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The British researcher into masculinity construction Mairtin Mac an Ghaill (1994) recounts a telling incident from his years as a secondary school teacher. An adolescent boy had shown his gratitude to Mac an Ghaill for helping him pass an exam by giving him a bunch of flowers in the playground. There was much macho humour among the teachers in the staff room afterwards. Later in the day the same boy was involved in a fight with some other boys, who attacked him for being ‘gay’ because of the flower-giving incident. In the aftermath of the fight, Mac an Ghaill was summoned to the office of the Head, who had let it be known that he thought that Mac an Ghaill had ‘really gone too far this time’. Anticipating some form of interrogation-cum-dressing down over the fight, Mac an Ghaill was preparing to protest that he could not be held responsible for the fight. In fact, he was surprised to find that the fight was not what was bothering the Head at all. On the contrary, the Head had been rattled by untoward behaviour of an altogether different sort: the unmanly gesture of a boy giving a male teacher a bunch of flowers. Broken noses and black eyes paled into insignificance compared with this form of transgression.
One of the most compelling findings generated by this painstaking and sensitive study by Frosh, Phoenix and Pattman is that pervasive homophobia sets serious limits on the forms of masculinity constructed and lived out by young secondary-school-aged boys. The study is both illuminating and potently generative of fresh thinking about masculine identity construction in young adolescents. It is also moving and urgent at both therapeutic and social policy levels.
The research project aimed to explore emerging masculinities in the early teenage years. Two-hundred and forty-five boys and twenty-seven girls between the ages of 11 and 14 years were interviewed, drawn from twelve secondary schools in London (four from the private or ‘independent’ sector and eight from the st