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Dude, You're a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School

In Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School, C. J. Pascoe brings the reader into the familiar halls, classrooms, and assemblies of “River High,” where boys call each other “fags,” hit on girls, and boast about their sexual conquests. Pascoe describes River High as a typical high school in a typical U.S. suburb in north central California: students and school personnel are unselfconsciously proud to be “Cougars” and homecoming is a big deal. Perhaps because it’s California, at River High, some things seem to have changed. Boys say that gay men are okay. Openly lesbian girls are among the most popular students in the school. The school (reluctantly) hosts a Gay/Straight Alliance. Despite this progress, institutional policies and practices—which fear youth sexuality while simultaneously endorsing rituals of homophobia, masculine heterosexual dominance, and feminine heterosexual availability—shape and validate unequal relations between boys and girls. Pascoe’s theoretically sophisticated but lively and accessible book makes excellent use of a year and a half of ethnographic fieldwork, 50 formal interviews, and countless informal interviews. (Her appendix provides an informative discussion of the difficulties inherent in studying boys). Pascoe analyzes high school rituals and everyday interactions to “examine masculinity as sexualized processes of confirmation and repudiation through which individuals demonstrate mastery over others” (p. 14). She draws on and extends developments in gender and queer theory, and offers an empirically grounded analysis of the processes by which sexual meanings are used in the construction of masculine identities on the cusp of adulthood. Throughout the book, Pascoe also pays attention to the ways race mediates these processes. At River High, boys claim masculinity through practices and talk in which they perform not just heterosexuality, but sexualized control over themselves and over girls. In homecoming skits, boys compete for the title of “Mr. Cougar” through performances in which they rid themselves of all signs of femininity by getting girls. In groups, boys try to one up each other through heterosexual storytelling—not about sexual desire or satisfaction, but about making girls’ bodies do gross things. Boys demonstrate their dominance of girls’ bodies through everyday games of “uncle” in which a boy spars with a girl until the girl gives up. Pascoe shows that these practices, which she calls “compulsive heterosexuality,” are not about sexual desires but about masculine social positions, and that they are often distinct from the things boys say when they are not in groups of other boys. Typically seen as play and not discouraged by personnel, they reinforce the “threat of sexualized violence” against girls. In addition to claiming heterosexual prowess, boys repudiate the “fag” through mocking performances and by calling each other “fags” for behaviors that are seen as feminine. The fag label, however, rarely “sticks,” but instead is passed from boy to boy. This relentless circulation reminds boys of the consequences of insufficient masculinity while also providing a means of distancing the name-caller from a feminized identity. The fag does not have universal meanings. Because of different cultural histories and access to institutional power, the behaviors that earn the epithet are different for white boys than for African-American boys. Moreover, African-American boys at River High are less likely to use the term altogether, more often achieving the same gendered repudiation by calling each other “white.” Pascoe’s analysis challenges the notion that “fag” talk is only (or mostly) about homophobia, as it has often been seen. Instead, she argues, “fag” talk regulates gender. Indeed, many River High boys claim to be tolerant of gay men—if they are masculine. At the same time, Ricky, an openly gay boy, was so severely harassed that he had dropped out by the end of Pascoe’s study, further illustrating the importance of gender