Who’s the Faggot?

Faggot. Who is it? You are, if you are a high school male. Stepping into the halls of any high school in America, you can hear this term flying around out of people’s mouths. In the lunch room, locker room, parking lot and yes, even in class rooms. C.J. Pascoe did just this study and found that the fag is everywhere.

What is a fag? Generally, people think of fag in relation to sexual preference, or in other words, gay. Sexual preference actually has nothing to do with the use of fag. Completely heterosexual boys are labeled with fag. Fag is not living up to the standard of masculinity. “Fag” is a weakness in masculinity. Teenage boys’ lives are filled with being masculine from ultra-masculine sports such as football to objectification of women’s bodies. At any time the word fag can descend upon them. This reminder to be masculine happens for many reasons.
Pascoe found that faggot covers a wide range of actions. For example, at lunch if the lunchmeat falls out of the sandwich, he’s a fag. Or if boys’ bodies get too close, they’re fags. Or if the boys care too much about how they look, fag. Clothing especially distinguishes a faggot. Boys will purposely look dirty as to be masculine. To purposely not look clean is to be masculine but to care if you look good is to be a fag. For example, in auto shop class (an area dominated by all men) the boys work with dirty and greasy materials. By the end of the class period, their white t-shirts and jeans are all dirty, covered in grease. An area is provided to change into clean clothes, but instead these boys decide to stay dirty to physically demonstrate they don’t care what they look like and therefore are not a faggot.
Faggots extend beyond physical appearance though. A huge area of the fag is performances. This is best seen in dancing. A boy who dances and does so well or in all serious is labeled a fag. Boys also cannot have too close physical contact or they are deemed weak.
All of these examples are of faggots in a high school. But only for a white boy. Fag is actually a racialized disciplinary mechanism. The ways in which a white boy can be a faggot is completely different from how an African American boy can act. Fag is consistently a white term. The way white boys’ used “fag”, blacks used “white”. For instance, the African Americans at the high school Pascoe studied where admired for their style. It was cool to look good. An especially strong symbol of masculinity is the white sneakers. Even the slightest scuff on the shoes would make the boy weak, not a fag. Similarly, black teen boys are admired for their dance skills while the white boy is a faggot.

So, the fag is only the white weak boys. Fag does not carry across the race line and does not carry the same disciplinary actions for different races. A boy must learn to become a man and this begins when they are young and is strongly disciplined in high school. The “man” must be strong and masculine, but that masculinity is different for different races. Faggot does not carry across race boundaries.

It’s one lazy weekday afternoon and you’re stuck at home just lying around. Since you’re doing nothing you turn on the T.V. and flip through some channels. Re-runs, re-runs, re-runs, re-runs, oh wait could it be? Is that Ellen? Yes it is! It’s Ellen DeGeneres with her own talk show on national television. Everybody knows Ellen! She’s funny, witty, charming, and gay. Yes, Ellen is arguably the most powerful lesbian woman in America, possibly the world. And who could argue her popularity? Ellen is Ellen. But somewhere in the back of your mind you wonder where are the gay men? Where are the gay men with their own nationally celebrated television talk show?

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The fact of the matter is there are none. Let’s be honest here, the truth is there is a double standard in homosexuality that C.J. Pascoe addresses in her book Dude You’re a Fag. Spending eighteen months of fieldwork, Pascoe wrote Dude You’re a Fag as a case study about masculinity, gender, and sexuality in high school. One of the interesting topics she touches upon in her book is how it is more socially acceptable for females to be homosexual than males. A girl often looks back at her “tomboy” childhood with a certain fondness, while a boy may wish to hide the fact that he loved playing with dolls, and doing his hair. A girl may be viewed as powerful and attractive for her masculine qualities while a boy would be labeled a fag for displaying feminine characteristics. While not encouraged it is often more celebrated when a high school girl embodies masculine qualities, as if she is declaring a sort of liberation from social norms. But should an adolescent teen wish to abandon his masculinity, he would be ostracized and ridiculed. This is what Pascoe suggests is a subconscious glorification of masculinity. It’s as if being masculine is best so it’s understandable why girls would wish to follow suit.
Masculinity is no longer tied down by sex or gender, but is embodied in many different ways. Female masculinity might sound contradictory but it exists. In schools, the work place, on television, and just about everywhere else. “Girls who act like boys” are here to stay. Yet boys who act like girls are still marginalized and left to bite the dust. Why can’t boys act like girls and still be considered men? Doesn’t this in fact reveal how deep rooted feminine oppression is in the mind? To be masculine is good and to be feminine is bad. Let’s hope that one day these views will change. Yes, girls who act like boys are here to stay, and someday boys who act like girls will too.

