The Social Construction Of Heterosexuality

C.J. Pascoe’s book, Dude You’re A Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School, examines masculinity and its connection with sexuality through an eighteen-month study at River High School. The goal of Pascoe’s study is to explain how teenagers, teachers, and schooling construct adolescent masculinity through idioms of sexuality. In addition, the book investigates the relationships between gender and sexuality as it relates to a major social institution. Throughout the book she asks how heteronormitive and homophobic discourses, practices, and interactions produce masculine identities through focusing on gender and sexual practices of the students, teachers, and administrators.

In the article “Dude you’re a fag; Adolescent masculinity and the fag discourse” C.J Pascoe addresses American adolescent boys learning to become masculine through the rejection of the fag identity. Masculinity and sexuality are embedded with the word faggot. This article focuses on the challenges of the relationships between homophobia and masculinity. This article points out three arguments that focus on homophobia demonstrating that the fag is not only an identity linked to homosexual boys, but an identify that can temporarily adhere to heterosexual boys as well and highlighting the radicalized nature of the fag as a disciplinary mechanism. Homophobia is usually used to describe ways that boys aggressively tease each other, girls do not harass each other this way and they often aren’t embarrassed in the same manner. Pascoe provides examples of how the fag discourse is radicalized and that failing at the masculine tasks of competence reveals weakness and femininity with sexual identity.

Gender can be defined as “sex roles” which are conditions that one considers to be for men or women. People tends to mistake it with sex or thinks that they are both the same. We discussed about the patterns of gender which how the authors of The Kaleidoscope of Gender describes it as “regularized, prepackaged ways of thinking, feeling, and acting” (Spade and Valentino,2017). It becomes an identity for us. We believe that there is and can only be two genders, being masculine for men and feminine for women. These roles has been forced onto us since birth: blue for boys, and pink for girls. You can see the roles being push onto a person throughout one’s life, but we don’t notice it since it’s “normal” to us.

Heterosexism, according to Warren J. Blumenfeld, is the system of advantages given to heterosexuals based on the social construct of gender roles and heterosexual norms, while marginalizing and oppressing homosexuals and others who do not fit into the heterosexual culture (373). The enforcement of this system is known as heteronormality. This is seen in the binary system, which is a social construct that divides people into different strictly bordered categories organized by “social roles, values, stereotypes, and behavioral and attitudinal imperatives, expressions, and expectations” (Blumenfeld 373). Those who stick to the binary system, maintain power and privilege. People who may live in the binary system, but also intentionally

Pascoe discusses how masculinity can function as a regulatory mechanism of gender in American adolescent boys. It has been found that the word ‘fag’ is not necessarily directed at a homosexual boy, but has taken on a new meaning in school age boys. It is being used as a disciplinary mechanism to police certain behaviors “out of fear of having the fag identity permanently” (Pascoe p.330). This kind of teasing and harassment can temporarily be place on any boy who shows signs of weakness or femininity. The high schoolers in the study told Pascoe that calling someone a fag was like telling them they were nothing or stupid (Pascoe p. 335). Boys could be called a fag for anything that he did that was opposite of masculine, even when it had nothing to do with his sexual preference. The fag discourse seemed to be just another way for the contest of masculinity to take

What does it mean to be a woman or man? Whether we a man or a woman, in today’s society it is not determined just by our sex organs. Our gender includes a complex mix of beliefs, behaviors, and characteristics. How do you act, talk, and behave like a woman or man? Are you feminine or masculine, both, or neither? These are questions that help us get to the core of our gender and gender identity. Gender identity is how we feel about and express our gender and gender roles: clothing, behavior, and personal appearance. It is a feeling that we have as early as age two or three. In the article, “Becoming Members of Society: Learning the Social Meaning of Gender,” the author, Aaron Devor, is trying to persuade his readers that gender shapes how we behave because of the expectation from us and relate to one another. He does this by using an educational approach, describing gender stereotypes, and making cultural references. He gets readers to reflect on how “Children’s developing concepts of themselves as individuals are necessarily bound up …to understand the expectations of the society which they are a part of” (389). Growing up, from being a child to an adult is where most of us try to find ourselves. We tend to struggle during this transition period, people around us tell us what to be and not to be, Jamaica Kincaidt in her short story, “Girl” tells just that, the setting is presented as a set of life instructions to a girl by her mother to live properly. The mother soberly

So if one guy called another guy a “fag” it is not necessarily to say that he is literally gay; it’s a charge that he is not being “a real man”. In essence the word “fag” is not only a homophobic slur, it is a homophobic slur that also attacks behavior as not being masculine. This is why Pascoe used the phrase gendered homophobia throughout the book to describe the masculinity the male students showed on a daily basis.

