A discourse of disconnect : young people from the Eastern Cape talk about the failure of adult communications to provide habitable sexual subject positions
- Jearey-Graham, Nicola, Macleod, Catriona I
- Authors: Jearey-Graham, Nicola , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6308 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1018864 , http://0-hdl.handle.net.wam.seals.ac.za/10520/EJC171669
- Description: Face-to-face adult communication with young people about sexuality is, for the most part, assigned to two main groups of people: educators tasked with teaching schoolbased sexuality education that is provided as part of the compulsory Life Orientation (LO) learning area, and parents. In this paper, we report on a study conducted with Further Education and Training College students in an Eastern Cape town. Using a discursive psychology lens, we analysed data from, first, a written question on what participants remember being taught about sexuality in LO classes and, second, focus group discussions held with mixed and same-sex groups. Discussions were structured around the sexualities of high school learners and the LO sexuality education that participants received at high school. We highlight participants’ common deployment of a ‘discourse of disconnect’ in their talk. In this discourse, the messages of ‘risk’ and ‘responsibility’ contained in adult face-to-face communications, by both parents and LO teachers, are depicted as being delivered through inadequate or nonrelational styles of communication, and as largely irrelevant to participants’ lives. Neither of these sources of communication was seen as understanding the realities of youth sexualities or as creating habitable or performable sexual subject positions. The dominance of this ‘discourse of disconnect’ has implications for how sexuality education and parent communication interventions are conducted.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Jearey-Graham, Nicola , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6308 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1018864 , http://0-hdl.handle.net.wam.seals.ac.za/10520/EJC171669
- Description: Face-to-face adult communication with young people about sexuality is, for the most part, assigned to two main groups of people: educators tasked with teaching schoolbased sexuality education that is provided as part of the compulsory Life Orientation (LO) learning area, and parents. In this paper, we report on a study conducted with Further Education and Training College students in an Eastern Cape town. Using a discursive psychology lens, we analysed data from, first, a written question on what participants remember being taught about sexuality in LO classes and, second, focus group discussions held with mixed and same-sex groups. Discussions were structured around the sexualities of high school learners and the LO sexuality education that participants received at high school. We highlight participants’ common deployment of a ‘discourse of disconnect’ in their talk. In this discourse, the messages of ‘risk’ and ‘responsibility’ contained in adult face-to-face communications, by both parents and LO teachers, are depicted as being delivered through inadequate or nonrelational styles of communication, and as largely irrelevant to participants’ lives. Neither of these sources of communication was seen as understanding the realities of youth sexualities or as creating habitable or performable sexual subject positions. The dominance of this ‘discourse of disconnect’ has implications for how sexuality education and parent communication interventions are conducted.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Deconstructing developmental psychology twenty years on : reflections, implications and empirical work
- Callaghan, Jane, Andenæs, Agnes, Macleod, Catriona I
- Authors: Callaghan, Jane , Andenæs, Agnes , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6315 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1020934 , http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0959353515583702
- Description: Editorial
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Callaghan, Jane , Andenæs, Agnes , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6315 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1020934 , http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0959353515583702
- Description: Editorial
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Life orientation sexuality education in South Africa: gendered norms, justice and transformation
- Shefer, Tamara, Macleod, Catriona I
- Authors: Shefer, Tamara , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6310 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1018868
- Description: [From introduction] Research on sexual practices among young South Africans has proliferated in light of the national imperatives to challenge the spread of HIV/AIDS, gender-based violence and unwanted early pregnancies. It has been widely acknowledged that, in order to respond to these social problems, we need to understand the enmeshment of gender, class, age and other forms of social inequality, and how these are played out in ‘normal’ heterosexual relationships. Life Orientation (LO) sexuality education programmes have been viewed as key locations for incorporating education to challenge negative assumptions in respect of HIV/AIDS, gender-based violence and unwanted pregnancy and to promote safer, equitable and non-violent sexual practices. There is a paucity of work that interrogates the LO sexuality education programme in terms of gender norms, gender justice and gender transformation. In the handful of studies conducted on school-based sexuality education in South Africa, researchers have foregrounded a number of challenges, including the dominance of a guiding metaphor of danger and disease in the sexuality education component