Masculinity: it’s not just for boys

Teenage masculinity: The phrase conjures up images of adolescents who spend lots of time chasing after girls, playing sports, being loud and unruly, constant teasing, fighting, and other obnoxious behavior. While this may be an accurate description of adolescent masculinity, what’s missing from most mental pictures is the fact that some of these teens are girls.
In C.J. Pascoe’s study on adolescent masculinity and sexuality (Dude, You’re a Fag, 2007) she analyzes masculine behavior in teenage girls. Focusing on the female students that were described by themselves and others as “like boys”, Pascoe observed their behavior and finds that these girls have adopted dress, mannerisms, and other social behaviors that are traditionally seen as masculine. Within these girls the motivation for adopting masculinity seems to be differently motivated: one group seems to do it politically, the other socially.
The political minded group makes their masculine adoption choices aware that they are challenging ideals of how boys and girls are supposed to behave, as a way to examine the expectations of masculinity as a boy only choice. The other group instead adopts many markers of masculinity: dress, mannerisms, speech, activities. While this group is not consciously seeking to make a statement, their behavior does have a side effect: this group has considerable social power in the school.
Both groups served the same function in the end- they challenge the idea that masculinity is a boys only event.

In every and any given high school you will find boys being boys and girls being girls. The boys in their perhaps dirty looking clothes and girls wearing short skirts and low cut tops. There also being their gender by their iterations with each other, such as girls giggling at the boys flirtation remarks or the boys looking at a girl walking by. Looking into this typical high school you don’t think anything of this way of dressing or even the interaction between the sexes. In C. J. Pascoe’s book Dude you’re a Fag, she explores these roles the sexes take and how both male and female play along in a specific high school.
One of Pascoe’s favorite spot to observe the boys “talk” was the weight room. Here, the boys felt free to talk about women in this boy zone. In this room the boys talked about their sexual gains over girls. Each boy tries to impress the other by what they have done, in a sort of one upmanship game. The boys would also show off these exploits of girls by bringing in a trophy of the girls underwear. The boys in the weight room, as well as other male dominated areas have a need to display their dominance/control over girls’ bodies. They do this to show how masculine they are and to avoid being labeled a fag. Boys play in to this gender role of objectifying girls because it’s culturally expectable. One note Pascoe makes is that the boys are more likely to behave in this way when in groups of only males and that one on one with a girl they do not show the dominance/control they would talk about before.
Girls also play into this role of weak and sexual objects. By doing this they gain a kind of power and they gain attention from boys. Pascoe does not go into this as much as masculinity in both male and female. But this also plays a large part in high schools and the “real world”. Since gaining status in school is about attention from boys, girls use their sexuality as a form of social power. This means it is not only males objectifying females but that they were doing it to themselves. Unconsciously or not they feel the need to do this to be accepted. But what in American culture dictates that this is the way it has to be ? These teenagers are just following the rules when it comes to gender roles. Such as with the Mr. Cougar skits where the two nerds made hero save their weak helpless girlfriends by getting buff and defeating their rivals.
A high is the perfect place to study the interaction between males and females and how they play into gender roles. This environment reflects the American society, just on a smaller scale. Pascoe uses this environment to take a look at how masculinity and sexuality is played out among students. That most students go along with what it socially acceptable. The boy are dominant, while the girls are weak and our sexual exploits. While a few people may toy with these norms, generally they are not accepted and become the outcastes of the school.

Men do better on the math section of the SAT than women, many studies have reported. But maybe this isn’t because of differences in brain chemistry. Maybe what subject to excel in is taught in high school alongside quadratic equations and French.

Do schools teach kids how to “do gender”, that is, behave in certain ways depending on their biological sex? C.J Pascoe (Dude, You’re a Fag) writes that they do, by constantly reminding them what is gender-appropriate through everyday school rituals.

Take the dress code of River High, the high school Pascoe does research on, as an example of how schools emphasize gender differentiation. Although both boys and girls had to cover certain parts of their bodies, the parts in question were different. A girl had to cover everything until her bellybutton and a boy had to make sure his pants weren’t below his waistline. Another way of differentiating gender through dress is that boys and girls had different-colored graduation robes – girls wore yellow and boys wore black. These ways of differentiation are subtle – so subtle, in fact, that they become a part of everyday life and seem natural. Because they seem natural, they make gender differentiation because of social standards seem as undeniable as biological differences.

