Peer Group Culture

Response

Peer group culture operates as a social structure for learning where teenage boys learn values and norms of masculinity. It enables the passing down of values and norms from one generation to the next. Intergroup relations are created through these norms and values. Boy’s masculinity demonstrates what adults pass down in their communication. Social structure represents the stable and distinctive arrangement that institutions display where people in a given society interact and coexist. Social structures may include classes, family, religion, and law. Peer group culture acts in the same way as it is a classification of people in a society that is distinct and stable. Teenage boys’ ideas of masculinity are passed down among peer groups. In this argument, values include general guidelines while norms may be termed as specific guidelines. For teenage boys, values are the standards that decide what is masculine or otherwise. Norms are the expectations and rules specifying how men, or teenage boys, should not behave in a masculine situation. Using the term fag for such groups is not necessary a homophobic slur or insult but rather a communication that one displays behavior that is regarded feminine, unmanly, queer, or biased in terms of comparison with what such boys’ groups expect. The values that the term fag express include symptoms of fear for what is not masculine. It has nothing to do with homophobia. They are afraid of the un-masculine man because they lack a way to prove that they are not such man. They prove masculinity by rejecting the un-masculine man which takes the form of homophobic tones. The values and norms of the masculine man are a display of insecurity, repeating what adults do.

Question

How has society and adult relationships contributed to negative behavior in defining masculinity for the teenage boys?