IX
Learning and Imposition of Discourses
It need hardly be emphasized that discourses have neither agency nor the capacity to reproduce themselves. While it is true that they are vigorously promoted by the groups that derive greatest benefit from their existence, they also depend upon the active collusion of society members in general, who reinforce and sustain them through any number of discursive practices. For example, in the case of patriarchal gender discourses, they are reproduced through practices as diverse as the tendency to elect far more men to Congress than women (equally true for Costa Rica and the United States), or parents' tacit encouragement of aggressive behaviour among their male children.
However, even if the benefits associated with a given discourse are not spread evenly across all segments of society, their expanse is usually wide enough to ensure that most people prefer to sustain the status quo rather than risk engaging in practices that might undermine it. Still, the complexity of the social fabric is such that no discourse is able to command absolute hegemony, providing individuals with an opportunity to disregard, reject or reinterpret specific elements without calling into question the entire discursive edifice.
As for questions related to sexuality in particular, young people assimilate dominant mores and values through a feedback mechanism in which a dualistic world-view produces polarized sexualities which serve in turn to promote and reinforce the internalization of dualistic sexual discourses. In this way, young people's capacity to operate within a compartmentalized sexual culture turns crucially upon their successful adoption of an internal control system that arranges, controls and censures contradictory information.
In Foucault's estimation, power is wielded rather than possessed, necessitating forms of analysis that are focused less on institutions themselves, and more on the means by which the latter are capable of producing 'docile bodies' that are amenable to discipline and control (Foucault 1977; 1978). Sexual discourses are one of the key fields of knowledge through which this is accomplished, and thus it is our purpose in this chapter to explore how they become 'anchored' in young people's minds.
Of course, in embarking upon this project, we do not wish to suggest that institutions such as the Church, state or mass media are somehow unimportant. Indeed, given the resources they command, they are anything but irrelevant in the dissemination of messages about sexuality. For example, churches play a key role in the lives of community members, especially in Villa del Mar, where they distribute food and clothing to the poorest families and organize social, cultural and educational activities for young people. In similar fashion, universities are able to shape individuals' views and outlook by virtue of their monopoly over the distribution of diplomas and degrees. For those who wish to become accredited as 'professionals' in their field, they must prove themselves willing to operate within the bounds of the dominant paradigm; otherwise they risk mediocre grades at best, and expulsion at worst.
Needless to say, this latter point is crucial, revealing as it does the multi-faceted nature of disciplinary power. While one might argue that coercive force is the ultimate sanction imposed upon those who fail to conform, other methods are no less effective. These include the threat of job loss for workers who refuse to become complicit in their supervisor's sexism, or girls' fear that they will be thrown out of their home should their parents discover that they are sexually active.
However, it should be noted that, in most cases, these threats need never be carried out, since individuals learn from an early age to accept the tenets of dominant discourses and adapt their behaviour to them. As one might imagine, the preeminent site for the imposition of such discourses is the home, where mother, father, siblings and the extended family all have a part to play in the inculcation of appropriate values and norms.
Thus, with respect to religion in particular, it is generally the mother or grandmother who teaches the child basic principles and requires him or her to attend mass, catechism classes and other church-sponsored activities. This was confirmed in the group and interview sessions, where young people such as Maria and Aaron indicated that they went to church principally on account of parental pressure. While a number of participants went on to describe their fear of being denied intimacy by family members should they fail to live up the latter's expectations, by the same token it is clear that many also used religious devotion as a means of building power alliances with particular relatives, or of attacking those who did not live up to community expectations in matters of faith. How so? To cite but one example, Isidro reported to us that he has continued to attend mass regularly in the two years since his mother left his abusive father for another man, despite the fact that she no longer goes to church regularly herself. In short, he saw this as a way of publicizing his disapproval of his mother's 'immoral' conduct.
Along somewhat similar lines, several female participants referred to the distinction made between 'good' and 'bad' girls, with the former enjoying a measure of moral superiority over the latter. Needless to say, public demonstration of one's faith plays an important role in this regard, with sexual promiscuity closely associated with an irreligious outlook. Thus, while Anna believes that her personal devotion places her in the camp of those who enjoy an unsullied reputation, she is well aware that there is another group of 'misguided and headstrong' girls in her community who have failed to develop a fear of God.
