Bullying + homophobia + hegemonic masculinity = death

Jargon alert: There are many ways to be masculine and many ways to be feminine, but there is one culturally approved masculinity that characterizes people at the top of the gender hierarchy in the dominant culture of the United States. That masculinity is called hegemonic masculinity. I apologize in advance for the jargon, but there is no clearer way to say it. 

Angie Zapata's murderer, Allen Andrade, was found guilty of all charges, and sentenced under the hate crime statute in Colorado last week. It was a sign of progress. In some places at least, violence against people because of their gender expression is considered a hate crime. We are moving toward greater acceptance of the idea that freedom of gender expression should be protected as a civil right. But we are not there yet. Indeed, while we make strides toward expanding civil rights and freedoms for all, we still have a culture deeply tinted with homophobia, heterosexism, and sexism. Witness the deaths over the past few weeks of two young boys who committed suicide after being teased and taunted at school by bullies using words like 'gay' and 'fag' and 'queer.'

On April 16 Jaheem Herrera, 11, hung himself with a belt and was found by his 10 year old sister. Just a little more than a week earlier, on April 8 Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, also 11, hung himself with an extension cord. Both boys had been the targets of severe and ongoing bullying.

I learned about these two cases because Kate Bornstein, author of the amazing Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks, and other Outlaws, tweeted about  a post on Momlogic.com. I read the Momlogic post and while I was glad that there was a recognition that we need to address bullying more seriously in schools, I was dismayed by the question "How do we teach our kids tolerance of gay or transgendered classmates?"

Tolerance is a step on the road toward acceptance, and while I would not be happy to stop at tolerance I do not reject it as an interim goal. In addition, in some cases tolerance is the best that can be hoped for. In a pluralistic society even groups that hate each other based on religious texts or tradition are expected to tolerate each other. White supremacists are permitted to hold rallies but not to kill, and likewise homophobic or sexist groups must respect the civil rights of those they hate. So no, my problem is not with the world "tolerance." Rather my problem is with the phrase "of gay or transgendered classmates." There is no evidence, or none I've seen in the press accounts, that indicates that either of these 11 year old boys were gay or transgendered. Treatment of gay and trans kids is an important issue, but not the issue here. 

The issue here, and solving it would actually go a long distance toward getting people to treat LGBT peers as peers, is this: How do we stop people from using words like "gay" and "queer" and "fag" as the equivalent of "stupid" and "weak" and "worthless"? (Hint: we did it with what my students now call "the N word" - I cannot coax them to say "nigger" even to make the point. Racism, while not eliminated, has become socially unacceptable in the mainstream of our society.) Those words - gay, queer, fag, homo - are hurled at people, boys especially, regardless of their sexuality or their gender expression. They work as weapons because of the degree of homophobia, heterosexism and sexism in this culture, and they hurt people regardless of their sexual orientation. (This is not a new argument. See Suzanne Pharr's remarkable "Homophobia as a weapon of sexism" from the 1980s).

Now, most victims of bullying don't in fact kill themselves. They suffer depression, insecurity, anxiety but are able to hang on. Other victims become bullies themselves or, in rare but spectacular cases, commit Columbine-type violence. In a way, we can understand bullying as an attempt to force others to acknowledge one's dominant position in a social hierarchy. Michael Kimmel and Matthew Mahler in an analysis of 28 random school shootings between 1982 and 2001 write of the shooters:

Nearly all had stories of being constantly bullied, beat up, and, most significantly for this analysis, “gay-baited.” Nearly all had stories of being mercilessly and constantly teased, picked on, and threatened. And most strikingly, it was not because they were gay (at least there is no evidence to suggest that any of them were gay) but because they were different from the other boys—shy, bookish, honor students, artistic, musical, theatrical, nonathletic, “geekish,” or weird. (2003 html pdf)

So, instead of asking how to help our kids be more tolerant toward LGBT classmates, the question Momlogic needs to be asking is this one:

How do we teach our kids to challenge our system of gender which presents masculinity and femininity as polar opposites and where masculinity dominates? To put it more simply, and to refer again to Michael Kimmel, this time in his book "The Gendered Society" how do we teach our kids to see that difference doesn't necessarily translate into dominance. 

Questions of dangerous gender expectations get more attention when it pertains to girls . We are familiar with discussions of how media images of mainstream beauty reinforce body image issues for girls. We are familiar with discussions about whether images of young girls are overly sexualized. We are even familiar with discussions about how constructions of masculinity often lead boys to treat girls without respect, and in ways that lead to sexual violence. But we need to pay attention to how constructions of masculinity are harmful to boys, too.

Part of that harm comes defining hegemonic masculinity (the kind that is required of those at the top of the social ladder) in very narrow terms, any deviation from which is likely to cause one's belonging in the category "real man" to be questioned.  Straight white male professionals stand at the top of a social ladder and the rest of us, from working class men, to men and women of color, to anyone whose sexuality doesn't fit the vanilla heterosexual model, is assigned a lower position. That harm of stratification is magnified by associating aggressiveness, toughness, and insensitivity with masculinity. Men (and boys are expected to be men-in-training) who do not quite reach the top of the social ladder may reach for other evidence of their masculinity to prove their success as men. Teenagers, already in the position of figuring out who they are and how to get other people to recognize them as they want to be seen, are all the more focused on proving themselves. (One reason that life expectancy numbers for men are lower than for women is that a larger number of men than women die during adolescence and early adulthood in accidents and violent encounters - often while proving their masculinity.) 

Though Momlogic was stuck on the question of increasing tolerance for LGBT kids, Ritch C. Savin-Williams , the Cornell University psychologist she called on for help understood exactly the root of the issue:

"Parents must do everything they can to create a wide spectrum of gender expression," he says.

Here are his top five tips:

• Start early. Even toddlers can learn that gender expression is okay.
• Encourage emotion. Allow your child to cry and express his or her feelings.
• Watch your language. Ban expressions like "boys don't cry" or "girls aren't pushy" from your vocabulary.
• Offer kids a variety of toys. For instance, don't say things like, "You want the truck, right?" to your toddler son. Let him decide -- even if he chooses a doll or princess toy.
• Allow kids to be open and positive about peoples' differences. Even if you aren't tolerant of gay or transgendered people, your children live in a world that's very different than it was even 20 years ago. "Teach your child about the world that will come," Savin-Williams concludes, "not the one you were raised in."

You see, I think Andrade didn't kill Zapata just because he hated transfolk. I think he killed her because he hated the fact that he could have been attracted to her, and thus hated the possibility of being seen as gay. I think he hated anything that he thought would call his identity as a man into question.  Variations on the "gay panic" defense were attempted in the murders of Scott Amedure, Mathew Shepard and Gwen Araujo. Certainly the bullying that drove Jaheem Hererra and Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover to kill themselves had to do with proving and undermining hegemonic masculinity.

Michael Kimmel has pointed out that when we talk about crimes of violence we rarely talk about masculinity as part of the problem. We need to begin. And that discussion needs to be placed in the context of "expanding the spectrum of gender expression." It also needs to be placed in the context of dismantling the gender hierarchy that puts hegemonic masculinity  at the top of the social order. 

And take heart when these things seem hard to do. It is difficult to change something that seems so natural, but it isn't natural. Our ideas about gender are created through our culture and reinforced through media, education, law, and social interaction. They have changed before and we can change them again. Just remember the mantra the religious conservatives use when they want to keep themselves focused on the difficult task of policing gender and sexual expression:

Think of the children.