Muscular christians and drama faggots: observing a queering pedagogy beyond the binary in all-boys schools

Abstract

In elite boys' schools there is a level of anxiety about the perceived place of (the subject) Drama and how it might interact/interfere with the homogenous masculinity promoted by notions of the Arnoldian ‘muscular Christian’. This paper offers some observations on males who do Drama in these schools where dramatic and gender performances are used to create a self-referential and critical pedagogic space where masculinities are explored, disrupted, and commonly ‘queered’. Male Drama teachers provided a space in which to also interrogate not only the myths of their expected muscular Christian performance, but also that of the deviant, yet desirably playful ‘Drama Faggot’.