Similarly, heterosexuality or man-woman coupling is also made to seem natural and a model of how things normally are. One of the ways this was done at River High, Pascoe writes, was through the yearbook. The “superlatives” section of the yearbook always emphasized male-female pairings: the “best of” categories in each grade, such as “best-dressed” or “best-looking”, was not judged according to class or race but gender. Boys had their own winner of a superlative and girls their own, so that the boy with the best smile would not be selected from the entire student body but from all the boys in it. There was also a category for “best couple”. Coupling and gender therefore became a way of organizing students, just like class year.

In their interactions with students, teachers confirm these ideas. Pascoe writes about an elementary school teacher using the image of a heterosexual wedding to teach children grammar rules – the class puts on a mock wedding between the letter “Q”, which is designated as the groom, and the letter “U”, designated as the bride. A heterosexual wedding is unconsciously portrayed as universal and natural, right from elementary school.

In Pascoe’s book, this is called the “heterosexualizing process”. In this process children, starting from elementary school, can only be thought of as “normal” if they act according to the unofficial gender rules that they see around them – for example, girls play with kitchen sets and boys with trucks and if a boy plays with a Barbie he is not normal. Or girls do well in history and boys go on to become engineers. High school continues this process. Schools like River High, the high school cited in Pascoe’s book, not only emphasize gender differences through school rituals but also that heterosexuality, or man-woman coupling and all the institutions that follow, like marriage, is right and natural.

So the next time Sarah gets a lower grade than Tom in math, think about what they wore to prom.

The next time you’re stuck in line behind a group of teenage boys boastfully sharing about their sexual adventures you should know that it’s not just because teen males are full of hormones and think about sex all the time. You are actually witnessing those boys becoming and staying masculine. That might sound strange, however in her book about her study in a Californian high school C.J. Pascoe argues that masculinity is a process which involves somebody assuring others that they are masculine and denying and distancing themselves from feminine characteristics.

The bragging about sexual experiences mentioned before is an example of boys assuring or proving to each other that they are masculine. In addition to talking about sex in public, boys prove masculinity by having girlfriends or picking up girls. While boys publicly flaunt the fact that they are thinking about sex, their thoughts about and expression of sexuality is sometimes quite different in private. Through a combination of interviews and observations Pascoe found that the same boys who were trying to one-up each other with descriptions of either their sex life or their graphic fantasies talked much more sensitively, tenderly and even romantically about past or current girlfriends. This shows how the acts that make someone masculine happen in public. “Boys will boys” might have a grain of truth in it but only when the boys are in groups. Masculinity is less about what a person is and more how they act in public, masculinity happens in groups.

Similarly, flirting with girls by touching them is another way to create masculinity. Although this touching is often in the form of playful shoving and poking they all usually involve guys getting into girls personal spaces and usually end with the girl squealing and giving up. This emphasizes men having power over women. This power is one way that masculinity is something that is more similar to a process than merely an adjective for men. Girls who wield this power over other girls are also viewed as masculine. Most people think “men” when they hear masculinity but it’s probably more accurate to think “power” or “dominance” instead.

The other important step in being masculine is to separate yourself from things that aren’t masculine. This includes homosexuality, incompetence, being vain about your clothes, showing emotion and especially weakness. There is this subconscious terror among guys that they will become unmanly and this fear creates a ghost effect. The ghost is a fag and in order to protect themselves by being touched by this ghost they call other guys fag. Once they have been called a fag a guy will try to fling the contaminating word as quick as they can at someone else before it sticks to them. Besides hurling the word fag at each other guys will also mock things that are unmanly by imitating them. You know when you’re uncomfortable and you have to let out a nervous laugh? Well dressing in drag in a joking way and pretending to have high squeaky voices in order to make people laugh serves the same purpose for teenage guys. It’s through this combination of bragging, talking, flirting, or pretending to be women in order to get a laugh that high school boys achieve that wished-for status of masculine.

