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

least I like being a girl because I can’t be gay.’ However, of course, both these terms
were actually used to mean ‘other’. Epstein (1997:109) found that homophobia was used
towards boys as a means of implying their similarity to girls, and that the terms ‘gay’ and
‘sissy’ were often used interchangeably. Boys certainly risked derogation if they
associated too closely with girls, and from an early age they have to work hard to prove
that they have the right masculine credentials as heterosexual boys. In one of the
interviews Fred, at Petersfield, told me of a conversation he had had with Jinesh (one of
the class leaders) which had arisen after some of the boys had been calling him ‘Barbie’
(after Barbie doll). This had happened because he was perceived to be fraternising too
closely with the girls and the following quotation shows Jinesh clearly defining the
normative boundaries.

Fred: I mean, [I said to him], ‘It’s nice to be popular with girls, like with the
boys’, and he [Jinesh] went, ‘No it isn’t, I like to play with the boys, and
if you’re a boy you’re like a sissy if you play with the girls’

In some ways this may seem an apparent contradiction in that when people are popular
with the opposite sex it is usually taken as an expression of, and confirmation of, their
heterosexuality. As Josh (from Highwoods) told me, ‘the people who hang around the
girls and talk to the girls cannot be called gay’, and this could cause confusion when boys
were collectively constructing others as gay. In the passage below I am talking with three
other boys at Highwoods about Travis who has been referred to by some boys as being
gay.

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