High school and the difficult terrain of sexuality and gender identity are brilliantly explored in this smart, incisive ethnography. Based on eighteen months of fieldwork in a racially diverse working-class high school, Dude, You're a Fag sheds new light on masculinity both as a field of meaning and as a set of social practices. C. J. Pascoe's unorthodox approach analyzes masculinity as not only a gendered process but also a sexual one. She demonstrates how the "specter of the fag" becomes a disciplinary mechanism for regulating heterosexual as well as homosexual boys and how the "fag discourse" is as much tied to gender as it is to sexuality.
Author(s): C. J. Pascoe
Edition: 1
Publisher: University of California Press
Year: 2007
Language: English
Pages: 241
CONTENTS......Page 8
Acknowledgments......Page 10
1. Making Masculinity: Adolescence, Identity, and High School......Page 14
2. Becoming Mr. Cougar: Institutionalizing Heterosexualityand Masculinity at River High......Page 38
3. Dude, You’re a Fag: Adolescent Male Homophobia......Page 65
4. Compulsive Heterosexuality: Masculinityand Dominance......Page 97
5. Look at My Masculinity! Girls Who Act Like Boys......Page 128
6. Conclusion: Thinking about Schooling, Gender,and Sexuality......Page 169
Appendix: What If a Guy Hits on You? Intersections of Gender,Sexuality, and Age in Fieldwork with Adolescents......Page 188
Notes......Page 208
References......Page 214
Index......Page 228
