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Normalising intolerance: the efforts of Christian Right groups to block LGBTIQ+ inclusion in South African schools
Culture, Health & Sexuality
Abstract
Post-apartheid, South Africa has come a long way in making the inclusion of gender and sexuality equality explicit in its Constitution. To make schools more inclusive for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ+) identifying learners, the Department of Basic Education has developed what it claims are South Africa’s first guidelines regarding sexual orientation, gender identity and sex characteristics (SOGIESC). Despite the emphasis on equality in South Africa’s post-apartheid policies, which set out to protect the rights of LGBTIQ+ individuals, there has been a backlash from conservative advocacy groups, many with links to the US Christian Right. This paper argues that contrary to the disinformation being propagated by anti-LGBTIQ + groups, it is queer and transgender individuals who experience extreme levels of violence and marginalisation in schools. The empirical research makes explicit the bullying and exclusion that transgender and gender-diverse youth experience in school; however, this evidence is neglected in conservative claims that SOGIESC (SOGIESC) guidelines and Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) endanger other learners. Notably, and in stark contrast to those advocating for measures to make schools safer for LGBTIQ + learners, far-right advocacy groups have no empirical basis to support their claims.
... In this sense, a network of protective and promotive factors and processes across biological, psychological, social, structural, institutional, and environmental systems fosters the resilience process (Theron et al., 2022). Also, direct systems (parent, teacher, peer relational supports, antibullying school policies, uniform policies, and gender non-binary bathrooms) or indirect systems (national Department of Education inclusive policies) support LGBTQ+ youth resilience trajectory in school settings (Francis and McEwen, 2023;Theron et al., 2023). ...
... Similarly, this study showed how participants valued opportunities created by schools to participate and sports and recreational activities. Despite this, as noted in this research like studies such as Francis (2017) and Francis and McEwen (2023) some schools seem to be promoting the culture of hetero normativity which marginalizes LGBTQ+ learners in schools. The emotional engagement of LGBTQ+ learners at school is negatively impacted by the experiences of microaggressions from teachers, as well as the enforcement of compulsory heterosexuality through uniform policies and the absence of gender non-binary bathrooms. ...
... Nevertheless, their endeavors are frequently thwarted by heterosexist educational macrosystems. Regardless, Francis and McEwen (2023) emphasized the need for South African research pointing to the positive impact of inclusive practices and creating inclusive school ecologies. This paper addresses the research cap identified by Francis and McEwen (2023). ...
Introduction
Gender and sexually diverse youth in schools experience exclusion, which detrimentally affects their ability to cope with the consequences of minority stress and may lead to absenteeism or dropout. The purpose of the study is to highlight a pressing need for inclusive policies and practices to aid in enabling LGBTQ+ learners in schools.
Methods
This paper explores how multiple systems intersect to promote a sense of inclusion and engagement within the school environment and impact the resilience of LGBTQ+ youth in a rural school setting. This paper presents findings from a qualitative interpretive phenomenological study with twelve purposively selected self-identifying LGBTQ+ youth residing in a rural South African community. Data was gathered through semi-structured interviews.
Results
This study shows the significance of teacher emotional support, addressing homophobic bullying, moving away from gender-based uniform prescriptions and designating some school bathrooms as gender-neutral to LGBTQ+ learners' resilience.
Conclusion
The findings of this study demonstrate how certain schools in rural settings employ innovative methods to support LGBTQ+ learners despite limited resources and the absence of comprehensive, inclusive policies on gender and sexually diverse learners. The findings have implications for LGBTQ+ learners in rural community schools worldwide. Future longitudinal studies could focus on how school ecologies inclusive of teachers, parents and the wider community can foster the resilience of LGBTQ+ learners, particularly in rural community contexts.
... There is substantial evidence regarding the nature and scale of anti-gender movements in North America and Europe (GATE, 2024;Goetz, 2020;Roggeband & Krizsan, 2019;Shameem, 2021). However, far less is known about the strategies and tactics used by these movements when expanding their reach to the African continent, particularly in South Africa (see, for example, Francis & McEwen, 2024;Kaoma, 2012;McEwen, 2024;van Klinken & Chitando, 2016). At the same time, some scholars caution against framing conservative mobilisation in South Africa and other African nations as directly mirroring the ultra-conservative ideologies of the Global North, underscoring the need for context-specific insights into rights rollbacks on the continent (Awondo et al., 2022;Nabaneh et al., 2022). ...
... People facing multiple forms of compounding marginalisationsuch as migrants, refugees, unhoused individuals, and sex workers -report alarmingly high rates of violence, including hate crimes (Marais et al., 2022;Richter et al., 2020). Homophobic and transphobic violence is prevalent, particularly among LGBTIQ youth, who often endure physical and verbal abuse in schools (Francis & McEwen, 2024). ...
... A prominent scholar of gender and sexuality in South Africa, Bhana (2022), has argued that religious codification has produced contempt for transgenderism and that customary indigenous practices have fueled religious classifications of gender. Furthermore, our immediate social, cultural, and religious worlds are constructed in ways that leave trans learners vulnerable to stigmas perpetuated by their cis peers and even teachers (Francis & McEwen, 2024;Kean, 2021). Research reveals that studies focusing on transgenderism at the school level are reporting the voice of teachers and learners more than those of parents (Bhana, 2022;Nichols & Brown, 2021;Sathyanand, 2021;Ubisi, 2021). ...
... In other words, parents may use religion and culture as gatekeepers to GD and as a way to police GD (Brown, 2018). Indeed, some parents in the past have believed it is right to block trans learners from attending schools (Francis & McEwen, 2024). In turn, teachers at schools are not doing enough to promote GD because they know that parents are resistant to it. ...
