Gender-Twisting and Bros Talking
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Rhode Island College Digital Commons @ RIC Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview Research and Major Papers 11-22-2013 Gender-Twisting and Bros Talking Odile Mattiauda Rhode Island College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.ric.edu/etd Part of the Other Education Commons Recommended Citation Mattiauda, Odile, "Gender-Twisting and Bros Talking" (2013). Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview. 92. https://digitalcommons.ric.edu/etd/92 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers at Digital Commons @ RIC. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ RIC. For more information, please contact [email protected]. GENDER-TWISTING AND BROS TALKING: DISCURSIVE PERFORMANCE OF GENDER, POWER, AND RECOGNITION IN THE SEX ED. CLASS BY ODILE MATTIAUDA A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN EDUCATION UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND AND RHODE ISLAND COLLEGE 2013 DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DISSERTATION OF Odile Mattiauda APPROVED: Dissertation Committee Major Professor Carolyn P. Panofsky, RIC Lesley Bogad, RIC AnneMarie Vaccaro, URI Susana De LosHeros, URI RIC: Karen Castagno Dean, Feinstein School of Education – RIC URI: Nasser H. Zawia Dean, the Graduate School - URI UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND AND RHODE ISLAND COLLEGE 2013 ABSTRACT In American Schools, students are rarely offered educational experiences about gender and sexuality. Programs that do address sexuality are rarely based on moral beliefs and democratic values of tolerance and inclusivity. Sexuality education is predominantly taught by health teachers, rather than human sexuality educators, and their focus is on facts, statistics, and controversial issues such as the prevention of teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS. This limited perspective on sexuality neglects the important role of gender identity and sexual orientation (Donovan, 1989; Haffner & De Mauro, 1991; Nelson Trudell, 1993) Using teacher-researcher-participant-observer qualitative methodology, I examined the discourse of thirteen and fourteen-year-old youth in relation to the construction of meaning of gender in a comprehensive sexuality education program using a progressive curriculum named Our Whole Lives, Grades 7-9 utilized in congregations throughout the United States. The setting was the eighth grade class of a progressive church Sunday school in a middle-size city in the U.S. Northeast. Primary data collection consisted in two hundred and twenty double-spaced, typed pages of field notes and roughly two hundred and sixty eight minutes of audio recordings. Data analysis included discourse analysis, and interpretation of three conversations between participants carefully selected from the corpus and contextualized with field notes. I found that students’ discourse reproduced and resisted stereotypical gender representations, reified boys as sex-obsessed and sexual predators, constructed all participants as confused, contradictory, and seeking connection, at times. This process produced dynamics of power and dominance that tended to promote the patriarchal status quo, although moments of collaboration and complicity emerged. These results complicate the conversation about adolescence viewed as a “specie” and about adolescents’ discourses constructing meanings of gender that help them be recognized as a certain kind of person in this context. Examining the discourse of adolescents in relation to gender identity is an opportunity to explore their cultural values. Implications for teachers include greater awareness of students’ gender representations and gender performance, and articulating the curriculum with students’ meanings. TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………...ii TABLE OF CONTENTS……………………………………………………………..iv LIST OF TABLES………………………………………………………………….....v CHAPTER 1……………………………………………………………………………1 INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………1 CHAPTER 2…………………………………………………………………………..14 REVIEW OF LITERATURE………………………………………………….14 CHAPTER 3…………………………………………………………………………..61 METHODOLOGY: Teacher-Researcher in the Sexuality Education Classroom………………………………………………………………………61 CHAPTER 4…………………………………………………………………………..88 CONTEXT OF STUDY: “Condoms? Get them from your church!”...………..88 CHAPTER 5…………………………………………………………………………142 LOLA AND ROGER: A DISCURSIVE GENDER-TWISTING………….. 142 CHAPTER 6…………………………………………………………………………193 BOYS PERFORMING BROS’ TALK………………………………………193 CHAPTER 7…………………………………………………………………………306 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………306 APPENDICES…………………………………………………...………………….320 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………..344 i LIST OF TABLES TABLE PAGE Table 5.1: Legend of transcript…………………………………………………….152 Table 5.2: Overview of participants’ contribution…………………………………175 Table 6.1: Breakdown of participants’ turns ………………………………………209 Table 6.2: Legend of transcript ……………………………………………………211 Table 6.3: Overview of conversation………………………………………………264 Table 6.4: Detailed interruptions…………………………………………………..266 Table 6.5: References to lines as script…………………………………………....270 Table 6.6: Overview of content of re-crafted lines………………………………..274 Table 7.1: Symmetry of findings…………………………………………………..307 ii Chapter 1 Introduction Traditional school curricula and classrooms do not typically discuss gender. However, feminist theorists have demonstrated that sexism permeates all aspects of school, including its organization, status hierarchy, and curriculum (Lincoln, 1992, p. 92). I was acculturated in a sexist, but non-Anglo-American context and have become all the more fascinated by issues of gender and sexuality in the twenty six years I have been living in the United States. I started teaching sexuality education, as a volunteer teacher, fourteen years ago in the Sunday school’s co-educational eighth grade classroom of my liberal church. First, I had to become certified to teach a specific curriculum named Our Whole Lives for Grades 7 to 9 (Later on, I became certified to teach the Our Whole Lives Curriculum for Young Adults and Adults as well). I had been living in this country for some time and had developed a sense of some cultural differences and similarities between France and the United States in terms of how sexuality, especially young people’s sexuality, is perceived and how it is taught. Teaching about sexuality urged me to reminisce about my own sexuality education, and to become cognizant about human sexuality and gender. Teaching about sexuality in this religious context provided me with the foundational language I had been searching for to clarify and articulate deep-held beliefs about the body, sexuality, pleasure, emancipation and freedom. It provided me with a place to hone and teach those values. Importantly, learning to teach about sexuality education, and teaching this sexuality education program in the eighth grade “Coming of Age” class confirmed impressions I had had about how sexuality was viewed in this country, especially young people’s sexuality but not only. Before starting 1 to teach this program, I had been surprised at comments from parents, and teachers of my stepsons when they were teenagers and the popular culture and institutional discourses that associated sexuality with drug and alcohol consumption. I had discovered a way of thinking about sexuality different from the one I grew up with: Sexuality as an unwanted or dangerous behavior as opposed to a vital and pleasurable one that deserves full attention and disclosure. And I did not like it. Even though this program’s approach is different, I was also perplexed by some of the anxious attitudes of parents of students in this program although the majority was very supportive. However, as I became more and more familiar with teaching this course and utilizing its curriculum, its stories, and its activities, I started noticing gender patterns in the ways students responded to them by which I grew increasingly intrigued. For instance, I noticed such patterns over the years during the session named “Personal concerns about puberty.” While the first part of this class is spent in non-gender- mixed groups, female students would constantly focus on painful menstruations, premenstrual syndromes, and painful first sexual intercourse for girls even after the two groups had reconvened as a class. I noted how negatively even boys referred to female reproductive functions such as pregnancy, while, on the other hand, girls would make comments about how cool it must be to pee standing up and/or play football. Boys would dismissively discuss issues of penis size and would never allude to issues such as wet dreams or unwanted erections. In addition, girls would reminisce about how they had received tampons and pads during health class in an earlier grade in middle-school, while boys had gotten shaving cream without further commenting this fact. The girls’ and boys’ discourse mostly highlighted negative things about being a girl. It associated being a girl primarily 2 with reproductive functions and organs whereas the girls’ and boys’ discourse silenced negativity in any of the boys’ issues whether bodily or not, and emphasized the benefits of being a boy. Similarly, students complete an activity named “Sexual language” in the