“I couldn't say, I'm not a girl” – Adolescents talk about gender and marijuana use

Abstract

In this paper we report on findings from a qualitative study of marijuana use by adolescents in two communities in British Columbia, Canada. During 2005 and 2006, 45 interviews were carried out at schools with students aged 13–18, with an aim of understanding how adolescents perceive their experiences with marijuana to be shaped by gender. While it has been established that patterns of use differ for girls and boys, there is relatively little qualitative research addressing marijuana smoking as gendered social practice. Drawing from contemporary social theories of gender our analysis explores the normative functions of gender discourse within adolescents' narratives, situating their descriptions of marijuana use within the context of the research interview and within the social contexts of drug use. The results highlight the challenges we encountered in asking about gender during one-to-one interviews, juxtaposed with examples from the narratives that illustrate how boys and girls use marijuana as a way of “doing” gender. To conclude, we suggest how our findings can inform the design of gender-specific health messaging on adolescent marijuana use.

Introduction

Recent cross-sectional analyses suggest that in comparison to girls and young women, adolescent boys and young men in Canada smoke marijuana more frequently (Boyce, 2004, Leatherdale et al., 2007), and are more likely to report problematic use (Butters, 2005). While patterns of use differ for girls and boys, there is limited research addressing marijuana smoking as a gendered social practice. Drawing on insights from contemporary social theory we illustrate how adolescents' narratives speak to the presence of dominant or hegemonic gender identities connected to substance use, and how their descriptions of smoking marijuana illustrate ways of doing masculinity and femininity specific to the social context of adolescence. Methodological issues arising from the process of asking adolescents about gender during qualitative interviews are also addressed.

As argued by Anderson (2001) applying a gender lens to drug research “asks us to study substance use more carefully and to recognize the impact of social and cultural constructions of masculinity and femininity on individual and group drug use” (p. 286). Guided by insights from feminist and other critical theories of gender, contemporary social research positions gender as socially produced practice, with attention to how gender is accomplished vis-à-vis norms of femininity and masculinity. Particularly important is Butler's poststructuralist (1990) theory of gender performativity. Butler contests the notion that gender identities emerge from a stable coherent subject or essence. Gender is instead constituted discursively through the repetition of stylized acts (Butler, 1990, p. 33). Gender, sex and sexuality are seen as sets of socially manipulated codes, internalized images that shift according to context rather than natural identities governed by (biological) bodies. Yet Butler is careful to distinguish gender performativity from a symbolic interactionist view of gender as voluntary “performance” (Holmes, 2007, pp. 59–60). In her later work (1993), Butler clarifies this notion of performativity to emphasize its non-voluntaristic character, positioning it as the “reiteration of norms which precede, constrain, and exceed the performers ‘will’ or choice” (1993: 234). In this sense gendered practices and identities are shaped, but not determined by, regulatory discourses that produce unconscious compliance with gendered norms and actions. Butler's analysis redirects attention away from analysis of the biological origins of gendered practices to the effects produced by the repetitive performance of gendered norms.

Another vital perspective is Connell's (1995) social constructionist account of gender, centred on the concept of hegemonic masculinity and the culturally exalted versions of masculine practice that serve to maintain patriarchy (Allen, 2007, p. 138). In men's health research Connell's work is often employed to suggest how dominant forms of heterosexual masculinity circumscribe men's engagement with health enhancing behaviours and help-seeking when ill (Courtenay, 2000, Emslie et al., 2006, Robertson, 2006). Connell's (1987) theory of gender includes the concept of emphasized femininity, which is a “kind of traditional femininity based on subordination to men and boys” (Pomerantz, Currie, & Kelly, 2004, p. 549). While hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity are the preferred or socially privileged presentations of gender (Connell, 1995) they are not compulsory, as subjects enact versions of gender practice in ways that may circumvent, revise and transgress social norms. As argued by Holmes (2007), the differences in these theoretical accounts of gender hinge upon their view of human agency, and whether they see gender as something “done” to people or something they “do”, albeit within the context of social constraints (p. 61).

