As an opinionated and often challenging class of year 10 boys, they demonstrated a strong sense of their identity as a group of "bright boys". One of their English teachers described the class as "boisterous, but very motivated--they love discussing texts", but she also recognised their tendency to "descend into testosterone fuelled competitiveness". I became interested in the ways these boys read and responded to literature and in particular how their strong view of themselves as "bright boys" influenced their reading of gender in literature. I examine two lessons with this year 10 class in which they discussed representations of gender in two literary texts. I was interested in the ways they constructed and asserted their masculine identities through class discussions about gender in literature and I found myself wondering: how do these boys read gender, and why do they read gender in these ways?