Asserting Masculinity in the Cultural Context of Camp :: Sociology Essays Research Papers

Asserting Masculinity in the Cultural Context of inhabit Summer packground is an important annual experience in some childrens lives. Some kids choose to continue with camp long old their camper years and become counselors. A program, the Camper in leaders Training (CILT) program, exists within the camp structure as a leading program designed to educate kids, aged fifteen through seventeen, on how to become effective counselors. Each session typically concludes with a stoppage campfire, which the male CILTs extinguish after the females have left by urinating on the embers. This folk ritual, affectionately known to the CILTs as pissing out the fire, is utilise by the male CILT folk group as a system that allows them to reassert power, to reaffirm the solidarity of the all-male group, and to regain their masculinity, which has been altered within the camp environment, originally leaving the shelter of that environment. During this transitional period, the CILTs anticipate retu rning to the larger friendly world and are societalizing themselves accordingly. These kids experiences with sexual activity identity at camp mirror Barrie Thornes point that sexual urge is sociablely constructed and highly contextual (Thorne 10). This folk ritual allows these boys to regain their gender identity, the identity largely trustworthy by the outside culture, as they prepare to re-enter mainstream society. The program is an emotionally challenging one apart from teaching the foundations of counseling skills, the CILT directors encourage an start of ones true self that often involves breaking muckle the gender fronts kids bring with them. Thorne argues that boys social relations tend to be overtly hierarchical and competitive (92). The program does not encourage this type of social interaction. Rather, the program chooses to emphasize the emotions in personal relationships and self-disclosure typical of girls social relationships (94). afterwards two weeks of learning, sharing, and growing within the camp context, the males social relations puzzle out similarly to the females because there is no threat of being socially friendless for adopting the behavior values of the other gender. That is to say, the males have become bicultural along gender lines. Just as teasing (as Thorne points out) dissuades cross-gender interaction, social pressure outside camp plays a similar role in limiting males expression of things seen as feminine, such as sharing feelings (54). For an age group faced with more social anxieties, extinguishing the fire at the end of the session is an infixed tool of anticipatory socialization used to recreate the male gender identity necessary for acceptance in the outside male social world.