Dude, You're A Fag Part 7

PR ACTICA L STEPS.

It is hard to base policy recommendations on poststructuralist theory and a.n.a.lysis, which often seems far removed from the "nitty-gritty" of lived experience. In its emphasis on deconstructing categories, feminist theory has often outpaced the slower movement toward social justice, which relies on those very categories to ill.u.s.trate inequality (Bordo 1994). I have detailed above a more theoretical approach to solving some of the problems I outlined in this book. Now I suggest some policy changes that may facilitate more equitable conditions for adolescents. I focus these policy suggestions mostly on schools because while schools, as shown throughout this text, can be places of intense h.o.m.ophobia and s.e.xism, they can also be places for "anti-discriminatory responses to marginalization"

(Pallotta-Chiarolli 1999, 183). Organizations, individuals, and professionals from a range of disciplines have been mobilizing around issues of hara.s.sment, bullying, s.e.xism, and h.o.m.ophobia in schools over the last decade. I suggest here helpful organizations, curricular changes, resources for parents and educators, and films aimed at helping to facilitate gender and s.e.xual equity in schools.

Legal protections need to be in place to shield gay, lesbian, bis.e.xual, transgendered, and other non-normatively gendered students. Both Brady and Riley invoked California's AB 537, which prevents discrimination in schools based on s.e.xual or gender ident.i.ty, in order to gain equal treatment. Brady relied upon it, in part, to create the GSA, and Riley later used it to bolster her claim that she be able to wear a black graduation robe rather than a yellow one. The California legislature is not alone in having pa.s.sed such a law. The District of Columbia, Maine, Minnesota, and New Jersey have all enacted laws that prohibit hara.s.s-168 ment and/or discrimination based on s.e.xual orientation and gender ident.i.ty in school. Several other states-Connecticut, Ma.s.sachusetts, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin-have pa.s.sed laws that prohibit hara.s.sment and discrimination based on s.e.xual orientation in school but fail to protect alternative gender expressions. As the experiences of many non-normatively gendered students at River High indicate, these laws need to include gender expression, as alternative gender practices trig-ger much of the h.o.m.ophobic or s.e.xually based teasing in adolescence. As of the writing of this book, twenty states have no provisions protecting gay, lesbian, bis.e.xual, transgendered, or other non-normatively gendered students in school.

Though California has one of the most progressive laws about gay, lesbian, bis.e.xual, and transgendered (GLBT) youth in the nation, this law, it seems, did not protect Ricky. Ricky's experience indicates that these laws had little effect on his ability to learn free from hara.s.sment.

Teachers and administrators actually need to know about and enforce this legislation once it is in place. Had teachers and administrators actually heeded the law (or even been informed of it) and protected Ricky from threats of violence, he might have completed his education instead of dropping out to work as a female impersonator.

Presumably students (male and female) have been protected from s.e.xual hara.s.sment since the pa.s.sage of t.i.tle IX in 1972 (Orenstein 2002).

However, as with AB 537, the deployment of t.i.tle IX leaves something to be desired. s.e.xual hara.s.sment is rampant at River High School, as the boys in chapter 4 demonstrate. Boys' s.e.x talk and predatory behavior has become so normalized that teachers don't even recognize it as hara.s.sment but rather consider it harmless flirting. To implement these laws teachers and administrators must look with a new eye at student interactions, noting how both h.o.m.ophobic epithets and so-called flirtatious behaviors sh.o.r.e up normative gender and s.e.xual ident.i.ties and perpetuate unequal gender arrangements. Films such as Flirting or Hurting Flirting or Hurting can help both educators and students recognize more equitable interactions.5 Additionally, students who hara.s.s other students need to be punished, but can help both educators and students recognize more equitable interactions.5 Additionally, students who hara.s.s other students need to be punished, but Conclusion / Conclusion / 169 169 they also need to be educated. It's not enough to reprimand or discipline a boy for making s.e.xist comments or calling someone a f.a.g. To simply punish students who are hara.s.sing other students without explaining larger issues of power and inequality leaves those who are hara.s.sing confused and angry, and, more importantly, doesn't necessarily change how youth think about power and inequality (Orenstein 2002).

Educators can also take proactive steps to make schools more equitable places. They need to create learning and social environments that are more supportive of gay, lesbian, bis.e.xual, transgendered, and other non-normatively gendered youth. Administrators can modify both the social organization of the school and the curriculum content so that they are less h.o.m.ophobic and gender normative. Including a range of s.e.xual and gender ident.i.ties in school rituals and curricula will indicate to both GLBT and non-normatively gendered students as well as straight and normatively gendered students that school authorities don't tolerate gender- and s.e.xuality-based hara.s.sment or violence.

Schools can modify h.o.m.ophobic and s.e.xist social environments in several ways-by placing affirming posters in their cla.s.srooms, providing support for GSAs, sponsoring a.s.semblies and speakers, and reorganizing highly gendered school rituals. Allowing the formation of GSAs is an especially effective and simple way to support GLBT, gender-variant youth and their allies.6 There has been a veritable explosion of GSAs across the country over the past ten years. Students are initiating, forming, and sustaining these clubs in progressive cities like San Francisco and in solidly "red states" like Utah. Since courts ruled that these clubs are protected by the Federal Equal Access Act (which requires that schools allow noncurricular student groups access to the school), students have been banding together in support of gay and lesbian youth. According to the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, there are at least three thousand GSAs nationwide. GSAs from every state, with the exception of North Dakota, have registered with the network. As Ricky's, Genevieve's, and Lacy's stories indicate, having a GSA at River was cru-cial for them. It provided a s.p.a.ce for them to feel safe, create social net-170 works, hear special speakers, plan social events, and learn. The presence of and activism stemming from GSAs are central to combating h.o.m.ophobic and s.e.xist teasing, bullying, and violence in schools (Blumenfeld 1995). Administrators might also want to consider providing counseling and support groups for GLBT and gender-variant teens. Several advocates for gay and lesbian and non-normatively gendered teens indicate that school-sponsored support groups and specially trained counselors may alleviate some of the suffering of gay and lesbian students (Reynolds and Koski 1995; Uribe 1995).

Schools can also send the message that h.o.m.ophobia and s.e.xism are unacceptable through school-sponsored a.s.semblies and speakers.

Schools bring in a number of speakers and sponsor a variety of a.s.semblies each year. River High's administration, for instance, brings in guest speakers and performers to celebrate Black History Month, sponsors an annual Multi-Cultural a.s.sembly, and stages emotionally intense programs such as "Every 15 Minutes," which simulates student deaths due to drunk-driving accidents. These programs are organized to teach students lessons about history, respect for difference, antiracism, and alcohol abuse. In addition to these sorts of a.s.semblies and educational pro-gramming, schools should bring in speakers from feminist and gay rights organizations to talk about gay history, equal rights, and teasing. Studies have shown that after youth have witnessed gay people talking about their experience as gay people in formal settings, such as these sorts of school a.s.semblies, they are less likely to express h.o.m.ophobic att.i.tudes (Nelson and Krieger 1997). Bringing in feminist, gay, and lesbian speakers might also change the public att.i.tudes at River High. Since schools already bring in many special speakers and put on special programs to combat other social ills, recognizing Women's History Month or National Coming Out Day would send an unambiguous message to students that the school, as an inst.i.tution, opposed s.e.xism and h.o.m.ophobia.