The determination of my gender identity was preset by my parents giving me the chromosomes XY, gave me an anatomic appearance of a female. Also being reared in a hetero environment had an influence in becoming a female as well. So the relation to the masculinity-femininity continuum is that I posses both traits feminine and masculine. In some situations I tend to carry myself as a caring and soft-spoken female, is typical for feminine behavior. On the other hand I express more masculine attributes like aggressiveness and self-reliance, which is typical for masculine behavior. Both add in the development in determining and sustaining my gender identity. The biological perspective by the way was inherited from my parents and aided in the development of the characteristics in becoming a woman, gender role of nurturing and caring individual, and maternal tendencies in taking care of my child. Then the psychological perspective according to my mother to which she insists that I was a normal girl with particular behaviors toward feminine toys and clothes. As a final point, the social environment offers an insight into the typical social role of an American woman, which was predetermined at birth by my social surroundings (Rathus, Nevid &

In Pascoe’s analysis of the word fag she interviews many boys at River High and most of them had the same response, that a boy could be called fag for exhibiting any sort of behavior defined as unmasculine such as being stupid or incompetent, to caring too much about something, or being too emotional(57). With this I analyzed the situation I always got stuck in and constantly was under fire for the word fag. At River High having a girlfriend “both protected boys from the specter of the fag and bolstered their masculinity” in certain cases (90). At El Capitan I was the guy who always had a girlfriend but I never dated girls from the same school. Even though I was adored by other girls at the school for expressing my love interest to this other girl. The guys constantly threw the word fag at me for being emotionally attached to a girl. So I was intrigued and happy to hear that in Pascoe’s one on one interviews the guys who would be calling me a fag were actually in the same situation as me but just too scared to admit their feelings publicly. All because of the social organization as Weeks explains that the peer influences within the high school put out a

Pascoe explains that what is considered masculine and feminine essentially gender roles is accomplished through day to day interactions. perpetuated in our society and it is why cheerleading is seen as feminine while football is masculine. Pascoe states that “Through imitating a fag, boys assure others that they are not a fag by immediately becoming masculine again after the performance. In other words, calling another boy a Fag makes you a non-fag and hence reassert one’s masculinity. The use of the word fag is essentially about a gendered homophobia not a sexual homophobia because a male can still be considered masculine while also being queer.

To understand Butler’s work, it is important to know who Butler is. Judith Butler was born on February 24, 1956 in Cleveland, Ohio. She attended Bennington College and Yale University afterwards where she studied philosophy, receiving her B.A. in 1978 and her Ph.D. in 1984. She then taught at Wesleyan University, George Washington University, John Hopkins University, and University of California, Berkeley. In 1987, Butler had released her first book called “Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth Century France” which was about the concept of desire. Butler had then released her better known work “Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity” in 1990, and its sequel, “Bodies that Matter: On The Discursive Limits of Sex” in 1993. Much of her work had great influence on feminism, cultural studies, and continental

Pascoe provides a great idea of how the discourse of gay slurs is a powerful central mechanism that makes adolescents masculine, but the evidence she presents is weakened by her use of inadequate examples that lack the quantity of different social context. All of Pascoe’s references and testimonies come from teenagers that attend Riverside High in north-central California, which doesn’t allow room for different perspectives because all of the information comes from the same background that revolves around the same social norm. Pacoe’s examples sound very redundant, even though she interviews kids from different social groups and genders, stating that “both boys and girls I interview told me that “fag” was the worst epithet one guy could direct at another” (Pascoe, 2016, p. 577). Obviously the whole high school has its own set of social norms and at this one, it is acceptable to call another guy a fag because that is the slang they use; however, if Pascoe visits another high school in another area of the country with kids from a different background then her argument could be justified if they too presented the same data as Riverside High.

even though sexuality can be considered universal, the sexual behaviors affiliated with it offer different attitudes in various communities. Sexuality is aligned to sexual attraction where individuals can identify themselves with a broad range of sexuality that is bisexual, gay or being lesbian. Sexuality can change over time in a person depending on the circumstances surrounding him or her. It may be affected by the social circle and emotional imbalances that may occur in an individual. Interestingly there exists sexual inequality among many societies in the world. As observed, many societies encourage men to have multiple sex partners but forbid it in women. Moreover, pre-marital sex is promoted in men, but women are flaunted if they participate in pre-marital sex. Across the globe, Western Europe has embraced certain norms in sexuality such as homosexuality whereas African society embraces a negative attitude towards the same.

In applying the assigned reading to the article I found it very easy to understand the issue that many Latin American gay and transgender individuals confronting. The assigned reading prepared me to deal with the issue. In the article by Jonathan Ned Katz was a start off point to the history of heterosexuality in the United States. “This essay traces the historical process by which the heterosexual idea was created as ahistorical and taken-for-granted” (Katz pg.69). In addition, the article by Ruth Hubbard focused on the social construction of sexuality. I was well informed of the basics of the topic. In learning the history and construction of sexuality I was able to analyze the online article and add onto the issue. I started with a strong

Although homosexuality used to be the most important factor in privileging heterosexuality in contemporary society, over the last two decades other factors, such as capitalism, have become more important. McIntosh argued that, throughout history, homosexuality was established as deviance to privilege heterosexuality (1968), and this essay will explore the way this privilege has played out in the negotiation of space, using Valentine to explore the heterosexualisation of space (1996). This essay will then discuss the evolution of space and tourism over the past two decades, arguing that the power of capitalism in the privileging of heterosexuality can be seen through the increasing assimilation of homosexuality into capitalist values. This essay will then briefly explore the monolithic construction of heterosexuality implied in the question, as this fails to acknowledge the hierarchies of respectability within heterosexuality, ultimately arguing that the forces of capitalism, patriarchy and white supremacy work in conjunction with heterosexism to privilege certain forms of heterosexuality. Throughout this essay, the words homosexual and gay will be used inclusively to refer to all non-heterosexual identities, to reflect the often dichotomous use of homosexuality/heterosexuality in the literature.