Colloquial terms used in young adults’ talk about sexual practices, sexual subjectivities and sexual desires’
- Authors: Robertson, Cassandra Ann
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: Youth -- Sexual behavior , Sex in popular culture , Communication and sex , Language and sex
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MSocSc
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/96551 , vital:31293
- Description: Much of the growth in sexualities‘ research has taken the form of large scale surveys, but there is also increased interest in qualitative approaches that provide useful insights into the experiential and subjective aspects of sexuality, and illuminate the social and cultural contexts shaping these experiences. The reason for this research is to provide a richer understanding of the language that young people employ when speaking about sexuality. This study examines young adults‘ talk about sexualities with a special focus on the way in which colloquial terms are deployed in this talk and through the presence of gendered and/or heteronormative assumptions. Data consisted of posts off a student-led social media site and the study design employed was a validity check group interview. The social media site allowed its followers to post anonymously about a range of sexualities related issues. Data were analysed thematically, using a deductive, critical, and post-structuralist approach with key insights drawn on from Michael Foucault, Adrienne Rich, Gayle Rubin, Judith Butler and Rosalind Gill. Three overarching themes emerged: young adults spoke to sexual practices, sexual subjectivities and sexual desires. A major focus of this talk is casual sex. This talk showed that there are attempts to undermine gendered and heteronormative power relations, for example, non-normative sexual experiences were not seen as deviant, although those who were engaging in monogamy and casual sex were constructed as deviant sexual subjects. Yet underpinning of these power relations still took place, for example, in the female missing discourse of desire, the internalisation of male sexual desires over female sexual desires and the sexual double standard. There was a clear divide between the sexual practices and sexual subjectivities that were considered to be good and bad. This research therefore has the potential to benefit sexuality interventions by bringing into sharp focus the actual experiences of young adults.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2019
- Authors: Robertson, Cassandra Ann
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: Youth -- Sexual behavior , Sex in popular culture , Communication and sex , Language and sex
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MSocSc
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/96551 , vital:31293
- Description: Much of the growth in sexualities‘ research has taken the form of large scale surveys, but there is also increased interest in qualitative approaches that provide useful insights into the experiential and subjective aspects of sexuality, and illuminate the social and cultural contexts shaping these experiences. The reason for this research is to provide a richer understanding of the language that young people employ when speaking about sexuality. This study examines young adults‘ talk about sexualities with a special focus on the way in which colloquial terms are deployed in this talk and through the presence of gendered and/or heteronormative assumptions. Data consisted of posts off a student-led social media site and the study design employed was a validity check group interview. The social media site allowed its followers to post anonymously about a range of sexualities related issues. Data were analysed thematically, using a deductive, critical, and post-structuralist approach with key insights drawn on from Michael Foucault, Adrienne Rich, Gayle Rubin, Judith Butler and Rosalind Gill. Three overarching themes emerged: young adults spoke to sexual practices, sexual subjectivities and sexual desires. A major focus of this talk is casual sex. This talk showed that there are attempts to undermine gendered and heteronormative power relations, for example, non-normative sexual experiences were not seen as deviant, although those who were engaging in monogamy and casual sex were constructed as deviant sexual subjects. Yet underpinning of these power relations still took place, for example, in the female missing discourse of desire, the internalisation of male sexual desires over female sexual desires and the sexual double standard. There was a clear divide between the sexual practices and sexual subjectivities that were considered to be good and bad. This research therefore has the potential to benefit sexuality interventions by bringing into sharp focus the actual experiences of young adults.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2019
Policy responses to the sexual and reproductive health of queer youth in the global south: a systematic review
- Authors: Moore, Sarah-Ann
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: Sexual minorities -- Africa , Sexual minorities -- Asia , Sexual minorities -- Caribbean Area , Sexual health -- Developing countries , Reproductive health -- Developing countries , Reproductive health services -- Developing countries , Communication in reproductive health -- Developing countries , Sexual minorities -- Youth -- Developing countries , Medical policy -- Developing countries , Homophobia -- Developing countries
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MSocSc
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/63021 , vital:28355
