Dude, you're a fag Masculinity and sexuality in high school

Sociologist Pascoe (Univ. of Puget Sound) combines theories on gender identity with those on sexuality to argue that "making masculinity" involves the employment of discourses located within and out of male bodies. She describes her ethnographic study in a California high school where she interviewed adolescents from all walks of life (racially, sexually, etc.) and observed teacher-student interactions and schoolwide rituals (plays, athletic events, etc.). Her findings include the following: teachers and administrators are reluctant to formally discuss matters of sexual behavior and sexuality, but informally encourage patriarchal and heterosexual tropes among their students; male adolescents hurl the accusation of the word "fag" at one another to avoid it lying static on themselves; and behaviors perceived as "fag-like" when observed in whites are not perceived as such in African Americans. While Pascoe cites a wealth of sociological and interdisciplinary literature, the book is fairly easy to follow and the examples keep the reader entertained. One could easily assign this book as a week's worth of reading in an intermediate-level undergraduate course, or use it as an example of how to conduct ethnographic research in schools. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty. R. E. Barlow Trinity College