Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Ging, Debbie
• Ringrose, Jessica
• Milne, Betsy
• Horeck, Tanya
• Mendes, Kaitlynn
• Castellini da Silva, Ricardo

Titel

Moving beyond masculine defensiveness and anxiety in the classroom: exploring gendered responses to sexual and gender based violence workshops in England and Ireland

Ist Teil von

• Gender and education, 2024-04, Vol.36 (3), p.230-247

Ort / Verlag

Abingdon: Routledge

Erscheinungsjahr

2024

Quelle

Taylor & Francis Journals Auto-Holdings Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Increasing rates of gender-based and sexual abuse, coupled with a rise in misogynistic influencers online, have become a growing issue in UK and Irish schools. This paper reports on the findings of a postlockdown study in England and Ireland that piloted workshops on gender-based and sexual violence. While most student responses were positive, we found that roughly 10% of girls and 20% of boys were resistant. In this paper, we explore these critical responses, focusing specifically on male resistance. Our findings indicate that new strategies, which avoid the concept of 'toxic masculinity', are needed to help boys move from defensive to empathetic engagements. We also find that the neoliberal, meritocratic ethos of many schools has fostered a problematic framing of gender-based violence as genderneutral. We conclude that it is vital to adopt an intersectional, whole-school approach to educating about sexual violence, which acknowledges male victimhood, while also emphasizing gendered privileges.