Turn the Page, Hear Her Shout: Dissident Voices in the Journals of Female Secondary School Students and the Silence of their Male Counterparts

Abstract

This research investigates how a minority of female secondary school students in a Writing 12 class resisted internalization of gender stories by rewriting and subverting those same stories through the process of journaling. Journal material collected from five female students was analyzed using qualitative narrative analysis of quotes that demonstrate rewritten gender stories. The research examines how female students positioned the self as the storyteller, and by doing so, adopted an active role in reconstructing their narrative identities to include traits of strength and resilience. Journal material collected from three male students—the only consenting male students—revealed an absence of these students directly addressing the concept of gender through writing. The research suggests that for these male students, simply engaging in the project of journaling was a form of resistance against gender stories idealizing an noncompliant, less emotionally active male student and writer.