Playing in the Gender Transgression Zone: Race, Class, and Hegemonic Masculinity in Middle Childhood

This research focuses on how children negotiate gender boundaries in middle childhood play. Over a nine-week period, children were observed creating, defining, and altering gender codes in a summer day camp. When girls and boys disregarded pre-described boundaries, they entered an area we refer to as the gender transgression zone. This area of activity, where boys and girls conduct heterosocial relations in hopes of either maintaining or expanding gender boundaries in child culture, is where gender transgression takes place. The study revealed that high-status boys used hegemonic masculinity to regulate both girls' and boys' boundaries by reserving the authority to sanction all gender transgressions. While race and class were salient for girls' homosocial organization and behavior, within this age group they did not appear to influence the boys' status system.