Additionally the school could support GSA members' efforts to stage their own social interventions such as the "Day of Silence."

Conclusion / 171 171 Similarly, school administrators need to take a serious look at the role of rituals such as dances, proms, homecoming, and Mr. Cougar, in their socialization project.7 To the extent that these rituals are heteros.e.xist, h.o.m.ophobic, and s.e.xist they need to be reworked. The messages conveyed to students through these rituals should not be that the school advocates and in fact demands heteros.e.xualized gender difference. Rather, the rituals should be organized to reflect the diversity of gender and s.e.xual ident.i.ties among students. Small changes can make a big difference in terms of school rituals. For example, River High, like many other high schools, distributes lists of the names of all senior girls for homecoming queen and all senior boys for Mr. Cougar. If schools are wedded to these sorts of popularity rituals, they could consider listing all student names for each compet.i.tion, instead of deciding in advance the gender of each student and thus the gender of the homecoming queen or Mr. Cougar. They might also want to allow a Ms. Cougar or a homecoming king or to develop alternative gender-neutral t.i.tles. Students should be able to take same-gender dates, whether romantically or just as friends, to school dances and as escorts to the more formal rituals. Technically River High had no rule against this practice, but certainly Jessie didn't initially feel comfortable taking a same-gender date to these rituals. Clothing expectations should be applied equally to boy and girl students. Girls should not be required to wear different-colored robes for graduation, nor should they be forced to wear revealing off-the-shoulder drapes for their senior pictures. Finally, schoolwide performances (such as the Mr. Cougar skits) should be vetted for h.o.m.ophobic, s.e.xist, or heteros.e.xist content. The f.a.g discourse should not be allowed to form the story line of these sorts of rituals.

In addition to these modifications to the social world of the school, educators need to look seriously at the inclusion (or lack thereof ) of GLBT and gender-variant people in the school curriculum. Arthur Lipkin (1995) makes the case that gays and lesbians can be included in a va-172 riety of areas in the curriculum. Inclusion of nonheteros.e.xual and non-normatively gendered people in the official learning of the school would make s.e.xual minority and gender-variant students feel less alone. It would also combat damaging or scary images of gays and lesbians in the mainstream media (Lipkin 1995). Additionally, learning about GLBT or gender-variant people will send a message to straight students about the school's stance on h.o.m.ophobic and s.e.xist teasing. If students are encouraged to be less prejudiced, they may indeed experience more leeway with their own s.e.xual and gender ident.i.ties (Lipkin 1995).

Whether or not they are teaching specifically about s.e.xuality or gender, teachers need to be aware of how they contribute to the "hidden curriculum" (Campbell and Sanders 2002; Letts and Sears 1999; J. Martin 1976) of the cla.s.sroom. Teachers shouldn't try to garner masculine favor by allowing s.e.xism or h.o.m.ophobia to go unchecked. For example, the boys who formed the Man Party in response to Mrs. Mac's cla.s.s a.s.sign-ment should have been questioned about their plan and motivations for the party. Their desire to deny women the right to vote and to make fun of girls by showing how little they knew about women's history could have been used as a moment to teach about s.e.xism, citizenship, and vot-ing rights.

Organizations such as the Safe Schools Coalition, the California Teachers a.s.sociation, and GALE-BC provide resources, lesson plans, and teaching tools for teachers to create less h.o.m.ophobic and gender-normative cla.s.srooms.8 The California Teachers a.s.sociation and the National Education a.s.sociation partnered to produce a teachers' handbook ent.i.tled Gay, Lesbian, Bis.e.xual and Transgender Youth: Breaking the Silence. Gay, Lesbian, Bis.e.xual and Transgender Youth: Breaking the Silence.

The goal of this handbook is to educate teachers and school employees to ensure that all students receive "equal educational opportunity,"

though it stops short of encouraging change in values or beliefs. This informative and creative booklet provides discussion guidelines, statistics about s.e.xual ident.i.ties, definitions, exercises for students, and a variety of ways to include gays and lesbians in the curriculum. It is a model of what might be given to teachers at the beginning of each school year.

Conclusion / 173 173 Finally, in terms of the earlier discussion of parody and play, providing support and s.p.a.ces for gendered and s.e.xualized difference and fluidity is key to changing the seemingly entrenched h.o.m.ophobia and s.e.xism central to adolescent masculinity. s.p.a.ces should be created and sustained in which youth can think about the possibilities of crafting and inhabiting a variety of gender ident.i.ties. This is exactly what, with little adult guidance, the kids were doing in both the GSA and the drama performances. They were carving out playful, political, and meaningful ways of redefining, in part by deconstructing, the social categories of girl and boy, masculinity and femininity. In GSA meetings the youth (gay, straight, boy, and girl) challenged the concept of "normal" through their interactions and in their dress styles. They threw "normal" in the face of the administration and other kids in the school by partic.i.p.ating in a Day of Silence, by putting up posters, and by having announcements of their meetings read aloud over the loudspeaker. They made their difference public and they did so in a group, which afforded them more protection, and possibly power, than doing it individually. The boys in drama tried on a variety of gender ident.i.ties, often simultaneously. The s.p.a.ces for this sort of gendered and s.e.xualized creativity and playfulness are central to challenging gender and s.e.xuality norms in adolescence and high school.

Schools need to ensure that drama programs, which are constantly under funding threats, continue and that GSAs are allowed to meet, relatively free from peer hara.s.sment.

High school is hard. Negotiating gender ident.i.ties is hard. Figuring out s.e.xuality is hard. It is up to adults to configure s.p.a.ces that support youths' variety of gender and s.e.xual expressions. It is also up to adults to protect young people from the vicious teasing and hara.s.sment rampant in most modern high schools. We can't accept that boys and girls are defining a masculinity based on damaging notions of power and domination. We can't accept that youth craft masculine ident.i.ties through physically and verbally hara.s.sing girls and some boys. Much as adults have taken a stand, for the most part, against racist epithets in school, we need to take inst.i.tutional and individual stands against s.e.xist and h.o.m.o-174 phobic epithets. At both inst.i.tutional and individual levels, we need to support boys and girls who enact non-normative gender and s.e.xual ident.i.ties. "Making our schools safe for sissies" (Rofes 1995, 79) can make them safer places for all students: masculine girls, feminine boys, and all those in between.

a p p e n d i x WHAT IF A GUY HITS ON YOU?.

