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The Making of “Masculinity”:

The Impact of Symbolic and Physical Violence on Students, Pre-K and Beyond

Stephanie Cayot Serriere

STEPHANIE CAYOT SERRIERE is an assistant professor of education at Pennsylvania State University, University Park. She teaches elementary social studies at the undergraduate level. In the graduate program of Language, Culture & Society, she leads courses on democracy, gender, and teacher-research. She can be contacted at .

“When I’m five, my dad’s going to buy me a gun!”

–Jacob, age 4, son of Midwestern peace activist

I write about masculinity as a woman—the aunt of two young boys, a sister of two older brothers, and a niece whose uncle was the victim of a hate crime. I have witnessed the pain of dominant constructions of masculinity and even felt it myself. Growing up in the Midwest, it was unquestioned—my two brothers were to be tough and stoic. They were to protect themselves (and me), to be always ready to fight if confronted. In the early 1980s, my brother and I sang a country song by Kenny Rogers that described a meek boy who, despite his nature, slugged another young boy because, “sometimes you gotta fight when you’re a man.” (Bowling & Wheeler, 1979). In our home and school, the social norms of masculinity were clearer and rougher than anything placed on me.

Two particular incidences from my life history illustrate the way masculinities can impact any one person’s life. The first event is one of the only times I remember hearing my brother cry—I got on the phone to talk to him as he was away at his first year at college, only to hear him weeping to my mom about the horrible “hazing” occurring at his new fraternity. I hung up the receiver, shocked at the disgusting and degrading details of proving they were “brothers.” But even more poignant was another phone call in 1992, when I learned my uncle, a homosexual, had been shot through the throat while walking down the street in Chicago. From a car full of laughing men, one man—still unidentified—pulled the trigger and yelled one word: faggot. Although my uncle survived 12 hours of surgery to remove the bullet, his voice box was shattered and nearly silenced.

I also write as an educator. In the elementary classrooms where I have taught in Indiana, Italy, and India (the three I’s of my life), one of the worst insults for my young male students was to be called “a girl” or “crying like a baby.” In each diverse setting, there was generally a main group of boys who subtly enforced the norms of being a “real boy.” I wanted to do something, so I read my students books with alternative messages for boys such as Oliver Button is a Sissy (dePaola, 1979) and Michael’s Doll (Zolotow, 1972). However, the discussions that followed readings of those outdated and not very enticing textsdid little to undo what the boys knew to be correct way of being a boy, backed by their multimedia superheroes. I set out to learn more about the historically and socially constructed norms of masculinities. As a result, I now write to you as a teacher-educator and feminist scholar who values equality and “safe” masculinities.

My goal in this article is to make the relationship between dominant masculinities and school safety clearer. I show how the social construction of masculinity impacts the safety of boys and girls in school—socially, emotionally, and physically. Borrowing from Martin Luther King, Jr. (1967), I use a definition of violence that includes any loss of hope, dignity, or confidence. French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu (2002) similarly describes symbolic violence as any occurrence in which human beings, male or female, are denied a voice, treated as inferior, “other”-ized, or categorized by a dominant view. I define “safety” by pointing to the inverse of King and Bourdieu’s notion of violence: the preservation of hope, dignity, and confidence. Drawing from research on early masculinities (including my own), incidences of bullying, hate crimes, and school shootings, I show how “codes,” processes, and approaches of “making a man” perpetuate such notions of violence, in both the subtle and more recognized, physical ways. I show that “masculinity” is taught and reinforced in ways that impact the safety of boys and girls in school. I conclude that safety in schools is predicated on the continuous development of hope, dignity, and confidence for all students and offer suggestions towards that aim.

Masculinity Impacts Girls

When an idea of “masculinity” is inflexible, the space of possible feelings, acts, words, and bodily behavior is restricted for both boys and girls. As being called “a girl” or “a sissy” is often the worst insult for a male, girls are often, although indirectly, the butt of many boy jokes. Gary Fine’s (1987) classic study on boys’ peer culture in Little League baseball provides insight into the process of boys’ gender socialization, specifically the defeminization of boys, enforced by teasing, insults, and name-calling. In his study, one boy went so far as to say another boy was on “birth [control] pills,” as if his transgression of boy norms made him hormonally different (p. 80). The coaches condoned the “toughening up” of the boys.

This approach to educating young boys limits the potential for creating safe schools in two ways. First, by positioning typically feminine behaviors as off-limits for boys, it limits boys’ responses of caring and showing emotions, leaving them restricted in accepted modes of expression. Second, this approach disrespects young girls and women while also limiting boys’ potential to be caring and respectful. Asking what we can do to help the girls to become stronger and more secure may be asking the wrong question. Bourdieu (2002) argues that ongoing efforts to liberate women from domination “must be accompanied by an effort to free men from the same structures which lead them to help to impose [domination]” (p. 114). To continue on society’s journey toward gender equality, I illuminate several ways in which the construction of masculinity impacts females:

  • Females may normalize and accept male violence or domination if not taught differently.
  • Dominant forms of masculinity are linked to symbolic and actual violence that impacts all of society, but often positions females especially as the lesser “other” as well as any boy displaying attributes thought of as “feminine.”
  • Women and girls deserve having men and boys in their lives who are good listeners, empathizers, and capable of playing diverse roles.

