Boys, bullying and biopedagogies in PE, Atkinson & Kehler

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BOYS, BULLYING AND BIOPEDAGOGIES INPHYSICAL EDUCATION

There has been a dramatic rise in public, and particularly the media, attention directedat concerns regarding childhood obesity, and body shape/contents/images more broadly.Yet amidst the torrential call for increased attention on so-called “body epidemics”amongst youth in Canada and elsewhere, links between youth masculinities and bodilyhealth (or simply, appearance) are largely unquestioned. Whilst there is a well-estab-lished literature on the relationship between, for example, body image and marginalizedfemininities, qualitative studies regarding boys and their body images (and how they areinfluenced within school settings) remain few and far between. In this paper, we offer in-sight into the dangerous and unsettled spaces of high school locker-rooms and other “gymzones” as contexts in which particular boys face ritual (and indeed, systematic) bullyingand humiliation because their bodies (and their male selves) simply do not “measure up.”We draw on education, masculinities, health, and the sociology of bodies literature to ex-amine how masculinity is policed by boys within gym settings as part of formal/informalinstitutional regimes of biopedagogy. Here, Foucault’s (1967) notion of heterotopia isdrawn heavily upon in order to contextualize physical education class as a negotiated andresisted liminal zone for young boys on the fringes of accepted masculinities in schoolspaces.

Keywords: youth masculinities, physical education, bullying, violence, biopedagogy

Previous research has established schools and physical education classes in par-ticular, as a site of ritual masculinizing practices through which boys learn, em-brace and embody, or are damaged by particular codes of dominant masculinity(Connell, 2000; Kehler, 2007; Kehler & Martino, 2006). From this literature, twotrends serve as empirical points of departure in this article. The first is the bur-geoning trend of anti-gym/exercise ideologies among young boys, and the prolif-eration of systematic violence and bullying in gym zones (Atkinson & Young, 2008,

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* Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education, University of Toronto.** Western Education, Western University.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Michael Atkinson, PhD, Faculty ofKinesiology and Physical Education, 55 Harbord Street, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON,Canada M5S 2W6. Email: [email protected]

MICHAEL ATKINSON* and MICHAEL KEHLER**

THYMOS: Journal of Boyhood Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2, Fall 2012, 166-185.© 2012 by the Men’s Studies Press, LLC. All rights reserved. http://www.mensstudies.com

thy0602.166/$15.00 • DOI: 10.3149/thy.0602.166 • ISSN/1931-9045 • eISSN/1872-4329

Wilson, 2006). The second, and clearly related trend, is growing attrition rates ingrade nine physical education classes in Ontario, Canada (Kehler & Atkinson, 2010).In the first instance, young boys are developing decisively anti-sport and PE atti-tudes after years of harassment, intimidation and isolation in gym classes. In thesecond instance, they are choosing to withdraw from gym class as soon as they areinstitutionally allowed in Ontario; partly, as a reaction to cultures of bullying ingym settings. Ontario schools have recently responded to concerns over youth at-trition with curricular initiatives that mandate primary-junior schools to include30 minutes of physical activity per day. In response to the public outcry and in-creased medical research associated with youth inactivity, the provincial govern-ment in Ontario has proposed a number of initiatives beyond the “30 minute rule”to help promote the importance of activity and fitness across the life-course. How-ever, institutional methods to address the culture of dominant masculinity, and re-lated patterns of bullying this culture produces in gym class, in Ontario schoolsremain undeveloped.

Whilst researchers around the globe highlight the degrees to which teenaged boysmay regularly experience bullying in gym class, few have systematically pursued“deep” empirical research on the consequences of such bullying. As a matter ofdefinition, bullying is conceptually understood in our research as a systematic pat-tern of aggressive behaviour meant to hurt or cause discomfort to another person.Bullying can manifest in physical (hitting, punching, kicking, slapping, throwingobjects, confining a person), verbal (teasing, taunting, rumour spreading, identity-based derision along race, class, gender, sexuality, or physical lines) or social forms(isolation, exclusion, public humiliation, cyber-harassment via social media). In ourresearch on boys and body image, we approach the gym (and more specifically thelocker room space) as a primary school zone in which all three forms of bullyingmay be enacted “covertly” behind any official institutional surveillance screens.

Indeed, among the least addressed zones of boys’ victimization from bullying isthe gym locker room. The locker room is a context of intense (male) self-surveil-lance and peer group maneuvering. Kehler, Davison and Frank (2005), among oth-ers, have shown how degrees of gender/masculinity variation are monitored insocial situations where boys face constant surveillance and policing by other boys.The relatively laissez-faire attitude coaches, physical education instructors and oth-ers in the educational field often possess toward the locker room and itsgender/power dynamics exacerbates the situation for boys who do not live up tostereotypical masculinities (Kehler & Atkinson, 2010). The pervasive governmentallogic (Foucault, 1979) and architecture underpinning the geography of the lockerroom, the institutional policies regulating and shaping locker room use, and theconnection between masculine fear in the locker room and contemporary rates ofattrition among boys in health, exercise and sport practices must be questioned.But why?

That Canadian schools have reached an historical point in which young boys, inescalating numbers, are developing decisive anti-sport/play/activity attitudes isworth considerable sociological attention alone. Yet, we feel that the social genesisof certain boys’ increasingly vitriolic, or at best indifferent, attitude toward partic-ipation in gym is clearly linked to other indicators of a “boy crisis” in Canada. Fornearly two decades, scholars of youth in society have pointed to troubling statisticsand trends that paint a picture of boyhood as not so idyllic (or hegemonic) as pre-

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viously theorized (see Connell, 2008). There is growing research in education sug-gesting that boys and varying experiences among and across boys is best charac-terized by differing experiences of power and domination. Atkinson (2010), forexample, notes that in comparison to their female peers, boys are now: less com-mitted to school and less likely to go to university; three times more likely to be en-rolled in special education; four times more likely to be referred to a schoolpsychologist; more likely to be punished in schools and at home; more likely to behit at home (nearly 50 percent more likely to be physically abused by their moth-ers than girls); more likely to face verbal abuse by adults; three times more likelyto be diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and prescribed Ritalin;more likely to be obese, dependent on drugs/alcohol, hospitalized for chronic ill-ness, die during adolescence, commit suicide, or experience depression; and, lesslikely to enter the paid labour force as adults.

