bodies or identified as transgendered.1 Several of them, although not all, identified themselves as lesbian.

Most, though not all, of the girls were members of two social groups.

I call these two groups the Basketball Girls and the Gay/Straight Alliance (GSA) Girls.2 The Basketball Girls, athletic, loud, popular, and well liked, were commonly identified by other students as "like boys." The GSA Girls, as their name indicates, were all members of the school's GSA, a club formed to support gay students on campus. They were socially marginalized and less well known and were more likely to describe themselves than to be described by others as masculine. In addition to these two groups of girls, one other girl at River was commonly identi-115 116 fied by students as masculine-Jessie Chau. She was not a member of either group and was a senior when the GSA Girls and the Basketball Girls were mostly first-years and soph.o.m.ores. Like the Basketball Girls she dressed like a boy, was an athlete, and was incredibly popular-serving as both cla.s.s president and homecoming queen.

By looking at these girls this chapter examines what it means to define masculinity as a set of practices a.s.sociated with women as well as men. By moving in and out of masculine identifications these girls engaged in what Schippers (2002) calls "gender maneuvering." Gender maneuvering Gender maneuvering refers to the way groups act to manipulate the relations between masculinity and femininity as others commonly understand them. refers to the way groups act to manipulate the relations between masculinity and femininity as others commonly understand them.

By engaging in public practices that students a.s.sociated with masculinity (certain clothing styles, certain s.e.xual practices, and interactional dominance), these girls called into question the easy a.s.sociation of masculinity with male bodies. Their gender maneuvering challenges both commonsense and academic understandings of masculinity as the sole domain of men.

These girls engaged in non-normative gender practices in a variety of ways. In their daily interactional practices they engaged in gender resistance, acting in ways most people don't a.s.sociate with teenage girls.

However engaging in non-normative gender practices doesn't always and consistently challenge the gender order. Doing gender in this way opens up issues of gender resistance and reconstruction, ill.u.s.trating that gender resistance can, but doesn't always, challenge s.e.xism (Gagne and Tewksbury 1998). Like boys who "inhabit and construct non-hegemonic masculinities," thereby both subverting and reinforcing normative gender relations (Renold 2004, 247), these masculine girls both challenged and reinscribed gender norms. This chapter concludes with thoughts about how to discuss female masculinity and implications for how scholars study both male and female masculinity.3 While all the girls' practices of gender maneuvering had the potential for challenging the interactional gender order, the GSA Girls' gender practices, with their clear political project, contained the most potential.

Look at My Masculinity! / 117 117 TOMBOY PASTS.

Acting like a boy was not unique to the Basketball Girls, Jessie, and the GSA Girls, nor is it something that occurs only at River High. Many girls and women claim that they were tomboys as children. In Gender Gender Play, Play, Barrie Thorne (1993) talks about female students in her college cla.s.ses who proudly shared stories of childhoods in which they considered themselves tomboys. Similarly, when he asked his undergraduates, Barrie Thorne (1993) talks about female students in her college cla.s.ses who proudly shared stories of childhoods in which they considered themselves tomboys. Similarly, when he asked his undergraduates, "Who was a tomboy as a child?" Michael Messner (2004b) noted that women raised their hands more often than men did when he asked, "Who was a sissy?" In fact, Lyn Mikel Brown (2003) argues that the story of the tomboy girl triumphant over the sissy feminine girl is a common one. Instead of redefining girlhood as tough and powerful, these tomboy stories belittle normative femininity and celebrate masculinity.

The girls at River High, both those who were normatively gendered and those who identified as masculine, spoke with pride about tomboy childhoods. Identifying as a tomboy aligns a girl with a romanticized history of masculine identification before she encountered a more restricting femininity.