As for gender-centred discourses, the observations of project ethnographers show quite clearly that both mothers and fathers are involved in the teaching process. On the one hand, male siblings are forced to compete for their father's approval by acting in a sufficiently masculine fashion, for example by being successful in sports or having many girlfriends. On the other, mothers are also complicit in the reproduction of a patriarchal gender order, to the extent that they teach their daughters to be submissive while expecting their sons to be domineering and aggressive. While many women engage in such practices simply because they have themselves come to accept patriarchal relations of power as 'normal', others do so in order to protect their daughters from what they perceive to be the dangers inherent in a man's world.
Although there are a number of ways in which young people internalize hegemonic discourses, including most notably autos da fé, dissemination of essentialist or dualist precepts, and repetition, the latter is by far the most common. For example, in the Roman Catholic Church, the same interdictions are touched upon by the priest in almost every mass, with both Hilda and Santiago commenting upon the repetitive nature of the sermons and how bored they feel each time they go to church. In similar fashion, Maria, who goes to a denominational school run by nuns, indicated that she is exposed to religious exhortations and prayers on a more or less constant basis.
As one might imagine, repetition is also important in ensuring that individuals behave in a manner that is 'appropriate' to their gender. Thus, while girls are continuously reminded of the dangers of going out alone or after dark, boys are similarly pestered if they do not wish to go out, since masculinity demands that they be independent, self-reliant and street-wise.
Moreover, if by some chance parents are not teaching their offspring appropriate gender behaviour, other institutions, among them the mass media, advertisers, the educational system and the Church are only too willing to make up for this deficit by offering children and adolescents constant reinforcement as to what is and is not acceptable.
Autos da fé, essentialist thinking and manichaeism
Meanwhile, autos da fé are another important means through which young people are taught not to challenge or question the status quo. How so? In short, if individuals are to become good Christians, they must show themselves able and willing to rein in their common sense and accept the tenets of the Church on the basis of faith alone. Moreover, once they have done so in matters of religion, it becomes increasingly easy for them to suspend their critical faculties in other areas as well, such as human relationships and biology.
Of course, the question of essentialism is highly relevant in this regard, since it is yet another area in which a divine plan or mandate is invoked to explain the Church’s position on any number of issues, from women’s supposed weakness in the face of temptation to the requirement that priests abstain from all sexual activity. Again, once individuals have learned to accept precepts such as these without question, they are far more likely to assimilate other forms of essentialist thinking as well, for example in matters of gender role differentiation or sexual orientation. Significantly, this understanding was confirmed in our in-depth interviews with young people, with the latter proving entirely unwilling to challenge essentialist perspectives on a wide range of issues, including those cited above.
Along similar lines, the Church is also involved in fostering a manichaeist world-view among its followers. While this is not to suggest that it is alone in doing so -after all, the modern age is to a large extent founded upon dualistic thinking -its influence is particularly pervasive. At the pulpit and in the Bible, human beings are divided into any number of categories: good and evil, men and women, believers and infidels, saved and sinners. As one might imagine, this emphasis upon dichotomies serves to encourage fragmentation of the personality at an individual level, while lending credibility to the binary oppositions inherent within other hegemonic discourses.
Without wishing to downplay the importance of the assimilation techniques described above, this does not alter the fact that there is a near-constant need for recruitment campaigns designed to attract new followers. In both of the communities under study, project ethnographers identified several individuals who devote themselves, on a more or less full-time basis, to the task of convincing others of the verity and power of dominant discourses.
Not surprisingly, Church officials stand out as particularly prominent in this regard, with priests, parishioners and young people themselves called upon to convince others of the importance of attending mass or participating in Church-sponsored activities. However, as active as the Roman Catholic hierarchy may be in attempting to disseminate its message among the Costa Rican population, its efforts pale alongside those of fundamentalist Protestant Churches, which enjoy a well-deserved reputation for mounting aggressive proselytizing campaigns. Indeed, they have even gone so far as to democratize the recruitment process, calling upon all members of the congregation to go door-to-door in a concerted effort to win over new converts.
While a grass-roots approach is also used in the popularization of other discourses, most notably those associated with machismo and a patriarchal gender order, such tactics are a far cry from the professionalism that characterizes most state-run reproductive health campaigns. Typically, these revolve around the mobilization of physicians, nurses, social workers and volunteers in carefully-orchestrated drives to promote and disseminate approved messages on a range of health topics.
Social instruments of control: punishment
Reference has already been made to the coercive tools available to upholders of the status quo should the reinforcement techniques described above fail to prevent 'inappropriate' behaviour by young people. In the paragraphs that follow, we will touch upon some of the most common forms of punishment deployed against transgressors, including censorship, reclusion, categorization, exile, violence and abandonment.
