Over the course of the class, we have discussed the way in which subculture is born out of a need to rebel against dominant culture. It often acts as a means of circumventing the powers that be and their imposed restrictions and regulations, or in some cases merely creating spaces and identities because the ones that do exist currently don’t accommodate those that don’t already fit the status quo. In general, we have talked about these subcultural forms favorably. Obviously, we have not looked at them through rose-colored glasses; we strived to complicate, critique, and analyze them in ways that often led us to question the success and validity of some subcultural products. However, in general, we almost always valued the necessity of culture with a lowercase c. Unless I’m mistaken, we never saw a consequence of subculture that made us feel any differently about it’s sine qua non. That is, until we learned about the Sexy Boys.

There are so many layers to the sexy boys phenomenon that it’s quite difficult to unpack. We began to do so in class discussions, but I think there is so much more to be explored. On the aspect of gender alone, there are many different components. Learning about the joyriders and drifters in Saudi Arabia immediately after having learned about the Women2Drive movement in Saudi is fascinating in and of itself. Seeing the parallels and contrasts between the way two genders subvert the dominant culture of the same location through the use of cars, for obviously very different reasons, is extremely interesting. When you look at it more closely, and the article touches on this quite a bit, the aspect of masculinity (and perhaps femininity as well) is a large component of this disparity. Recently, there have been discussions and debates surrounding a trending term: “toxic masculinity”. If one were to look past the debate around whether or not this is a valid concept or not, one could easily see that it applies perfectly to the Saudi joyriders. When one looks up the definition of toxic masculinity, this is the definition they will find (although the definition does vary according to different sources): “Toxic masculinity is one of the ways in which Patriarchy is harmful to men. It refers to the socially-constructed attitudes that describe the masculine gender role as violent, unemotional, sexually aggressive, and so forth.” While there are ways in which the drifters subvert even this definition, the core of it is apt. The patriarchal system of Saudi Arabia affects not only women, but men as well. And even worse, it has led to the creation of a subculture that is directly linked to molestation and sexual violence against young boys. It is this example that challenges the essentialist nature of subculture.

However, one should also be aware that it is perhaps far more productive to criticize the cause of the (in this case, harmful) subcultural creature as opposed to the subcultural product itself. If it were not for patriarchal and in many ways, oppressive, nature of the patriarchal system of Saudi Arabia, perhaps this subculture of pedophilia would not exist, at least not to this extent. And it is also important to not vilify all forms and products of subculture, which often are extremely productive and important, just because of a few examples of subculture gone wrong. However, it is important to recognize that not all of it is positive either.