of LO manuals (Macleod, 2009); educators using a transmission mode of teaching to the exclusion of participation and experiential modes of learning (Rooth, 2005); educators understanding sexuality education as chiefly addressing the provision of information concerning, and prevention of, HIV/AIDS (Francis, 2011); teachers’ preference for abstinence-only education taught by means of a series of moral injunctions (Francis, 2011); and the avoidance of discussions of sexual diversity, and the endorsement of compulsory heterosexuality when same-sex relationships are mentioned (Francis, 2012). Recent research has also highlighted the variation in how teachers approach sexuality education. Francis and DePalma (2014) indicate that, while teachers may promote abstinence as the only appropriate choice for young people, they also recognise the value of teaching relationships and safe sex (aspects associated with comprehensive sexuality education). In their study, Helleve et al. (2009) report that Grades 8 and 9 LO teachers felt confident in teaching HIV and sexuality. This special issue of Perspectives in Education builds on this research by drawing together several papers that examine how LO or Life Skills sexuality programmes challenge and/or reproduce normative constructions of gender and gendered power relations. All the papers use qualitative research to locate these programmes within the complex contexts of their enactment, drawing attention to the multiple possibilities and limitations of such programmes. In the next section, we summarise the key problematics addressed in each of the papers. What curiosities drove the studies conducted by these researchers interested in gender dynamics in schools and LO or Life Skills sexuality education? Why are these curiosities important? We then highlight the key findings that emerged from these curiosities and the nuanced data collected. Finally, and most importantly in terms of the aims of this special issue, we address the ways in which a critical gender lens that facilitates gender transformation and gender justice could possibly be incorporated into LO or Life Skills sexuality programmes.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Shefer, Tamara , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6310 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1018868
- Description: [From introduction] Research on sexual practices among young South Africans has proliferated in light of the national imperatives to challenge the spread of HIV/AIDS, gender-based violence and unwanted early pregnancies. It has been widely acknowledged that, in order to respond to these social problems, we need to understand the enmeshment of gender, class, age and other forms of social inequality, and how these are played out in ‘normal’ heterosexual relationships. Life Orientation (LO) sexuality education programmes have been viewed as key locations for incorporating education to challenge negative assumptions in respect of HIV/AIDS, gender-based violence and unwanted pregnancy and to promote safer, equitable and non-violent sexual practices. There is a paucity of work that interrogates the LO sexuality education programme in terms of gender norms, gender justice and gender transformation. In the handful of studies conducted on school-based sexuality education in South Africa, researchers have foregrounded a number of challenges, including the dominance of a guiding metaphor of danger and disease in the sexuality education component of LO manuals (Macleod, 2009); educators using a transmission mode of teaching to the exclusion of participation and experiential modes of learning (Rooth, 2005); educators understanding sexuality education as chiefly addressing the provision of information concerning, and prevention of, HIV/AIDS (Francis, 2011); teachers’ preference for abstinence-only education taught by means of a series of moral injunctions (Francis, 2011); and the avoidance of discussions of sexual diversity, and the endorsement of compulsory heterosexuality when same-sex relationships are mentioned (Francis, 2012). Recent research has also highlighted the variation in how teachers approach sexuality education. Francis and DePalma (2014) indicate that, while teachers may promote abstinence as the only appropriate choice for young people, they also recognise the value of teaching relationships and safe sex (aspects associated with comprehensive sexuality education). In their study, Helleve et al. (2009) report that Grades 8 and 9 LO teachers felt confident in teaching HIV and sexuality. This special issue of Perspectives in Education builds on this research by drawing together several papers that examine how LO or Life Skills sexuality programmes challenge and/or reproduce normative constructions of gender and gendered power relations. All the papers use qualitative research to locate these programmes within the complex contexts of their enactment, drawing attention to the multiple possibilities and limitations of such programmes. In the next section, we summarise the key problematics addressed in each of the papers. What curiosities drove the studies conducted by these researchers interested in gender dynamics in schools and LO or Life Skills sexuality education? Why are these curiosities important? We then highlight the key findings that emerged from these curiosities and the nuanced data collected. Finally, and most importantly in terms of the aims of this special issue, we address the ways in which a critical gender lens that facilitates gender transformation and gender justice could possibly be incorporated into LO or Life Skills sexuality programmes.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Public foetal images and the regulation of middle-class pregnancy in the online media : a view from South Africa
- Macleod, Catriona I, Howell, Simon
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I , Howell, Simon
