Boys Being Boys: Eco-Double Consciousness, Splash Violence, and Environmental Education

This article shares three vignettes, drawn from the life experience of its authors and five years of research at two schools, to illustrate the "choice" many males are forced to make between normalized "masculine" indifference and a stigmatized caring relationship with the natural world. We suggest this dissociation results, for some, in a kind of eco-double consciousness. The first vignette draws on memories from a male author encountering typical threats of violence for continuing to "proclaim" care for forested places. The second describes a cis male child who at the age of eight dubs himself "eco-boy," but by 10, is resigned to hiding his ethic of care in order to fit in with other boys. The last vignette examines an instance between two six-year-old cis boys, a female researcher, and several ants. We suggest shirking from the significance of these commonplace experiences with the adage "boys will be boys" is an excusatory move and that educators ought to be aware and address gendered expressions of power, violence, and care at a young age when the necessity for an eco-double consciousness first emerges. The conclusion emphasizes the need for educators to trouble masculine norms by finding ways to respond to the normalization of ecological violence, to keep open the possibility of developing eco-care in young males, and to trouble the notion of "boys being boys."