At 4 p.m. on 19 April 2017, a 15-year-old boy was found unconscious outside a school. Next to him, showing clear signs of physical assault, lay a placard reading “I am gay”. This attack, which foregrounds the issue of homophobia, took place in a city in southern Brazil—one of the countries with the highest rates of lethal violence against LGBTQIA+ people in the world. The school where the pupil was found is located in an area with the highest recorded levels of violence experienced by women in the municipality. Far from being coincidental, the homophobic and misogynistic violence shaping this social geography are not separate phenomena, but rather expressions of the same gender order that profoundly structures social relations in that territory (Kaufman, 1987; Messner, 2002). The central aim of this research was to analyse how adolescent boys construct meanings around homophobia, and how these meanings inform the performance and regulatory mechanisms of masculinity in everyday school life.

Theoretically, the study draws on Critical Masculinity Studies, which examine the hierarchical and diverse configurations of masculinities (Connell, 2005), and the concept of sexuality as a historical dispositif (Foucault, 1978; Weeks, 1997). This conceptual foundation illuminates how heteronormativity emerges as a regime that establishes heterosexuality as a compulsory norm (Louro, 2013). Within this framework, homophobia is understood as a mechanism that demarcates boundaries between legitimate and deviant masculinities (Petry & Meyer, 2011; Rios, 2007).

The research highlighted homophobia as a regulatory device of masculinities among adolescent boys in that school— a mechanism that became evident through both the heterocentric pact of silence among the boys and the dissenting voice of a gender-nonconforming pupil.

The first mode of engagement—predominant in the focus group—was expressed through a silence laden with meaning: intertwined fingers, brief nervous laughter, averted gazes, and monosyllabic responses. Although little was verbalised (only six pages of transcript in fifty minutes), the unspoken was highly expressive. For the boys, talking about homosexuality was risky; articulating an opinion could place their own sexuality under suspicion. Silence, combined with restrained mockery, operated as a code of complicit masculinity, ensuring a safe distance from the topic without challenging the hegemonic norm (Connell, 2005). Occasional joking served as a mechanism of heteronormative reinforcement, positioning the “deviant” as an object of ridicule (Gastaldo, 2010).

The second mode of engagement emerged in the interview with Maicon, a boy whose gender expression distanced him from normative models of masculinity, rendering his sexual orientation subject to scrutiny. He described a school environment saturated with homophobia: insults during break-time football games, graffiti on desks and walls, and verbal offences at the school gate. Homophobia, according to him, was omnipresent. His account revealed two central functions of homophobia in that context. The first, punitive or corrective, targeted performances perceived as insufficiently masculine—whether due to lack of sporting ability, strength, or behaviour aligned with the normative pattern. The second, constitutive, reaffirmed dominant masculine norms by marking what is deemed inadequate.

The most striking dimension of Maicon’s narrative, however, concerned the relationship between homophobia and masculine honour. Being subjected to homophobic insults constituted a stain on one’s honour, for which the expected form of reparation was physical confrontation. Violence was not perceived as a problem but as a legitimate and necessary response to restore dignity. As he recounted, pupils who were targeted “fought back and it was ugly”. The fight, although regrettable, is narrated as inevitable within the logic of masculinity. For an adolescent who was also subjected to insults, yet possessed physical stature and athletic involvement, responding aggressively could function as a strategy of survival.

Methodologically, the research site was defined through the use of Kernel Density Maps, which identified areas with the highest concentration of reported cases of violence against women in the municipality (Silva, Meyer, & Riegel, 2021). The selected school was located at the epicentre of one of these regions—and, significantly, it was the same school where the initial assault on the adolescent had occurred. Data were produced in two stages. First, a focus group (Dal’ Igna, 2014) was conducted with seven boys from Years 7 to 9, all of whom were members of the school’s athletics team. As elicitation material, we employed homophobic anecdotes circulating in the public sphere related to the two most prominent football clubs in southern Brazil. Second, an individual interview was held with “Maicon”, a participant who had expressed a critical and divergent stance during the group discussion. All procedures adhered to ethical guidelines, with informed consent obtained from guardians. Data analysis followed the principles of Thematic Analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006), combining open coding, iterative reading, and theme development, while paying attention not only to explicit verbal content but also to gestures, silences, and embodied reactions.

The findings indicate that school-based homophobia functions as a veritable pedagogy of masculinity. It operates as a boundary-making language that delineates who belongs within the legitimate masculine group; as a regulatory mechanism that ranks and differentiates boys; and as a trigger for physical violence, sustained by an economy of masculine honour. The contrast between the complicit silence and the dissenting voice reveals that the boys—albeit in different ways—are entangled in the same heteronormative order: some reproduce it through omission, while others denounce it yet must negotiate with its codes to avoid being read as gay and, consequently, becoming targets of violence. Physical confrontations and threats of fights mediated through homophobic discourse appear to constitute a grammar of masculinity: an action that communicates gendered codes, a practice interpreted by the boys as evidence of manliness and virility. Finally, the study highlights the active role of the school in reproducing this homophobic curriculum. The absence of effective interventions, the tolerance of “boys’ fights”, and the lack of safe spaces to discuss gender all contribute to the normalisation of violence. There is, therefore, an urgent need for teacher education and pedagogical practices capable of destabilising the foundations of normative masculinity. It is essential to create opportunities to interrogate heteronormative knowledge and subjectivities, fostering school environments that are genuinely transformative.

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