This article seeks to understand practices of toxic masculinity whose roots are deeply embedded in society. An analysis of such practices demonstrates the importance of focusing on classroom processes and peer interactions, reinforcing these ideologies.

Gender, as Manjrekar defines it, is the fundamental element of the everyday representation of the self (2020, p. 3). It is a lens through which one sees itself and is seen by others. It defines who does what, when, how and what it means to be a gendered person. A taken for granted understanding of gender is coterminous to biological givens. The complex making of gender with its norms, expectations and pathologising of transgressions is rendered invisible.  Rephrasing Simone de Beauvoir’s influential statement from ‘The Second Sex’, it would be valid to claim that: “One is not born, but becomes a boy” (Beauvoir, 1974).

The social construction of masculinity

The gendered identity of a boy is fashioned according to a set of attributes or qualities that constitute ‘masculinity’ constructed in an oppositional binary to femininity. At the heart of the mechanisms and processes of becoming a boy is the anxiety that one does not possess quintessential masculine attributes.  This hierarchy where masculine finds precedence over feminine has been perpetuated in modern Western scientific, political, and cultural discourses. This is exemplified by the idea of the “Man of Reason” as against woman, the epitome of irrationality.  (St. Pierre 2000, p.  488). Martin (1986) echoes this sentiment when she traces the conceptualisation of educational ideals as inherently masculine.

But Western thought alone cannot be implicated in positioning qualities as positive and masculine and negative and feminine.  In ancient Chinese philosophy, Yin and Yang are discrete but complementary cosmic forces. Yin is feminine energy and is negative, dark, cold and passive, while yang is the masculine counterpart, positive, bright, warm and active.

An example closer home is an Assamese apocryphal tale/story connected to Lachit Borphukon, an Ahom General of the early 17^th century whom many in the Assamese community revere as the ‘ideal man’. When the Mughals were about to attack the Ahom kingdom (Assam), Lachit was the chief commander. He gave his maternal uncle, a builder, to ensure that a fortress was built within a night. He left after observing that the construction was securely underway and returned at midnight to find his uncle asleep and the labourers lazing. Furious, he woke his uncle and beheaded him with one sword stroke, saying, ‘My uncle is not bigger than my country’. Lachit, with his stoic refusal to be swayed by emotions when the defence of his country was at stake and his unleashing of extreme violence, embodies the perfect man in Assamese lore. At the same time, his uncle is likened to a woman, weak and undependable.  Some scholars would argue that gender does not necessarily and ahistorically play out in the same hierarchical and binary fashion (Nzegwu et al., 2016). This, however, is not our main intent here. The focus is on schools and the everyday construction of masculinity.

 Hegemonic masculinity and schools

The process of becoming a boy begins at home but is reinforced in schools. Schools are important sites for transmitting cultural values, norms and behaviour of the larger society. The dominant position of hegemonic masculinity is achieved due to collective cultural and institutional practices and asserts its authority through these practices (Connell, 1987). As Martino and Chiaratolli (2003) articulate, a particularly virulent form of hegemonic masculinity surfaces in schools and must be reckoned with while becoming a boy.

Certain school practices cultivate masculine traits in children and contribute to the way gender is perceived. In such a space, all its stakeholders, including curriculum developers, textbook developers, policymakers, school administrators, and most importantly, teachers, play an indirect or direct role in deciding what has to be taught to children. They have also been socialised to be a part of a society where power is reinforced to maintain social hierarchies. Evidence of masculine and feminine characteristics discussed in concepts, lessons, learning aids, etc., have been observed in schools.

Bhog (2009) asserts what constitutes the masculine emerges most significantly through stories and poems. For instance, the rhymes, stories and poems used in kindergarten are more like a drill that is followed every day. One such example is a Delhi-based kindergarten school where the children and the teacher would sing while the video titled ‘Jobs and Career Song’ on YouTube[i]  was played on the smartboard. The occupations associated with boys were astronaut, athlete, businessman, doctor, firefighter, builder and teacher. Occupations like artists, chefs, police officers, dancers and musicians were associated with girls. Such rhymes leave little to the imagination of the children.  

Through the following vignette, their active participation in reinforcing gender identities is evident in the interactions that the children have in the classroom,

Boy: Ma’am, I do not want pink sheet. Pink girls ka hai naa (pink is for girls)

The teacher changes the colour and gives him green.