- Description: Concerns surrounding youth sexual and reproduction health (SRH) are deeply embedded within systems of heteronormativity and ciscentrism. Resultantly, youth SRH is filtered through a lens of heterosexual and cisgender experience, rendering invisible the SRH needs of queer youth. Importantly, a failure to recognise queer experiences of SRH has implications for normative subject positions, which enjoy stronger institutional support and constitute legitimate ways of being. As such, the failure to recognise queer youth as health care subjects within policy has far reaching consequences for their sexual and reproductive health. Within this research, a sexual and reproductive justice (SRJ) framework is adopted as a backdrop for exploring policy documents related to youth SRH within selected global South countries in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. The final data set comprises of 1035 policy excerpts extracted from 152 policies across these three regions. Research takes the form of a systematic review utilising a deductive framing and positioning thematic analysis. Analysis identifies framings of youth SRH and explores the subject positions assigned to queer youth in relation to these identified framings, with the understanding that the manner in which youth SRH concerns are framed and queer youth are positioned within policies provides an important foundation for the implementation of SRH-related policy. Findings demonstrate that policy responses to youth SRH are most often framed in terms of a public health approach. As a result, dominant understandings of youth SRH serve to reduce youth sexuality to notions of infections and impact, which may speak to an overreliance on biomedical and population-level health models. Themes emerging within human rights framings demonstrate a presumption that rights are equally afforded to, and freely exercised by, all individuals once legally secured, failing to engage with the creation of enabling conditions to realise these rights. Although context and culture framings were by no means exhaustive examples of SRJ, they provide an interesting insight into how such SRJ concerns might be integrated into policy. Importantly, policy responses demonstrate a general pattern hypervisibility of men who have sex with men (MSM) standing in marked contrast to the invisibility of queer youth and other adult queer populations. Within policy extracts, both youth and „MSM‟ are positioned as particularly prone to poor SRH outcomes. By virtue of their inclusion within both populations, queer youth may be considered as especially at risk for, or vulnerable to, such outcomes. Relatedly, these populations (and by extension queer youth) are positioned as in need of correction, containment, and/or protection by those occupying „gatekeeping‟ positions (e.g. health care providers). The positioning of „MSM‟ solely within the context of HIV/AIDS serves to link same-sex sexualities (and at times gender non-conformity) with harmful consequences, suggesting that the positioning of queer youth could similarly serve to conflate their SRH needs with concerns around HIV/AIDS. Many of the subject positions deployed in policies serve to deny the potential for youth and „MSM‟ agency, strength, and resilience. Thus, queer youth subjects are unlikely to be positioned as empowered, autonomous, and agentic. Across both framing and positioning themes, a number of key shortcomings were observed. For the most part, policy responses fail to acknowledge the influence of social, economic, political, and cultural forces that may serve to hinder SRH outcomes according to particular contexts and the intersection of multiple and varied social identities. By obscuring these broader contextual factors and power relations, policy responses may serve to hold individual youth responsible for poor SRH outcomes. In failing to engage with the potential for diversity within youth populations, these populations are largely homogenised. Finally, the need for the creation of an enabling environment in order to secure sexual and reproductive health is largely unacknowledged within policy responses.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2018
- Authors: Moore, Sarah-Ann
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: Sexual minorities -- Africa , Sexual minorities -- Asia , Sexual minorities -- Caribbean Area , Sexual health -- Developing countries , Reproductive health -- Developing countries , Reproductive health services -- Developing countries , Communication in reproductive health -- Developing countries , Sexual minorities -- Youth -- Developing countries , Medical policy -- Developing countries , Homophobia -- Developing countries
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MSocSc
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/63021 , vital:28355
- Description: Concerns surrounding youth sexual and reproduction health (SRH) are deeply embedded within systems of heteronormativity and ciscentrism. Resultantly, youth SRH is filtered through a lens of heterosexual and cisgender experience, rendering invisible the SRH needs of queer youth. Importantly, a failure to recognise queer experiences of SRH has implications for normative subject positions, which enjoy stronger institutional support and constitute legitimate ways of being. As such, the failure to recognise queer youth as health care subjects within policy has far reaching consequences for their sexual and reproductive health. Within this research, a sexual and reproductive justice (SRJ) framework is adopted as a backdrop for exploring policy documents related to youth SRH within selected global South countries in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. The final data set comprises of 1035 policy excerpts extracted from 152 policies across these three regions. Research takes the form of a systematic review utilising a deductive framing and positioning thematic analysis. Analysis identifies framings of youth SRH and explores the subject positions assigned to queer youth in relation to these identified framings, with the understanding that the manner in which youth SRH concerns are framed and queer youth are positioned within policies provides an important foundation for the implementation of SRH-related policy. Findings demonstrate that policy responses to youth SRH are most often framed in terms of a public health approach. As a result, dominant understandings of youth SRH serve to reduce youth sexuality to notions of infections and impact, which may speak to an overreliance on biomedical and population-level health models. Themes emerging within human rights framings demonstrate a presumption that rights are equally afforded to, and freely exercised by, all individuals once legally secured, failing to engage with the creation of enabling conditions to realise these rights. Although context and culture framings were by no means exhaustive examples of SRJ, they provide an interesting insight into how such