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6307 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1018803 , http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13691058.2015.1046138
- Description: Ultrasonography images and their derivatives have been taken up in a range of ‘public’ spaces, including medical textbooks, the media, anti-abortion material, advertising, the Internet and public health facilities. Feminists have critiqued the personification of the foetus, the bifurcation of the woman’s body and the reduction of the pregnant woman to a disembodied womb. What has received less attention is how these images frequently intersect with race, class, gender and heteronormativity in the creation of idealised and normative understandings of pregnancy. This paper focuses on the discursive positioning of pregnant women as ‘mothers’ and foetuses as ‘babies’ in online media targeted at a South African audience, where race and class continue to intersect in complex ways. We show how the ontologically specific understandings of ‘mummies’ and ‘babies’ emerge through the use of foetal images to construct specific understandings of the ‘ideal’ pregnancy. In the process, pregnant women are made responsible for ensuring that their pregnancy conforms to these ideals, which includes the purchasing of the various goods advertised by the websites. Not only does this point to a commodification of pregnancy, but also serves to reinforce a cultural understanding of White, middle-class pregnancy as constituting the normative ‘correct’ form of pregnancy. , Full text access on publisher website: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13691058.2015.1046138
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I , Howell, Simon
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6307 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1018803 , http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13691058.2015.1046138
- Description: Ultrasonography images and their derivatives have been taken up in a range of ‘public’ spaces, including medical textbooks, the media, anti-abortion material, advertising, the Internet and public health facilities. Feminists have critiqued the personification of the foetus, the bifurcation of the woman’s body and the reduction of the pregnant woman to a disembodied womb. What has received less attention is how these images frequently intersect with race, class, gender and heteronormativity in the creation of idealised and normative understandings of pregnancy. This paper focuses on the discursive positioning of pregnant women as ‘mothers’ and foetuses as ‘babies’ in online media targeted at a South African audience, where race and class continue to intersect in complex ways. We show how the ontologically specific understandings of ‘mummies’ and ‘babies’ emerge through the use of foetal images to construct specific understandings of the ‘ideal’ pregnancy. In the process, pregnant women are made responsible for ensuring that their pregnancy conforms to these ideals, which includes the purchasing of the various goods advertised by the websites. Not only does this point to a commodification of pregnancy, but also serves to reinforce a cultural understanding of White, middle-class pregnancy as constituting the normative ‘correct’ form of pregnancy. , Full text access on publisher website: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13691058.2015.1046138
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2015
Public reproductive health and ‘unintended’ pregnancies: introducing the construct ‘supportability’
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6313 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1019881 , https://academic.oup.com/jpubhealth/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/pubmed/fdv123
- Description: In this Perspectives paper, I outline the limitations of the concept of ‘intentionality’ in public reproductive health understandings of pregnancy. ‘Intentionality’, ‘plannedness’, ‘wantedness’ and ‘timing’ place individual cognitions, psychology and/or behaviors at the center of public health conceptualizations of pregnancies, thereby leaving the underlying social and structural dynamics under-examined. I propose a model that places ‘supportability’ at the center of thinking about pregnancies and that allows for an analysis of the intersection of individual cognitions, emotions and behavior with micro-level interactive spaces and macro-level issues. , Full text access on Publisher website: https://academic.oup.com/jpubhealth/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/pubmed/fdv123
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6313 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1019881 , https://academic.oup.com/jpubhealth/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/pubmed/fdv123
- Description: In this Perspectives paper, I outline the limitations of the concept of ‘intentionality’ in public reproductive health understandings of pregnancy. ‘Intentionality’, ‘plannedness’, ‘wantedness’ and ‘timing’ place individual cognitions, psychology and/or behaviors at the center of public health conceptualizations of pregnancies, thereby leaving the underlying social and structural dynamics under-examined. I propose a model that places ‘supportability’ at the center of thinking about pregnancies and that allows for an analysis of the intersection of individual cognitions, emotions and behavior with micro-level interactive spaces and macro-level issues. , Full text access on Publisher website: https://academic.oup.com/jpubhealth/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/pubmed/fdv123
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2015
Sexual socialisation in Life Orientation manuals versus popular music: responsibilisation versus pleasure, tension and complexity
- Macleod, Catriona I, Moodley, Dale D, Saville Young, Lisa