“Compulsive Heterosexuality”

Exhibiting masculinity may seem like a generally simple concept, but it applies to many aspects of our everyday lives. Pascoe, in her book Dude, You’re a Fag, calls this concept of “constellations of sexualized practices, discourses, and interactions” “compulsive heterosexuality.” This term does not refer to a sexual orientation. Rather, it refers to a variety of behaviors, social interactions, and institutional structures. This is a good umbrella term for a lot of different physical, verbal, and emotional actions. Pascoe describes how male students exhibit compulsive heterosexuality verbally when referring to their sexual interests. It is all about “the ability to exercise mastery and dominance literally and figuratively over girls’ bodies.” Whether a boy is objectifying, privately or publicly, a woman’s body directly at her or in the company of other men/boys, these are forms of compulsive heterosexuality. Pascoe examines how masculinity is present in not only in media, sexual practices, and desire but also in politics. This leads to how it also affects economics and gender inequality in both physical and emotion ways. It can be seen in television shows, clothing ads, or unequal pay wages between men and women. Compulsive heterosexuality is not reserved for the bedroom. In fact, in most cases, it is a public, yet subtle, display of male dominance. It is a way that “’eroticizes male dominance and female submission.’” It is the combination of “ritualized interactions” that create compulsive heterosexuality. I would even argue that compulsive heterosexuality could also apply to women to a certain extent. Women sometimes emasculate men by talking about them in a diminutive and/or domineering way. Although women do not have equal political rights or fair representation in the media, woman can use social interactions in a compulsive heterosexual way. This behavior is an interesting and prominent issue in modern society.

Sitting in a teenage boy’s locker room, it is not uncommon to hear tales of late night hookups and other “sex-capades.” Indeed this is what boys seem to talk about most often – their sex lives, who they have sex with, and who the next hottest girl is. These talks usually take place in very “manly” places like the locker room, the gym, shop class, or while playing sports. This kind of talk is what C.J. Pascoe calls “compulsive heterosexuality.”
When C.J. Pascoe was researching at a high school, she did a study about compulsive heterosexuality to see it actually existed. She met many boys who said that the way you become “the man” on campus is by having sex with many girls. You’re “the man” if you can talk about sex knowledgeably and are seen with the hottest girls. Having a girlfriend seemed to be some sort of rite of passage. And should you happen to be bad at “getting girls,” in order to still be seen as cool, you had to at least act as if you were into girls.
When Pascoe did her study, she gave an interesting example of a popular boy who, for Halloween dressed in a homosexual way, but still achieved masculinity by forcing some girls to kiss him on the cheek. This boy, dressed as an elf, ran around with mistletoe over his head yelling at girls to kiss him until they did. His friends then congratulated him on “getting them to kiss him.” Later, she watched as a boy annoyed a girl with sexual innuendos about how when they went to college the next year they would room together. As he joked about this, he thrusted his hips into her butt and continued to do that even when she told him to stop.
These displays, Pascoe said, shows that compulsive heterosexuality as a ritual not only includes needing to prove your masculinity but also a semi-predatory aspect. It is as if, in order to be considered heterosexual, you must never be turned down by a girl. If a girl does turn you down, she automatically is called a “whore” or a “slut.”
Who cares if you are seen as manly or not? Apparently most men in high school do. This sense of having to be seen as someone who is manly or masculine is part of this compulsive heterosexuality phenomenon. Guys are terrified of being seen as a “fag.” I say, who cares? But to them it is so important to be seen as heterosexual and as a result, they end up forcing themselves on girls and making idiots of themselves. Most girls don’t care, but to these guys, how you are seen and what girls your having sex with is really all that matters. It’s part of their need to be heterosexual at all times.
This need probably comes from another thing that Pascoe studied which was how most boys in high school are homophobic. Boys see how other boys who are not seemingly masculine and heterosexual are treated (they are called fag, beat up, and made fun of) and realize that in order to avoid that type of bullying they have to “get with girls” and prove that they are not even close to being a “fag.” Pascoe studies the word “fag” and how heterosexual boys use it to peer pressure other boys into doing heterosexual things. If a guy is not getting with girls, or isn’t into girls, he is a “fag.” This forces the other boys who are getting called a “fag” to over-assert their masculinity.
It’s interesting that so many guys feel like they have to be heterosexual to be accepted. It doesn’t seem like girls feel the pressure to as heterosexual. The word fag and the fear of being seen as anything other than heterosexual pushes these boys to do things and even sometimes lie about things, that maybe they just didn’t want to do. That seems crazy to me. Who cares what you’re seen “as?” Compulsive heterosexuality is the name sociologists use to say that boys feel as if they have to be straight in order to fit in. In my opinion, that sucks.

