“Learning to listen”: Boys gender narratives- implications for theory and practice
Education + Training volume 58, issue 3 2016 pp 283-297
Dr Francis Farrell
Recent contributions to masculinities scholarship have argued for a softening of masculine styles and practices signalling system wide changes to the ‘cultural zeitgeist’ (Anderson, 2012, McCormack, 2012). The most notable example is Eric Anderson’s concept of inclusive masculinity (2012). In earlier school based research I had found evidence of progressive masculinities (Farrell, 2014; Farrell, 2015; Jupp, 2013) which did not align to that essentialist construction of education policy discourse, the ‘failing boy’. In many cases these boys expressed counter hegemonic values without disruption to their masculine subjectivity, irrespective of the class and cultural capitals available to them. Anderson’s work seems to offer further empirical confirmation of arguments for these multiple ways of ‘doing boy’ and would appear to be an optimistic ‘good news’ story about gender (Warin, 2013).
This article draws on data from a research study of the constructions of masculinity held by boys in primary and secondary schools and emerges out of a concern to test the burgeoning arguments for a softening of masculinity in the light of empirical findings at the micro level of cultural analysis. There are several questions this paper seeks to critically address:
· How were the boys in our sample constructing and performing their masculine identities? Was there evidence of inclusive masculinities?
· What are the implications of arguments for the existence of softer masculine styles for debates about the conceptualisation of masculinity in education research?
Personal and professional positioning
This study is also as much a part of my personal biography as it is also part of my professional trajectory. I am a former secondary school teacher, now working as an ITE tutor. Entering the research site as a male researcher is a reflexive process informed by my connection to the ‘alternative discourses’ (Davies, in Ball, ed., 2004) of critical theory through which I have come to recognise the forces that have shaped my experiences as a gendered masculine subject. I understand the ‘lure of hegemonic masculinity’ (Martino, 2008). Notwithstanding the privileges of being a white, middle class man, I also recognise the sense of arbitrariness and the ‘dread’ expressed in the narratives of the older boys in this study, the existential sense of being ‘thrown’ into “a world of brute existence already elaborated and organised …in the established ruts and routes of the organized world” (Blackham, 1961,92-93). It is because of these reflections that I wish to foreground ‘experience’ (Whelan, 2011) in this paper with the intention of avoiding the reification of schoolboys in the bi-polar terms of the ‘lads’ or ‘sissy boy’ much loved in the media (Ashley, 2009, 179). This study is also an account of the experiences of ‘ordinary boys’ (Roberts, 2012; Brown, 1987) who constitute the ‘majority’ of the boys teachers come into contact with. They are not necessarily failing or succeeding spectacularly, but if the project of progressive education is to be reasserted in a globalised neo-liberal education policy context, critical scholarship has a significant role to play in contributing to the development of educational strategies and research which will enable all boys and girls to fulfil their ontological possibilities,
“This crucially involves learning how to listen to boys as well as men so that we can engage with what they have to say” (Seidler in Martino and Berrill, 2003, 100).
A key outcome to emerge from this analysis is the capacity of gender work programmes such as the project I report on to enable boys to “ interrogate the social construction of masculinities” and “hegemonic heteronormativity which is embedded in school from social interaction to curriculum” (Martino and Berrill, 2003,100).
New directions in masculinities scholarship- some critical considerations:
In his seminal book ‘Inclusive Masculinity’ (2012) Eric Anderson argues that the current ‘zeitgeist’ is characterised by diminished homohysteria and homophobic discourse. He outlines changes in milieu where,
“Once previously stigmatized terrains and behaviours become available to heterosexuals without the need for one to defend their heterosexuality, it opens up further social and emotional spaces for heterosexual mean to occupy without threat to their publicly perceived heterosexual identities” (Anderson, 2012,96).
Anderson’s arguments have significant implications for educators working in the field of gender and social justice as suggested in a co-authored paper by Anderson and his graduate student, Mark McCormack, ‘It’s Just not acceptable anymore: The Erosion of Homophobia and the Softening of Masculinity at an English Sixth Form’ (McCormack and Anderson, 2010). The paper presents ethnographic evidence for inclusive heterosexual masculine practices amongst sixth form male students, indeed, inclusive masculinity is required for the performance of a successful masculine identity in Standard Town High Sixth Form. For the boys in the study, homophobia was regarded as an indication of immaturity and therefore detrimental to the performance of a socially successful masculinity, consequently, ontological security and social validation are achieved rather than disrupted by inclusive masculinity.
