“I Don’t Start a Fight; They Start my Powerful Engine”: Primary School Boys Negotiating Violence and Gendered Bullying

Abstract

This chapter explores how masculinities are constructed and negotiated by 8–9-year-old primary school boys. The discussion foregrounds how young boys enact their masculinities through verbal and physical violence in the form of bullying which they use to claim power. Boys who fail to adhere to hegemonic masculine ideals are often victims of and easy targets for bullying, yet they, too, seek to reclaim their power by using violence as a defensive approach to protect their individual masculine identity. This illustrates the fluid ways through which masculinities are negotiated. The chapter contributes to the developing research on young masculinities by situating young boys as active agents who construct, contest, and negotiate violent masculinities in the primary school. I conclude by arguing that interventions within the early years of schooling is the ideal time to work with young boys to encourage alternative, non-violent masculinities, based on mutual respect, in order to mitigate the prevalence of violence in primary schools and beyond.