Intersections of Gender, s.e.xuality, and Age in Fieldwork with Adolescents in Fieldwork with Adolescents "Yeah, she's writing a book on River guys," said sixteen-year-old Ray as he introduced me to a few of his friends in River High School's bustling main hallway.

Don, a tall, lanky basketball player, leaned casually against the stone pillar next to me. "d.a.m.n," he said, smiling down at me, "I was gonna hit on you." Six months into my research I had grown more accustomed to, although certainly not comfortable with, this sort of response from boys at River High School. During my time in the field I often heard similar comments from boys interested in dating me, asking my advice about their s.e.xual adventures, or inquiring about my own personal life. In this chapter I discuss unique challenges encountered by female researchers when studying adolescent boys. I focus particularly on how the boys infused our interactions with s.e.xual content and how I managed these interactions to maintain rapport while simultaneously enforcing a professional distance (and maintaining my own dignity). I did this through the creation of what I call, building on Mandell's (1988) notion of a "least-adult" ident.i.ty, a "least-gendered" ident.i.ty.

The role of s.e.xuality is understudied in ethnographic research in general, and thoughtful a.n.a.lysis of it in methodological discussions of ethnographic research among youth is nearly absent. While teenagers are almost obsessively studied as s.e.xual actors, most research focuses on s.e.x education, "at-risk" behaviors, or non-normative s.e.xual ident.i.ties (Kulkin, Chauvin, and Percle 2000; Medrano 1994; Strunin 1994; Waldner-Haugrud and Magruder 1996) rather than the ways s.e.xuality constructs daily lives. In researching teenage boys I found that s.e.xuality was 175 176 / Appendix Appendix not just a set of behaviors studied by researchers but part of the research process itself in that it mediated, complicated, and illuminated researcher-respondent interactions. Masculinizing processes in adolescence take place not only between peers but also between a female researcher and male respondents (Arendell 1997).

As a female researcher, I was drawn into a set of objectifying and s.e.xualizing rituals through which boys constructed their ident.i.ties and certain school s.p.a.ces as masculine. In the end I wasn't just studying their gender ident.i.ties; I became part of the very process through which they constructed these ident.i.ties.

River High boys directed their masculinity rituals primarily at their female peers, but occasionally they would involve me. In response, I tried to manage this use of me as a masculinity resource by creating a "least-gendered ident.i.ty," positioning myself as a woman who possessed masculine cultural capital. I carefully crafted my ident.i.ty and interactional style to show that I was a woman who knew about "guy" topics and could engage in the verbal one-upmanship so common among boys at River High. That said, at times I accepted their use of me as a potential s.e.xual partner or s.e.xual object in order to maintain rapport, as I did when Don said he wanted to "hit on" me. At other times, I responded differently to the boys by establishing an insider/outsider position in terms of age, gender, and s.e.xuality. This liminal stance, and specifically my attempts to create a least-gendered ident.i.ty, allowed me to maintain a good relationship with the boys. This strategy yielded more information than I would have gathered had I reacted like an offended, judgmental adult or a giggly, smiling teenage girl. However, it stopped short of actually challenging the practices in which boys engaged as they crafted masculine ident.i.ties.

GOING BACK TO SCHOOL: NEGOTIATING.

INTERSECTIONS OF AGE AND GENDER.

The first methodological challenge I encountered when researching adolescents was not exactly what I had expected: going back to high school. I had a.s.sumed that since I had already researched adolescents, it would be simple to do the same for this project (Pascoe 2003). However, I hadn't antic.i.p.ated the difference between interviewing and actually existing among teenagers in their social worlds.

I realized that this project was going to be different the first day I walked onto the River campus to begin conducting research at 8:00 on a warm Monday morning. I walked out of the office in front of the school, having just signed in to the guest log and grabbed my visitor pa.s.s. The visitor pa.s.s, a blue and white rectan-What If a Guy Hits on You? / 177 gle sporting my name and VISITOR across the top, was supposed to be worn in a conspicuous location. Not wanting to highlight my temporary and outsider status, and possibly feeling some of that high school pressure to "fit in," I stuck it in my bag. Striding down the open-air hallway to my first cla.s.sroom observation, I heard a deep voice booming out behind me, "Hey you! Hey! Hey you! You! Who are you!" Frozen, having sudden flashbacks to my own high school experience and remembering narrow escapes while ditching cla.s.ses and evading threats of detention, I turned around. A fifty-something African American gentleman built like a linebacker loomed over me. Looking down through his gla.s.ses, he asked, "Who are you?" Recovering quickly and remembering that I was finishing up my twenties, not my teens, I looked up and smiled, in a way I hoped was charming, as I responded, "I'm C. J., a researcher here." I showed him my slip and he said, "Okay, as long as you have that with you." He explained to me that he was the school's security guard. His name was George Johnson, but I soon called him Mr.

J. just like the rest of the kids at River. Later, as I became a more familiar sight at the school, Mr. J. engaged in many of the same s.e.xualizing processes as the boys did, often saying flirtatious things to me like "Well, my day suddenly got much brighter since you you got here!" followed with a wink. got here!" followed with a wink.

That moment of misidentification was the first of many: teachers thought I was a student, and students thought I was a new student, a teacher, or worse, a parole officer. Early in my research, as I sat in the back row of the auto shop cla.s.s, a tall, lanky blond boy with spiky hair and a relaxed demeanor turned to me as the rest of the boys in the cla.s.s zinged from one side of the room to the other and asked, "You new here?" I laughed and said, "Sort of. How old do you think I am?" "Uh, seventeen?" he answered. I laughed, explaining, "No, I'm a researcher. I'm almost thirty. I'm writing a book on you guys." He told me he hoped it was a good book.

Soon after that tall, lanky blond thought I was a new student, I found myself standing at a table with the "High School Democrats" as they tried to recruit students to their club. I stood next to the vice-president, Trevor, as he summoned David, the president, to introduce me. David looked at me quizzically as he walked over, and I, responding to his questioning look, said, "Who do you think I am?" David paused, looked at Trevor and said, "His mom?" I burst out laughing, as did Trevor. Somehow I had gone from late teens to late thirties in a matter of hours! I told him no, I was a researcher from Berkeley and I was writing a book on boys in his school.

I found I was anxious not to let the students know my actual age, fearing that I would lose some of the cachet inherent in my role as a Berkeley researcher. My concern about age was reflected in my clothing choices as well. I didn't want to 178 / Appendix Appendix dress like the teachers because I didn't want to be seen as an authority figure.

However, because I didn't wear the extremely low-slung pants that the girls tended to wear and possibly because I walked with more confidence than did most teenage girls, students often mistook me for a teacher. Even though I wore baggy pants and a black T-shirt, one day as I was walking down the hallway two boys who had been joking around and using swear words looked at one another as one said, "Shhhh! She's a teacher."

