Living with/in a hypermasculine moral paradox: Examining adolescent White male athlete disengagement in school
Date
2020-04-23
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Abstract
This dissertation examined White male student athletes as a way to explore the impact of disengagement on boys’ education and to explicate the intersections that constituted their masculinity. The study’s five participants were members of an elite hockey team who attended school at a specialized sports academy intended to cater to their athletic needs and support their potential to become professional hockey players. Through a qualitative methodology, the boys revealed not only the implications of the “boys will be boys” narrative within the school but also how their hypermasculine identity resulted in a masculine moral paradox. Participants found themselves in tension between benefiting from their identities as White athletic boys and alienation from students who were not members of their team. This exclusivity does little to dismantle barriers of gender equity in schools and has consequences for those who see hockey players as cultural symbols embodying national identity and a narrow vision of masculinity. Schools must not only hold young men accountable for complicit masculinity and educate them on the outcomes of patriarchal power but also consider their own role in entrenching the “boys will be boys” narrative and find sites of intervention to move schooling toward a relational balance of gender equity.
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Keywords
Masculinities, Disengagement, Sports, Whiteness
Citation
Fowler, T. A. (2020). Living with/in a hypermasculine moral paradox: Examining adolescent White male athlete disengagement in school (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.