Censorship
As one might imagine, the capacity to suppress or silence alternative perspectives is a powerful weapon in the armoury of dominant social forces, and the latter do not shrink from using it. For example, frank discussion of topics related to sex and sexuality is strongly discouraged in most homes and schools, thereby giving the Church broad scope to communicate its own perspective to young people without fear that they will be contaminated by 'illegitimate' sources of information.
Discouragement takes several forms. With respect to female sexuality in particular, our interviews with young women pointed to the existence of what might be called a conspiracy of silence, in which mothers, aunts and grandmothers (let alone male relatives) simply refused to discuss any issue related to this topic. Thus, not only did most of the participants receive absolutely no emotional support when they began to menstruate, but many felt so uncomfortable with this development that they postponed telling their mothers for as long as possible.
In this way, one might argue that families' reticence to discuss menstruation is indicative of their fear of adolescent female sexuality. How so? Quite simply, mothers (and other relatives) associate their daughters' period with the risk of pregnancy, and hence feel that any discussion of it will only increase the likelihood that they will become sexually active. Interestingly, young men face no such taboo in discussing their own sexuality. Though this is certainly not to suggest that families are more likely to provide their sons with sex education than their daughters, it is generally assumed that boys will learn all they need to know on the street, thereby obviating the need for secrecy.
Of course, it should be emphasized that sex is not the only area in which the effects of censorship manifest themselves. Priests and others in the Church hierarchy (both Catholic and Protestant) routinely deploy warnings concerning the dangers inherent in entertaining beliefs that run contrary to Christian morality or dogma. Moreover, should these threats prove insufficient, Costa Rican law includes anti-blasphemy provisions whereby individuals who criticize the personage of Christ could find themselves facing a lengthy prison sentence. Given this state of affairs, it is not particularly surprising that research participants had for the most part come to accept religious censorship as normal, with individuals like Hilda admitting to feelings of guilt whenever she disparages the Church for its misogyny.
Significantly, censorship is also invoked in defence of Costa Rica's dominant reproductive health discourses, with physicians taking it upon themselves to ensure that interventions in this area do not pursue 'inappropriate' ends. For example, when the medical establishment first awoke to the danger posed by the AIDS epidemic, by no means did it wish to embark upon a prevention campaign that could be perceived as being tolerant of homosexuality. Thus, when a local NGO took it upon itself to fill this gap by working directly with the gay community around issues of awareness and prevention, the Ministry of Health ordered it to cease and desist, on the grounds that it was engaged in activities that fell outside of its jurisdiction.
What does all of this mean for young people themselves? According to Jorge, censorship has prevented him from 'imagining alternative ways of doing things.' That is to say, the suppression of alternative perspectives and approaches leaves young people with the sense that there is only one answer to any given problem, and that those who fall outside of the mainstream are not only wrong-headed, but evil.
Seclusion
As project ethnographers have made clear, seclusion is a strategy employed in both Villa del Mar and Villa del Sol to control or police young people's behaviour. Needless to say, its use is particularly widespread among adolescent girls, whose movements outside of the home are carefully circumscribed so as to prevent them from falling prey either to boys' advances or to their own sexual urges.
Moreover, it is also used to punish young people who fail to abide by the tenets of dominant discourses. Thus, 'unruly' children are often sent to denominational schools as a way of enforcing strict standards of behaviour upon them, since the latter are known for their disciplinarian approach and ability to restrict students' access to the outside world. Among those who do not wish or cannot afford to send their children away to a religious school, other forms of seclusion are used, including physical confinement or relocation to the home of another family member elsewhere in the country. As one might imagine, the most common reasons why young people are subjected to these forms of punishment are 'promiscuity' (in the case of young women), and drug or alcohol consumption (for young men).
Exile
However, in those instances where seclusion fails to have its desired effect, non-conformist youth are faced with a battery of increasingly severe forms of punishment. Exile is one such measure, and is deployed as a means of insulating the community from discursive challenges or contradictions.
Among those who are targeted in this way, many are young men or women who have chosen to adopt an openly homosexual lifestyle. In short, they are forced to leave their home town either to save their family from embarassment, or as a way of avoiding the prejudice and violence of other community members. Other candidates for exile include women who become involved in the sex trade, or young people of both sexes who refuse to support the terms of the dominant gender order.
Categorization
Meanwhile, should 'undesirables' of the sort described above elect to stay in their home community against the wishes of their fellow citizens, they run the risk of categorization. In many ways a form of internal exile, this punishment is invoked when individuals are designated as deviants, prompting other community members to ostracize and ignore them, lest they wish to be considered deviant themselves. As one might imagine, the most common labels deployed in this regard include prostitute, lesbian, gay, drug addict, atheist and criminal.
