The resources and strategies that 10-11 year old boys use to construct masculinities in the school setting

important for (some) boys to be able to show a commitment to adolescent future by being
‘in the know’ regarding the meaning of certain swear words and matters of sexuality.

Robert:      Me and Luke, in Year 5, we used to ask Sam about bodily parts

which were rude and that, and ask him if/

Ryan:       We’d ask Sam now about body parts

Robert:       Yeah, and ask if he knows [much laughter, I can’t hear everything

that is being said]

Chris:       He used to say when your nose goes stiff

Ryan:        Like we asked him things like that

Robert:      We asked Sam what something was, I can’t remember what it

was, and I think he said something like ‘your tongue’ or something

Having a girlfriend

There has recently been a growing number of studies considering the heterosexual
positions of boyfriend and girlfriend, particularly at the upper end of the primary school
(see, for example, Thorne & Luria, 1986; Thorne, 1993; Epstein, 1997; Adler & Adler,
1998; Renold, 2000), although Connolly (1998) found that infant boys were also able to
gain a significant level of status by having a girlfriend. Some researchers like Renold
have found that ‘having a girlfriend’ was a common occurrence amongst the boys’ peer
group culture (they were also 10-11 year olds), and created an ‘acceptable and
assumptive’ status (Renold, 2000, p. 319) which emanated from the need to reinforce
dominant versions of heterosexual masculinities. However, I found little evidence of
these relationships in my three schools, and even the few short term associations usually
only lasted a number of days or even hours. Indeed, despite the connotations of activity
invoked by the phrase ‘going out’, it was ironic that the two or three couples that actually
did exist in the three schools did not actually seem to go anywhere, and ‘going out’ was a
particular ‘storyline’ which signified, and gave the pupils access to, the positions of
boyfriend/girlfriend from the social world of the adolescent or adult. In the vast majority
of cases, the boys wanted to do little more than to possess a girl, to use as a status

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