Christina Hoff-Sommers is among the leading, and most controversial, neo-con-servative proponents of a thesis that articulates a failure on the part of multiple in-stitutions to medically and socially protect boys in a left-wing, anti-male, “feministworld.” In The War Against Boys, Hoff-Sommers (2000) attempts to deconstruct fem-inist agendas in contemporary education and medical spheres. She points to sev-eral alarming trends regarding how, particularly within schools, boys are likely tobe bullied and harassed by a number of agents. For examples, boys get into fist-fights ten times more often than girls; they are 15 times more likely to be the vic-tims of a violent crime; boys get lower grades on standardized tests of reading andwriting, and have lower class rank and fewer class honours than girls. Hoff-Som-mers attributes these problems to a basic discounting of boys’ biologies and de-velopmental patterns within school settings. Elementary schools, she argues, areessentially anti-boy because they emphasize reading (a skill, like speech, that de-velops faster among young girls than boys) while restricting the movements ofyoung boys as a matter of daily convention. Gurian (1997) similarly argues in TheWonder of Boys that regardless of how testosterone is surging through their bodies,educators demand that boys sit still, raise their hands, and take naps. The ultimatemessage is that boyhood is a defective state of being and that autism or ADHDmust be the root cause.

Hoff-Sommers is not alone in her critique of the treatment of boys in school, or inthe recognition of the widening educational gaps between males and females. Al-though he disagrees with Hoff-Sommers about the need to embrace essentialistmasculine biology, Pollack argues, in Real Boys, that being a boy in late modern lifeis not all hegemonic fun and games. As co-director of the Center for Men at McLeanHospital and Harvard Medical Center in the United States, Pollack works to revealwhat lies behind the stoic masks of troubled, modern boys as they struggle to copewith the mixed messages, conflicting expectations, and increasingly complex de-mands they receive in a hyper-sensitive gender culture. Kindlon and Thompson(2000) paint an equally depressing portrait of life for many young boys in NorthAmerica in their book, Raising Cain. Through accounts of how young boys becomeemotionally scarred in a culture that is wrestling with the definition of appropri-ate masculinity, they expose a generation of boys who are sad, afraid, angry, andsilent, simply about being boys. Kindlon and Thompson (2000), for example, pointto chilling effects and outcomes in the cultural contestation about what it means tobe male, such as demographic spikes in number of boys at risk for suicide, alcohol

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and drug abuse, violence, and loneliness. Along with the trends noted above, theypoint to the far greater likelihood of North American boys to be in gangs and go toprison, develop risk-taking body practices, or die in automobile accidents than theirfemale peers.

What these “boy crisis” advocates and others suggest that whilst hegemonic mas-culinity is one of the most salient concepts in gender research, it is unclear just howmany boys actually embody “hegemonic” identities in their youth. Whether oneplayfully learns to submit to one’s father while wrestling on the living room floor;to not speak back to a male teacher; to accept the orders of a sports coach; or towalk down the opposite side of the hallway from older boys, part of the learnedcode of masculinity is deferral to those who are in some manner above you on theostensible “masculine ladder” (Kehler & Atkinson, 2010). Feminist scholars sincethe 1960s have equally noted how the power mongering, resource gathering, com-modity accumulating, and sexual conquesting that comprises everyday life mightbe categorized as the social practice of (male) bullying; or more basically, acquir-ing one’s wants, needs, or desires, or extending one’s will over others through ag-gressive, exclusionary, or exploitive social means.

One could argue that the entirety of the “boy crisis” argument boils down to aperspective in which boys are targets of bullying (from other boys, girls, teenagers,peers, parents, and institutional agents) in society. Indeed, the basis of hegemonicmasculinity (or at least, dominant codes about masculinity) revolves around oneform of social bullying or another (Atkinson, 2010). Hegemonic men are, tradi-tionally, the types of men who bully and “get away with it.” Farr (1988) argues thatmale superiority and privilege is often won when men bond with the strong, whileavoiding and deriding the so-called weak. Such links between bullying, masculin-ity, and power are enduring and historically prevalent in Canada. One might sug-gest they comprise part of the meta-narrative of masculine power and authority. Yetthe meta-narrative of divine hegemonic masculinity in countries like Canada hasbeen seriously questioned. The ability for men to economically, politically, and cul-turally bully (qua masculine right) is no longer a universally accepted part of the so-cial script, and discourses about gendered power expose those inequalities asdeeply intolerable. This is true, perhaps, with the exception of sport and physicaleducation related spaces, where masculine bullying is more often than not definedas “just part of the game” (Atkinson & Young, 2008; Young, 2011)

Building on past studies of masculinities, bodies and the education settings, then,this paper draws on qualitative interviews undertaken with adolescent boys whohave voluntarily withdrawn from physical education in a sample of Ontario schoolsas a case study in institutional bullying, its link to masculinity performances, andits surveillance (or not) by social control agents. Attention is given to the physicalabuse, ostracism and derision some boys experience as socially identified marginalmales in the locker room setting. The locker room is a curious social space withinthe physical education context, as a zone wherein boys are sequestered from socialcontrol agents, and thus aggressively dominant boys are presented with an op-portunity to bully/police the preferred sorts of masculinity mainly reified in phys-ical education and sport settings. Through the discussion of locker room and itsrelationship to the policing of particular kinds of masculinity in school, the spaceis dissected as a youth heterotopia (Foucault, 1967) for boys on the outside or fringesof a normative masculinity. Heterotopia (Foucault, 1967) refers to a space outside

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of other, and perhaps more mainstream, institutional zones within which a personfinds predictable order, cultural comfort and social normalcy. Heterotopia can bea zone where identities, maps of cultural meaning, relations of power and techni-cal uses of the body are enforced in both traditional and non-traditional ways. Inusing Foucault’s (1967) ideas regarding heterotopia, it is argued that locker roomsare places of doubt, existential confusion, and in some instances resistance; whereboys’ masculine identities are enforced and monitored among themselves in largelyhidden, anxiety-producing, and ritual ways that have no ostensible (or inherentlink) to the pedagogy of physical education itself.

METHODOLOGY

The data included in this paper emerges from a three year, nationally funded re-search project .The research began in September 2008 spanning three Canadianprovinces, British Columbia, Ontario, and Nova Scotia. Grounded in qualitativeresearch traditions, (Patton, 2002) both authors conducted in-depth semi structuredinterviews with adolescent male students across three research sites. Additionally,participants were invited to journal via a secure blog site to allow for immediate re-porting of daily experiences that might have occurred when the researchers werenot present. Finally, the participants agreed to allow the researchers to conductfield observations during a one week period while the participants were in healthand physical education class.