The notion of softening masculinities is also supported by the earlier ethnographic work of Bender (2001) which points to the articulation of masculine styles which resist dominant masculinities through alternative practices expressed through musical taste, dress and leisure choices. Similarly in the context of primary education, Swain (2006) has developed the concept of personalised masculinity as an analytical category for theorising the practices of boys who do not seek to subordinate others. Skelton and Francis (2012) have used the concept of the ‘Renaissance Child’ to account for the emergence of socially successful masculine subjectivities which do not align to the hegemonic ideal. Masculine styles produced by this ‘Renaissance Child’ discourse enable boys to incorporate practices traditionally associated with the feminine arena, such as a strong identification with English, but without any threat to their masculine subjectivity. Skelton and Francis recognise the contingent nature of gendered subjectivity accounting for the emergence of these softer masculinities in the context of a neo-liberal discourse of educational credentialism which is in turn producing renaissance masculinities where pupils, “come to demonstrate their potential as flexible, entrepreneurial, economic subjects” (2012, 443).
But do these studies signal the end of dominant ‘hegemonic’ masculinity? Mac an Ghaill and Haywood (2012) go as far as to consider a ‘reflexive refusal’ of the category of masculinity. Drawing on Butler (2004) they problematise the discourse of hegemonic masculinity on the grounds that it constitutes the subjectivities of which it speaks, thus reinforcing binaries,
“The use of masculinity as a conceptual tool to explore educational space may be instantiating a regulatory system of gender that is dependent upon sex/gender binaries” (Mac an Ghaill and Haywood, 2012:9).
However, for its critics, inclusive masculinity theory and proclamations of the end of masculinity are nothing more than examples of the turn to ‘happy talk’ within the academy, “At best…a catchall attempt to describe behaviours which do not fit within a cultural stereotype of machismo” (De Boise, 2014, 17).
It is hard to ignore that in the case of Anderson’s theory the evidence is principally derived from studies of “white, middle-class university men” in the USA (Anderson, 2012) and predominantly white, middle class sixth form students in the UK (McCormack, 2012). These male subjects are ‘already there’ (Connell, 2000), that is, they possess the economic, social and cultural resources to be able to take risks with their masculine identities because they possess the ontological security to do so. Softer masculinities are only part of the story. For O’Neil (2014), inclusive masculinity reflects the insidious logic of post feminism which effects an erasure of sexual politics by proclaiming gender equality rather than acknowledging the capacity of new and pernicious masculinist neo liberal discourses of self-improvement to cause injury to female and male subjects.
However, the cumulative evidence presented in studies such as Anderson’s does point to an apparent weakening of dominant masculine styles previously shaped by the demands of a traditional industrial labour market and the greater fluidity required of gendered subjects in the economic landscape of post modernity. This proliferation of new masculine ways of being is a feature of postmodernity, as Massumi argues: “The citizen of the liberal nation state is given the latitude to recode an existing code, to redefine a category. The denizen of the neoconservative trans-nation state can invent new codes by mixing and matching images. Gender becomes increasingly negotiable, as new sexualities come onto the market” (Massumi, 1996, 134). Overall, therefore, this literature does raise substantive questions about the epistemological foundations of concepts of masculinity in educational research and suggests a need for a broader conception of gendered identity which can interrogate fluid masculine subjectivities in localised settings.
The Study
The data presented in this paper aims to make a contribution to this debate by critically analysing the narratives of boys collected over the period 2011-2013 as part of a project developed in a University Faculty of Education with partnership primary and secondary schools. The first stage of the research was undertaken in three primary schools and aimed to investigate the relationship between year six boys’ constructions of masculinity and their engagement with school at a key transition point - the move to secondary school. The second phase was undertaken in three secondary schools and aimed to gain insights into year nine boys’ engagement with their schooling, their aspirations, imagined futures and subsequent trajectories in employment or education. As idiographic social sites, stratified by discourses of class and gender the schools provided a useful lens through which to interrogate recent debates about softer masculine styles and to, endeavour, at least to partly address O’Neill’s question, “Whither Critical Masculinity Studies?” (2014).
