Dude, you're a fag': Adolescent masculinity and the fag discourse (original) (raw)
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Journal of Adolescence, 2001
This paper explores the use of homophobic terms by boys and young men and the meanings they invoke when using them. Highly detailed interviews were conducted with young men from diverse backgrounds about their own experiences while growing up and their observations of schools, teachers, family and peers. Homophobia was found to be more than a simple prejudice against homosexuals. Homophobic terms like ''poofter'' and ''faggot'' have a rich developmental history and play a central role in adolescent male peer-group dynamics. Homophobic terms come into currency in primary school. When this happens, words like poofter and faggot rarely have sexual connotations. Nevertheless, far from being indiscriminate terms of abuse, these terms tap a complex array of meanings that are precisely mapped in peer cultures, and boys quickly learn to avoid homophobia and to use it decisively and with great impact against others. Significantly, this early, very powerful use of homophobic terms occurs prior to puberty, prior to adult sexual identity and prior to knowing much, if anything, about homosexuality. An effect of this sequence is that early homophobic experiences may well provide a key reference point for comprehending forthcoming adult sexual identity formation (gay or not) because powerful homophobic codes are learned first.
THE IDEOLOGY OF "FAG":. The School Experience of Gay Students
The Sociological Quarterly, 1998
This article reports on research into the experience of gay teenagers in school. Interviews with gay students examined the heterosexisdhomophobia of the current educational regime in schools. As an institutional ethnography, the article explores that regime from the standpoint of the informants. It does not study the informants themselves. The ideology of "fag" is key to the organization of the heterosexistlhomophobic dimensions of the school regime. It is a practice in language. Mikhail Bakhtin's work is used to devise ways of "seeing" social organization in the speech and graffiti in which the ideology of "fag" is realized in schools. His conception of the dialogic explicates the relationship between researcher and informants, as well as the dialogues internal to informants' narratives. Excerpts from their stories create windows into the local practices of the ideology of "fag" as they experienced it and made available the social organization of their everyday school lives. Analysis focuses on how speech, whether as verbal abuse or homophobic graffiti, concerts antigay activities, articulating to the wider organization of gender and the school as a regime. Informants' stories describe how "fag" as a stigmatized object is constituted in "gossip." Aspects of youths' appearance are interpreted with reference to "fag" as an underlying pattern. Everyday practices of "fag-baiting", such as poking fun, teasing, name calling, scrawling graffiti on lockers, insulting and harassing someone, produce the "fag" as a social object. The language intends a course of action isolating the gay student and inciting to physical violence. Verbal abuse both is and initiates attack. As a form of public speech, graffiti constitute a depersonalized form of threat and harassment. Whether a gay student is identified as ''fag" or not, he acquires a gay identity/ consciousness through the practices of the ideology of "fag." What the article describes is a normal part of school organization. The social relations of heterosexuality and patriarchy dominate its public space. Being gay is never spoken of positively (in these informants' experience). Teachers are reported as being generally complicit by their silence if not actively participating in the ideology. Attacks on and ostracism of gay students are taken for granted. The heterosexism of the regime makes "fag" the stigmatized other and, reflexively, "fag" as stigmatized other feeds into the regime's heterosexism. Thus, the gay students' stories show the school's complicity in the everyday cruelties of the enforcement of heterosexisthomophobic hegemony. Gay and lesbian youth attend schools throughout the nation. .. . These students-from every ethnic and racial background, in urban, suburban, and rural schools-have sat
In this study, I use in-depth interview data with black and white heterosexual men to explore shifts in the role of homophobia in the social construction of heterosexual masculinities. A continuum is introduced to map a range of interactional practices through which these men enact heterosexual masculinities. Heterosexual men who, on one end of the continuum, construct their heterosexual masculinities through homophobic practices establish strong boundaries of social distance from gays. The other end documents heterosexual men's anti-homophobias, moving from men who establish weak boundaries to those who blur them. These heterosexual men's anti-homophobic stances trade on the prestige of being tolerant of gays, with black men's antihomophobias drawing on their experiences with racism.
American Journal of Community Psychology, 2010
In the context of a U.S. dominant masculinity ideology, which devalues men who are not heterosexually identified, many gay, bisexual and questioning (GBQ) adolescent males must develop their own affirming and health-promoting sense of masculinity. In order to promote the well-being of GBQ young men, exploration of their reactions and responses to dominant images of masculinity is needed. We qualitatively analyzed interviews with 39 GBQ African American, Latino, and European American male adolescents (15–23 years old). Participants reported a range of responses to traditional masculinity ideologies, most of which centered on balancing presentations of masculine and feminine characteristics. Negotiation strategies served a variety of functions, including avoiding anti-gay violence, living up to expected images of masculinity, and creating unique images of personhood free of gender role expectations. These data suggest a complex picture of GBQ male adolescents’ management of masculinity expectations and serve as a basis for culturally and developmentally specific HIV prevention programs.
Psychology of Men and Masculinity, 2004
This article uses a discursive psychological approach to examine the subtle ways that adolescent boys attempt to position themselves as both normatively heterosexual and unprejudiced as they manage homophobia and sexism in their talk. It is argued that homophobia and sexism are given meanings within social interaction, meanings that involve negotiating competing ideological and normative dilemmas. The analysis examines the positioning strategies used by young men to appear simultaneously complicit and resistant to masculine norms. The practical value in this work is that it provides psychologists with insight into the subtle and indirect (but pervasive) ways that young men are able to inoculate themselves from appearing obviously or unknowingly complicit with homophobia and sexism while engaging with heteronormative masculinity. Special thanks to Michael Bamberg and Michael Addis for their helpful guidance and generous feedback.