Shop Talk


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Locker Room Talk

Social life at an average high school is centered on adolescent male homophobia. Constant social control is implemented when teenage boys are trained to constantly make jokes about “fags,” talk and imitate a fag as they think one would act, “To call someone gay or fag is like the lowest thing you can call someone. Because that’s like saying that you’re nothing” (Pascoe Dud, You’re A Fag 55). These teens use the word fag as an ultimate insult that could be used for anything. When called a fag, it is because there is a lack of masculinity. As if, this person is weak or feminine.

In most cases, this homophobia is also gendered homophobia. Lesbians are looked at as “good.” Guys considered lesbians “cool,” mainly because they role they play in heterosexual male fantasies. When two women kiss, it is more accepted in social life rather than if two men were to kiss. This is because the sexual act of two women kissing are most of the time connected with the desire to attract males through there hetero fantasies. As long, as a heterosexual purpose is attached with the homosexual act it is acceptable.

Boys are constantly trying to force others into the “fag position,” as if it were a game. No one actually thinks that these people are really homosexual, but yet no boy wanted to be left with that epithet. The best way to get rid of it was to turn another boy into a fag. Although, when a boy wanted to be humorous they would pretend to be feminine to imitate a “fag” and then quickly express his masculinity again. This would show his “audience” that he actually very masculine and would never do what a fag would do.

Fag extends far past a sexual identity attached to a gay boy, but is used to assert one’s own masculinity by either throwing someone else into the fag identity or simply crafting a situation where you could imitate a fag to express your strength. This creates an epithet that is no longer means to be homosexual, but plainly not manly. Whether it is true or not, it has been used as a tool of social control to fear the fags and pressure these young boys that being a fag or feminine is synonymous to being wrong or a bad thing. Although, the word fag is being thrown around for a variety of different meanings, it is rarely used directly to an actual homosexual. This depicts a hint of success of the gay rights movement and if we continue to open our minds and the minds of future generation, then maybe one day the word fag will not even be used as an insult toward the heterosexual male adolescent community.

Are you man enough?

High school is a rough time for some teenagers. This is when they are establishing their identities, including sexual. As stated by Pascoe, masculinity is an array of gender practices carried out by men whose bodies are assumed to be biologically male. To some high school students, masculinity achieves a level of respect from others. This behavior, and the idea that masculinity is displayed through actions, is often seen in popular media. The show Glee portrays the adversity among teens in high school when it comes to what extracurricular activity in school is masculine such as football and what deserves a slushie in the face such as Glee Club. According to Pascoe, not only do boys exercise and dress a certain way in order to preserve their image, but they shoot homophobic comments at each other and openly discuss their heterosexual experiences, which is empowering among the high school students trying to assert masculinity.
Over time, the definition of masculinity has some variations but the common denominators remain. To some high school students, being male biologically is not the end of the story. That is where they and sociologists agree but shortly thereafter, their views diverge hastily. In her study, Pascoe notices that the presentation of manliness involves “…homophobic taunts and assertion of heterosexuality.” She talks about Connell’s idea of multiple masculinities in a high school setting. Not only are there different types of masculinities in this sociological observation, but they are placed in a hierarchal order judged by high school students. Hemogemic is at the pinnacle supports gender inequality. Complicit is a more passive form of hemogemic. Subordinate describes those oppressed by hemogemic, and marginalized refers to gender rather than class or race.
Masculinity is an application of peer pressure. The level of “man” a young male seems to be is simply a label brought about by collective deduction by peers that can have the ability to affect one’s character and subsequently, one’s choices in life. High school boys find a parallel between level of masculinity and dominance, and dominance is key to survival. In some societies, definitions of masculinity are enforced heavily. They are based on arbitrary things such as the way one talks, walks, dresses, and interacts with others rather than based on how one feels about himself.