One of the aims of this research was to gain an understanding of boys’ experi-ences of body image concerns particularly in relation to health and physical edu-cation class. Our aim was not to make generalizations across this particularpopulation of adolescent male youth but rather to give voice to and better under-stand a relatively misunderstood area of inquiry intersecting body image, mas-culinity and inactivity. We purposefully designed a national study with anawareness that a boys’ disengagement in physical education classes may be linkedto both regional understandings of obesity and increased physical activity as wellas expressions of masculinities as being, both situational and geographically con-textualized.

Our participants come from a purposeful sampling of adolescent boys betweenthe ages of 14-17 who are in a significant period “of immense physical and emo-tional change with respect to the body” (Drummond, 2001). This sample popula-tion of adolescent men was also chosen because it is a transitional period for manyleaving middle or junior school and entering a high cool setting. Moreover, this pe-riod of physical activity among adolescent males is particularly rich because “notonly does the body change, but body meanings and the image-repertoire of bodiesbecome, in contradictory ways, available” (Corrigan, 1991, p. 206) in the negotiationand construction of gender identities. Given the significance of the body and cul-tural understandings associated with gender identities at this age, a purposefulsampling strategy was used. In addition to the above mentioned reasons for choos-ing this population, it is also significant that physical education classes are com-pulsory across Canada at this level and consequently may influence decisions tocontinue or withdraw from future physical education classes.

Our research protocol centred on conducting “cultural interviews.” (see Rubin &Rubin, 1995) This approach allowed us to focus on the norms, values, understand-

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ings, and taken-for-granted rules of (dis)engagement for these particular boys. Assuch cultural interviews offer a deep knowledge base of high school masculineidentities and the particular bodily practices of male students. Semi-structured in-terviews allow shared understandings to emerge from a similar cultural context ofphysical education classrooms across three provinces. The accounts and experi-ences captured in these interviews provide data that capture how adolescent boyscome to know particular versions of masculinities through physical education.

Field notes and observations of the participants allowed the researchers to pro-vide a kind of “thick description” (see Geertz, 1973) necessary to fully understandthe taken for grantedness of student lives. Moreover, it also allowed us to, in asense, “make the familiar strange.” Patton (2002) points out that “[b]ecause all so-cial systems involve routines, participants in those routines may take them so muchfor granted that they cease to be aware of important nuances” (p. 263). It was sig-nificant for us to observe and record the cultural settings of which the participantswere a part. Our primary focus during the field observations then was to developa detailed description of the public performance and expression of masculinities inthe context of the negotiated physical space of the class, namely the gym. Ouranalysis of the data attends to emergent patterns in behaviours, attitudes, and ex-pressions of masculinity within the school sanctioned context for physical activity.As a configuration of practice, it is salient to understand which masculinities areconfigured and reconfigured in clearly demarcated spaces such as locker roomsand gym spaces that are sex segregated. The capacity for different kinds of move-ments in physical activity settings and different kinds of interactions in same sexsettings is underscored and informed by rules of heteronormative masculinity.(Connell, 2008, 2000)

HETEROTOPIA AS A LIMINAL (PHYSICAL EDUCATION) SPACE

Early in the interview process with the boys, their words painted a decisive pic-ture of gym class as a space wherein their identities were virtually destroyed on aregular basis. Left feeling as if they had no status, role or valued identity becausetheir bodies did not fit an imagined social masculine norm, the boys described gymclass as a liminal space—a place wherein most aspects of their gendered identitiesoutside of the gym class were discounted, devalued and derided. Scott (age 16) toldus, “it doesn’t matter if I have the biggest brain in math class or can be like, the guywho does volunteer things for the community through my church. Once I’m in P.E.none of that matters any more … and just about every week, they come up withnew shit to put me through.” What Scott and other young boys his age come to ar-ticulate, are physical education spaces as quintessential heterotopic zones.

Heterotopia, a word coined by Foucault (1967), refers to a space that suspends ornegates one’s cultural identities, maps of meanings and physical abilities. Foucault(1967) articulates several possible types of heterotopic experiences: i) “Crisis het-erotopia” as a space like a boarding school or a motel room where cultural ritualslike “coming of age” or a honeymoon take place out of public sight; ii) “Hetero-topias of deviation” as places where social authority figures place individualswhose behaviour falls outside expected norm (hospitals, asylums, prisons, resthomes, cemetery); iii) “Heterotopia” in general as a place that juxtaposes and re-contextualizes several spaces—a garden, for example, is a heterotopia because it is

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often meant to be a microcosm of different environments with plants from aroundthe world; iv) “Heterotopias of time,” like museums that showcase objects fromvarious times, places and styles; and, v) “Heterotopias of ritual or purification” asspaces that are only accessible to a chosen, esoteric few in order to maintain somesemblance of “cultural integrity” and tradition.

What we have come to learn is that high school gym settings may become blendsof “crisis heterotopia” and “heterotopia of ritual” for boys falling outside of theprototypical athletic norm (Kehler & Atkinson, 2010). Immersion in a crisis or rit-ual heterotopia situates a young boy in a place of uncertain social and physical reg-ulation, fear, uncertainty, physical risk and alienation; and of course, at risk forbeing bullied. In this respect, perhaps an equally salient concept in the study ofheterotopic gym class and locker room experiences among marginalized boys, isLyotard’s (1989) notion of scapeland. Scapeland, to Lyotard (1989), is a physicalspace producing anxiety and disquiet for an individual because the normal cul-tural identities rules and rituals of one’s everyday life may not apply there. Ly-otard’s (1989) scapeland is therefore a place that presents itself without satisfactoryideological or narrative support for the individual (Lyotard, 1989, pp. 216-217). Ascapeland is, then, characterised by the absence of direction or pleasure form one’spreferred cultural scripts or modes of thinking and understanding. With furtherreference to the high school gym setting, a scapeland is a physical zone of “risk-filled play” for some boys, because their social identities, ideologies and practicesbecome symbolically annihilated through the physical education process, and inthe informal socializing “done” in the locker room.

A collection of relevant empirical studies of masculinity in sport point to the typeof heteronormative work and gender disciplining that accompanies involvement inheterotopic gym locker room spaces (Burstyn, 1999; Caudwell, 2006). Within tra-ditional male locker rooms, it is argued, normative sex, race, ethnic, class codes andidentities within a broader culture are both confirmed and consolidated throughphysical practices (Hanlon, 2003). Perhaps more so than any other private socialspace in which young boys interact, the gym classes and their associated lockerrooms are zones of hyper-normative/dominant masculine affirmation. Heterosex-ual discourses involving the objectification of women, ideal-type male bodies, andcoercively organized power differentials between boys are all on display therein.