Specific to childhood and adolescence, Paechter (2007) argues that gender is learned within localised communities of practice (e.g., families, schools) that shape how girls and boys understand what it means to be male or female and the appropriate ways to enact masculinity and femininity in these contexts. Of particular relevance to this study located within school settings, Paechter describes schools as particularly gendered institutions, wherein academic curricula, recreational activities and students' behaviours are routinely distinguished and segregated by gender. Additionally, in suggesting how adolescents accomplish gender through their marijuana use, this analysis also draws from Pascoe's (2007) account of gender and sexuality in an American high school. This Butler-informed ethnography illustrates how norms of adolescent masculinity and femininity maintain the heteronormativity of the school culture, regulating those adolescents that fail to demonstrate their investment in appropriate gender identities. Similar research employing critical theories of gender has explored schools as sites where dominant masculinities, femininities, and sexualities are deployed – and challenged – by adolescents (e.g., Currie et al., 2006, Kehily, 2001).

With the exception of a Canadian study employing focus groups (Warner, Weber, & Albanes, 1999), qualitative research on gender and adolescent marijuana use has not been substantial. Focusing on femininity as constraining use, the authors propose that traditional gender norms restrict girls' access to marijuana, as the drug is typically obtained through their social relationships with boys. Both girls and boys held the view that marijuana affords “females access into the world of male sociability” (Warner et al., 1999, p. 35), and accordingly girls' use is a strategy to impress boys, whereas boys “get high” for the sake of the experience. Speaking to the imperative of emphasized femininity, Warner et al. found that adolescents believe frequent marijuana smoking diminishes girls' attractiveness (i.e., seen as not “pretty”). Yet overall, girls viewed themselves as “morally superior” to boys because they were cautious about where and how much they smoked, while boys believed that being male allowed them greater control when high and the ability to smoke more marijuana than girls.

Qualitative research on tobacco use has described the gendered roles and functions of smoking for adolescents, connecting smoking to “the active construction of their gendered adult identities” (Amos & Bostock, 2007, p. 771). Although smoking has become increasingly stigmatized or “denormalized”, for many adolescents it remains associated with so-called masculine traits such as being “tough” and a “risk-taker” (Nichter et al., 2006). Accordingly, boys identify gendered styles of tobacco use and consciously avoid ways of smoking that mark them as “sissy” (Stjerna, Lauritzen, & Tillgren, 2004). Cigarettes can serve as a fashionable and glamorous prop in girls' displays of femininity (Gilbert, 2007a), but their tobacco use is constrained by cultural discourse that positions female smoking as unattractive and unfeminine (Nichter et al., 2006). Other work has suggested that girls may shun styles of smoking seen as “not girly” or “butchy” (Gilbert, 2007b), while some use tobacco to cultivate a “hard” image that assists them in competing with boys (Denscombe, 2001).

Empirical studies of adolescent substance use have examined hegemonic masculinities and femininities in connection with the use of alcohol and illicit drugs. Historically, cultural discourse on alcohol use has positioned drinking as the natural domain of boys and men and as hypermasculine practice contradictory to women's “feminine virtues” (Day, Gough, & McFadden, 2004). As such, research on young women's drinking has typically emphasized alcohol use as a means to enact aggressive or “tough” femininities as a response to the hegemonic masculinity of drinking cultures (Leyshon, 2008, p. 270). Yet recent research on young men's drinking suggests a move beyond binary approaches to gender, focusing on the diversity of young men's experiences with alcohol and development of plural masculinities associated with different drinking styles (Mullen, Watson, Swift, & Black, 2007, p. 163). In terms of illicit substances, while early research highlighted the masculine “cool” associated with boys' involvement with drugs and other “risky” activities (Collison, 1996), since the mid-nineties other ethnographic work has focused on young women's participation in drug cultures and its gendered implications (e.g., Henderson, 1996, Hutton, 2004). Prominent among these perspectives was Measham's (2002) proposal that drug use be conceived of as practice “not just affected by gender or filtered through some of its influences” (p. 350), but constitutive of gender as “people construct their gender identity, their masculinities and femininities in both traditional and nontraditional ways, through their experiences of drugs” (p. 351). Drawing from Messerschmidt's (1997) concept of “doing crime” this view of doing gender through drugs locates masculinity and femininity as structured action, generated within the specific social contexts (Measham, 2002).

Drawing insight from these past empirical accounts, we position gender as purposeful action, and place adolescents' descriptions of marijuana use within the situational context of the research and the social context of adolescence. In an attempt to move beyond descriptive qualitative health research where gender analysis proceeds from a binary comparison of “what boys/girls said about x and y”, this paper proposes an analytical approach for thinking critically about presentations of gender generated by research interaction, in addition to exploring how adolescents accomplish femininity and masculinity through descriptions of their marijuana use.