SRJ concerns might be integrated into policy. Importantly, policy responses demonstrate a general pattern hypervisibility of men who have sex with men (MSM) standing in marked contrast to the invisibility of queer youth and other adult queer populations. Within policy extracts, both youth and „MSM‟ are positioned as particularly prone to poor SRH outcomes. By virtue of their inclusion within both populations, queer youth may be considered as especially at risk for, or vulnerable to, such outcomes. Relatedly, these populations (and by extension queer youth) are positioned as in need of correction, containment, and/or protection by those occupying „gatekeeping‟ positions (e.g. health care providers). The positioning of „MSM‟ solely within the context of HIV/AIDS serves to link same-sex sexualities (and at times gender non-conformity) with harmful consequences, suggesting that the positioning of queer youth could similarly serve to conflate their SRH needs with concerns around HIV/AIDS. Many of the subject positions deployed in policies serve to deny the potential for youth and „MSM‟ agency, strength, and resilience. Thus, queer youth subjects are unlikely to be positioned as empowered, autonomous, and agentic. Across both framing and positioning themes, a number of key shortcomings were observed. For the most part, policy responses fail to acknowledge the influence of social, economic, political, and cultural forces that may serve to hinder SRH outcomes according to particular contexts and the intersection of multiple and varied social identities. By obscuring these broader contextual factors and power relations, policy responses may serve to hold individual youth responsible for poor SRH outcomes. In failing to engage with the potential for diversity within youth populations, these populations are largely homogenised. Finally, the need for the creation of an enabling environment in order to secure sexual and reproductive health is largely unacknowledged within policy responses.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2018
Women's micro-narratives of the process of abortion decision-making : justifying the decision to have an abortion
- Mavuso, Jabulile Mary-Jane Jace
- Authors: Mavuso, Jabulile Mary-Jane Jace
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: Abortion -- Psychological aspects , Pregnancy, Unwanted -- Psychological aspects , Narrative therapy , Post-abortion syndrome
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MSocSc
- Identifier: vital:3262 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1017885
- Description: Much of the research on abortion is concerned with determining women’s psychological outcomes post-abortion. There is a small, but increasing, body of research around women’s experiences of abortion (conducted predominantly in Scandinavian countries where abortion laws are liberal). However, research around the decision-making process regarding abortion, particularly research that locates the decision to have an abortion within the economic, religious, social, political, and cultural aspects of women’s lives and that looks at women’s narratives, is virtually non-existent. Drawing on Foucauldian and feminist post-structuralism as well as a narrative-discursive approach, this study sought to explore women’s micro-narratives of the abortion decision-making process in terms of the discourses used to construct these micro-narratives and the subject positions made available within these discourses. This study also sought to determine whether the power relations referred to by participants contributed to unsupported and unsupportable pregnancies and the implications this had for reproductive justice. Purposive sampling was used to recruit a total of 25 participants from three different abortion facilities in the Eastern Cape. Participants were ‘Black’ women, mostly unemployed and unmarried with ages ranging between 19 and 35 years old. In analysing and interpreting participants’ narratives, the picture that emerged was an over-arching narrative in which women described the abortion decision as something that they were ‘forced’ into by their circumstances. To construct this narrative, women justified the decision to have an abortion by drawing on discourses that normalise certain practices located within the husband-wife and parent-child axes and make the pregnancy a problematic, unsupported and unsupportable one. Gendered and generational power relations reinforced this and contributed to the denial of reproductive justice
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Mavuso, Jabulile Mary-Jane Jace
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: Abortion -- Psychological aspects , Pregnancy, Unwanted -- Psychological aspects , Narrative therapy , Post-abortion syndrome
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MSocSc
- Identifier: vital:3262 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1017885
- Description: Much of the research on abortion is concerned with determining women’s psychological outcomes post-abortion. There is a small, but increasing, body of research around women’s experiences of abortion (conducted predominantly in Scandinavian countries where abortion laws are liberal). However, research around the decision-making process regarding abortion, particularly research that locates the decision to have an abortion within the economic, religious, social, political, and cultural aspects of women’s lives and that looks at women’s narratives, is virtually non-existent. Drawing on Foucauldian and feminist post-structuralism as well as a narrative-discursive approach, this study sought to explore women’s micro-narratives of the abortion decision-making process in terms of the discourses used to construct these micro-narratives and the subject positions made available within these discourses. This study also sought to determine whether the power relations referred to by participants contributed to unsupported and unsupportable pregnancies and the implications this had for reproductive justice. Purposive sampling was used to recruit a total of 25 participants from three different abortion facilities in the Eastern Cape. Participants were ‘Black’ women, mostly unemployed and unmarried with ages ranging between 19 and 35 years old. In analysing and interpreting participants’ narratives, the picture that emerged was an over-arching narrative in which women described the abortion decision as something that they were ‘forced’ into by their circumstances. To construct this narrative, women justified the decision to have an abortion by drawing on discourses that normalise certain practices located within the husband-wife and parent-child axes and make the pregnancy a problematic, unsupported and unsupportable one. Gendered and generational power relations reinforced this and contributed to the denial of reproductive justice