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I , Moodley, Dale D , Saville Young, Lisa
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6309 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1018866
- Description: This paper compares two forms of sexual socialisation to which learners are exposed: the sexuality education components of the Life Orientation (LO) manuals and the lyrical content and videos of popular songs. We performed a textual analysis of the sexual subject positions made available in, first, the LO manuals used in Grade 10 classes and, second, the two songs voted most popular by the Grade 10 learners of two diverse schools in the Eastern Cape. Of interest in this paper is whether and how these two forms of sexual socialisation – one representing state-sanctioned sexual socialisation and the other learners’ chosen cultural expression that represents informal sexual socialisation – dovetail or diverge. Against a backdrop of heterosexuality and an assumption of the ‘adolescent-in-transition’ discourse, the main sexual subject positions featured in the LO manuals are the responsible sexual subject and the sexual victim. A number of sexualised subject positions are portrayed in the songs, with these subject positions depicting sex as a site of pleasure, tension and complexity. Although these two modes of sexual socialisation use different genres of communication, we argue that learners’ choice of songs that depict fluid sexual subject positions can help to inform LO sexuality education in ways that takes learners’ preferred cultural expression seriously and that moves away from the imperative of responsibilisation.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I , Moodley, Dale D , Saville Young, Lisa
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6309 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1018866
- Description: This paper compares two forms of sexual socialisation to which learners are exposed: the sexuality education components of the Life Orientation (LO) manuals and the lyrical content and videos of popular songs. We performed a textual analysis of the sexual subject positions made available in, first, the LO manuals used in Grade 10 classes and, second, the two songs voted most popular by the Grade 10 learners of two diverse schools in the Eastern Cape. Of interest in this paper is whether and how these two forms of sexual socialisation – one representing state-sanctioned sexual socialisation and the other learners’ chosen cultural expression that represents informal sexual socialisation – dovetail or diverge. Against a backdrop of heterosexuality and an assumption of the ‘adolescent-in-transition’ discourse, the main sexual subject positions featured in the LO manuals are the responsible sexual subject and the sexual victim. A number of sexualised subject positions are portrayed in the songs, with these subject positions depicting sex as a site of pleasure, tension and complexity. Although these two modes of sexual socialisation use different genres of communication, we argue that learners’ choice of songs that depict fluid sexual subject positions can help to inform LO sexuality education in ways that takes learners’ preferred cultural expression seriously and that moves away from the imperative of responsibilisation.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Stigma resistance in online child free communities : the limitations of choice rhetoric
- Morison, Tracy, Macleod, Catriona I, Lynch, Ingrid, Mijas, Magda, Shivakumar, Seemanthini T
- Authors: Morison, Tracy , Macleod, Catriona I , Lynch, Ingrid , Mijas, Magda , Shivakumar, Seemanthini T
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6311 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1019799 , http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0361684315603657
- Description: People who are voluntarily childless, or ‘‘childfree,’’ face considerable stigma. Researchers have begun to explore how these individuals respond to stigma, usually focusing on interpersonal stigma management strategies. We explored participants’ responses to stigma in a way that is cognisant of broader social norms and gender power relations. Using a feminist discursive psychology framework, we analysed women’s and men’s computer-assisted communication about their childfree status. Our analysis draws attention to ‘‘identity work’’ in the context of stigma. We show how the strategic use of ‘‘choice’’ rhetoric allowed participants to avoid stigmatised identities and was used in two contradictory ways. On the one hand, participants drew on a ‘‘childfree-by-choice script,’’ which enabled them to hold a positive identity of themselves as autonomous, rational, and responsible decision makers. On the other hand, they mobilised a ‘‘disavowal of choice script’’ that allowed a person who is unable to choose childlessness (for various reasons) to hold a blameless identity regarding deviation from the norm of parenthood. We demonstrate how choice rhetoric allowed participants to resist stigma and challenge pronatalism to some extent; we discuss the political potential of these scripts for reproductive freedom.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Morison, Tracy , Macleod, Catriona I , Lynch, Ingrid , Mijas, Magda , Shivakumar, Seemanthini T
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6311 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1019799 , http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0361684315603657