Building on White and Young’s (1997) term, and blending with our understand-ing of physical education contexts as heterotopic for young boys on the physicalmargins, we see the locker room as a place wherein a particularly “dangerous mas-culinity” is reinforced through, at times, overt bullying amongst boys. The litera-ture on hazing in sport (often occurring within the locker room zone) illustrateshow teenage boys may find subcultural justification in ritually engaging in the so-cial domination of weaker or more vulnerable boys (even in the context of PE class)as a statement of masculine dominance (Bryshun & Young, 2007; Johnson & Hol-man, 2004). Young men’s practices and discourses in locker rooms have been foundto be replete with homophobic messages and symbolism. Boys who are deemedtoo fat, too thin, or generally not as physically capable as the dominant boys are la-beled as feminine or their sexuality is called into questioned. Anderson’s (2009) re-search on youth masculinity has shown consistently how, at least until recently,the fraternity setting of the locker room often facilitates an anti-gay or anti-alter-native masculinity environment for young boys who simply do not “live up.” Toboys on the margins, what they experientially know, prefer and feel as “mascu-

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line” outside of gym zones is not a part of the social script in the locker setting and,therefore, repeatedly (re)enter the space with heterotopic fear of being bullied inever changing and unpredictable manners. Blake (age 17) said,

I hated it because you never knew when it would come, or what would go down.It came all the time, right, but it might go for like two or three weeks and noth-ing. But then, right, it would be like, they would all decide to turn on me. They’dwait for me in the [locker] room or corner me before I went to shower and towelwhip me, or write stuff on me with markers, or just stand around me in a circleand call me “fat fucker” or “pig” or something. I guess what made me scared themost was not knowing if it would be a good or bad day.

Fusco’s human geographical studies of sport, health and physical education set-tings attest to how the spatial design of the gym as a private field where adults arenot to enter helps to transforms it into heterotopia for young men like Blake (2005,2006a, 2006b). For Fusco, educators and school agents must be attentive to how cul-turally privatized zones with schools are saturated with a “hidden” (or perhaps,naively denied) gender curriculum. Normative codes of dominant masculinity areenforced among very young boys with little fear of reprisal. Jim (aged 16) told us,“no, the guys [who bully other boys], they always get away with it. Always. Theteacher might yell into to the locker room to shut the guys up if they are being loud,but like, everyone has this attitude of like sports are for men, and suck it up andtake it. And like it’s not really that big of a deal, like if they pick on you in gym‘cause it’s supposed to be competitive.’” These spaces and the lack of regulationtherein create a “chilly climate” in physical education for scores of boys who nei-ther embody nor identify with dominant masculinities.

Yeah they do and it’s just kind of the behind the scenes stuff that teachers don’tnecessarily know about but what I’ve realized in all my years as a student is youcan’t teach a student to behave a certain way verbally and I’m not saying getphysical. I’m not saying smack them across the face and say, don’t do that. I’msaying you have to discipline them and show them there are consequences totheir actions and that can’t always be done because they can’t keep an eye outeverywhere but I’m encouraging people now because I know nobody’s proba-bly going to here this but if I could I would encourage people. If you are beingbullied to tell somebody about it because then the teacher can do something andhopefully they won’t give you one of those, “well I’ll keep an eye on them andif they do it again I’ll discipline them” answers like I got in elementary school be-cause then they’d know the teacher’s watching them. So behave for a while andas soon as they turn their back, they’re back to it again. (Bob, age 15)

Discourse and praxis regarding the de-gendering of education in Canada aside,then, with the generational turning of a blind eye to the physical layout of gymspaces and their capillaries within the school setting—and the subsequent culturalcodes promoted within them—consistent evidence in our research reveals how dis-criminatory, alienating and abusive code of masculinity often accompany physicaleducation instruction for young boys.

In what follows, we further read the gym and locker room space as a context ofheterotopia and scapeland (with a specific emphasis on the locker/change room) asa prelude to our analysis of boys’ experiences with and reflections on how codes ofmasculinity within physical education produce a space replete with bullying.

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UNDERSTANDING THE LOCKER ROOM AS HETEROTOPIA

The crisis produced within physical education for boys who are not socially iden-tified by their peers (and even, their teachers) as those who embody preferred mas-culinities (i.e., too small, fat, slow, weak, sexually unattractive, or ethnicallydifferent) is both deep and pronounced. These boys in crisis find that the hetero-topic experience of gym class begins early in the day, before the school bell sounds.To be sure, “seeing” gym class on one’s daily schedule becomes the source of greatanxiety for some young boys; prompting nerves and nausea at breakfast or on theway to school. These boys dread the experience so strongly that they often layawake at night before gym days worrying about what humiliation or torment theywill endure. Such is the nature of both heterotopia as a social experience, and thegym class as a spatial scapeland. It is an amazing cultural shift in ludic experiencesamong boys. For most of the boys who come to hate gym, they do so after years ofchildhood exuberance for physical activity and play. Don (age 15) told us, “youknow, when I was younger, like I would like play with the guys on the street allday. We did things like soccer and football and rode bikes and stuff. They got bet-ter at those things in gym and I guess I didn’t. So, like I don’t do anything withthose guys any more.” In the context of the school, more troublingly, play becomesassociated with social threat and harm.

A great portion of the heterotropic crisis for the boys in our sample begins withinthe confined locker room setting. Most school locker rooms are socially/spatiallyprotected spaces due to issues in youth privacy. Entryways are typically config-ured in a zigzag or switchback pattern so that teachers, coaches, and peers cannotlook directly into the room from the corridor. Floor plans within the rooms varyconsiderably, but the typical layout is one in which three or all four of the mainroom’s walls feature metal lockers, with long, thin wooden benches bolted to floorsdirectly in front of them. Floors are tiled, few, if any windows are found, and aprison-like open showering “pen” (with normally 3-8 showering points) is foundsomewhere between the main changing area and the toilets. The distinctive feel tomost school locker rooms is one of openness and of vulnerability for boys whostruggle with hegemonic masculinity.