Like these two boys, other students were wary of me. I spent one afternoon early in my fieldwork hanging out at Bob's, a small yellow burger shack around the corner from school, where kids ordered their food from a window and con-gregated around the eight picnic tables separated from the sidewalk by a tall wrought-iron black fence. The "bad" kids hung out here. Most dressed in dark baggy clothing, and many smoked. Quite frankly, some of them, with their spiky hair and multiple piercings, intimidated me. I had never hung out with these sorts of "bad" kids when I was in high school and still felt as if I might be punished for a.s.sociating with them. Thinking about this fear of punishment, I asked a large white boy in a red and plaid black shirt, earrings, a slight mustache, and baggy pants if kids ever got in trouble for smoking. He said, "No. Every once in a while the cops would come by and tell us to put it out, but not usually." I told him I was writing a book on River and he looked a little surprised. He took me over to another group of three boys, one of them clutching a skateboard who looked at me and asked, "Who are you?" At this point I was intrigued by their categories, so I responded with "Who do you think I am?" He said "P.O." and I immediately thought-partic.i.p.ant observer-and laughed to myself. In explanation, he offered, "Parole officer." I laughed out loud at this point. "No, I would probably make more money being a parole officer. Do they really come around here?"

"Yeah, all the time," he answered.

I finally settled on telling the students I was "almost thirty." I tried to make it seem as if I was an adult but not too much older than them, more of a mediator between the adult world and their world. I negotiated a "least-adult" (Mandell 1988) ident.i.ty, in which I was simultaneously like and not like the teens I was researching. Barrie Thorne (1993), in her research on elementary school children, provides vivid examples of how to enact a least-adult ident.i.ty across generational lines.

In establishing and maintaining a least-adult ident.i.ty, I had to repeatedly promise the boys that they wouldn't get in trouble for the things they told me.

J. W., for instance, walked out of the weight room to ask what I was writing down in my notebook. I said I took notes on everything they did. He asked if I had written about a fight that had occurred the day before. I said yes and asked him if he What If a Guy Hits on You? / What If a Guy Hits on You? / 179 179 was worried that he was going to get in trouble. He nodded. I told him that everything I wrote down was confidential; I couldn't get him in trouble at all. He said he was worried that I was going to tell his teacher. I told him, "No, I don't tell teachers about stuff that I saw that could get kids in trouble." I continued by saying that maybe if "I were in the middle of a fight or got hurt then I might tell somebody." J. W. asked, "What if a guy hits on you?" I laughed and said that I didn't tell teachers about that either. J. W., in this early interaction, began to lay the groundwork for later comments he would make about my body and s.e.xuality by ensuring that he wouldn't get in trouble for saying them. were in the middle of a fight or got hurt then I might tell somebody." J. W. asked, "What if a guy hits on you?" I laughed and said that I didn't tell teachers about that either. J. W., in this early interaction, began to lay the groundwork for later comments he would make about my body and s.e.xuality by ensuring that he wouldn't get in trouble for saying them.

Once the boys got used to the fact that I was going to be hanging around, they took pains to make sure I was writing down what they thought was important. It took them a while to realize that I wouldn't tattle on them. They tested me on this claim by breaking the rules in front of me and then looking at me to see if I disapproved. One day I proved my mettle by refusing to tattle on them as they monkeyed around on the cable machine in the weight room. Mike, J. W., and Josh set the pin to lift the heaviest weights on the cable machine. This meant that the cables were so heavy that none of them had the strength individually to pull the weights off the ground. As Billy and I watched, Mike, J. W., and Josh all tried to perform chest flies with this enormous amount of weight. They aided each other by holding the lifter's arms in place while another boy put the handle on the lifter's arm. As they tried out the cables they discovered, much to their delight, that the weight was so heavy that, if a boy kept hold of the cables, he would be lifted off the ground. When J. W. tried to perform a chest fly, he lost the battle with the weights, allowed the cables to pull him up, and executed a back flip as they did so. As he performed more flips, the boys in the cla.s.s gathered in a half-circle around him, urging him on.

I asked Jeff what he thought this gymnastic/weight-lifting performance was all about. He told me, echoing my claims from earlier in the book about how boys become masculine in groups, "Proving masculinity. They're only doing it because they're guys and they're around other guys. They prove how strong they are, and then, when everyone sees how strong they are, they don't mess with them." As if realizing, that he, too, didn't want to be messed with, soon after he had made this p.r.o.nouncement, Jeff walked over to join in. By this time the crowd was so large that they kept looking to make sure Coach Ramirez wasn't paying attention. A group of boys helped Jeff grab onto the cable handles, and he tried desperately to hold onto them. The weights yanked little Jeff quickly into the air as he easily performed a back flip. He kept trying to do a front flip, which no boy had yet performed, and when he was unable to complete it he let the weights fly 180 / Appendix Appendix down as he let go. They clanked down so hard that the pin snapped in half. The boys scattered, yelling, "He broke it! He broke it!" Josh, standing next to me, started laughing, "Write it down! Write about guys doing dumb stuff!" Instead of fearing that I would tattle on them to Coach Ramirez, they wanted me to doc.u.ment their misdeeds. Thankfully, teachers never put me in the position to report on student behavior either.

Many of the boys in auto shop and the weight room came to pride themselves on their status as research subjects. Brook took a look at my big pad of paper, which I happened to be carrying that day because I had filled up the small one I usually carried with me. He cried, "She came in with the big notebook today!"

Darren chimed in, "She knows we do too much to put in the small one!" Arnie said, amazed, "I can't believe you filled up a whole notebook." I said, "Yeah, between you guys and weight lifting." Arnie replied, "Yeah, they're they're really bad." The boys frequently equated "badness" with masculinity. They knew I was there to study masculinity and as a result thought that what I wrote down was "bad" stuff. really bad." The boys frequently equated "badness" with masculinity. They knew I was there to study masculinity and as a result thought that what I wrote down was "bad" stuff.

For instance, Ryan said to me, "Your book is a lot today." I said, "Yeah, lots of good stuff." To which he responded, "About Josh?" Josh was pegged as one of the most masculine boys because he was one of the "baddest"; thus Ryan a.s.sumed I wrote more on days he acted up.

This constant doc.u.mentation helped define me as an outsider, albeit a privileged one, an expert, someone who knew more about the boys than they knew about themselves. The boys highlighted my outsider status in auto shop as a subst.i.tute was engaging in futile attempts to calm down the cla.s.s. The subst.i.tute, Mr.

