Deconstructing heterosexism and homophobia in schools : case study of a hate crime by an adolescent offender /
As the first case study of an antigay assailant, this investigation focuses on the internal and external factors that led to Jon Buice's murderous assault along with nine of his adolescent peers on a gay man, Paul Broussard, in Houston, on the night of July 4, 1991. The study examines the soci...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Thesis Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
[Place of publication not identified] :
[publisher not identified] ;
2001.
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://proxy.library.tamu.edu/login?url=http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=728889311&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=2945&RQT=309&VName=PQD |
| Summary: | As the first case study of an antigay assailant, this investigation focuses on the internal and external factors that led to Jon Buice's murderous assault along with nine of his adolescent peers on a gay man, Paul Broussard, in Houston, on the night of July 4, 1991. The study examines the societal sense of permission (Franklin, 1997) to harass and assault those who violate gender norms, with a particular focus on the role of schools as passively and sometimes actively contributing to this sense of permission. The dissertation is told in the form of a narrative documenting the author's journey of uncovery and discovery as he sought an ever richer and thicker description of the case. Incorporating the emotional and intuitive parts of the self, the journey is punctuated with autobiographical/autoethnographical flashbacks to the writer's own painful past as a teenage victim of heterosexism. The data consist of more than a year's worth of interviews and correspondence with Jon Buice, along with interviews of and information concerning Jon's parents, peers, personnel of the school district which Jon attended, and members of Houston's gay and lesbian community. Newspaper accounts and videotapes of the civil trials of the defendants are closely examined. To obtain something of the victim's perspective, in the absence of direct contact with Paul Broussard's mother, the author interviewed Judy Shepard, the mother of Matthew Shepard, the Wyoming college student also brutally murdered in an antigay assault. Her insights about and recommendations to the school community proved invaluable. The case study shows that Jon was more typical than atypical of young male adolescents in our highly gendered and patriarchal society. He was driven by thrill-seeking and peer dynamics to attack societally-permitted targets rather than by any knowingly antigay ideology. The members of Jon's school and community may make convenient scapegoats of Jon and his companions, but this study indicates that we are all implicit in such acts, and ends with suggestions about ways to end our schools' complicity in such grim oppression. |
|---|---|
| Item Description: | Vita. "Major Subject: Curriculum and Instruction". |
| Physical Description: | xii, 299 leaves ; 28 cm. Issued also on microfiche from University Microfilm Inc. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (leaves 288-298). |