Chapter 4: Data analysis and discussion
4.4 They… show off; they are powerful and can fight
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George: Those boys who can stand and defend themselves. Boys who can fight back and don’t get hurt but survive. Boys like Khumalo…
Scelo: A lot of bullying and fighting takes place here at our school. The boys are the same boys who fight on the ground every day during break time and always fighting smaller boys. They intimidate them and take their lunch. Miss, they also fight for their girlfriend.
Me: So what do they do to fight you, I mean do you like disturb their play or games?
Mazibuko: We have big boys Miss. They want to show off they are powerful and can fight you and push you down to fall.
Scelo: Miss, when they see you walking, running, they call you names and swear at you.
If you speak back to them, they will hit and kick you. Miss, their girlfriends will laugh at you and sometimes they make jest at you in the classroom.
Mazibuko: These boys, Miss… sometimes they walk into the pitch where we are playing and kick the ball out of the pitch or seize it from us… they spoil for a fight.
Thando: But they know you can’t fight back so they take the advantage. When you even bust into them if you are running by mistake, they just turn and starts fighting you. Also Miss, seize our lunch and share it to their girlfriends.
Me: So they fight you to please “their girlfriends?”
Thando: Miss, yesterday, there was a fight on the ground. Two grade 7 boys fighting over a girl. The big boy hit the other boy by his nose and he started bleeding.
Boys’ use of violence reinforces and is reinforced by hegemonic forms of masculinities (Swain, 2000). This is so because it gives them certain status and prestige. Studies have shown that boys engage in physical violence and stand up for themselves so that they are not ridiculed by their peers (Renold, 2001; 2004; 2005; Swain, 2001). Emerging from the voices of the boys is an assertion that having power to defend oneself made you a ‘real boy’ at school. Boys measure their adequacy in terms of self-identity construction by the scale of their power and ability to
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dominate and command influence. From my observation, this is seen in the cheering or jeering they receive when they hit and kick each other during fights at break time. Being defeated fuels the need for revenge that is often sought outside of school and the desire among almost all the boys to become not just powerful and strong, but bullies – (like the dreaded “those boys”).
Hidden in boys’ tendency to bully other boys is perhaps their assertion of themselves as not just powerful, but also as dominators and controllers of the space and grounds which they occupy.
Fights for control of space and domination within the playground space reflect their masculine prowess. This is particularly true when it comes to fighting to please their “girlfriends.”
Engaging in such fights is an attempt to assert their superior masculinity in order to woo girls and is obviously gender motivated. For “those boys”, bullying can thus possibly be understood as a construction of what it means to play like a ‘boy’; to dominate, take control and win. In the context of this study, it is possible that boys’ tendency to subjugate other boys is not dissociated from the hegemony and power dynamics that play out in the wider social order where men are valued in terms of how much power they have to control, dominate and own.
In the individual interview with Khumalo, it was revealed that girls also bully. Girls’
construction of their identity as not just girls, but as more powerful and stronger than boys, also offers insight into girls’ agency in gender violence at school.
Khumalo had this to say about girls:
Khumalo: … Miss, girls too are violent. They gossip and fight. There is one girl in grade 7 called Gugu. She is very strong. People say she does boxing. She seizes children’s food, push me out if I enter their game and talk to me rudely and other boys. She wears boys clothes on Friday when its dress up day. She is always fighting with boys and other girls during break time.
Me: Tell me Khumalo, do the boys fear her? Aren’t boys supposed to be strong and powerful?
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Khumalo: Miss, there isn’t anything like that for her. If you hit her, she hit you back.
Miss, boys always fear … her stay away from her and her friends.
Me: So does she … play with you when you play your games like soccer?
Khumalo: She doesn’t play with the boys…, but sometimes she tries to size herself up with the big boys and Miss… these boys like her and the joke and smoke with her and sometimes they seize some boys, marching on their dress as they made them to lie on the floor and burst their football.
Violence is not only associated with male power (Bhana 2008a). Khumalo’s assertion of how powerful this girl is at school suggests that girls also use power and dominance as tools of subjugation. Khumalo's narrative suggests that Gugu and her friends use bullying to gain power and control over boys and other girls. In so doing, they imitate and are able to replicate violent masculinity in their construction of their identity as “powerful” and “strong” girls. Gugu secured her territory by demonstrating domination of her space. She actively used violence (Bhana, 2008). Perhaps, Gugu saw in violence a power that enabled negotiation with the suffocating boy- cult that pervades school playground spaces. Or, as Bhana (2008) posits, her use of violence was a means to “secure resources and claims to power.” Her demonstration of power and control provided a passport to access fraternity with the “big boys” at the playground. Contrary to the dominant construct of girls as soft, gentle and agreeable, Gugu as a type exemplifies that girls’
agency in the gender violence seen in and around schools cannot be discounted.