Boys who have concerns about their bodies and their physical abilities find littlecomfort in the daily or weekly ritual of changing in front of other boys and reveal-ing their lack of embodied (dominant) masculinity. The norms of the space (to re-move one’s everyday, self-determined and culturally inscribed styles; hence one’ssense of self-identity) dictate how that which is theirs is summarily taken from theboys. They need to strip and reveal their culturally male bodies in front of othersfor subcultural inspection. Charlie (aged 16) says, “no matter strong you are [else-where in the school], like if you are the best in science or win awards or anything,you are nothing in there [the locker room] because it’s like all you are is a body.”There is, if one ponders the crisis ritual for one instance, few places in social lifewhere boys are as culturally leveled in front of other for adjudication in such amanner. Dan (age 15) tells us that, “It was hard to feel like a guy in gym, when allI could think about was the shit-kicking I was gonna face everyday from the big-ger guys. In there [the locker room] everybody sees everything and there’s nowhereto hide.” As such, the locker room zone is a crisis heterotopia space for the boys asit exists between the safe confines of the class (where different masculine traits and

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characteristics like intelligence and leadership) can be celebrated, and the publictheatre of gym (where hegemony might rule, but at least a modicum of safety ex-ists as a result of a teacher’s presence). For some boys, it is the locker room and notgym class itself that produces the most fear and self-loathing about one’s suppos-edly insufficient young male body.

The locker room as a heterotopic scapeland, therefore, creates a cultural situationin which boys who do not possess particular ideal-type embodiments of mas-culinity are placed on display, monitored by conforming boys, and critiqued fortheir deficiencies (Shott, 2009). Boys who do not see their physical attributes as suf-ficiently male are forced to publicly confess their deficiencies on a weekly basis andoffer themselves up to conforming males as examples of the pathological. Luke(age 16) instructs that, “I don’t know what it is to be a man, or male, cause I’venever really been able to feel like one in from of the other guys.” From a Durkheim’s(1956) functionalist perspective, the (heterotopic) ritual is a social vehicle for reaf-firming the masculine “normal” and “pathological.” The physically “blessed” (readathletic) boys may tease, deride, assert dominance over, and bully the visiblyweaker boys. In this context, schools become implicit in the institutionalization ofbiopedagogical practices that serve to, both implicitly and explicitly, legitimatedominant codes of masculinity. In our interviews, boys told us that such hetero-topic rituals, in which the outcomes are never neatly known in advance, are re-peated contexts of humiliation and degradation:

I didn’t like it [gym], not all the time. As long as they [the bullies] weren’t pur-posely trying to hit me in the head with the dodge ball which is what they usedto do, I was fine. It’s disappointing when you suck at a game. Like volleyball no-body likes but dodgeball was the worst for me because they’d purposely try tohit me in the head. They did that with other people too I think. Just it seems I wasa target.… It’s a good thing that I’m going to a different high school that none ofthe rest have ever heard of really. Like I used to go to a public school in London,so they don’t know where it is. (Bob, age 15)

We should expect little difference in masculine practice in the hyper-vulnerablespace of the locker room wherein the embodiment of young masculinities is thrustonto the table for cultural dissection. Traditional masculine power and authority islargely earned by the deployment of accepted social, physical, mental and emo-tional bullying by males. Such is the case of the locker room experience for manyof the young boys in our sample. While not deliberately designed within the edu-cational system as such, the peer-based culture of the locker room dictates other-wise. Authoritarian masculinity is won among young boys in small scales throughone’s ability to bully in a socially accepted, or at least tolerated, manner. “Healthy”bullying sorts the herd and inspires greatness in others as the physical culturallogic of the locker room goes.

Usually when we’re picking teams and stuff, I’m one of the last ones picked butour gym teacher, he puts us, like the last few people into a group because hedoesn’t want the last person to be picked to feel extremely bad. So he takes thelast few people and puts them into the teams himself and so it’s not really thatbad because you can’t really tell if you’re the last pick or you could have been thenext pick. (John, age 15)

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As discussed above, significant portion of the ritual fear, risk and uncertainty per-tains to exposing their bodies to other males; both in the context of the locker roomand on the main floor of the gym. Here, they routinely speak about being muscu-larly deficient in some respect, overweight, or simply too thin. Some may takerefuge in toilet stalls and change out of their clothing behind closed doors therein.Few can avoid having to shower, though, in front of others at the end of class. Boysmay try to evade the showering process, but physical education teachers often in-spect them after class to ensure they have undertaken the ritual. Shower pens areespecially unforgiving to boys who do not measure up on the masculine ladder.The open space of the showering pen is a Mecca for those boys who seek to assertminor hegemony through the castigating and emasculation of the socially differentmale. One-third of the boys who left physical education in our sample followingGrade Nine reported patterned histories of teasing and abuse within showerspaces. Showering, ostensibly a practice to ensure proper hygiene following therigors of gym, is transformed into a heterotopic process; again, a crisis event inwhich few if any of the statuses, role sets or achieved identities the boys have out-side of the practice count as currency. John said,

It’s weird because they guys get an open shower but the girls don’t. I don’t knowwhy. Maybe the guys like seeing each other [naked] but I don’t think so. I don’tknow why they have open showers for guys, but you get used to it, and actuallyI don’t [shower] anymore. Like I got late for French two times in a row and, he[the teacher] said next time you go into the office. So, and then if I miss my busthen I have to two wait twenty minutes for my mom to pick me up so I don’twant to miss my bus. So I don’t anymore.... I don’t shower anymore. I just showerwhen I get home and again the guy who bugged me [bullied], he’s like “whydon’t you take a shower”? I said because I don’t feel like it. So now he teases meall the time about that too, like I smell and that sort of thing.

Alarming stories about physical confrontation, tormenting and outright violencein the locker room were present in the boys’ narratives. Some boys recount tales ofbeing pushed into lockers, surrounded and teased by several other boys, “snapped”with wet towels, having their clothes or school kit stolen or vandalized, and evenpunched or kicked on a repeated basis:

There’s [locker room] games where you throw balls at people, and they’re kindof like go sit down and shut up, or they kind go for me [bully] and think it’sfunny … they go for me because they think it’s funny, or I’ve thought of anotherreason. It’s kind of like back to the animal thing, you know, I don’t like com-paring it to animals but it’s the easiest way. It’s kind of like eliminating the oneswho, I guess they see me as, the easier target and besides the fact they think it’sfunny. They’re just going to … it’s like, just get rid of the ones that are easier toget rid of first. (Mythic Artist, age 15)

Other boys get off lightly as the recipients of verbal abuse. Quite predictably, theyare called “fag,” “fat ass,” “bitch” or “pussy” because of their supposed physical fe-male-like inadequacies as young boys. The derisive insults and jeers, if spoken inthe classroom or cafeteria, might be the source of detention or suspension for theissuers. But, in the control agent-free zone of the locker room, this brand of mas-culine bullying is all too common, and undocumented, discourse.

