[Grovenet] Pacific University Presents, "Dude, You're a Fag: Homophobia in High School"

[Cecelia Warner]

DUDE, YOU’RE A FAG: HOMOPHOBIA IN HIGH SCHOOL

CJ PASCOE, author of "Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality  
in High School" to speak on Pacific University

Date: Thursday, October 25, 2007
Time: 4:30-5:30 p.m.
Place: Taylor Auditorium (Marsh Hall 216) Pacific University, Forest  
Grove (www.pacificu.edu for directions)

In this talk, Pascoe focuses on what she calls the "fag discourse,"  
or the ways in which adolescent boys shore up a masculine image  
through homophobic taunts and epithets. She documents how homophobic  
gender practices and discourses surrounding the specter of the faggot  
constitute adolescent masculinity. “Fag” is not necessarily a static  
identity attached to a particular (homosexual) boy. Fag talk and fag  
imitations serve as a discourse with which boys discipline themselves  
and each other through joking relationships. Any boy can temporarily  
become a fag in a given social space or interaction.  This does not  
mean that those boys who identify as or are perceived to be  
homosexual aren’t subject to intense harassment.  But becoming a fag  
has as much to do with failing at the masculine tasks of competence,  
heterosexual prowess and strength or an anyway revealing weakness or  
femininity, as it does with a sexual identity.  This fluidity of the  
fag identity is what makes the specter of the fag such a powerful  
disciplinary mechanism.  It is fluid enough that boys police most of  
their behaviors out of fear of having the fag identity permanently  
adhere and definitive enough so that boys recognize a fag behavior  
and strive to avoid it.  The talk will conclude with suggestions for  
social change and policy reform to combat the homophobia central to  
adolescent masculinity.

Sponsors:  Department of Sociology/Anthropology, Center for Gender  
Equity, Feminist Studies Minor