ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the girls’ perception of the dominance of boys in the school, the ways in which boys utilized symbolic violence and sexual harassment to maintain their power—social, emotional and physical—over the girls, and teacher complicity in the structure of power in gender relations between students at the school. Most of the girls agreed that the boys “ran” the school. Through verbal and physical harassment of girls in the classroom and in the hallways, a form of symbolic violence, the boys were able to implement and maintain their dominance. This is a critical component in the exploration of Latina girls’ experiences in school as stereotypes of Latinos are rooted in traditional roles of machismo and marianismo—wherein males are expected to be dominant and females are expected to be passive. This chapter provides insight into how Latino boys and girls at FDMS worked to develop their gender identities in relation to one another and in the specific context of their middle school. It also examines the teacher denial of, and complicity in, the structure of power in gender relations between students at the school.