Brown, stated, for the tenth time, "Okay, guys and girls. Settle down, guys and girls." Brook responded, "Uh, it's all guys." Jeff said, looking at me, "Except for her." Brook countered, "She's an outsider. She takes notes." Both looked at me and we laughed. Brook and Jeff highlighted my liminal status-I wasn't really really a girl because I was an outsider. All these instances go to show that negotiating age and authority differences is important when studying adolescents. I had to leave my "adultness" behind and refrain from admonishing them for behaving like teens. Their impressions of me were a source of data themselves as boys projected on to me adultness, femaleness, and the ability to punish them. a girl because I was an outsider. All these instances go to show that negotiating age and authority differences is important when studying adolescents. I had to leave my "adultness" behind and refrain from admonishing them for behaving like teens. Their impressions of me were a source of data themselves as boys projected on to me adultness, femaleness, and the ability to punish them.

CREATING A LEAST-GENDERED IDENt.i.tY.

While I did not lift weights with the boys or work on cars with them, I did engage in gender practices that marked me as less like the girls in their peer groups.

What If a Guy Hits on You? / 181 181 I was not easily categorized, creating what I thought of as a "least-gendered ident.i.ty." Establishing a least-gendered ident.i.ty required drawing upon masculine cultural capital such as bodily comportment, my inability to be offended, living in a tough area, athleticism, and a compet.i.tive joking interactional style.

I first attempted to create a least-gendered ident.i.ty by dressing and carrying myself differently than teenaged girls. Most girls at River High wore tight, fitted pants baring their hips or belly b.u.t.tons. I, on the other hand, routinely wore low-slung baggy jeans or cargo pants (characterized by multiple large pockets), black T-shirts or sweaters, and puffy vests or jackets favored by those who identified with hip-hop culture. Similarly, I "camped up" my s.e.xuality. I performed what might be identified as a soft-butch lesbian demeanor. I walked with a swagger in my shoulders, rather than in my hips (Esterberg 1996). I stood strong legged instead of shifting my weight from one leg to another. I used little flourish in my hand motions, instead using my arms in a traditionally masculine way-hands wide with stiff wrists. I smiled less. I also sat with my legs wide apart and crossed ankle over knee rather than knee over knee. This appearance muted my difference and helped me gain access to boys' worlds and conversations-if not as an honorary guy, at least as some sort of neutered observer who wouldn't be offended.

My athletic ability and interests also contributed to my least-gendered status.

Boys and I often spoke of mountain biking, and we would sometimes get into in-jury comparison contests, trying to one-up each other with the grossest and most outlandish sporting incident-me talking about my concussions and revealing my scars, boys showing their st.i.tches and scabs. The weight room teacher, Coach Ramirez, inadvertently helped establish my sporting ident.i.ty with his introduction to his weight-lifting cla.s.s. We had spoken on the phone before I had come to visit his cla.s.s, and during our discussion we had talked about lifting weights, something I did on a regular basis. This had helped me establish rapport with him, as he was pa.s.sionate about weight lifting and strength training. When he introduced me to the cla.s.s, he told the boys I was a "weight lifter from U.C. Berkeley who has some things she wants to talk to you about." He encouraged them to ask me questions about weight lifting and form. I think this gave them the impression that I was a weight lifter from Berkeley in some official capacity as opposed to a graduate student who went to the gym several times a week and lifted weights to stay fit. While boys didn't come running to me for advice, I did tease them about their form (which, more often than not, was horrible), and we were able to joke back and forth about it, thus establishing rapport. This sort of masculine cultural capital-both the teasing (a hallmark of masculinity) (Kehily and 182 / Appendix Appendix Nayak 1997; Lyman 1998) and the knowledge-allowed me to attain something of an insider/outsider status.

Describing where I lived to the boys at River High also bolstered my least-gendered status. I lived off a main thoroughfare in Oakland, California, famous for drug deals, prost.i.tution, and gang fights. Indeed, during the time of my research a man was gunned down on the street outside my apartment. This actually gave me an entree with some groups of boys, especially African American boys, who were slightly less willing to talk with me, regarding me as just another white member of the administration who could discover their real addresses and send them back to the "bad" school in the nearby Chicago district. I was standing outside the weight room watching a bunch of boys with whom I hadn't yet spoken. J. W. turned to them to introduce me, saying, "She lives in East Oakland." A chorus of "ooohs," "aaaahs," and "no ways!" followed this announcement. One of the boys in that group, Mike, later introduced me to a group of his friends, all African American boys, by pointing at me and saying, "She live in East Oakland." One of the boys in the group said, looking over short, blonde, female me, "No she don't." Mike challenged him, "Ask her." So, Dax did, in disbelief: "You live in East Oakland?" I smiled and said, "Yeah, between East 18th and East 14th." Talking about a recent murder, Rakim said, "She lives two blocks from where that guy was killed." The boys still looked skeptical. I asked Dax, "Why don't you believe that I live in Oakland?" "'Cause it's ghetto," he replied. I agreed, "Yes, it is ghetto." They all laughed uproariously as I said the word ghetto. ghetto. Then they clamored asking, where was I Then they clamored asking, where was I really really from. I told them that I was born in Or-ange County, a famously white conservative area in Southern California. This seemed to make much more sense to them. It seemed that they were picking up on a raced and cla.s.sed ident.i.ty-a whiteness that was at odds with my residence in such a tough neighborhood. Much as the boys perceived badness as masculinity, my living and surviving in a "bad" area helped me to establish credibility with them. From this point on these African American boys were much more likely to let me into their circles. Again, this sort of knowledge allowed me to be an insider in multiple ways, in terms of street credibility, racial ident.i.ty, and age. from. I told them that I was born in Or-ange County, a famously white conservative area in Southern California. This seemed to make much more sense to them. It seemed that they were picking up on a raced and cla.s.sed ident.i.ty-a whiteness that was at odds with my residence in such a tough neighborhood. Much as the boys perceived badness as masculinity, my living and surviving in a "bad" area helped me to establish credibility with them. From this point on these African American boys were much more likely to let me into their circles. Again, this sort of knowledge allowed me to be an insider in multiple ways, in terms of street credibility, racial ident.i.ty, and age.

As I established a "least-gendered" ident.i.ty, I disrupted the common understanding of s.e.x-gender correspondence. Like many women who gain access to all-male domains, I distanced myself from more conventional forms of femininity (Herbert 1998). I purposefully distinguished myself from the other women in these boys' lives: mothers, teachers, and, most importantly, other teenage girls.

I didn't wear makeup or tight clothing and I didn't giggle. I also selectively shared information about myself, emphasizing attributes such as mountain biking, What If a Guy Hits on You? / What If a Guy Hits on You? / 183 183 weight lifting, guitar playing, and bragging about injuries. I intentionally left out topics that would align me with femininity, such as my love of cooking, my feminism, and my excitement about my upcoming commitment ceremony. Like the boys, I distanced myself from femininity, but I did not, like the boys, actively dis-parage femininity. In this sense creating a "least-gendered ident.i.ty" involved a deliberately gendered research strategy.

NEGOTIATING s.e.xUA LITY.

I was not consistently successful in maintaining this least-gendered ident.i.ty.