Physical and mental violence
Still, despite the undoubted pain and suffering inflicted upon young people by the instruments of control discussed in preceding paragraphs, physical and psychological violence remains the ultimate sanction to be used against those who cannot or will not conform. As our in-depth interviews with young people made clear, beatings are often administered to boys who engage in 'feminine' pastimes (such as playing with dolls), just as girls who dare to walk the streets by themselves are in danger of being sexually assaulted or raped. Moreover, even in cases where there is no physical violence, 'deviant' youth, such as effeminate men or masculine women, are forced to contend with a near constant stream of taunts and threats, engendering a climate of fear which is highly traumatizing in its own right.
Individual instruments of control: the internal watchdog
Although reference has already been made to the role of the internal watchdog in creating the conditions necessary for individuals to police themselves, thereby ensuring conformity with the principles of dominant discourses, in this section we cast further upon the workings of this 'watchdog' by means of two examples drawn from the in-depth interviews.
In the first instance, we consider the case of Maikol, who was 14 years of age when he participated in this study. During the course of our interview with him, he admitted that he used to enjoy playing with dolls and braiding his girl-friends' hair. He would also experiment with make up, try on earrings and wear his female siblings' clothes, until one day his mother surprised him in the midst of putting on a dress. Although he was punished for doing so, his enjoyment of 'feminine' pastimes was such that it was not long before he was caught once again, prompting his parents to becoming increasingly forceful in their punishments, beating him and locking him in his room for hours on end.
At the same time, family members also attempted to influence his behaviour through more subtle means. For example, his grandmother would often take him on long walks as a way of making him 'forget' his inappropriate urges, while his father and mother would constantly tell him that he was 'no good', that he would never be with a woman, that he would be ostracized and called a 'faggot'. Moreover, as Maikol himself made clear, these lessons eventually began to have an effect upon him:
My mother would hit me and tell me I shouldn't dress like a girl and that I was getting the wrong ideas in my head, and finally I stopped because they scolded me and gave me advice so that I wouldn't forget.
That these 'lessons' were successful in making Maikol 'forget' his former identity were only too clear to us when we met with him for an interview. Not only did he express gratitude to his parents for discouraging his 'bad habits', but he had adopted the manner and opinions of a typical Costa Rican male, arguing that women were the weaker sex and that they should behave in a suitably feminine fashion.
Meanwhile, Leidy is Maikol's mirror image. As a child, she loved to play football with boys, and would often steal away after dinner to hang out with them in the town square. However, she soon learned that this was not acceptable behaviour. Whenever she asked to go out and play, her mother would tell her to stay away from boys, since they were rough and would likely beat her up. In similar fashion, her aunt would turn away any boy who came to the door asking for her, saying that 'Leidy is a girl, she's not allowed to play on the street.'
Again, with time, these reinforcement techniques began to have an effect, prompting Leidy to adapt her behaviour in the face of societal expectations, and causing her to express thanks for the punishment she received as a child: 'my mother was right when she told me that men should stick with men and women with women. That's the way it should be.'
Having highlighted the degree to which parental reinforcement is capable of altering young people's behaviour patterns, we will now explore in detail the specific mechanisms used to foster self-discipline and conformity.
Observation
As is evident from the discussion above, children are subjected to constant surveillance, their every action scrutinized by any number of authority figures, including parents, grand-parents, teachers, physicians, and priests. Of course, constant scrutiny on the part of others prompts young people to be mindful of their own behaviour as well, and any action or characteristic that arouses the interest of observers immediately draws the attention of the child who is being watched.
Thus, children quickly learn that adults are extremely interested in gender-relevant behaviour, and all the more so if the latter does not correspond with dominant expectations and stereotypes. For example, when Adriana was a young child, she used to play with toy cars. However, she indicated that she quickly stopped once she realized that her mother was reacting 'oddly' whenever she started to play with them. Meanwhile, other participants reported having had analogous experiences, with Kenneth describing the anger directed towards him by his mother when she discovered him one day playing 'house' with a girl. As for Alberto, he was similarly upbraided when one of his parents entered his room to find him pretending to be a nurse. As he put it, 'my mother was so mad she hurled herself at me, telling me to take those clothes off, they look awful.' As punishment, he was sent to the fields and ordered to cut the grass. Finally, Guillerno indicated that although his mother never told him explicitly that he should refrain from playing 'house', she would always endeavour to make sure that he adopted the role of a male character, such as the 'father' or 'husband'.