These points are woven throughout this article. Because “male” is often considered the referent gender, the work of creating respectful, caring, and safe school communities must involve the way in which “successful,” “worthy,” and “normal” are defined for boys and what that means for girls.

Finding Safety in the “Boy Code”

As a volunteer and researcher at a Midwestern pre-kindergarten classroom of four-year-olds, I collected audio-recorded data and field notes for over three years during children’s free choice play episodes. For one month, I obtained permission to take photos of the children (Serriere, 2007). I use these data here to demonstrate how the social construction of masculinity involved a constant check of actions, signals, and codes along binaries: weak/strong, female/male, dominated/dominant.I also point to the “subtler” acts of symbolic violence (Bourdieu, 2002). I organize the data around three overlapping rules or expectations of their “boy code” (Pollack, 1999):

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Figure 1. “Shhh, Tinkerbell doesn’t talk!” (photograph courtesy of Stephanie C. Serriere)

First, boys are to be risky, brave, and drawn to violence. Figure 1 shows a boy with a paper hook on his hand playing as “Captain Hook” and tackling a girl, “Tinkerbell,” for speaking after he told her: “Shhh, Tinkerbell doesn’t talk!” The boy in the background cheered on the “captain’s” display and joined the attack by calling the girl “stinkerbell.” The girl then returned to a state of silent compliance in order to play with the boys. Bourdieu (2002) reminds us that over time females and males misrecognize and accept such invisible violence as “normal.” Yet, it is vital to understand that the norms of masculinity do not “bubble up” out of one’s biology (Kimmel, 2006, p. 3), nor does violence.

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Figures 2a and 2b. “When I’m five, my dad’s going to buy me a gun!” (photographs courtesy of Stephanie C. Serriere)

Second, boys should achieve status, dominance, and power. Jacob (see Figure 2a) pumped his muscles and proudly told his friends about his upcoming birthday gift, a gun. (Ironically, his father happened to be a peace activist in our community.) This young boy and others used “power packs” and “super powers” to protect against the “bad guy.”A Korean boy, Taek-Sung (see Figure 2b), who was just learning English, was often positioned as the “bad guy” against his will.

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Figure 3. “Take off that nasty girl stuff!” (photograph courtesy of Stephanie C. Serriere)

Third, boys are to avoid anything considered to be traditionally feminine. In Figure 3, a boy came out of the dress-up area in a pink wig; the other boy responded, “Take off that nasty girl stuff!” From the color pink, to longer hair, to showing “soft” emotions, boys heavily patrolled traditionally feminine items, behaviors, and emotions.

The display of bravado in the muscle pump, physical force in the tackle and the paper hook, and verbal abuse in the pink wig are the weapons of masculinity that threaten the hope, dignity, and confidence of all students. Faced with subtle and overt modes of “gender policing” (Butler, 1990) from their peers and society, boys acquire the discourse of the “boy code” to enable them to secure safety in schools. But this sort of safety is elusive and false. As this version of hegemonic masculinity shifts, boys negotiate and adapt in order for their version of masculinity to survive. Constructs of “race,” class and language ability (as shown with Taek-Sung in Figure 3) are of significance in how boys see themselves and others, and also in how their behavior will be interpreted.

Deeper Trouble: Physical Violence and Masculinity

Considering the photos above, it may be easy to imagine how the next step may be physical violence. One such incident occurred several months ago. A junior high school boy in California, Lawrence King, gave a male classmate a card that read, “Will you be my Valentine?” Lawrence, who had endured previous taunting from classmates for being too effeminate, was shot and killed the next day by the boy who received his valentine (Cathcart, 2008). This hate crime and other school shootings, mostly perpetrated by young males, can be read as the physical evidence of the pain and pressure of being a “real boy” wrought in our schools and society, limiting and hurting everyone. Because the norms are learned early and policed well, gender nonconformity can elicit intense hatred and fear that leads to violence (Russell, 2008). Moreover, the filter of weak vs. strong asks boys to prove their strength by any means possible. Showing physical strength through violence is generally a persuasive means of communication, especially when other means of strength are unacceptable or unobtainable.

The scenario above, where “Tinkerbell” isn’t allowed to talk, implicates the power and unquestioned legitimacy of the media in reinforcing images of the violent male and the weak female. Although dominant forms of masculinity in television, films, and popular culture can be simplified and exaggerated, they are nonetheless embodied in boys’ play (Dyson, 1994; Jordan, 1995; Seiter, 2000; Serriere, 2007). From pre-kindergarten and beyond, boys’ involvement in popular culture must be understood and interrogated in order to impact the construction of safer masculinities.