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The unregulated, protected, adult-free zone of the locker room is, then, a crisisplace for boys who view themselves as on the margins of normative masculinity.The social fishbowl setting of this scapeland is one in which there is little opportu-nity to escape surveillance, and the reminding of how one’s male body does notmake the proverbial grade. As we present next, the geographic set up and the prac-tices of masculine reinforcement it produces provides a fertile context for a cultureof youth male bullying to flourish.

LOCKER ROOMS, GYM, AND BULLYING

Mother I tried please believe me,I’m doing the best that I can.I’m ashamed of the things I’ve been put through,I’m ashamed of the person I am.Isolation.Isolation.Isolation.

(From the song, “Isolation” by Joy Division)

All of the discussion above relates deeply to the idea that the locker room is aheterotopic, scapeland space where young male bullying is established and prac-ticed. We find good analytic reason to extend the discussion of hetereotopia andscapeland Gamsci’s (1971) discussion of hegemony. Here, we argue that the gymsetting (and the locker room in particular) is a sociologically interesting educationalspace, as it is one of the only contexts where young boys are granted a relativehegemony to produce their own heterotopic spaces as a disciplinary practiceamongst peers.

By taking the lead of radical social constructionists and post-structuralists in-cluding Foucault (1979, 1980), Pringle (2005) argues that social power (to bully, inour case) is closely linked to a group’s access to the production and disseminationof knowledge (or, means of representing social truth). What goes on in locker roomspace is as much, we argue, about the power to determine and police what it meansto be a dominant young boy, as it is about ritually changing one’s clothes to preparefor a physical education class. The space is heterotopic for boys as it is definingzone of male reality foreign or inaccessible to them. The reality of their masculin-ity is pejoratively defined within the space by others, and not by them. Individu-als who control process of ontological framing in a society—who Foucault (1979,1980) refers to as those who dictate discourse within particular social formations,and shape cultural dispositions—are hegemonic in contemporary life. From thisperspective, young boys themselves are given, in a carte blanche sense, the author-ity to reinforce and shape dominant masculine dispositions in the locker room.

I have not brought my gym uniform, my gym clothes to school on so many oc-casions that if I don’t pass the exam, I’m not going to get the credit for gym. Thatwas a conscious choice on my part, because I did not want to participate, be-cause I brought [gym clothes] a few times but I would wear it underneath myother clothes, and I would just take those off in the change room and have mygym uniform on, because I was uncomfortable with my body and I was afraidof what other kids would say to me. In Grade Eight, I got made fun of a lot. When

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I would take my shirt off to change into my other shirt, and people would screamand look away and stuff just to make fun of me. So I had had enough of that, andI decided that I was either not going to bring my uniform or just not go at all …and no, nobody really ever asked me why or like wanted to do anything aboutit. I thought the teacher might ask me why, but he never did. No one seemed tocare. (John, age 15)

Gramsci’s (1971) now canonized conceptualization of “hegemony” suggests so-cially legitimate and enduring forms of cultural power (like dominant young boys’power to regulate gender in and around gym class) are established and maintainedthrough diffuse and often times subtle institutional and cultural means. The processof convincing others to consent to institutional authority is a political, ideological,social and cultural power game. A ruling group in any space maintains its powerto assert, or to rule, by tactically creating and enforcing its norms, values and sta-tuses through slippery and often times unchallenged social manners. The school,as scholars like Evans & Rich (2006) teach us, is not only a place where dominantforms of class power are exerted through the curriculum, but also a setting whereindominant (read authority granted) students are enabled to wield their own forms ofhegemony in micro-pockets of the environment. Ricky (age 16) said, “Nobody sortof has to tell you about what being a guy is like, like not directly. The boys who arethe best at like sports [in gym], they kinda’ are like the ones I think who are the ex-ample, though, like the ideal.” One boys explains, “When you get older, the guyswho are the best in gym and at like football, become sort of known as the top guysin the school. They are the ones who like tease a lot of the time, because I guesseveryone looks up to them” (Raj, age 15). Hegemony is clearly at work, for instance,when young boys like Raj realize or believe in few alternative realities to dominantsocial codes like those pertaining to gender in his school. Many of the boys we in-terviewed, for example, spoke about the “natural male order” in school and in thegym, and the ways in which physical activity itself is only for the naturally gifted(read dominantly embodied) boys. When presented with the opportunity to exit fromthe physical education curriculum in school they mainly do so, for they simply de-code physical education and sport as the preserve of the popular, the strong, orthose favoured by physical education instructors. Boys who choose to remain inphysical education classes, despite constant ridicule and exclusion, do so at theirown peril. These boys remain in a constant state of risk, unsure what the hetero-topic process of going to gym class will entail on a weekly basis. Shun One (age16) says,

I’m still in gym now, and I dunno, because I like sport and that, and like running,but some days I hate it because I know one of the other guys will call me loseror homo or something. I think it’s just because I’m thin and that, and like, I don’thave muscles like them.

Resisting the relatively unpoliced zone of power the dominant boys have in gym,and shedding off its ideological trappings proves difficult in most contexts. This isespecially the case for young boys who possess little social or cultural capital toengage such resistance in schools. So-called “unpopular” boys, and boys with par-ents who do not place heavy scholastic emphasis on gym, are especially vulnera-ble. “I didn’t make a lot of friends through sport, so I never really thought I wanted

