Gender and school

With the Euros happening at the moment, I’ve been reminiscing about ex-England players with the kids. Obviously Gazza came up, amongst a few others and I had a go at trying to liken him to current players. One of the differences, Naomi and I were telling the kids, is that back then there was a lot more crazy behaviour amongst footballers. Dentist chair, or sniffing-the-touchline-type celebrations were probably never really a great thing to see school children reproducing on the playground, but I would argue that for famous sports people and other celebrities, the coming of social media and a life online has contributed to a change in how influential people regulate their behaviour.  It is important to consider on different levels what teenagers are engaging in when they take to social media. On the face of it, a profile appears as a symbolic representation of an identity: if we are considering the exhibitional approach (which I’ve written about before here) then the title across th...

When you’re writing up research you usually have to write an impact statement where you describe how what you’ve learnt about might be put to use one day. I’m pretty relaxed about the idea that my thesis (if it ever gets written) will mostly just occupy some dusty space in a university server somewhere, almost entirely untouched for the rest of time. But I’ve not got many regrets about taking it on because it has lead me into so many conversations about what it is to be a man or woman, and I know there is lots of good that has come from these. M y interest in this area came from trying to understand the lived experience of boys at school, and it’s still in this area where I hope a lot of what I’m learning might one day be able to be used.   I reckon that what my impact statement is going to focus on.  First and foremost, I talk to Naomi about all this stuff, and some of what I read is a catalyst to chats that mean I get to appreciate her position a little better. The school I ...

In the mid-to-late 90s my dad bought a computer that could access the internet. Sat at it in the kitchen, I could interact with people I had never met before, and probably never would again, through chat rooms such as  AOL instant messaging . Users were identifiable by a screenname which they chose themselves, and I could connect by clicking on their screenname and starting a conversation, usually with the shorthand question “asl?”, asking for their age, sex and location. I quickly lost count of the numerous alter-egos I created for myself, apparently liberated by the anonymity of having no visual identity. In conversations users could construct their own backstory and perform a personality of their choosing. Was there anything real in those interactions? Were they genuine insofar as they were unmediated by cultural regulations of face-to-face interactions, or simply fabrications and role-plays that were entertaining but not illustrative of the user’s ‘real’ identity?   I...