narratives of three generations of urban middle-class - eTheses ...

“‘Those were the days of our boy fun’. Remember those ‘dick measuring games?’
(talks to Arjun) Such games that defined one’s manliness also became indicators
of ‘group power and inter-group rivalry’.”
‘Dick’ measuring games defined the strength of a man as directly proportional to the
size of his penis. Such phallocentric standard of masculinity was effectively reinforced
by bullying and bantering of the ‘other’, the not so masculine; ‘too soft’, ‘sissy’, ‘girly’,
‘gay’ (Gough and Edwards (1998: 415). These homosocial-homosexual power-plays
also reinforced male bonding by strengthening inter-group solidarity, and attacking rival
groups (Flood, 2008: 342). The defeated group was constructed as meyeli
(girly/effiminate), bokachoda (foolish fucker) and Gandu (impotent). These slangs that
pathologized effeminacy and gayness indirectly re-confirmed the ‘strong and fit’
heterosexual male self through the most effective form of banter.
The narrative texts can have two readings that reconfirm the paradoxical process
belying the construction of the heterosexual masculinity. On one hand, these can be
read to project the insidious power of hetero-normativity through the cultural
reproduction of hegemonic masculinity in the most effective form of ‘harmless boy fun’.
On the other hand, the hegemonic sexual codes belying peer power, pleasure and peril
can be read as practices that are often charged with high eroticism (Agostino, 1997;
Muir and Seitz, 2004; Flood, 1998). Also in its most masculinist forms, male intimate
friendships, like that of Arjun and Shouro, often developed a ‘deep’, ‘personal’,
companionate dyad. Such overlapping lines of love and friendship in otherwise
masculinist spaces often unwittingly blurred the distinction between homosociality and
homo-sexuality and demonstrated that ‘doing gender’ is a dynamic process in
continuous interaction (West and Zimmerman, 1987).
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