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

Subordinated masculinities

Being different from the majority is often an unenviable position for boys (and girls) to
be in. The powerful pressures to conformity that characterised the peer group cultures
meant that a boy had only to look, and be, slightly different from the norm to be accorded
inferior status. Under the rubric of ‘difference’, boys could be subordinated for
associating too closely with the formal school regime (such as by working too hard, being
too compliant or over-polite); by speaking too formally/correctly or being ‘too posh’; by
singing in the choir; or by looking different. Although I did not come across a single
incident of any pupil being subordinated because of their ethnicity or race, aberrant
physical appearances and differences in body language were keenly scrutinised and
commented on. As I have already written, boys had to work hard at learning the
appropriate peer group norms, and to be included they had to be what Thornton (1997)
calls ‘in the know’: that is they needed to be able to talk about the right subjects, use the
right speech (using the same style and vocabulary), wear the right clothes, play the right
playground games, as well as move (sit, walk, run, catch, throw, kick, hit etc) in the
‘right’ way that being a boy demanded. Although I did not come across any pupil being
teased because they were wearing glasses, Simon was bullied at Westmoor Abbey
because he was deemed to have a ‘funny shaped head’. Pupils who had physical
‘differences’ of the more unusual kind also did not always escape the more pernicious
comments. For example, even though Peter (from the same class as Simon) suffered
from alopecia, and was allowed to wear a base-ball cap in class to cover his baldness, he
had occasionally still been called names such as ‘cancer-head’ by a few boys, particularly
from other classes. However, the major material bodily difference came from the
impression of being overweight, and my data are littered with disparaging references
directed to boys and girls being ‘a big fat blob’, ‘fat-boy’, ‘too fat’, ‘so fat’, ‘really fat’
and so on. It was a serious handicap to boys’ (or girls’) attempts to establish peer group
status, and boys needed to use other strategies and resources in order to compensate for it.
In the extract below (which comes from Highwoods) I am trying to find out if a group of
boys have any ideas why Rex (who is academically bright) misbehaves in certain classes.
Travis’s theory is that Rex deliberately attempts to avert the masculine gaze:

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