- Description: People who are voluntarily childless, or ‘‘childfree,’’ face considerable stigma. Researchers have begun to explore how these individuals respond to stigma, usually focusing on interpersonal stigma management strategies. We explored participants’ responses to stigma in a way that is cognisant of broader social norms and gender power relations. Using a feminist discursive psychology framework, we analysed women’s and men’s computer-assisted communication about their childfree status. Our analysis draws attention to ‘‘identity work’’ in the context of stigma. We show how the strategic use of ‘‘choice’’ rhetoric allowed participants to avoid stigmatised identities and was used in two contradictory ways. On the one hand, participants drew on a ‘‘childfree-by-choice script,’’ which enabled them to hold a positive identity of themselves as autonomous, rational, and responsible decision makers. On the other hand, they mobilised a ‘‘disavowal of choice script’’ that allowed a person who is unable to choose childlessness (for various reasons) to hold a blameless identity regarding deviation from the norm of parenthood. We demonstrate how choice rhetoric allowed participants to resist stigma and challenge pronatalism to some extent; we discuss the political potential of these scripts for reproductive freedom.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
When is it legitimate to use images in moral arguments? The use of foetal imagery in anti-abortion campaigns as an exemplar of an illegitimate instance of a legitimate practice
- Kelland, Lindsay, Macleod, Catriona I
- Authors: Kelland, Lindsay , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6305 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1016146
- Description: We aim to interrogate when the use of images in moral persuasion is legitimate. First, we put forward a number of accounts which purport to show that we can use tools other than logical argumentation to convince others, that such tools evoke affective responses and that these responses have authority in the moral domain. Second, we turn to Sarah McGrath’s account, which focuses on the use of imagery as a means to morally persuade. McGrath discusses 4 objections to the use of imagery, and outlines responses that may be used to legitimate the use of imagery in moral arguments. Assuming that we accept her account and that the invocation of affect has authority in the moral domain, we, using McGrath’s responses, examine whether the use of foetal imagery in anti-abortion campaigns is a legitimate instance of this practice.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Kelland, Lindsay , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6305 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1016146
- Description: We aim to interrogate when the use of images in moral persuasion is legitimate. First, we put forward a number of accounts which purport to show that we can use tools other than logical argumentation to convince others, that such tools evoke affective responses and that these responses have authority in the moral domain. Second, we turn to Sarah McGrath’s account, which focuses on the use of imagery as a means to morally persuade. McGrath discusses 4 objections to the use of imagery, and outlines responses that may be used to legitimate the use of imagery in moral arguments. Assuming that we accept her account and that the invocation of affect has authority in the moral domain, we, using McGrath’s responses, examine whether the use of foetal imagery in anti-abortion campaigns is a legitimate instance of this practice.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
‘… a huge monster that should be feared and not done’: lessons learned in sexuality education classes in South Africa
- Shefer, Tamara, Kruger, Lou-Marie, Macleod, Catriona I, Baxen, Jean, Vincent, Louise
- Authors: Shefer, Tamara , Kruger, Lou-Marie , Macleod, Catriona I , Baxen, Jean , Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6314 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1020933 , http://www.mrc.ac.za/crime/aspj/2015/AhugeMonster.pdf
- Description: Research has foregrounded the way in which heterosexual practices for many young people are not infrequently bound up with violence and unequal transactional power relations. The Life Orientation sexuality education curriculum in South African schools has been viewed as a potentially valuable space to work with young people on issues of reproductive health, gender and sexual norms and relations. Yet, research has illustrated that such work may not only be failing to impact on more equitable sexual practices between young men and women, but may also serve to reproduce the very discourses and practices that the work aims to challenge. Cultures of violence in youth sexuality are closely connected to prevailing gender norms and practices which, for example, render women as passive victims who are incapable of exercising sexual agency and men as inherently sexually predatory. This paper analyses the talk of Grade 10 learners in nine diverse schools in two South African provinces, the Eastern Cape and the Western Cape, to highlight what ‘lessons’ these young people seem to be learning about sexuality in Life Orientation classes. We find that these lessons foreground cautionary, negative and punitive messages, which reinforce, rather than challenge, normative gender roles. ‘Scare’ messages of danger, damage and disease give rise to presumptions of gendered responsibility for risk and the requirement of female restraint in the face of the assertion of masculine desire and predation. We conclude that the role which sexuality education could play in enabling young women in particular to more successfully negotiate their sexual relationships to serve their own needs, reproductive health and safety, is undermined by regulatory messages directed at controlling young people, and young women in particular – and that instead, young people’s sexual agency has to be acknowledged in any processes of change aimed at gender equality, anti-violence, health and well-being.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Shefer, Tamara , Kruger, Lou-Marie , Macleod, Catriona I , Baxen, Jean , Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6314 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1020933 , http://www.mrc.ac.za/crime/aspj/2015/AhugeMonster.pdf
