| During adolescence, young men are increasingly confronted with the dilemmas of ‘hetero-normative masculinity’. They are encouraged to be confident, forward, and active with their sexuality, while simultaneously avoiding tendencies towards shallowness, desperation, and misogyny. The present thesis is an examination of the multifaceted, dilemmatic, and often contradictory ways that young men actively manage and negotiate ‘hetero-normative masculinity’ during adolescence.; More specifically, the thesis employs a discursive psychological orientation in examining how adolescent males (ages 10–15) employ ‘finely-tuned positioning skills’ in constructing ‘heterosexual desire’ while simultaneously foreclosing potential counters and challenges to such orientations. Such equivocation is explored in both focus group discussions and naturally occurring talk. One of the central findings is that doing ‘hetero-normative masculinity’ means being able to strategically resist it. In other words, while adolescent boys do their heterosexuality by displaying an interest in sexuality and a disinterest in homosexuality, they also (over the course of adolescence) orient to norms against appearing overly or naively interested in such things. By doing this, adolescent males are able to align themselves with the traditional masculine norms of sexual prowess, but in indirect and subtle ways that mitigate the appearance of immaturity or prejudice.; The findings are presented in four studies. The first study is developmentally focused, paying close attention to the way ‘maturity’ is constructed in focus group talk about sexual attraction. The second study focuses specifically on the subtle and indirect (but pervasive) ways that young men work to avoid appearing homophobic or sexist while displaying a clear preference for heterosexuality. The third study presents a cross-sectional comparison of the different positioning strategies used by the three different age groups of boys (10–11, 12–13, 14–15) in discussing sexual attraction and desire. Finally, the fourth study examines ‘naturally occurring talk’ in order to advance an empirical account of ‘identity’ as a complex weaving of ‘positionings’.; Together the four studies reveal the discursive skills that adolescent males use to negotiate the vagarious and mutable nature of ‘hetero-normative masculinity’. Ultimately, their socialization into the normatively heterosexual and contested social arrangements of adolescence largely depend upon acquiring such discursive skills. From a discursive orientation, the conclusion is that adolescence is a period of becoming ‘rhetorically-responsive’ to the practicalities of living—that is, in becoming discursively fluent in negotiating the two-sided and often dilemmatic nature of gendered ideologies. |
