‘We haven’t even been able to talk!’: gender norms and masculinity exams in representations of sexuality in Spanish primary schools

ABSTRACT

Through language, children participate actively in the construction of meanings around sexuality, which is governed unequally according to gender. This article examines the articulation of the social constructions of sexuality and gender with the pictorial and narrative representations of boys and girls from 9 to 11 years of age from four public schools in Barcelona province in the 2020–2021 school year. We used participatory methods, including drawing activities and focus groups. The findings suggest that hegemonic social constructions of masculinity and femininity guide children’s practices and narratives about sexuality, (re)producing differences between ‘boys’ and ‘girls’. The desire to fit into these hegemonic models puts pressure on boys to make their genitalia and bodies visible, and talk about sexuality through joking, while female genitalia are rendered invisible, and girls have calm discussions about sexuality. The article shows how children navigate, negotiate, or resist such governmentality and the inequalities that result.

KEYWORDS:

• Representations
• governmentality
• sexuality
• gender
• childhood

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the children participating in the study for sharing their points of view on a subject as sensitive as sexuality, as well as their families and schools for allowing us to carry out the research. We would also like to thank Susan Frekkofor her guidance, translation from original Spanish, and valuable feedback during the writing process of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We consider children to have the capacity to make decisions about things that involve them. Although we had the consent of the parents, we requested children’s informed assent. This procedure was approved by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona ethics committee (CEEAH 5313).

2 Only penises and vulvas appear in the drawings and in the narratives, so we talk only about these two kinds of genitalia, despite our adherence to a non-binary understanding of genitalia and our awareness that intersex genitalia is common.

3 Although in many focus groups the children told us that sexual relations can be homosexual, homosexual relations are not represented in any of the drawings.

4 Stephens (2007) explains that the ancient Greeks preferred to represent penises as an index of self-control and rationality, while the Romans preferred large penises as a symbol of virility.

5 In retrospect, it would have been better to word the question more neutrally (‘Have you been taught to draw vulvas?’) to avoid potentially influencing the participants’ responses.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation [grant number PID2020-112692RB-C21 / AEI / 10.13039/501100011033], Spanish Ministry of Equality [grant number 34/4ACT/21], and Barcelona City Council [grant number 21S04887-001].

Notes on contributors

Estel Malgosa

Estel Malgosa She holds a PhD in Anthropology from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and is a researcher in the AFIN research group. Her research focuses on sexuality, gender and childhood. Her dissertation examines how children from public schools in the province of Barcelona (Spain) construct, live and narrate their sexuality. It also explores how the gender in which they identify (and/or are recognised) is articulated in the construction of their sexuality.

She is co-coordinating the SexAFIN project on sexuality and childhood in Catalonia, in which the thesis is framed. She has recently directed a documentary, broadcast by Catalan Public Television, to disseminate some of the results of her thesis and the project.

Bruna Alvarez

Bruna Alvarez is a Senior Lecturer in Anthropology and researcher in the AFIN research group at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain). Her lines of research are maternities, reproduction, sexualities and childhoods. She did her doctoral thesis on the politics of motherhood in Spain, pointing out that the labour market, gender relations in heterosexual couples, the narrative of choice, and the feminist discourse functioned as moral regimes that influenced reproductive decisions.

Since 2017, she has been co-coordinating the project SexAFIN, sexuality and childhoods, in Catalonia (Spain) and Ciudad Juárez (Mexico).

She is currently researching reproduction in Barcelona (Spain) and Ciudad Juárez and Tijuana (Mexico), analysing (non-)reproductive mobilities. Specifically, her work in Barcelona refers to gamete recipients, reproductive decisions and histories, and the work-life balance of reproductive health professionals in Catalonia.

Diana Marre

Diana Marre is Associate Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology and the Director of the AFIN Research Group and Outreach Centre at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), Spain. Her research areas are the social, culture and politic aspects of assisted human reproduction. She has authored about 80 publications in her field, including books, edited volumes, book chapters, and peer-reviewed articles in top academic journals. She was Visiting and Invited Professor at several universities around the world. She participats regularly in knowledge transfer activities regarding assisted human reproduction -children adoption, gamete and embryo provision, surrogacy- issues for government, civic and users' institutions and associations. Between 2009 and 2017 she was the founder and co-editor of the open access, monthly, and online magazine, Publicación AFIN devoted to disseminate the AFIN Research Group' findings to a wide audience.