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Discourses surrounding 'race', equity, disadvantage and transformation in times of rapid social change : higher education in post-apartheid South Africa
- Authors: Robus, Donovan
- Date: 2005
- Subjects: Rhodes University , University of Fort Hare , Universities and colleges -- Mergers -- South Africa , Education, Higher -- South Africa , Education and state -- South Africa , Apartheid -- South Africa , Discourse analysis -- Methodology , Discrimination in education -- South Africa , Educational change -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MSocSc
- Identifier: vital:3142 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007196 , Rhodes University , University of Fort Hare , Universities and colleges -- Mergers -- South Africa , Education, Higher -- South Africa , Education and state -- South Africa , Apartheid -- South Africa , Discourse analysis -- Methodology , Discrimination in education -- South Africa , Educational change -- South Africa
- Description: Since the dismantling of Apartheid in South Africa in 1994, the South African socio-political and economic landscape has been characterised by rapid change. In the ten years since the 'new' democratic South Africa emerged, transformation has become a dominant discourse that has driven much action and practice in a variety of public areas. One of the areas of focus for transformation has been Higher Education whereby the Department of Education aimed to do away with disparity caused by Apartheid segregation by reducing the number of Higher Education institutions from 36 to 21. This research draws on Foucauldian theory and post-colonial theories (in particular Edward Said and Frantz Fanon), and the concept of racialisation in an analysis of the incorporation of Rhodes University's East London campus into the University of Fort Hare. Ian Parker's discourse analytic approach which suggests that discourses support institutions, reproduce power relations and have ideological effects, was utilised to analyse the talk of students and staff at the three sites affected by the incorporation (viz. Rhodes, Grahamstown, Rhodes, East London and Fort Hare) as well as newspaper articles and public statements made by the two institutions. What emerged was that in post-Apartheid South Africa, institutional and geographic space is still racialised with virtually no reference to the historical and contextual foundations from which this emerged being made. In positioning space and institutions in this racialised manner a discourse of 'white' excellence and 'black' failure emerges with the notion of competence gaining legitimacy through an appeal to academic standards. In addition to this, transformation emerges as a signifier of shifting boundaries in a post-Apartheid society where racialised institutional, spatial and social boundaries evidently still exist discursively.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2005
- Authors: Robus, Donovan
- Date: 2005
- Subjects: Rhodes University , University of Fort Hare , Universities and colleges -- Mergers -- South Africa , Education, Higher -- South Africa , Education and state -- South Africa , Apartheid -- South Africa , Discourse analysis -- Methodology , Discrimination in education -- South Africa , Educational change -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MSocSc
- Identifier: vital:3142 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007196 , Rhodes University , University of Fort Hare , Universities and colleges -- Mergers -- South Africa , Education, Higher -- South Africa , Education and state -- South Africa , Apartheid -- South Africa , Discourse analysis -- Methodology , Discrimination in education -- South Africa , Educational change -- South Africa
- Description: Since the dismantling of Apartheid in South Africa in 1994, the South African socio-political and economic landscape has been characterised by rapid change. In the ten years since the 'new' democratic South Africa emerged, transformation has become a dominant discourse that has driven much action and practice in a variety of public areas. One of the areas of focus for transformation has been Higher Education whereby the Department of Education aimed to do away with disparity caused by Apartheid segregation by reducing the number of Higher Education institutions from 36 to 21. This research draws on Foucauldian theory and post-colonial theories (in particular Edward Said and Frantz Fanon), and the concept of racialisation in an analysis of the incorporation of Rhodes University's East London campus into the University of Fort Hare. Ian Parker's discourse analytic approach which suggests that discourses support institutions, reproduce power relations and have ideological effects, was utilised to analyse the talk of students and staff at the three sites affected by the incorporation (viz. Rhodes, Grahamstown, Rhodes, East London and Fort Hare) as well as newspaper articles and public statements made by the two institutions. What emerged was that in post-Apartheid South Africa, institutional and geographic space is still racialised with virtually no reference to the historical and contextual foundations from which this emerged being made. In positioning space and institutions in this racialised manner a discourse of 'white' excellence and 'black' failure emerges with the notion of competence gaining legitimacy through an appeal to academic standards. In addition to this, transformation emerges as a signifier of shifting boundaries in a post-Apartheid society where racialised institutional, spatial and social boundaries evidently still exist discursively.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2005
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