Needing to be ‘in the know’: strategies of subordination used by 10-11 year old school boys

Again, the main strategies used came under the rubric of difference. Of course Emlyn
was immediately different because he had come from another school, but he was nearly
everything the dominant form of masculinity was not. He worked hard, was a high
academic achiever (he actually got three Level 5s in his SATs [6]) and was thought of as
a ‘know-all’; he was polite and did not call out in class; he spoke with a middle class
accent which the boys (and girls) castigated as ‘posh’; he wore school uniform; he did not
act tough and did not stick up for himself; and, he was overweight and rather
unaccomplished at games and sport (particularly in terms of speed, skill, coordination,
and levels of fitness). In the conversation below I am asking how Emlyn is getting on in
the weekly football games where I had heard that he was playing in goal. Notice the
derogatory comments about his the way he moves (like a goalkeeper in a computer
game), his level of fitness, and about his weight which was deemed to cause an absence
of bodily control:

Chris:       He’s like this right: do you know, like, on computer games when

you boot the ball, yeah, he [the goalkeeper] catches it and then he
falls on the floor, Emlyn pretends he’s done a wicked dive but he’s
so fat, so the ball’s, like, past him into the back of the net, then he
dives.

Robert:       Or if the ball’s just in front of him and it’s stopped/

Chris:        He sweats well bad ‘cos like he’s here, Eric’s there, the ball’s there

and he’s running and he’s sweating

The other two boys who were regularly bullied and subordinated were Simon and Sam
who were not close friends, but often came together by default because they were
ostracised from the other friendship groups. In the next extract I am asking three boys
about people who are bullied, trying to uncover some of the reasons why they get picked
on:

Chris:        Some people, including me, bully Simon and Georgia, ‘cos we say

‘Egghead’ and ‘Spam’ and things

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