Gender Identity

Gender Identity

1. Verbal Abuse

   • Paetcher sees name calling as helping to shape gender identity and maintain male power. The use of negative labels such as 'gay' 'queer' and 'lezzie' are ways in which pupils 'police' each others sexual identities.
   • Labels are often not in relation to pupils' sexual behaviour but are in fact used simply to reinforce gender norms.

2. Male peer groups

   • They often use verbal abuse to reinforce their definitions of masculinity. eg, Mac an Ghaills study of Parnell school examines how peer groups reproduce a range of different class-based masculine identities. eg. the working class 'macho lads' were dismissive of other working class boys who worked hard and aspired to middle class careers, referring to them as the 'dickhead achievers'
     • The middle class 'englishmen' tried to project an image of 'effortless achievement' of succeeding without really trying.

3. teachers and discipline

   • Teachers also play a part in reinforcing dominant definitions of gender identity. Haywood and Mac an Ghaill found that male teachers told boys off for 'behaving like girls' and teased them when they gained lower marks in tests than girls. Teachers tend to ignore boys' verbal abusr of girls and even blames girls for atracting it.

4. the male gaze

   • Mac an Ghaill thinks that the male gaze as a form of surveillance through which dominant hetrosexual masculinity is reinforced and femininity devalued. It is one of the ways boys prove their masculinity to their friends and is often combined with constant telling and retelling stories about sexual conquests. Boys who do not display their heterosexuality in this way run the risk of being labelling gay.

5. Double standards

   • Applying one set of moral standards to one group and a different set to another group. Feminists see double standards as an example of a patriarchal ideology that justifies male power and devalues women. Among with verbal abuse, the male gaze and school discipline, double standards can be seen as a form of social control that reinforces gender inequality by keeping females subordinate to males.