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to continue with it,” said Jesse (aged 16). He added, “It would be sort of stupid tokeep coming back just so I could be picked on by the kids in there who think theyare kings of the world.” Ming (age 16) said, “It wasn’t really that bad [dropping outof gym] because my parents didn’t care. I was never good at sports, and was tiredof all the names I’d get [in gym], and so we never really worried about dropping.Like, it was no big deal.” Ming argues further that, “It’s like that with a lot of Asianparents, and other kids from minority families too. They don’t think sport in schoolis really important, and so it’s like seen as a white kid thing.” The options for boyslike Jesse or Ming who wish to partake in physical and health education but whoare uncomfortable or socially unsupported in the traditionally hegemonic settingof gym class are clear; one consents to rule and derision from other boys, or onewithdraws. In Ontario schools, alternative pedagogical streams of physical educa-tion for boys who are not accepted by their peers as “normative” male athletes arepractically non-existent. Indeed, policy changes allowing boys to withdraw fromphysical education in Grade Ten in Ontario punctuate the point. The lack of alter-native modes of physical education in school systems fail to recognize how youngboys with different body shapes, abilities, preferences, intersectional cultural back-grounds (i.e., race, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, etc.) and interests in physical move-ment are structurally and subculturally “bullied” out of class. Bikram (age 16) said,“You know, in my culture, the boys are supposed to wear a pagri all the time, andI was always teased in class for that. In math or science no one noticed, but all theguys did when you play basketball. They’d say things like towels were only sup-posed to be used in the locker room.” In the end, many of these boys develop in-different attitudes toward their bodies and physical movement, and come toassociate physical activity with negative social identities and personal traits. Iron-ically, then, as a form of resistance to the hegemony of dominant young boys inthe schools, boys on the margin often promote definitions of physical activity as theterrain of the mentally and emotionally stunted boy. Spikeshade (age 15) says,

The main reason I quit was because I just don’t enjoy football, and I was mainlydoing it because everybody else wanted me to, not because I wanted to. And theother reason is I hate jocks. I don’t want to be so direct but that’s … they’re gen-erally bullies. They’re not academic generally and their big and they just …they’re really … I just don’t like them. They’re not … I don’t really know theword I’m looking for here. They’re just kind of egotistical and they think becausethey’re jocks they’re better than everybody else, and I was afraid that playingfootball would turn me into one of those things, and I didn’t want to becomesomething that I hate. I didn’t want to become someone that I’m not because Iwould much prefer a quiet evening at home reading a good novel than beingout on the football field knocking people over.

Gramsci (1971) argued that “wars of position” and a “wars of manoeuvre” asmechanisms of resistance for combating the tyranny of hegemony. To Gramsci,wars of position are culture battles in which anti-authoritarian groups seek to gaina dominant voice in a group to inspire collective resistance. Following the successof a war of position, new leaders in a group would be empowered to begin wars ofmanoeuvre; or, the actual insurrection against the established power bloc, withmass support. A few of the boys we studied argued that Gramscian-esque warsmight be difficult to wage in the school because, “you always feel like you are the

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only one getting treated like shit. But you are not, because you see other [little]guys getting shit on too. But like, you don’t talk about it [with them] because it’sembarrassing, and never taking [gym] is the easiest way out” (Dean, age 16). Ofcourse, violent overthrow in the education system is clearly not the answer to prob-lems of masculinity in the locker room or in the broader physical education set-ting. We see considerable hope and merit in the idea, though, that educators andpolicy makers on the inside might strive to alter the physical culture of gym in theschool setting to make it more inclusive and diverse. If there are wars of positionand manoeuvre to be waged, these will likely have to be initiated and waged byconcerned teachers and parents rather than the boys themselves.

What is specifically required for change in this case? First and foremost, the youngboys teach us how physical educators must seek to recognize and protect multiplemasculinities in physical education spaces. Anderson (2009) reminds us to chal-lenge the singular construction of a single, legitimate hegemonic masculinity, andargues that there are many men with different kinds of masculinities in any culturalsetting. We must never forget that most boys/men do not participate in a universalmale hegemony in the school or elsewhere. For just as male hegemony empowerssome boys in gym, it does so “on the bodies” of marginal boys. Clint (age 16) in-sightfully suggests, “you know, when you think about it, there’s no such thing apopular guy unless there are loads of other guys who are not.” Unless multiplemasculinities are revealed to young men as acceptable and normative, the notionof multiple masculinities often escapes young boys who do not see gender in suchcomplex, contradictory, or challengeable terms.

Amongst the most consistent findings in our data, is that young boys who expe-rience gym as a heterotopic process, and who have been bullied therein, learn to in-ternalize binary codes about masculinity (i.e., powerful and weak males). Eventhough multiple masculinities are clearly present amongst them, the idea that theseare either real or valuable differences erodes amongst bullied young boys. For ex-ample, we learned how young boys often view masculinity along essentialist (bio-logical) lines. The boys learned how males who are big, strong, fast andauthoritarian are “normal” (at least in gym), while non-hegemonic males tend tobe smart, emotive and intuitive. Binaries between established and outsider mas-culinities are reinforced in the classes, and unless exposed there, such ideologies be-come embedded in the young boy’s habitus. Rod (age 16) said to us, “In the changeroom, like they would say, ‘well you’re not like me,’ and say ‘you’re not coolenough.” And I didn’t like how they would say, ‘well I’m bigger than you so I havemore authority, so you should listen to me’.” To young boys like Rod, masculinitybecomes a world of black and white, right and wrong, and of inclusion and exclu-sion. Troubling for us is how physical activity too often is associated with the“right” kind of masculinity and its life-long embodiment. Just as troubling is howthe boys, themselves, learn to label other boys as unintelligent or un-artistic be-cause they excel in gym class. Perhaps as a defence mechanism or technique of re-sistance to their persistent labeling in physical education scapelands, themarginalized boys condemn the “jocks” as stupid and inferior at complex intellec-tual tasks. Mythic Artist (age 15) said:

I’ve noticed that most of the people that are really good in gym aren’t as good atEnglish or stuff like that. So maybe they feel they can’t really do English, and

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they go and need to do gym, and it can also go vice-versa. But in my case, I wasjust already into books and stuff like that and I just didn’t like gym. But, I thinkfor them, gym’s one of the only things they’ve got.

LINES OF INTERVENTION

Gramsci’s (1971) description of hegemony suggests that any prevailing culturalnorms cleaving people into powerful or ruled groups are not immutable; despitepublic perception at times. Rather, the ideological roots of status hierarchies and theinstitutions, practices, beliefs that support them are reversible systems of domina-tion. Norms and cultural ways of life promoting certain young boys as dominantlymasculine in any social context can be destabilized, challenged and dissected asexploitive techniques of power. In the terms of our analysis, the heterotopic natureof the locker room can be destabilized. Privatizing showers and changing spaces arebut small, and seemingly logical, steps in reconstructing the scapeland geographyof the locker room. Constructing the space in less Panoptic fashion was advocatedby many of the young boys in our interviews. “So, it [would be] better if therewould stalls where people can just have their own shower. I’d put up with that. SoI usually take my shower at home, but if I was really running or doing stuff, thenI would take it at the gym” (Bob, age 15). Granting the boys a simple of amount ofcorporeal dignity, it seems would go a long way in easing the heterotopic natureof the context, and potentially provide one less interactive opportunity for the boysto be bullied.

