Boyz' Own Stories: Masculinities and sexualities in schools[1]

ABSTRACT In this paper I will draw on ethnographic work to argue that schools are highly sexualised sites, within which struggles around sexuality are pervasive, of consuming interest and, at the same time, taboo. I will suggest that struggles around sexuality are intimately connected with struggles around gender, and that the explicit homophobia and implicit heterosexism found within schools derives from and feeds macho and misogynistic versions of masculinity. The paper will suggest further that it is impossible to develop a full understanding of gender relations in schools without examining them in the context of compulsory heterosexuality-in other words, sexism in schools needs to be understood through the lens of heterosexism.