Dude You Re A Fag Case Study

The teenage years are especially important in the establishment of social and cultural core principles that provide the base for further growth in the future. Sociologist C.J. Pascoe links her personal experience with scholarly research in her ethnography titled, Dude, You’re A Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School. Pascoe’s year and a half study at a Northern California School known as River High School sheds light on how bullying, power, and sexual innuendos are all components in the makeup of social life in Americas public schools. Her analysis of these components through observational data research is centered around the subject of the challenges associated with masculinity as well as sexual inequality, and the refinement of gender

This is often done through playful flirting, but in reality it’s a boy physically dominating the girl through rough housing. This compulsive heterosexuality is also played out through bullying on those who do not fit the masculine norm. This is visible when Pascoe introduces Ricky, who is gay and visually rejects masculinity on a daily basis in front of his classmates. Ricky does so by being the only male that participates in choreographed dance shows in the school, cross dressing, and wearing hair extensions. Ricky shows true strength by maintaining his own unique identity despite white male students continuously harassing him for being too feminine or weak. Pascoe shows how Ricky’s strength is a positive element even though his peers attempt to deny his masculinity so that they could boost up their own. Yet, Pascoe undermines herself again by failing to analyze Ricky’s emotions and experiences and simply just shows them to the reader. As social researcher Pascoe is capable of analyzing evidence systematically, but instead makes the reader ponder whether or not she is uncomfortable with how overt Ricky is about her sexuality. Her word choice may even seem to appear that she justifies the violence against Ricky. When Ricky states, “this is the only school that throws water bottles, throws rocks, and throws food, ketchup, sandwiches, anything of that nature” (pg. 70), Pascoe follows up by telling the reader there is a law that protects students from sexual discrimination and that, “River was not a particularly violent school, it may have seemed like that to Ricky because sexuality-based harassment increases with grade level as gender differentiation becomes more intense” (pg. 196). By claiming that River was not a particularly violent school, despite Ricky telling her of his experiences seems to show that she does not believe Ricky and that