Politics of Dancing

When I was in my last year of high school the senior class was given a list of what we could and could not wear to our prom. On this list, it plainly said that the girls must wear dresses of full or tea length and the boys must wear black tie or formal military uniform. It forbade what the administration considered “funny business” which meant a girl was not allowed to wear pants of any kind and a boy could not wear a dress and still expect to be admitted to the senior prom. The administration of the school expected us to place ourselves into the framework of the gender binary and enforced a rigid interpretation of it that did not tolerate different interpretations.
In the chapter titled “Look At My Masculinity”, Pascoe shows how the school she studied did the same thing to their students through her story about Jessica Chau. The school and her social environment pressured her into wearing a dress using the excuse of tradition. She was not the kind of girl who would wear a dress and heels. She is what Pascoe might refer to as a “Dude”. Jessica wore comfortable clothing and had masculine gestures but she allowed herself to be pigeonholed into the stereotypical image of the Home Coming Queen thus fitting in with social norm.
At my own high school Shane MacDermott was not allowed to enter prom because he wore formal Scottish attire, which included a kilt. . This kilt had been in his family for generations and was the one his father wore to his wedding. It was the pride and joy of his family. The members of the administration tried to send him away because he violated the dress code by wearing a skirt. In the end the owners of the property had to step in and over rule this judgment for fear of an ethnic prejudice lawsuit.
The administration reacted according to their strict standards without considering the rest of the situation much like the Rivers High School did with Jessica. If they had removed themselves and looked objectively at the situation, then they would have seen that these interpretations are just as valid as the social standard.

“Tomboys” vs. “Sissys”

How do the “tomboy” identity and the “sissy” identity translate into a sexual identity? According to Pascoe’s Dude, You’re a Fag, when a little girl dresses and acts in a more typically masculine way, she is simply considered a tomboy and there is not much else to it except the expectation that she will eventually grow out of it. When a little boy dresses or acts in a more typically feminine way (wearing high heels, for example), there is a very different reaction. When these little children grow up, a young woman will much more readily speak about her childhood as a tomboy than a young man will speak about his more “girly” childhood. This is because the “tomboy” identity is considered to be tough and powerful, whereas boys are embarrassed to be called a girl. What was considered “cute” in childhood, however, can be more problematic in adulthood.
Pascoe notices that, as girls become women, if they keep acting in a tomboyish manner, they will be labeled a lesbian. Women with more masculine qualities are lesbians, whereas girls with masculine qualities are tomboys. Interestingly enough, women are often proud to speak of their tomboy-pasts, whereas men are deeply ashamed of having worn heels or a dress and played with Barbies as a youngster and are more likely to ignore those experiences altogether. In general, girls who act outside of their gender-norms as children are more accepted than boys who act outside of their gender-norms as children. A boy can “act gay” at any age whereas a girl only becomes a lesbian if she keeps the same behavior throughout adulthood.
Overall, Pascoe claims that a girl can be proud to be a tomboy because the masculine qualities associated with the act of being a tomboy are something that girls, even young women, aspire to obtain. These qualities include braveness and athleticism – things that most people want to have. Boys, however, cannot be “sissys” because, even though they are at such a young age, it is still seen as embarrassing.

Masculinity (and Race) in Dance

Picture a dancer. Most people will imagine a number of stereotypical things: a ballerina in a tutu pirouetting on point shoes, a hip hop dancer grinding on a dance floor, or maybe a ballroom dancer in a pretty dress and high heel shoes. Dancing is a feminine activity; traits used to describe dance (i.e. delicate, graceful, fluid, and soft) are pretty much always feminine. What happens when a male attempts to take on the feminine art of dance? He’s labeled a fag unless he is lucky enough to be an exception to the rule.

CAN MALE DANCERS BE MASCULINE?

Picture a dancer. Most people will imagine a number of stereotypical things: a ballerina in a tutu pirouetting on point shoes, a hip hop dancer grinding on a dance floor, or maybe a ballroom dancer in a pretty dress and high heel shoes. Dancing is a feminine activity; traits used to describe dance (i.e. delicate, graceful, fluid, and soft) are pretty much always feminine. What happens when a male attempts to take on the feminine art of dance? He’s labeled a fag unless he is lucky enough to be an exception to the rule.

CAN MALE DANCERS BE MASCULINE?