Some boys insisted on positioning me as a potential s.e.xual partner by drawing me into the s.e.xualizing and objectifying rituals central to maintaining a masculine ident.i.ty at River High. Being used as an ident.i.ty resource in this way left me feeling objectified, scared, angry, and unsettled. As a strong, a.s.sertive woman who socializes primarily with other feminists, I found it disconcerting to have boys leer at me and ask invasive questions about my personal life. Despite my efforts to create a least-gendered ident.i.ty, some of them set up a heteros.e.xual dynamic between us, trying to transform me into a girl their age (or older, which might have been in some way "better") who might or might not be a future s.e.xual conquest. It was as if, by making me concretely feminine, they could a.s.sert their masculinity as a socially dominant ident.i.ty.

The first time this happened I was startled, and, looking back at my field notes, I have a hard time describing why I knew I was being positioned as a s.e.xual object. During my second day of research at River High, I had presented my project to the auto shop cla.s.s, saying to a room full of boys, "Hey, you're probably all wondering what I'm doing here. I'm writing a book on teenage guys. And I'm researching the guys at your school. I'm gonna be a doctor in two years, that's what this book is for. I'm gonna be at your football games, dances, and lunch and school, et cetera . . . for the next year. And I'll probably want to interview some of you." When a bunch of boys in the back of the room yelled out, "Rodriguez will do it, Rodriguez will do it!" and Rodriguez said lasciviously, "Yeah, I totally totally will," I felt warned that these boys were in a process of building dominant ident.i.ties and that I, as a woman, was central to this process. As a result, I knew, early in my research, that I would have to figure out ways to deal with this sort of treatment while maintaining my rapport with them. will," I felt warned that these boys were in a process of building dominant ident.i.ties and that I, as a woman, was central to this process. As a result, I knew, early in my research, that I would have to figure out ways to deal with this sort of treatment while maintaining my rapport with them.

On a few occasions I felt physically intimidated by the boys as they invaded my s.p.a.ce with their sheer size and manipulated my body with their strength. At 184 / Appendix Appendix one point during the Junior Prom David ran up to me and started "freaking" me.

Freaking is a popular dance move in which students grind their pelvises together in time to the music as if to simulate s.e.x. David was probably six feet tall (as compared to my five feet and two inches) and the size of a grown man, not a wiry adolescent. I had never been grabbed by a man in such a way, and I responded with a bit of panic. I tried to step back from him, but he wrapped his arms around me so that I couldn't escape his frantic grinding. I put my arms on his shoulders and gently pushed back, laughing nervously, saying, "This might be a little inappropriate, David," and saying I hoped he had a good night. I was desperately hoping no administrators saw it because I didn't want to get in trouble for s.e.xually accosting one of the students, even though he had approached me.

Researching teens required maintaining rapport with two groups who often had different interests: students and administrators. I needed administrators to see me as a responsible (and thus nons.e.xual) adult while simultaneously appearing accessible, but not too much so, to the teens on the dance floor. Similarly, at another dance, a boy I didn't even recognize ran up to me, tightly grabbed both of my wrists, and pulled me toward the dancing throng, saying, "C'mon! You want to dance!" as a statement, not as a question. Again, I tried to hide my fear and exit the situation by laughing, but I had to struggle to pull my wrists out of his grip.

Other boys were even more physically aggressive, especially in primarily male s.p.a.ces. In auto shop Stan, Reggie, and J. W. kept grabbing each others' crotches and then hurriedly placing their hands in a protective cup over their own, while giggling. After watching them for a while, I finally asked J. W. what they were doing. He explained, "It's cup check. Wanna play?" I must have looked shocked as he extended his hand toward my own crotch. Trying to maintain my calm I said, "No thanks." Looking slyly at me he tried again: "Wanna play t.i.tties?" suddenly shoving his hands toward my chest and twisting them around. I shook my head, dumbfounded. He turned and walked away as Stan and Reggie defensively put their hands over their genitals. I felt especially violated because he didn't just ask, "Want to play cup check?" He followed this question with a specifically gendered proposal, reaching for my chest. To protect myself from their violating touches, while at the same time maintaining a relationship with them, I laughed to mitigate discomfort and quietly exited the situation. In these instances I found no way to maintain some sort of least-gendered ident.i.ty but rather tried to escape their s.e.xualizing and objectifying processes without looking offended or flattered.

Josh was one of the boys whose actions I found most troubling. He often What If a Guy Hits on You? / What If a Guy Hits on You? / 185 185 stood too close to me, eyed me lasciviously, and constantly adjusted his crotch when he was around me. I was repelled by these gestures and his heavily pimpled face. He was constantly seeking masculine positioning by talking about women's bodies in problematic ways. I had forged a decent relationship with his off-again, on-again girlfriend, Jessica, a striking blonde. She came up to me one morning in drama cla.s.s to tell me that she and Josh had been talking about me the previous night on the phone. I looked surprised as she continued, saying that he had told her how he liked older women and he would like to "bang" me. After hearing this I felt exceedingly awkward and, quite frankly, vulnerable. It hadn't occurred to me that conversations about me were going on in my absence. I also realized that I was in a vulnerable position, not just in terms of s.e.xual advances, but in terms of any stories these boys might choose to tell about me. Throughout my research Josh continued to allude to me as his s.e.xual partner. In auto shop one day, when I rose from my seat to use the restroom in the school office, Josh yelled out, "You leaving already?" I looked at him and said, "Bathroom." He pointed to the grimy bathroom/changing room the boys used and said, "There's one here." I replied, "I don't think so." As I walked away, Josh looked around, adjusted his crotch, and followed me out saying, "I'll be back, fellas," to suggest that he was going to follow me and something s.e.xual was going to happen. He had adjusted his crotch with a greasy hand, so falling back, he said, "My nuts are greasy!" and he stopped following me. Using the strategy I had by that time perfected, I just ignored him.