Methodological orientation
The ontological and epistemological orientation of the analysis in this article draws upon post-structuralism. The data presents a complex picture of boys whose identities elude simplistic reduction in the bi-polar terms of resistant ‘lad’ or academic ‘ear ole’, requiring nuanced theoretical instruments to interpret their identity work and social experience. Foucault’s concept of discourse is a key theoretical tool in this analysis. Foucault defines discourse as those practices which systematically constitute “the objects of which they speak” (Foucault, 2002, 54), thus there is no pre-existent self that exists outside of discourse. Masculinity is not a naturalised essence, it is a social, cultural and linguistic construction, an artefact which has the appearance of substance but is performative, constituted through iteration of culturally esteemed masculine practices, for example the daily dramas and social rituals of localised school boy life explored in this analysis (Butler, 2007). Identity is achieved through both the subject’s own appropriation of the discourses circulating within the social spaces they inhabit and the subjectifying effects of dominant discourses which signify what constitutes an admissible existence as a boy. This is not to suggest the boys in this study lack agency or self -reflexivity. On the contrary they demonstrate insight into their gendered subjectivity when offered opportunities to discuss their views on masculine identity. Some of the older boys we interviewed could be uncritically positioned as the pathologized ‘problem boys’ of neo-liberal policy discourse, “constructed throughout the social policy arena in relation to delinquency, crime, unemployment and other ‘social ills” (Francis, 2006, 193). Analysis of the boys’ narratives of the self (Ricoeur, 1984) demonstrates that they are beginning to offer some reflexive insights into the forces operating within their lives. They are not social and cultural ‘dupes’ or the demonized “others of educational policy” (Francis, 2006, 196), but equally, these boys do not share the cultural and social capitals, the ontological resources of Anderson and McCormack’s inclusive masculine subjects. They share more in common with the ordinary “just getting on kids” of Brown’s ethnographic study (Brown, 1987) and the ‘overlooked boys’ of Robert’s paper (Roberts, 2012).
The discursive site: Newtown
Following BERA (2004) ethical guidelines the schools and the research participants have been anonymised. The schools where the research was undertaken are located in a town in the north west of England, referred to as ‘Newtown’. The data presented was collected in two sites, represented as: Newtown Primary School and Newtown College, the secondary school setting. There is some light industry in the town, but unemployment figures are high and there are few signs of economic growth, although over the past decade affluent private housing estates serving a commuter population have been built in the town. As a result the schools’ intakes have become less homogeneous, but they remain predominantly working class social and cultural sites. An initial assessment based on indicators of class suggested the likelihood of hard resistant anti-academic masculinity as the dominant identity resource adopted by boys in these schools.
Methods of data collection
The qualitative research methods utilised in this fieldwork belong to what Denzin and Lincoln (2003) refer to as the ‘narrative moment’, a paradigmatic shift away from positivism, grand narratives, and generalisable universal truths to a concern with contingent, socially situated micro-narratives.
Themes emerged inductively, collected through semi-structured group interviews in single-sex male groups. As a stimulus for the primary school group interviews the boys were shown ten pictures based on Pollack’s ‘boy code’(1999) and were invited to share whether the ‘rule’ shown in the pictures made it ‘hard to be a boy’. A short excerpt from the film ‘Danny the Champion of the World’ was shown in order to stimulate discussion about the contrasting masculine styles of the teachers Danny encounters in his school. The authoritarian and physically brutal disciplinarian Captain Lancaster is contrasted with the kindlier, but alcoholic Head master in the clip the boys were shown. Both resources were offered in order to gain insight into the models of masculinity held by year 6 boys in Newtown.
The secondary school sample consisted of single sex year 9 volunteer male groups from three community high schools in Newtown. The interviews with the boys took place in their respective schools. As stimulus for the group interviews an extract from David Puttnam’s film about the education and aspirations of five young people, ‘We are the People we’ve been waiting for’. The focus in the secondary school addressed the boys’ educational and career aspirations and sought to explore the factors they identified as facilitating or inhibiting the fulfilment of their desires.