Several girls who, at the time I spoke with them, identified as normatively feminine shared stories about how they had acted more masculine when they were younger. They ill.u.s.trate the trajectories of gender ident.i.ty, in which gender non-normativity may be considered cute in childhood but problematic in adolescence or adulthood. Jenna and Sarah, energetic, thin, attractive white cheerleaders who wore their straight blonde hair up in high bouncy ponytails and frequently pulled out com-pacts to apply or freshen up already perfectly crafted makeup, rehea.r.s.ed their lines for an upcoming play as they sat outside drama cla.s.s. Their talk turned to River High's football team. Sarah announced, "I wanted to play football when I was little! I love football! And my dad totally wanted me to play. But my mom didn't, and I think that's why I didn't get to play.

So I became a cheerleader." It seemed as if, in her mind, being a cheerleader was as close to becoming an actual football player as she could get.

118 While certainly cheerleaders and football players inhabit the same playing field, the gendered meanings of the two roles are worlds apart, with cheerleaders working as football players' perky heteros.e.xual helpmates (Adams and Bettis 2003). Like Sarah, other girls often told stories about mothers encouraging them to give up "acting like a boy" as they grew older. During Hoop Skills (the basketball cla.s.s), Latasha, a pet.i.te African American soph.o.m.ore, said with pride and a bit of regret, "I used to dress like a boy. But I fixed up this year. My ma didn't like it." Her appearance underscored her claim. She now sported large gold hoops, gold jewelry, tight pants, and a tight shirt, with makeup and a gold heart painted on her cheek.

Boys also commented on girls' increasing feminization as they grew older. As Allen and I talked about "girls who act like guys," he said, "You can't see too many of them at the high school level, it seems to me, as I did when I was younger in the middle school." When I asked him "Why do you think that is?" he responded, "At the age of high school I guess people want to be the same. When you're younger . . . you are a kid. You are wide open. You're not really sure. You just do what you want." Allen attributed girls' changing gendered practices to social pressure, which, in the case of the girls who identified as tomboys when they were younger, seemed to be true. Mothers, and most likely other adults, began to discipline girls to a.s.sume more typically feminine dispositions. The change from tomboyism to femininity discussed by Latasha, Sarah, and Allen reflected the representational transformation in the yearbook in which both girls and boys moved from a variety of clothing options to strictly gendered uniforms in their senior photos. The public face of the tomboy belongs to childhood. This sort of female masculinity in childhood is not only accepted but celebrated (Halberstam 1998). However, this same masculinity in adulthood threatens to destabilize the gender order.

Interestingly, I never heard these sorts of childhood stories from boys.

None of them told me they were or knew of boys who used to act more feminine when they were younger. Nor did any of them express sadness about experiences they had missed out on, such as playing with Barbies Look at My Masculinity! / Look at My Masculinity! / 119 119 or dressing up in skirts and heels. The fact that I didn't hear these stories doesn't mean they don't exist. When teaching college cla.s.ses about masculinity, I've heard stories from my male students about being ruthlessly teased and eventually giving up playing with dolls and Barbies because of this gendered torment. Instead of pride, their stories are tinged with shame. We don't have a cultural narrative, such as that of the tomboy, with which to frame and understand these experiences, so they may be more likely to be silenced.

In high school, female masculinity, once understood as a tomboy ident.i.ty, translates into a s.e.xual ident.i.ty. Much as they did with boys, youth at River High a.s.sociated girls' gender non-normativity with same-s.e.x desire. When I explained to them that I was "writing a chapter on girls who do guy things," Sarah (the aforementioned cheerleader) asked, "Oh, you mean lesbians?" However, the loathing many boys expressed for male same-s.e.x desire didn't appear when boys (or girls) talked about either tomboys or lesbians. James said, "I haven't really heard anybody tease them [lesbians]." In explaining the differential treatment of gay boys and lesbians, students repeatedly a.s.serted that because boys thought that same-s.e.x activity between women was "hot," lesbians were desired, not shunned. When I asked James about this, he told me, "Guys like it for girls. Guys will see two lesbians and they'll be like 'Yeah!' Then when guys see two guys they're like-'Uughh!' " Marco also drew on a discourse of eroticization: "Girls are pretty. They have soft skin, you know?