In instances where I couldn't escape or ignore my involvement in these s.e.xualizing processes, I sometimes tried to respond as neutrally as possible while encouraging boys to continue to talk about their feelings. One day in the weight room J. W. was looking pensive, sheepish, or moping, I couldn't tell which. He finally sidled up to me and asked, in a saccharine, bashful voice, "Can I ask you a personal question?" This question always gave me pause. I had been asking them all sorts of personal questions and following their every word and deed. As a result I felt that I should reciprocate, to a certain extent, with information about myself. So I concluded, "Sure," thinking I could talk my way out of inappropriate questions about whether I was married or dating, which were the types of questions I was usually asked. Instead, he surprised me with a question I didn't fully understand but knew was inappropriate: "Have you ever had your walls ripped?" Frantically, I thought that I had to stall for time as I figured out how to respond to what I knew must be a lewd question. I a.s.sumed, given the context of the boys' previous discussions about making girlfriends bleed by "ripping" their walls, that it had something to do with their p.e.n.i.ses being so large that they pro-186 / Appendix Appendix duced b.l.o.o.d.y tears in their girlfriends' v.a.g.i.n.al walls. I tried to respond with a relatively neutral answer: "What do you mean, walls ripped?" J. W. stammered, trying to answer the question. He began to look around desperately for help, asking other guys to help him define it. Since it isn't really possible to rip a girls' walls as often and as harshly as they bragged, none of them really knew what it actually meant. The boys all looked at him as if to say, "You've gotten yourself into your own mess this time" and laughed at him as they shook their heads "no." Finally, unable to continue to embarra.s.s him and feeling incredibly awkward myself, I said, "I know what it means. Why do you want to know?" He responded, "'Cause I like to know if girls are freaky or not. I like freaky girls." I felt awkward at this point because it seemed as if I was being categorized as a potential s.e.xual conquest. Instead of following that line of talk I redirected the question and asked him, "Have you ever ripped a girl's walls?" J. W. responded proudly, "h.e.l.l yeah."

So I asked him, "How does it make you feel?" He spread his legs and looked down between them, gesturing: "I feel h.e.l.la bad because they are bleeding and crying. It hurts them." This strategy of redirecting the offensive statement back toward the boys had the effect of producing rich data. While trying not to reveal information about myself or appear offended, I furthered the discussion by trying to engage him to talk about his feelings, which he did, to the extent that he was able.

By the end of my research, I frequently copied some of the boys' masculinizing strategies in my interactions with them, specifically the ways boys established themselves as masculine through discursive battles for dominance in which they jokingly insulted one another (Kehily and Nayak 1997; Lyman 1998). I began to engage in a similar strategy when the boys would begin to make s.e.xualized comments to me. While I didn't invoke the f.a.g discourse, I tried to verbally spar with them in a way that was both humorous and slightly insulting. For example, in auto shop, Brook asked for some grease to lubricate an engine part. In response, Josh looked at me and commented lewdly, "I got white grease, baby." Fed up with Josh's incessant comments and no longer needing to establish rapport, I mim-icked the boys' interactional style. I looked at him and said scathingly, "What does that mean, Josh?" The surrounding boys looked stunned and then burst out laughing. Brook looked down at me and said "I'm startin' to like you. You're okay!" Josh, angry, ran across the yard yelling, "f.a.ggots! I'm not talking to any of you!" I had "won" this interchange and some of the boys' respect by interacting in their masculinized manner. Josh didn't stay angry at me, but he actually did tone down his comments during the remainder of my time at River.

As with Josh, I finally became so weary of J. W.'s continual propositions that What If a Guy Hits on You? / What If a Guy Hits on You? / 187 187 I responded to him with a similar verbal insult. In the weight room I tried to walk past J. W. to get to the back of the room. Looking at me, he put his leg up on a weight bench to prevent me from walking past. I said, without a smile, "Very funny, J. W.," and turned to walk around him. Quickly he put his other leg up. I was now trapped between his legs. He looked at me and smiled as if he expected me to smile back. I tried my usual strategy of invoking humor and challenged him, "But can you put both legs up like that at the same time?" He said, loudly for the entire cla.s.s to hear, "You'd like that, wouldn't you?" Ticked off and embarra.s.sed that my approach hadn't worked, I said, witheringly, "You know, I was a teenager once and I dated teenage boys then. They weren't impressive then and they aren't now." The other boys laughed loudly, jumping in with their own insults. J. W. hung his head in embarra.s.sment. I felt good, as if I had linguistically wrested s.e.xual and gendered control of the situation from his grasp.

With both of the boys I engaged in the sort of verbal one-upmanship boys engaged in with each other. While they tried to pull me into their objectifying rituals, I had to deny them that control without raising my voice, condemning the s.e.x talk, or revealing too much about my own personal life. Instead, I had to either highlight the illogic of what they were saying, as I did with Josh, or make it clear that they were immature. I refused to engage in the feminizing verbal war of the f.a.g discourse the boys used to define themselves and one another. As a result I had few other options with which to encourage their respect and avoid becoming another sort of victimized girl, appearing flattered by their obscene overtures, or looking like an authority figure by scolding them. Deploying this compet.i.tive joking strategy worked when my least-gendered ident.i.ty failed and I was pulled into their objectifying rituals. To this end I was able to play, in a sense, the "age card," reminding boys that they were young and childlike.

JUST ONE OF THE (MASCULINE) GIRLS.

Of course, the negotiations around masculinity and s.e.xuality at River High didn't take place just between me and groups of boys but also between me and groups of girls, specifically the Basketball Girls and the GSA Girls. After a bit of getting to know me, both groups wanted me as a part of "their" group-seeing me as someone who echoed their non-normative gender practices. Indeed, I too felt a kinship with these girls in a way I didn't with the boys. I saw my own gender practices reflected in their public ident.i.ties. I also respected them, seeing them as somewhat heroic for refusing the gender pressures of normative femininity that 188 / Appendix Appendix weigh so heavily on teenage girls. Though, in many ways I marked myself and was marked by them as one of them, I had to delicately patrol boundaries of and information about my own ident.i.ty because of the rampant h.o.m.ophobia at River High, even though these girls, like many of the boys, were keenly interested in my personal life. While many girls at River talked to me and were interested in my presence, they didn't necessarily try to bring me into their social worlds as did many of the boys, the Basketball Girls, or the GSA Girls. Both groups of girls, eventually, actively claimed me as one of them.

The GSA Girls took me into their world soon after I began my tenure at River High. In large part this was probably due to my explicit interest in studying gender, which reflected much of their own political and social focus. I was quickly and easily invited into their social circle as they brought me over to the local burger joint that const.i.tuted their lunchtime hangout. Soon after I met Lacy, she introduced me to many of the members of the GSA. I was seen as so integrated into their group that it was as if they sometimes forgot I was not a student. During the club fair at lunch as they recruited for new GSA members they shouted at me to join GSA. I laughed and said that if I were in high school I would. I felt both honored by their inclusion of me in their political activism and slightly worried about explicitly revealing my own politics. For the most part I was happy that these girls were brave enough to form such a group and pleased that I could serve as an adult ally.

The Basketball Girls were a slightly more difficult group to penetrate. In fact, the first time I saw them, during the CAPA performance at which Ricky danced, I was intimidated. I watched as a group of five tall girls dressed in baggy clothes strutted up to a thin, lanky boy selling candy and surrounded him. He shrank as they laughingly grabbed candy out of his box and tossed it over his head at one another.

He feebly tried to retrieve it, moving from one girl to another in their mocking game of "Keep Away," eventually giving up and slinking away in defeat as the girls strutted away smugly with their new candy. After this incident I frequently saw the Basketball Girls at lunch, but for a while I was too nervous to approach them, thinking I might sabotage my opportunity for rapport if I didn't appear tough enough.