- Description: Research has foregrounded the way in which heterosexual practices for many young people are not infrequently bound up with violence and unequal transactional power relations. The Life Orientation sexuality education curriculum in South African schools has been viewed as a potentially valuable space to work with young people on issues of reproductive health, gender and sexual norms and relations. Yet, research has illustrated that such work may not only be failing to impact on more equitable sexual practices between young men and women, but may also serve to reproduce the very discourses and practices that the work aims to challenge. Cultures of violence in youth sexuality are closely connected to prevailing gender norms and practices which, for example, render women as passive victims who are incapable of exercising sexual agency and men as inherently sexually predatory. This paper analyses the talk of Grade 10 learners in nine diverse schools in two South African provinces, the Eastern Cape and the Western Cape, to highlight what ‘lessons’ these young people seem to be learning about sexuality in Life Orientation classes. We find that these lessons foreground cautionary, negative and punitive messages, which reinforce, rather than challenge, normative gender roles. ‘Scare’ messages of danger, damage and disease give rise to presumptions of gendered responsibility for risk and the requirement of female restraint in the face of the assertion of masculine desire and predation. We conclude that the role which sexuality education could play in enabling young women in particular to more successfully negotiate their sexual relationships to serve their own needs, reproductive health and safety, is undermined by regulatory messages directed at controlling young people, and young women in particular – and that instead, young people’s sexual agency has to be acknowledged in any processes of change aimed at gender equality, anti-violence, health and well-being.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
“Peer pressure” and “Peer normalization” : discursive resources that justify gendered youth sexualities
- Macleod, Catriona I, Jearey-Graham, Nicola
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I , Jearey-Graham, Nicola
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6312 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1019877 , https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13178-015-0207-8
- Description: “Peer pressure” is associated in the scientific literature with a range of risky sexual behaviors and with undermining public sexual health messages. Interventions are instituted encouraging young people to resist peer pressure or to model positive peer norms. Taking a discursive psychology perspective, we show how young people themselves use the discourses of “peer pressure to have sex” and “peer normalization of sex” to explain and justify youth sexual activity. Using data from focus group discussions about youth sexualities with students at a South African further education and training college, we show how participants outlined a need for young people to be socially recognizable through engaging in, and talking about, sex and how they implicated peer norms in governing individual sexual behavior. Both discourses pointed to a gendering of peer-endorsed sexual norms: masculine virility, the avoidance of shameful virgin or gay positions, and multiple sexual partners were emphasized for men, while the necessity of keeping a boyfriend and avoiding a “slut” position were foregrounded for women. These discourses potentially undermine the aims of public sexual health programs targeting youth. Nuanced engagement with peer group narratives, especially how sexual activity is explained and justified in a gendered fashion, is indicated. , Full text access on Publisher website: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13178-015-0207-8
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I , Jearey-Graham, Nicola
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6312 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1019877 , https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13178-015-0207-8
- Description: “Peer pressure” is associated in the scientific literature with a range of risky sexual behaviors and with undermining public sexual health messages. Interventions are instituted encouraging young people to resist peer pressure or to model positive peer norms. Taking a discursive psychology perspective, we show how young people themselves use the discourses of “peer pressure to have sex” and “peer normalization of sex” to explain and justify youth sexual activity. Using data from focus group discussions about youth sexualities with students at a South African further education and training college, we show how participants outlined a need for young people to be socially recognizable through engaging in, and talking about, sex and how they implicated peer norms in governing individual sexual behavior. Both discourses pointed to a gendering of peer-endorsed sexual norms: masculine virility, the avoidance of shameful virgin or gay positions, and multiple sexual partners were emphasized for men, while the necessity of keeping a boyfriend and avoiding a “slut” position were foregrounded for women. These discourses potentially undermine the aims of public sexual health programs targeting youth. Nuanced engagement with peer group narratives, especially how sexual activity is explained and justified in a gendered fashion, is indicated. , Full text access on Publisher website: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13178-015-0207-8
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2015
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