CJ Pascoe’s book “Dude, You’re a Fag” is based on the interviews she had with students at River High in California, a school that could be labeled a stereotypical high school. River has its jocks, cheerleaders, badasses, nerds, and rejects; each group handles the subject of masculinity differently. One of Pascoe’s students was Ricky, an openly gay white boy. Ricky is known around school for many things: his unconventional clothing, the fact that he occasionally wears mascara and hair extensions, membership in the Gay Straight Alliance and his talent for dancing. In the school dance shows, he was often the star and danced the lead in many numbers. Instead of being appreciated and admired for his skills, most of his classmates reacted Ricky’s dancing with homophobia. For example, one of the audience members compared Ricky to a car wreck because “you just can’t look away”. Pascoe states that Ricky “embodied the fag because of his homosexuality and his less normative gender identification and self-presentation.” (p. 65); Ricky was called a fag in high school because he acted like one.
Like almost anything else today, masculinity can be racialized. Ricky was a white boy doing feminine things. K.J., a mixed race student, was also a talented dancer. K.J. participated in what Richard Majors calls “cool pose” or what is today known as “hip hop culture”. The African American boys of River High were a part of “cool pose” because they cared about their clothes, the shine of their shoes, and style but in a way that would show off and emphasize their masculinity. When Ricky danced the lead in a number, he performed “all the sexually suggestive hip swivels, leg lifts, arm flares, and spins that the girls did” (69), unlike K.J. who would do more physical and masculine moves like flips and lifts. The crowd would celebrate K.J.’s dancing; Pascoe described the auditorium as “reverberated with the screamed chants of ‘Go K.J.! Go K.J.! Go K.J. Go K.J.!” (74) whenever he went on stage; no one ever called K.J. a fag for being a dancer.

THE SOCIALLY ACCEPTABLE MALE DANCER: “‘physical moves’ such as flips, holding up the girls, and spinning them around” (Pascoe, pg. 69)

Ricky and K.J. were very similar; whether it was through their long hair, concern for fashion, their bodies, or talent for dance, Ricky and K.J. seemed to “mirror one another”. But the social implications that went hand and hand with their race and sexual orientations caused the two characters to be, in K.J.’s case, extremely popular and respected or, in Ricky’s, teased and tormented until he dropped out and left River. Pascoe credits Ricky’s treatment to culture and society and how it “views race and sexuality”. In today’s culture, it is not okay for a white gay boy to dance but it is okay for an African American to dance, as long as he does it in a masculine way.

The Power of Hormones

Teenage boys are generally thought to be largely made up of raging hormones. It would come as no surprise to anyone then that sex and girls are favorite topics among groups of high school-aged males. What may not be obvious, however, is that through this type of “shop talk”, boys are constantly reminding themselves and their friends how they “should” act: masculine and straight.
In “Dude You’re A Fag”, C.J. Pascoe spends time observing and interviewing students at one high school. While the conversations that take place among groups of boys in locker rooms and shop classes don’t seem out of the ordinary, Pascoe shows how these constant discussions of wild sexual adventures and “getting girls” are the tools teenage boys use to demonstrate power to each other. By painting themselves as sexually experienced and in-control, boys prove to each other that they are dominant over females, which leads to being thought of as masculine.
It seems to be irrelevant whether the stories told by these boys are true or not; the important part is that in publicly discussing sex and girls, boys maintain an image of being able to control a female’s body, as well as show off their fascination with two subjects that are “supposed” to interest them. If they were to be perceived as being disinterested or unknowledgeable about sex and girls, they would receive the label of “fag”. By making sure that this interest is on display for everyone to see, boys prove that they are masculine, straight, and therefore not fags.
Pascoe’s private interviews showed, however, that this masculine image was often only necessary in public. When alone, many boys showed emotions and romantic feelings towards girls, rather than focusing on them as purely sexual objects. Many also tried, in private, to distinguish themselves from “other guys” who viewed females this way, regardless of whether or not they too made girls into sexual objects when in the company of other boys.
Though these sorts of conversations among teenage boys are typical, Pascoe highlights how underlying them is the idea that males are dominant over females. In showing how boys feel they have to constantly push this message or face social rejection, Pascoe also shows how ingrained these ideas are in our culture.