Needless to say, underlying adults' concern that children behave in a manner 'appropriate' to their gender is their fixation upon the latter's genital anatomy, prompting children to pay attention to bodily attributes (ie. vagina, penis) that would otherwise arouse little or no interest. For example, Marianela admitted that she was completely ignorant of physical differences between the sexes until they were explained to her in the first grade. In her words, 'before that, I thought all children were the same.'
Moreover, as sexual organs grow and become more mature, adults place increased importance upon the physical separation of boys and girls, with interaction between the sexes becoming ever more carefully circumscribed. For example, Juan remembers being bathed by his mother until he was roughly four years old, at which time she abruptly stopped, without telling him why. Similarly, both Santiago and Carlos indicated that they still recall the day when their parents told them that they must leave the washroom while their sisters were bathing.
Of course, in many ways these developments are reflective of broader changes in the adult-child relationship as the latter's sexual identity becomes more pronounced. How so? Quite simply, as parents' are made aware of the fact that their children are sexual beings (eg. because of penis or breast growth), certain forms of interaction are rendered taboo and off-limits. Thus, among young males in particular, overt signs of affection by fathers and other male relatives become increasingly rare, with research participants such as Jonathan and Guillerno reporting that, while their fathers used to hug and kiss them, they now never do so..
Finally, the emphasis placed by adults upon genital organs also serves to encourage young people to discuss and compare them among themselves, often in ways that foster shame and self-consciousness. For instance, Carlos described occasions when he would get together with friends and they would each take off their trousers in order to determine who had the largest penis. This caused Carlos no end of embarassment, since his penis was small and the other boys would make fun of it. As for young women, the principal object of comparison are the breasts, with Hilda in particular indicating that she has always felt ashamed of them, both on account of the fact that she started to develop at an early age, and because boys would often 'make comments and joke about the size of them.'
As one might imagine, this latter point is significant, highlighting as it does the fact that surveillance does not cease when children leave their home. Indeed, if anything, it becomes more intense as they grow older, with teachers, priests and other community members taking it upon themselves to observe the behaviour of the children under their care, and intervene should there be any evidence of 'abnormality'.
David's experience is typical in this regard. Somewhat effeminate in appearance and manner, his aunt approached his mother one day when he was still quite young, in order to tell her that she found his conduct 'odd' and that she should really 'do something' about it. Others followed in his aunt's footsteps, warning his parents of the dangers of such behaviour and advising him on how he might go about changing it. Of course, given this background, one is hardly surprised when David remarks (as he did during the course of our interview with him): 'I feel like I'm weird and different, like something that's sick.'
Indeed, if adults' scrutiny has any effect at all, it ensures that children exercise self-surveillance in order to curb any affectation or behaviour that might arouse the censure of those around them, whether authority figures or members of their own peer group. In this way, the need for coercive force diminishes until it becomes almost superfluous. Not only are individuals socialized to think carefully about the consequences to any action they might undertake, but they are also trained to keep a watchful eye on their friends and colleagues, and remind them if they step out of line. For example, several interview participants reported feeling angry whenever their friends complain about having to go to church, or when they talk among themselves during the service.
Confession
Reference has already been made to the central role played by confession within Christianity. Quite simply, it offers believers a chance to cleanse themselves of the effects of evil thoughts and actions, but only if they are willing to reveal their sins, admit their guilt and ask for forgiveness.
Regardless of the degree to which such a mechanism is (or is not) useful in helping one cope with personal difficulties or traumatic experiences, there can be little doubt that it facilitates surveillance and control of the population. How so? On the one hand, it encourages individuals to categorize their thoughts and feelings, and hide or repress those that are deemed 'improper' whenever they are subject to the gaze of parents, priests or other authority figures.
On the other hand, by 'naturalizing' the confessor-penitent relationship, and by associating it with personal development and catharsis, the stage is set for its progressive encroachment upon other walks of life, until such time that individuals' every thought and action are laid bare to any number of self-declared experts, whether psychologists, social workers, lawyers or marriage counsellors.
Tools and resources of the internal watchdog
Thus, while one might point to several factors that are involved in fostering the internal watchdog within each individual, once in place the latter is able to draw upon a wide range of mechanisms to ensure compliance with the tenets of hegemonic discourses.
Few are as significant in this regard as one's memory. That is to say, children quickly learn that, if they are to escape the censure of their parents and community, they must forget or repress 'inappropriate' feelings and desir