Sexed bodies, heterosexuality and Glasgow street-orientated youth

Abstract

This dissertation demonstrates that existing malestream and feminist criminological research into youth gangs generally, and in Glasgow specifically, either portrays simplistic gender-congruent dualisms and/or remains heteronormative and de-sexed. Hence, this dissertation explored how gang-involved young men use discursive and social resources to construct ‘intelligible’ male and heterosexual subjects. It achieves this through the application of a ‘sexed bodies’ approach and qualitative postmodernist feminist-queer methodology drawing on oral-history interviews and a focus group across two comparable Glasgow research sites. The generated data from the resultant sample of 13 young men, aged between 18 to 30, generated rich insights into their sexed practices and discursive repertoires in the ‘youth gang’. Through ‘thick analysis’ and the discourse analysis tools of ‘interpretative repertoire’ and ‘subject positions and identity work’ three emergent themes developed: valorised maleness in the youth gang, male gang affirmation of the ‘heterosexual matrix’, and sexed street habitus, which were critically explored utilising three case-studies from a ‘sexed bodies’ queer criminological framework. Thus the dissertation demonstrates that central to any analysis of young men’s ‘youth gang’ lived experience and meaning-making requires a holistic account of the social and discursive significance of their sexed and sexualised bodies.