‘Charmer boys’ and ‘cream girls’: children’s construction of the (hetero)sexual self through football and implications for Life Orientation sexuality education

Mayeza, Emmanuel

Title: ‘Charmer boys’ and ‘cream girls’: children’s construction of the (hetero)sexual self through football and implications for Life Orientation sexuality education
Creator: Mayeza, Emmanuel
Date: 2015
Type: text
Type: article
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143760
Identifier: vital:38280
Identifier: https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
Description: Due to the adult-centric ‘common-sense’ view of primary school children as non-sexual, research on schooling, gender and sexuality in South Africa rarely addresses primary schools. In contrast, this paper explores how nine-to-ten year-old children in a working-class, township primary school near Durban (hetero)sexualise their gendered identities through football. By illuminating the different ways in which the young children in the study construct themselves as both gendered and sexual beings in their everyday playground and sometimes ‘underground’ cultures at the school, the paper calls into question the ‘common-sense’ discourse of childhood which (re)produces primary schools as sexuallyfree contexts. Findings raise pertinent implications that call for the (re)conceptualisation of children; from being seen simply through the discourse of sexual innocence to being conceptualised as people who are capable of expressing sexual agency. This, in turn, calls for the development of new ways of working with the young children in Life Orientation sexuality and HIV/AIDS education which are empathetic and sympathetic to the children’s own constructions of themselves as both gendered and sexual beings.
Format: pdf
Language: English
Relation: International Society of Critical Health Psychology (ISCHP), Mayeza, E., 2015. ‘Charmer boys’ and ‘cream girls’: Children’s construction of the (hetero)sexual self through football and implications for Life Orientation sexuality education. International Society of Critical Health Psychology (ISCHP). 9th Biennial Conference, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa, International Society of Critical Health Psychology (ISCHP) volume 2015 number 0 2015
Rights: Publisher
Rights: Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Rhodes University Proatia Statement (https://www.ru.ac.za//governance/proatia/)

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