Do school authorities view the masculinity and sexuality of minority students differently than white students? According to C.J. Pascoe, teachers and other administrators treat black heterosexuality as threatening, while encouraging and promoting heterosexual expression among white students.
Pascoe spent a year and a half studying a working-class high school in California, where the student body was 49% white, 28% Latino, 10% African American, and 6% Asian. She interviewed students, sat in on classes, attended club meetings, and spent time with students informally between classes, at lunch, and at events.
Despite the fact that school administrations went to great lengths to discourage actual sexual activity, school events and rituals promoted male dominance, heterosexual coupling, and gender conformity. From pep rallies, where student-performed skits centered around heterosexual dating, to yearbook superlatives, which listed a male-female “couple” for each award, heterosexual pairings were emphasized in all aspects of school culture. Individual teachers also participated in the promotion of heterosexual expression, teasing students about which members of the opposite sex they might be dating and tolerating, or even participating in, sexist discussions by male students. It was clear that the administration of this high school approved of heterosexual interaction for the student body in general.
African-American students faced a much more hostile attitude when it came to heterosexuality. At the school Pascoe studied, like in many high schools, black male students were especially popular and well-liked by other students. Still, they faced much more opposition, fear, and suspicion from the administration when they tried to make themselves visible. When a group of primarily black students tried to form a dance group to counteract the whiteness of performance groups at their school, the administration required them to change their name from the Bomb Squad to the much “friendlier”-sounding Pep Club. At a school dance performance, numerous groups performed, and many of the dances were highly sexualized, involving male and female students doing sexy dance moves together. The male members of the Bomb Squad were specifically instructed, with the threat of suspension, to not touch the female dancers in their performance. None of the other, predominantly white, groups were warned of this. This shows how racist the administrators' views of sexuality were: they assumed that the black guys would need to be given specific instructions to prevent them from violating their dance partners. Despite the fact that the black male students were popular, they still faced disproportionate policing by authority figures in their high school. Administrators viewed black male heterosexuality as aggressive and threatening, while accepting and even celebrating the heterosexuality of white male students. Sexist comments and behaviors by white students were overlooked or encouraged, while sexism on the part of black students was far more likely to result in punishment. Pascoe's analysis shows that even when black students appear to be socially privileged (by popularity), they still face discrimination from authorities and institutions.

What is the first thing that pops into your head when you think of the term “fag?” Is it a white, preppy, well groomed, pretty male? If so, you are not alone. That seems to be what most people think of when they think of the term “fag.” All of these things are associated with this word and therefore when a male encompasses one or more of these features he is labeled as a fag.
Fag is no longer a derogatory term to describe a homosexual male, but a way to define a lack of, or failed, masculinity. There are unspoken rules and laws in a typical American high school that restrain the actions of teen males. You would think that these rules only encompass behavior and appearance but subconsciously race falls into the definition of fag. These rules vary based on race. Certain races and cultural circles are able to act in various ways that would have the stereotypical white, high school, football player from the suburbs labeled as a fag.
C. J. Pascoe explores this subject in her book, Dude You’re a Fag. Drawing upon her experiences as a observer at a “typical American high school” Pascoe writes a detailed account of masculinity and social control within the education system. Let’s use her example and take a black male high school student who is part of the “hip-hop culture” and compare him to a white, preppy, male, same age, class, and background and see just how differently these two are labeled just based on their skin color, culture, and style.
If the white male was seen dancing with another male: “FAG!” If the he was seen hugging another man: “FAG!” If he looked nice or cared too much about his clothing or daily showers: “FAG!”
Now lets look at our African American student in the same situations. When he dances with another male: “Damn! I wish I could dance like those guys! That is so gangsta!” If he is seen hugging another man: “oh, they tight homies.” If he looks nice and carefully picks out his outfits daily so they match perfectly: “Now that dude is the definition of fly.”
It is not necessarily only the color of their skin that determines whether or not one is labeled as a fag, although it does have an affect It is also the culture that males take part in that determines how they will be labeled. If a white male walked through the halls of a high school in America wearing baggy shorts hanging off of his rear end, boxers showing, hat turned to the side, and sporting fresh, clean, white sneakers it is automatically assumed that he is a member of the hip-hop culture and therefore hypermasculine. Hypermasculinity is associated with the hip-hop culture and teenage boys want to relate to that culture because it embodies the image that all men want to achieve, which is “the man on top.” Taking part in the hip-hop culture automatically makes teenage boys “cool” and respected, something that most high school students try to achieve for four years.
So, by labeling someone as a fag, it is not necessarily calling them a homosexual, but drawing out all of the negative connotations associated with homosexuality. Fag has become racialized, culturalized, and taken from its original meaning to be used as an agent of social control; that is to say, peers controlling other peers around them. By fear of being a social outcast, people follow their peers’ lead. Fag no longer means homosexual but embodies everything that is not considered not normal or perfect within society. Anything that is simply out of the ordinary can be labeled fag. White guy wearing a colorful outfit: “Dude, you’re such a fag.” Black guy who participates in the hip-hop culture: “Dude, you’re so cool.”