Abstract:
The links between gender based violence and rurality first became apparent to me when conducting an extended five-year activist study into boys’ schooling disengagement in the rural Queensland community that I have called ‘home’ for almost three decades (see Henderson & Lennon, 2014; Lennon, 2015). In Wheatville I found evidence of hegemonic masculinity manifesting as misogyny, homophobia, physical violence, sexual assault, intimidation, harassment, financial and civic control, exclusionary practices, packing, predation, and a sense of white male entitlement. This presentation draws on my experiences as an activist educator/researcher working within and across a traditional patriarchal rural community to unsettle and transform local gender beliefs and practices that were limiting students’ schooling performances and lives. The presentation makes a case for the importance of tapping into the local when working to encourage a rethinking and reshaping of gender beliefs and practices in communities. Using local media discourses, texts, artefacts and school data, I set about building links between boys’ schooling (under)performances and local versions of hegemonic masculinity, hypermasculinity, heteropatriarchy and phallocentrism. I then set about sharing my findings with members of the school community in order to emotionally engage them in a critical conversation about the ways in which gender is being constituted and performed here. My politicised approach flies counter to emerging discourses of neo-liberalism that manifest in Western educational settings as pre-packaged pedagogies of passivity, conformity and uniformity. These neutralising pedagogies promote a simple one-size-fits-all curricula and offer decontextualised solutions to complex social and educational problems. Such approaches completely ignore the diversity and multidimensionality of students’ lifeworlds. My presentation demonstrates how critical and post-critical pedagogies might be harnessed to trouble gender beliefs and practices that work to limit schooling performances and individuals’ lives. By strategically collating, sharing and problematising local stories, texts, school data and artefacts with students and their teachers, I have been able to expose links between hegemonic masculinity and boys’ schooling underperformances; emotionally engage those being impacted; and, ultimately, create the foundations for a rethinking and reshaping of gender beliefs, practices and performances to occur. If we are ever to reduce the level of gender based violence in this country then researchers/educators must begin by mining and collaboratively problematising the local.Henderson, R., & Lennon, S. (2014). A conversation about research as risky business. Doing Educational Research in Rural Settings: Methodological Issues, International Perspectives and Practical Solutions, 119. Lennon, S. (2015). Unsettling Research: Using critical praxis and activism to create uncomfortable spaces (Vol. 14). New York: Peter Lang.