Through their eyes

Abstract

Hockey culture has been demonstrated to be a site of racism, homophobia, misogyny and other forms of domination which keep men’s ice hockey stuck with hypermasculine narratives as young hockey boys chase a place within this culture. This study, conducted with an Elite U18 male ice hockey team in Western Canada, used photovoice as a means to enquire into young male athlete experiences in schools and the tension between being celebrated as a hockey boy and the domination of hypermasculinity in their everyday lives. Photovoice was used to open up conversations with images participants took during their days at a specialized sport academy regarding their feelings of disengagement in school. The findings show the weight of the hypermasculine narratives on hockey boys including toughness, homophobia, and classism as well as the implications on their mental health and risk of violent acts from being in an isolated and exclusive white patriarchal community. Young male athletes, desiring to continue to play elite hockey, unknowingly find themselves within a masculine moral paradox by becoming both constrained by and consenting to the hypermasculine narratives, further ensconcing hypermasculinity within hockey culture. The article brings together Connell’s hegemonic masculinity, Eisner’s three curricula, and Bourdieu’s theory of cultural reproduction as a means to generate awareness of the ways in which the entrenchment of masculine (hegemony) domination is deeply engrained in the fields of education, hockey culture, and the home.