Building the masculinity of adolescent boys in high school.

Theoretical contributions, reflections, encounters and disagreements from a situated gender perspective

Abstract

This research takes part in the ongoing discussion on the construction of the masculinities of the teenage male in contemporary secondary schools in Argentina. This matter is linked to questions that arose during the Specialisation Seminar in Gender and Masculinity from FLACSO’s Regional Training Programme on Gender and Public Policy in 2017. The central issues were: What discourses, values, and imaginaries remain and emerge in the classrooms, corridors, restrooms of the educational institutions? In what ways do they influence the construction of teenaged males’ gender identity? What demands and interests does the male teenager express? Are they against the syllabus-enabled hegemonic discourse and practices of Argentine secondary schools or not?

The epistemological lenses from which the questions are tackled are that of critical pedagogy and gender perspective, which enable a coupling of nature and social development. It is a theoretical framework which questions the ways in which sexed subjectivities are constructed, which formal education fosters and justifies as a bio-psycho-social phenomenon, and, as such, historical. This work aims to deconstruct the processes that emphasise the so-called feminine and masculine traits from secondary schools in Argentina today.