More broadly, the boys we interviewed almost universally cited three main prob-lems with what “counts” as physical education. While most desired more in-classhealth education, they detest physical education which: is based on power and per-formance team-based sports; occurs in a context in which the teacher is also a sportscoach; and, one in which grades are earned “meritocratically” through sports per-formance. For the boys, team-based sports tend to become gang-bullying contextsof dominance bonding (Farr, 1988). Popular, muscular boys are positioned as teamcaptains, stack their teams with their friends, and leave the least physically domi-nant boys to be selected last. In competition, physical performances only serve toheighten codes about dominant masculinity enforced in the locker rooms. It is nosurprise, then, why the boys learn to fear and loathe collective participation in phys-ical education. Surprising to us is how many boys indicated that the teacher/coachplayed a pivotal role in the masculinity confirmation process. Several of the boysnarrate how coaches laugh at or mock the boys’ physical problems with a particu-lar gym task; or, how the teacher serves to legitimate a masculine hierarchy in theclass.

The teacher plays a major role … they try to follow the curriculum pretty well,probably, and he’s the one who will, maybe if it gets out of hand, like give themheck and chastise them for it. [He] will tell them to set a good example and rep-resent [school] well when we go out on field trips and stuff. In the gym class theteacher mainly plays the role of the coach, and he’s not really trying to gear it to-wards everybody. He’s just trying to go, okay this is what we’re doing, this is thesport, I’m going to blow the whistle and you go out there and block. (Rod, age15)

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For boys like Rod, he finds little cultural or structural justice in the current sys-tem of physical eudcation. Because the teacher may actually coach and befriendthe dominant boys on a team setting, there is systematic bias and structural in-equality in the grading system. Quite interestingly, the boys become punished ac-ademically for not living up dominant gender performance standards. Boys whoare on the margins are, then, presented with a doubly layered problem in the class,as they are deemed subculturally, and then academically, inferior.

Third and finally, few seem to listen to these boys and how they would relish adifferent ethos and praxis of physical education. These are not “naturally lazy” orunmotivated boys as popular cultural discourse often positions them. They are in-terested in different sorts of physical activities, leisure pursuits and even sportsthat do not find a way onto the physical education curriculum. Programs of phys-ical education which are co-ed, multi-sport and activity-based, portioned out in abalance between physical activity and health education, and are not overseen byhegemonic male authority figures in the school might go a long way in encourag-ing different perspectives about the place of masculinity in PE. Lucas (age16) says,“I might have stayed in if the classes were mixed [gender] all the way through, andif we did like recreational stuff rather than sports. As long as you have team sportsin gym, the strong guys will always gang up on the other guys.” Mythic Artist (age15) adds, “Put something like that in [alternative sports] just because it’s interest-ing or just do other interesting things like archery, just other physical stuff that isn’taggressive. Or maybe just put more stuff like skiing or walking or running. Theyhave a little bit of running at my school but you know, not too much. I’m good atrunning and maybe if they’re more enthusiastic about that. Spikeshade (age 15)said:

Other ways you could improve gym class would probably be they could makeit instead of being geared just towards the jocks of the athletic kids, they couldmake it maybe even 50/50 time in the gym and the classroom so it’s geared to-wards everybody … the academically driven and the athletically driven, and Ithink that would be better because then nobody feels like, man I can’t do this.This isn’t like everybody here is better at this than I am. Nobody would feel likethat because it focuses on both interests equally, and I think that would reallyhelp because then you eliminate these feelings of, I hate gym class. I’m not goodat it because you would think I don’t care for the athletic part of gym class butthat’s okay because we’re in the classroom also. So just about as much time aswe’re in the gym, so I can still pass this for my classroom but the thing here is nomatter how much they don’t judge based on skill and it’s just participation, evenif it’s that, if you’re not academically driven you’re not going to want to partici-pate in the gym part and you can’t pass for just the classwork. But I think itwould be better if you could, because then you’d feel better about participatingin gym no matter how badly you get because you think, hey even if I do badlyhere, my classwork can save my mark and I think that would be better for thewhole image thing.… Also, having enforcement in the locker room [would help].I don’t know how they’d be able to do that but maybe having just one personwho’s either a teacher or maybe a student in the class who’s to report to theteacher, with like maybe so and so was being bullied in the change room by who-ever and whoever. I think that would help a lot with the acceptance aspect of itand that’s basically all I have to say about that. (Spikeshade, age 15)

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Shifting the manners by which physical education is done might help in theprocess of de-coupling ideal-type masculinities from the performance of gym asMythic Artist or Spikeshade suggest. If those spaces, ideologies and practices plac-ing some boys at risk of marginalization are interrupted and replaced, the hege-mony in physical education might very well be transformed.

CONCLUSION

The heterotopia produced with the context of physical education instruction forsome young boys who do not live up to prevailing codes of dominant masculinityis rarely tackled within educational policy settings; to this end, physical educatorsbecome complicit in the systematic bullying young boys face as part of their schoolcareers. Data reveal disturbing trends about how historically marginalizing codesof masculinity remain overtly and covertly apparent in the gym setting. Quite sometime ago, Lenskyj (1996) described the sport as a place with an institutionally “chillyclimate” for young girls. There is ample evidence to indicate that many young boysare as equally chilled in physical education and sport settings. Perhaps even moreparamount for boys is, however, that masculinity is more heavily tied to the ath-letic body than it is for girls. New spaces and opportunities must be created forboys, especially given the considerable empirical documentation of how inactivityand disengagement from athletics in early life leads to sedentary behaviourthrough adulthood. Of course, such an empirical problem speaks nothing aboutthe self-identity issues and traumas associated within patterned social belittlingthrough adolescence. The adherence to and ongoing negotiation of a singularhyper-masculine body ideal is manifest in the daily and importantly hidden or se-cret interactions of the boys in this study. Locker rooms and gym classes remainpart of a sex segregated space in which these young men continue to evaluate andreevaluate the masculine body as emblematic of normative masculinity. (see Mar-tin & Govender, 2011) Several decades worth of research on the problems associ-ated with instructing a singular masculinity through physical education intoeducation policy reform must be further translated in policy settings in order toimprove the ways in which physical activity for all is delivered as part of public ed-ucation. The old cultural dictum of “boys will be boys” should simply not continueas an ideological tenet within physical education processes.

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Documents

Boys, bullying and biopedagogies in PE, Atkinson & Kehler