Eventually, Sarah, the blonde perky cheerleader I discussed in chapter 5, was able to introduce me to the Basketball Girls. She took my business cards and pa.s.sed them along to the Basketball Girls. A few days later at a football game, she took me by the hand and introduced me to the Basketball Girls as they roughhoused on the bleachers. Once I introduced myself, they, for the most part, seemed excited about being interviewed and, like the GSA Girls, slowly brought me into their group.

What If a Guy Hits on You? / 189 189 One of the ways the Basketball Girls made me part of their group was through inquiring about and expecting me to engage in non-normative gender practices. For example, a certain handshake was a powerful symbol of group membership for the Basketball Girls. Unlike other girls at River, they greeted each other not with hugs but with elaborate handshakes. One afternoon Mich.e.l.le reached out to shake my hand as I walked up to their lunch table. Not having paid attention to the intricacies of the handshake, I made several wrong moves. Mich.e.l.le patiently walked me through the ritual, showing me the cho-reography. In subsequent interactions she greeted me with the handshake, but I frequently forgot the final move-the concluding "snap." Mich.e.l.le often reprimanded me for this. One afternoon, as I left the girls at basketball practice, I engaged in the handshake ritual. Mich.e.l.le snapped in conclusion. Noticing I didn't snap, she yelled, "You didn't snap!" I turned to walk away, raised my hand up, and snapped defiantly. The Basketball Girls and Mich.e.l.le cracked up. The day I finally remembered to snap in greeting, Mich.e.l.le smiled and hollered, "You remembered to snap!" This sort of denotation of group membership was much more common among the Basketball Girls and the GSA Girls than it was among the boys. They positioned me not as a s.e.xual object but as one of them, if only marginally.

The Basketball Girls were also interested in other ways I was "different."

They were interested, for example, in my fighting abilities. During our interview, Mich.e.l.le asked me, "Have you ever gotten into a fight?" Though I don't consider fighting a central part of who I am and have never actually punched someone in anger, I had recently recovered a stolen bike during a relatively physical interchange with a man much larger than me. Hoping that this would suffice in establishing my "tough" credentials, I shared the stolen bike story with Mich.e.l.le.

She then pressed me for more details about my fighting ability, asking me if I had ever been in a fight "with a girl." Given that I hadn't ever fought with a woman, I tried to change the subject by responding, "I'd never hit a girl." Mich.e.l.le concurred, answering, "That's like me, I've never hit a girl." She continued to in-quire: "Can you fight? But do you, like, fistfight, or do you wrestle, or do you catfight?" Not having any idea how I fight, but being pretty sure I could throw a punch if I needed to, I bluffed, "No, I don't catfight. You have to have nails to catfight." That, seemed to satisfy Mich.e.l.le's need to know that I was indeed tough and therefore like her.

The Basketball Girls also drew on racialized gender ident.i.ties to mark me as one of them. One afternoon Rebeca and Shawna (a tangential member of the Basketball Girls) both claimed me as their "n.i.g.g.a" (a primarily African American term, in 190 / Appendix Appendix this case as a term of endearment denoting friendship and camaraderie [Kennedy 1999/2000]). As I stood in the front quad of the school, watching the Bomb Squad practice for the next performance to loud booming music, Shawna ran up to me and threw her arms around me yelling, "She's my n.i.g.g.a!" Rebeca, hearing and seeing Shawna stake this claim, ran up from the other side yelling, "She's my my n.i.g.g.a!" n.i.g.g.a!"

I laughed and hugged them both back, happy to be included in such an intimate way, indeed in a way that crossed racial lines. However, I found that because of my own racial and cla.s.s status I couldn't reciprocate in kind, since for me using the word n.i.g.g.a n.i.g.g.a would be laden with racist history. This was not the only time that gender-non-normative girls at River insisted I wasn't white. Valerie, a Latina member of the GSA who stylistically had more in common with the Basketball Girls, insisted, "But you're not really white. You're not all conceited and preppy, you know." So the girls didn't rely just on our likeness in the gendered presentation of self but also on our likeness in terms of a racialized gender ident.i.ty. would be laden with racist history. This was not the only time that gender-non-normative girls at River insisted I wasn't white. Valerie, a Latina member of the GSA who stylistically had more in common with the Basketball Girls, insisted, "But you're not really white. You're not all conceited and preppy, you know." So the girls didn't rely just on our likeness in the gendered presentation of self but also on our likeness in terms of a racialized gender ident.i.ty.

Both the Basketball Girls and the GSA Girls were intensely interested in my s.e.xuality, but unlike the boys they were looking for similarity, not difference.

They frequently asked probing questions to see if I was straight or gay. During my first conversation with Rebeca's girlfriend, Annie, we chatted about her current argument with Rebeca. I laughed and commented, "It's always more drama with women!" Alicia looked at me and asked if I dated women too. Though I did "date women too," I had decided, early in my research, not to discuss this part of my personal life with students or administrators at River High. In my response, I stuck with the line I had decided to use, explaining that I couldn't talk about some parts of my personal life until my research was over.

The GSA Girls put me in similar positions, expecting me to partic.i.p.ate with them in discussions about other women. One afternoon at Bob's they engaged in a heated and playful debate over who was "hotter," Pink, Eve, or Angelina Jolie.

Unable to come to a consensus, they turn to me to ask who I thought was the "hottest." Figuring it wouldn't be the same as outing myself and wanting to establish rapport, I said Pink and then revised my answer to jokingly include Britney Spears. They laughed at me for my clearly uncool preference.

Several times I had to evade answers about my s.e.xual life. Shawna followed me out of the cafeteria after lunch, saying, "I have to ask you my question but I'm not sure how." I teased her asking, "Do you want to know how much I weigh?"

Shawna responded, "No," and the other Basketball Girls laughed. Being silly, and concerned about what she wanted to know, I threw out a few more joking questions: "How old I am? What my favorite color is? How many kids I have?" As Shawna and I continued to walk, the other girls fell away and she asked me, "So What If a Guy Hits on You? / What If a Guy Hits on You? / 191 191 are you into girls?" I said back, "What makes you ask that?" She murmured, "I dunno," as she shuffled uncomfortably. "'Cause you wear that big jacket and 'cause the way you like move and talk and stuff and 'cause you used to have your hair all short." I nodded to indicate that I understood why she was asking that question and responded by saying that I could answer her when I was done with my research in December. Much as with the boys, I found it difficult to avoid some questions about my personal life. However, my feminist challenge in this sense was not to avoid condemning their s.e.xist behavior. Rather, I found myself wanting to be "out" to these girls as a role model and an ally because there were no other out gay adults at River High.

The GSA Girls had similar questions, though it seems that they had a more secure sense that I was gay. For instance, one day I was complaining about my cats, who had made a mess of my apartment the night before. Lacy asked, "Why don't you jus