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
Developing principles for research about young women and abortion: a feminist analysis of difficulties in current South African studies
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2008
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6292 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1014716
- Description: Soon after the first democratic elections in South Africa in 1994, the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy (CTOP) Act of 1996, which legalised abortion for the first time, was passed. Since the introduction of the CTOP, a number of studies have been conducted on abortion in South Africa. Many have taken a health-related focus, but some research on young women and abortion has also been conducted, and it is to this (published) research that this article speaks. Two facts highlight the importance of this kind of research in the context of the abortion debate. Firstly, data from the Department of Health indicate that from 1997 to mid-2006, 12% of women undergoing terminations in the provinces in which age-related data are available were under the age of 18 (Department of Health: 2006). Secondly, the subsection of the Act allowing minors to request abortions without parental consent has caused some controversy. For example, the Christian Lawyers Association filed a suit in the Pretoria High Court in 2003, arguing that the above-mentioned subsection was unconstitutional. Their application was not successful. The research conducted on young women and abortion is etched against a background of change and contradiction in young people’s lives in South Africa. In addition to enabling legislation on termination of pregnancy, which is premised on the rights-based approach of the first democratically elected government of South Africa, various opportunities and challenges define the lives of young women. Specifically in relation to sexual and reproductive health, the Department of Health’s National Adolescent Friendly Clinic Initiative aims to make family planning and other services more accessible and acceptable to young women (Dickson-Tetteh et al., 2001). However,HIV/AIDS and “safe sex” programmes define sex as dangerous and individual young women as responsible for close monitoring of heterosexual spaces. The Child Support Grant, shown to enable functional mothering (Case et al., 2005), has sparked controversy in terms of providing perverse incentives for poor young women to conceive (a claim refuted by the research – Makiwane & Udjo, 2005). Young, black and poor women who conceive are, in particular, stigmatised and teenage pregnancy is in many respects racialised (Macleod & Durrheim, 2002). In this paper I highlight some of the problems in the research conducted on young women and abortion in South Africa since the legalisation of abortion. The specific aim of the paper is, through this analysis, to draw out feminist principles that should be considered in this kind of research. My argument draws on postcolonial feminisms that theorise the multiplicity of oppression along gender and, inter alia, race, class, age and location lines (Macleod, 2006). The paper is premised on the assumption that, in a field as fraught with gendered, race and class politics as abortion, regardless of the method used, researchers need to inspect the ideological implications of their work, and to be vigilant about their scholastic practices, and any claims legitimately made.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2008
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6292 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1014716
- Description: Soon after the first democratic elections in South Africa in 1994, the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy (CTOP) Act of 1996, which legalised abortion for the first time, was passed. Since the introduction of the CTOP, a number of studies have been conducted on abortion in South Africa. Many have taken a health-related focus, but some research on young women and abortion has also been conducted, and it is to this (published) research that this article speaks. Two facts highlight the importance of this kind of research in the context of the abortion debate. Firstly, data from the Department of Health indicate that from 1997 to mid-2006, 12% of women undergoing terminations in the provinces in which age-related data are available were under the age of 18 (Department of Health: 2006). Secondly, the subsection of the Act allowing minors to request abortions without parental consent has caused some controversy. For example, the Christian Lawyers Association filed a suit in the Pretoria High Court in 2003, arguing that the above-mentioned subsection was unconstitutional. Their application was not successful. The research conducted on young women and abortion is etched against a background of change and contradiction in young people’s lives in South Africa. In addition to enabling legislation on termination of pregnancy, which is premised on the rights-based approach of the first democratically elected government of South Africa, various opportunities and challenges define the lives of young women. Specifically in relation to sexual and reproductive health, the Department of Health’s National Adolescent Friendly Clinic Initiative aims to make family planning and other services more accessible and acceptable to young women (Dickson-Tetteh et al., 2001). However,HIV/AIDS and “safe sex” programmes define sex as dangerous and individual young women as responsible for close monitoring of heterosexual spaces. The Child Support Grant, shown to enable functional mothering (Case et al., 2005), has sparked controversy in terms of providing perverse incentives for poor young women to conceive (a claim refuted by the research – Makiwane & Udjo, 2005). Young, black and poor women who conceive are, in particular, stigmatised and teenage pregnancy is in many respects racialised (Macleod & Durrheim, 2002). In this paper I highlight some of the problems in the research conducted on young women and abortion in South Africa since the legalisation of abortion. The specific aim of the paper is, through this analysis, to draw out feminist principles that should be considered in this kind of research. My argument draws on postcolonial feminisms that theorise the multiplicity of oppression along gender and, inter alia, race, class, age and location lines (Macleod, 2006). The paper is premised on the assumption that, in a field as fraught with gendered, race and class politics as abortion, regardless of the method used, researchers need to inspect the ideological implications of their work, and to be vigilant about their scholastic practices, and any claims legitimately made.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
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