Later, the boy says to his peers, ‘Dekho, tumhaara to ladkiyon waala hai weak ghar hai, mera ladko waala strong ghar hai, kyunki pink nahi hai naa’ (See, yours is a weak house, it’s girlish. Mine is strong because it is not pink)

Instruments of teaching such as textbooks that stereotype men with ‘normative masculine’ qualities, teacher-student relations where certain ‘kinds’ of boys are shown leniency based on their sports’ achievements, gender segregation whether in play areas or classrooms, the sexual division of labour in task assignment based on stereotypical notions of attributes – practices through which hegemonic masculinity consolidates.

To enforce particular dualistic and hierarchical classifications regarding how boys are encouraged to fashion their masculinity, schools have been observed to do various tasks inside the premises. The classroom duties assigned to the boys include lifting the chairs, piles of books and tables. Apart from heavy lifting duties, they are asked to make important announcements. Only boys are asked to do any tasks that included going to secondary school or administration. For girls, the tasks are limited to decorating the notice boards, doing crafts work, singing rhymes, or narrating stories.

In various dance performances in kindergarten, specifically Indian fold dances like bhangra, dandhiya ras, jhoomar, etc., the boys are asked to make the whole body moves that included moving the whole body, jumping, etc., and girls are given roles that involved sitting, moving their hands with expressions.

At the primary and secondary levels, the teachers preferred the boys for Nukkad Naatak (street plays), Music bands and inter-state competitions. During the selection process for the Inter-state extempore competition, I remember one of the female panellists saying, “Boys can handle themselves well. These boys are strong; if somebody teases them or the girls, they can handle it.” Setting the pitch for the cricket field, filling the air in basketballs, setting up the badminton court, moving all the sports equipment. There were two sports captains, one girl and one boy; however, the torchbearer was always the boy during the sports day.

Physical education teachers who focus on performance and body fail to acknowledge important issues like self-appreciation of their bodies. The entire focus is on the hegemonic normal masculine body. There is little room for alternative bodies. For males, self-regulation under the panopticon of the school is further increased when puberty starts. Despite belonging to diverse-socio cultural locations, sexual orientations and special needs, many boys strive to reach the mark of becoming a ‘man’, which ultimately decides whether they would be accepted in the society or not. This shows the boy’s understanding of what constitutes ‘normal’ or desirable masculinity, and they learn to fashion and embody this masculinity in socially acceptable ways (Martino and Pallotta-Chiarolli 2003, p. 3).

Performativity

Writing this essay has triggered memories of an incident that was observed in a school in Delhi. This boy who was in the 8^th grade had punched his fist into the wall when he received news that his grandmother, who lived in a different city, had passed away. So powerful was the punch that the cement cracked and three of his fingers fractured. He did not shed a single tear. This incident became the talking point in the school, and the men and boys started expressing admiration and awe at the way he dealt with his grief. A few years earlier, this same boy had wept copiously in the classroom when the movie ‘Halo’, which was shown in school, ended with the protagonist, a little girl herself, giving up her dog to a physically challenged boy. The boys later teased him from senior classes for crying. Is punching a hole into the wall and substituting tears with aggression, did this boy not performed?

Displays of aggression are a normalised practice through which boys constitute themselves as masculine. To understand the process of ‘becoming’, it is essential to explore the regimes of practice and the performance thereof that are implicit in the construction of gender identity (Martino and Pallotta-Chiarolli 2003, p. 3). The notion of performance of masculinity is evident in the exaggerated swagger, conversational behaviour, rule-breaking like bunking classes or bringing alcohol into school, acts of dare-devilry like competitive running on train tracks and bike racing, displays of anger and defiance at home by kicking furniture or breaking utensils- all features of so many boys that we have known.

The difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’

In schools, heterosexuality is hegemonically assumed. Verbal and physical homophobic attacks are visible.  What is invisible is how gender works as an organising principle of social structure and the consequences of toxic masculinity.