But we cannot just blame it on the media and popular culture. Boys learn and reject the norms of masculinity presented by family, teachers, the school curriculum, and their peer culture. Research on gang masculinities (Hagedorn, 1998) to working-class masculinities (Willis, 1981) to anti-schooling masculinities (Renold, 2001) show how boys define themselves with some and against others to make temporary “safety” zones: safety from social isolation, safety from ridicule, and safety from physical violence. As one young man explained, “If I join a gang, I’m 50% safe. I don’t, I’m 0% safe” (Garbarino, 2002, p. 480). Despite the brief respite of social safety, “the fact is the more narrowly masculine they become, the more likely they are to end up in early death and early incarceration and other damage” (p. 480). Thus, the greater the impact of the gender policing, the greater the risk of losing of hope, dignity, and security. Surprisingly, even at the young age of four, achieving “safety” necessitates riskier displays of dominant masculinity.

I have shown evidence that a hegemonic, or dominant, notion of masculinity can be narrow and although its “code” changes from situation to situation, there are real social, emotional, and physical consequences for transgressing. Now I will point out that there is evidence of a change in our society—fissures in dominant notions of masculinity.

Fissures of Hope or Mixed Messages of the “New” Masculine Man?

Various scholars of masculinity have indicated a change in the old boy code, demonstrating that there is a “new” masculine man who can show sensitivity and even respect girls and women while simultaneously being tough, stoic, and “manly.” Kimmel (2006) ends his book, Manhood in America: A Cultural History, by pointing to a new “democratic manhood.” He proposes that about half of the United States supports this change, leaving boys with dueling images of “sharing housework while protecting their homeland” (p. 254). Children’s culture researcher, Henry Jenkins, depicts the “new fatherhood” in which men still get power and authority from their public roles while also getting credit “for their more private roles as educators and nurturers” (1998, p. 10). Women and girls, too, respond to these new gender roles as they find their place at home and work.

Although boy researchers Pollack (1999) and Kindlon and Thompson (1999), focus on these “mixed messages” as potentially confusing for boys, I see it as a societal change toward more flexible gender norms—an opportunity for boys and girls to experience a wider range of acceptable behaviors. I am reminded of Ellen Jordan’s (1995) call for educators to find “clever” ways, in conversations (story-telling and discussions about media) with children, of pointing out the worthwhile elements of popular masculine characters such as cooperation with comrades and calling upon friends for help. While we are far from living in an ungendered society, educators may help their students move toward a frame of human characteristics, instead of gendered ones. Or if we do use gendered reference points, they may not be limited to the straight-jacket of masculinity or a clear binary. The primary aim of impacting the social construction of masculinity should be to associate it with “hope” and to disassociate it with any sort of violence.

What Can Educators and Schools Do?

As a woman and educator contemplating my past experiences, it is remarkable to consider the ways in which masculinity has shaped and continues to impact the life stories of many, even the unfolding history of our world. In considering this, I hope to have made clear that first, masculinity isn’t just about boys and men, and second, how violence is not just physical. In addition, symbolic violence (Bourdieu, 2002), in its concurrent search for security, leads easily to physical violence. In the pre-kindergarten research, while the norms present were familiar from related research, their rigidity was surprising—the rules surrounding strict norms of masculinity are grasped by students at a young age, and enforced through mechanisms of categorization such as weak vs. strong, us vs. other, and feminine vs. masculine. Yet, I present these data to not to suggest that free-choice play, super-hero play, or even pretend weapons should be banned. Instead, I propose that students may be given the spaces and tools to negotiate these discourses. In that aim, I challenge educators and schools, collectively and cleverly, to look at social issues and to consider school safety more broadly in order to take action in three key impact areas:

Policy

Recent research suggests that the first and most important step to creating safe schools is establishing “intentional and inclusive nondiscrimination and anti-harassment school policies” (Russell, 2008, n.p.).

  • Share policy with students: Several studies show that when students know about these policies they feel safer (O’Shaughnessy, Russell, Heck, Calhoun, & Laub, 2004) and students who attend schools with inclusive policies report more supportive school climates (Szalacha, 2003).
  • Encourage support and training: If not already available, school personnel should ask for training and support to intervene in bias-motivated bullying and harassment, as well as having resources to provide for students (Russell, 2008).
  • Develop programsfor boys: After-school programs for boys, backed by equal funding for girls’ programs, can focus on local issues of masculinity (such as gang violence) to redefine unsafe notions of masculinity. Rebounding from violent pasts, programs to redefine masculinity have been successfully implemented in places like Sweden and Nicaragua (Cleaver, 2002; Montoya, 2000).

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