Guys don't. They're hairy. They stink. I can see where a girl would be a lesbian." Ray told me that most guys fantasized about lesbian relationships: "[To] see two hot chicks banging bodies in a bed, that's like every guy's fantasy right there. It's the truth. I've heard it so many times: 'Give me two chicks banging bodies.' " So-called "lesbian" s.e.x is a trope frequently deployed in heteros.e.xual p.o.r.nography that, far from legitimiz-ing same-s.e.x relationships, t.i.tillates and arouses male readers ( Jenefsky and Miller 1998). Eroticizing women's same-s.e.x relationships renders them harmless and nonthreatening to the gender order (Rich 1986).

In general, girls who transgress gendered and s.e.xualized expectations 120 don't need to do the same sort of interactional work boys do when they are permanently or temporarily labeled as f.a.gs. Unlike gender and s.e.xual non-normativity for boys, which decrease a boy's social status, gender and s.e.xual non-normativity for girls can actually increase their social status. In certain circ.u.mstances, such as those in which girls' non-normative gender practices mirror the boys' masculinity processes that I've discussed thus far, such non-normativity can result in popularity. However, as the GSA Girls'

gender practices indicate, challenging gender norms, especially when the challenge is framed as a political one in direct opposition to s.e.xism and h.o.m.ophobia, doesn't necessarily result in increased social status for girls.

REBECA AND THE BASKETBA LL GIRLS.

Not surprisingly, more often than not the Basketball Girls could be found on the basketball court. While in total there were about ten to fifteen of them, Rebeca, Mich.e.l.le, Tanya, and Tanya's little sister, Sheila, were the girls students talked about when I asked them if they know any "girls who act like guys." They were a racially diverse group (as was the larger crowd)-Rebeca was Latina, Tanya and Sheila were white, Mich.e.l.le was Filipina. They were all soph.o.m.ores during the first year of my research, with the exception of Sheila, who was a freshman. The Basketball Girls acted like boys in a variety of ways. Their athleticism and involvement with a male sport instantly aligned them with masculinity (Messner 2002; Theberge 2000). They spat, walked in a limping "gangsta" style, wore boys' clothing, ditched cla.s.s, and listened to loud hip-hop music, dancing and purposefully singing only the "naughty" lyrics. They performed special handshakes and made fun of me when I didn't execute them correctly. Their energy was never-ending. At the homecoming football game, which they all attended, I grew dizzy watching them run up and down the bleachers, screaming, laughing, and pulling each others' long ponytails. They continually shoved each other and wrestled on the top bleachers, every once in a while falling into me, at which point they'd laughingly reprimand each Look at My Masculinity! / Look at My Masculinity! / 121 121 other and profusely apologize to me because I was, in their words, a "grown-up."

Before this group physically appeared, one could almost always hear them coming because of their hollers, screams, and laughter. Mich.e.l.le described their "loudness" to me at length: They're fun to be around. They loud. They not quiet people . . .

When I'm by myself I don't really be yelling and stuff, but when I'm with my friends, yeah, I be like that . . . When I'm around my friends I can't be quiet. We [are] just always loud. That's how it is. When we go around school, everybody already knows. We're always together, and we always act loud. Everybody's like, "If you guys were ever in cla.s.s together I feel sorry for that teacher." That's how we was in sixth period. We were hecka loud in that cla.s.s.

Other students also described the Basketball Girls as loud. Jason observed, "They are sometimes a little rowdy and loud. Like after school they hang out sometimes and they're running around yelling and stuff, but you just overlook it. I think they're cool."

The Basketball Girls were instantly recognizable because their attire set them apart from other female students. They wore long hair, typically slicked back into tightly held ponytails that hung long down their backs.

They dressed in baggy hip-hop clothes generally indistinguishable from boys' hip-hop clothing: oversize shirts, baggy pants precariously balanced low on their hips and held up with a belt, immaculately clean athletic shoes unlaced with socks rolled up under the tongues so that they stuck out, and large jewelry. One day Mich.e.l.le came to school dressed entirely in white-white cargo pants, a white baggy T-shirt, and a white sweatshirt with one arm in the sleeve and the other sleeve hiked up over her shoulder (a typically "boy" way to wear it), and white tennis shoes.