One of my classmates from 10^th grade, who identifies himself as gay, used to get beaten up every day in the toilet by the ‘normal guys’ because they thought that he was always looking at their penis and getting excited. They had stigmatised him as gay because he had a piercing in his right ear. They used to call him ‘Mithaai’ or ‘Meetha’ (sweet) and were never questioned by anybody. The community acknowledgement of him being gay adversely affected his agency. This hierarchical difference was a condition of double marginalisation that he faced in school, where his peers questioned his ‘abnormal’ masculinity and labelled him.

Another basis of hierarchial difference among boys was being the one with special needs. A boy studying in 11^th grade had to get his right hand amputated after he met with an accident. All the boys used to tease him, saying, ‘You cannot even masturbate now. How will you do things that men can do?’ Another incident from the school involved my classmate who used to stammer in schoo. The Mathematics teacher used to call him names like ‘Totla’, ‘Hakla’, ‘Hichkich’ (stammerer).

These narratives of compulsory heterosexuality, discriminatory practices in terms of inclusion show the failure of the school and our education system to address these diversities. This raises questions about the awareness of teachers and children about masculinity and diversity within it. Here, exclusion becomes all the more evident from the way young boys dominate other narratives. Boys are invariably shown as striving for the higher virtues of morality and character – of courage, hard work, grit and determination in the face of all odds (like being blind, parent-less) and limitless intellectual inquiry (Bhog, 2009). The path to discovering oneself from within becomes difficult due to this strict interpretation of masculinity.

Conclusion

Talking about toxic masculinity is not about vilifying boys, men, or any of the particular qualities society has deemed “masculine.” Instead, it is an opportunity to begin to reconstruct a more positive model of masculinity that makes room for the many different ways to be a boy or man and allows all individuals to feel secure in their masculine identity. It corresponds to the claim by Martin, ‘it is a mistake to assume that an identical education will yield identical results in all instances’ (Martin, 1986, p. 9). In the present context, the school’s objectives need to be revisited with constant evaluation as neglect of such issues can lead to the deepening of social divisions and inequalities.

The process of becoming a boy involves learning to exist in an interstitial space where one is enamoured of the masculine ideal yet has to contend with one’s inadequacy in embodying it. The ideal, in its very conception, is required to be unachievable. Therefore, boyhood is a space fraught with anxiety, yearning, loathing and tenuous attainment. However, it is simultaneously a space of contravention, resistance and negotiation. Through its invalidation of all other ways and forms of being a man, hegemonic masculinity is an oppressive mechanism that exerts authority through pedagogic, social and disciplinary practices in school. How boys reckon with it is an arduous and complex process and contains an element of the same ‘inescapability’ that Kumar (2017) says girls must contend with. It is indeed difficult being a girl, but it is not easy being a boy either.

References:

1. Beauvoir, S.D. (1974): The Second Sex. Vintage Books.
2. Bhog, Dipta et al. (2009): Textbook Regimes: A Feminist Critique of Nation and Identity, New Delhi: Nirantar, Selected Excerpts.
3. Kumar, Krishna (2017): “Education and Girlhood: An Educational Perspective,” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol 52, No. 47, pp: 13-16.
4. Manjrekar, Nandini (2020) (ed.): Gender and Education in India: A Reader, Delhi: Aakar Books.
5. Martin, J.R. (1986): “Redefining the Educated Person: Rethinking the Significance of Gender,” Educational Researcher, Vol 15, No 6, Special Issue: The New Scholarship on Women in Education, June-July, pp 6-10.
6. Martino, Wayne & Pallotta-Chiarolli, Maria (2003): So What’s A Boy?: Addressing Issues of Masculinity in Education, Maidenhead: Open University Press.
7. Nzegwu, N., Bockover, M., Femenias, M. L., & Chaudhuri, M. (2016). How (if at all) is gender relevant to comparative philosophy? Journal of World Philosophies. https://doi.org/10.2979/jourworlphil.1.1.06
8. St. Pierre, Elizabeth Adams (2000): “Poststructural Feminism in Education: An Overview,” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Vol 13, No 5, pp 477-515.
9. Connell, R.W. (1987): Gender and Power: Society, the Person, and Sexual Politics,” Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, Vol 8, No. 4, pp 445–445.

[i] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwHF6mdYVzw, accessed on 21^st August 2021.

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Shreya Sharma is working as a content head with Sachhi Saheli. Pranami Tamuli is working as a researcher with Mixed Media Productions and The Red Door.