‘It's not bullying’, ‘It's just a joke’: Teacher and student discursive manoeuvres around gendered violence

Abstract

Threats or harassment related to the enforcement of gender norms remain largely unchallenged in many schools. Possibilities for meaningful interventions have been undermined by an over‐reliance on individual, psycho‐pathologised understandings of ‘bullying’ and a reluctance to examine contextual and socio‐cultural mechanisms of power. Poststructural feminist approaches offer an alternative view of gendered violence and its responses—one that focuses on the meanings that individuals and groups constitute through discourse around gender, violence and ‘bullying’. This article examines focus group data from teachers and students from one Australian school that experienced a significant event of gendered violence referred to as ‘Kick a slut in the head day’. Results demonstrate that participants minimised or dismissed the ‘seriousness’ of this event through employing particular ‘discursive manoeuvres’ drawn from hegemonic discourses of ‘bullying’. Teachers utilised essentialist discourses to illustrate that the incident was ‘not bullying’, while students suggested that it was a ‘joke’ or that the girl/s were deserving of the treatment. These findings suggest that ‘discursive manoeuvres’ are a helpful indicator for understanding contextual resistance to addressing gendered violence.