By examining the voices of parents regarding the extent to which South African high schools maintain a cisnormative culture, this paper aims to explore how parents' understanding of gender can play a role in promoting gender diversity. Drawing on a qualitative study conducted in the Free State Province of South Africa and framed by both Queer Theory and the African philosophy of Ubuntu. A focus group interview was employed to interview nine parents. Consistent with many international studies on the experiences of parents regarding gender diversity in high schools, this paper found that most of the parents’ views were influenced by cultural and religious backgrounds. The results reveal that parents' understanding of gender can play a role in promoting gender diversity in South African high schools. Results further reveal an emerging understanding that gender diversity is real, not mythical. This paper calls for more research to examine how parents can help others to embrace gender diversity through various school platforms to accelerate parental support of trans learners. Lastly, the Department of Basic Education can formulate a policy that will assist schools in engaging parents to support schools in promoting gender diversity.
... Furthermore, as a consequence of TGD invisibility in school settings, those aware of such erasure or are denied recognition avoid revealing their identities. (Jones et al., 2016;Kassen, 2022) The discursive construction of TGD youth as invisible in schools limits our understanding of how everyday cisgenderism and its power are actively resisted (Francis, 2023b;McBride, 2021). In the curriculum, TGD identities and experiences are underrepresented or omitted, with no content knowledge to counteract the stereotypes about TGD people (Potgieter and Reygan, 2012;Wilmot and Naidoo, 2014). ...
... The research reported in this article draws on a larger project to engage queer and transgender activists, school managers, teachers, parents, and school-attending youth to understand how queer and transgender youth navigate secondary school spaces and how schools respond to gender and sexuality diversity (see Francis, 2022Francis, , 2023aFrancis, , 2023b. This article draws on data generated through in-depth interviews with 7 trans and non-binary school-attending youth, 19 secondary school educators, and 4 school managers. ...
There is a continuing thread of research evidence that schools acknowledge just two self-evident genders and that trans and gender diverse (TGD) youth face significant marginalisation and exclusion. Drawing on a qualitative study of educational staff and seven TGD school-attending youth in South Africa, this paper explores two lines of inquiry – how schools as cultural and social spaces produce and resist cisnormativity and how TGD school-attending youth orientate themselves in or out of line with normative power? Shedding light on how orientation marks out boundary lines and practices of differentiation, the analysis highlights how schools produce a field of objects that ensures that schooling is orientated around the cisnormative body. The paper argues that schooling is a space where TGD youth learn their place, which is exclusion and marginalisation. The findings point to the need for urgent school reform, highlighting the need for important intervention paths to address gender diversity and schooling.
... However, the pervasive influence of cultural rhetoric on societal attitudes towards sexuality and gender diversity in Namibia means that Life Skills teachers often must navigate these sensitive topics with great care and sensitivity. As such, Life Skills teachers often must make difficult compromises in order to avoid backlash from traditional leaders (Francis & McEwen, 2024). ...
Background: The Namibian High Court’s judgment 2023 in favour of same-sex marriage has created significant volatility in the country, considering the Life Skills curriculum’s call for affirmative teaching of sexual diversity education.Objectives: This study examined how the provisions made in the Life Skills curriculum to teach affirmative sexual diversity education could be affected by the tension created by the High Court’s judgment. Using intersectionality theory, the study explored how cultural, religious, political, and professional intersections influence teachers in implementing policy.Methods: Qualitative data were collected over four weeks from 10 Life Skills teachers through semi structured interviews. Sampling was purposive because only 4 secondary schools in town schools and 5 in rural schools was selected were the teachers had at least 3 years teaching experience in Life Skills. Study employed a qualitative research design and an intersectional lens.Results: Amidst the volatile environment with varying intersections, teachers were conflicted and uncomfortable teaching gender and sexual diversity education while aware of the intersectional influences on them. Amidst the anxiety of inclusively address to discourse of sexual diversity. In the Life Skills classroom, teachers continued to present a message of affirmation, care and support as a duty to all learners.Conclusion: This article calls for awareness of the intersectional challenges teachers face in delivering the Life Skills curriculum, specifically the sexual diversity topics. Teacher educators and staff development interventions should focus on creating knowledge about intersections to gain a better understanding and improve teaching and learning platforms.Contribution: As educators dealing with children daily Life Skills must become conscious of existing intersectionality and how it affects their work. They must use this knowledge to create safe spaces for the learners.
... This paper contributes to efforts to provide critical insight into the ideological obstacles that prevent inclusive curricula and school environments and, at the same time, seek openings that will bring about possibilities for social change. In the face of inconsistent social attitudes (Griffin & Ouellet, 2003;Hall & Rodgers, 2019;Moyano & Sánchez-Fuentes, 2020) and opposition from multiple points including a growing heteroactivist discursive rhetoric (Francis & McEwen, 2023;McLean, 2021;Nash & Browne, 2021), schools are offering questionable responses and varying levels of commitment to LGBT+ safety and equality (Kitching, 2024;McQuillan & Mayo, 2024;Payne & Smith, 2018). How schools are expected to respond to the growing oppositional social forces and simultaneously maintain an LGBT+ inclusive school climate despite the lack of official guidance is the focus of this paper. ...
This paper challenges the idea that schools can sufficiently address LGBT+ inequalities and makes a case for schools to forge alliances with non-governmental actors who provide advocacy and support. It draws on in-depth interviews with educational staff and NGO queer and trans activists to explore their agendas in responding to cisheteronormativity in schools. The paper argues that teachers and NGO interactions are underpinned by an ambivalent logic whereby the advocacy and support work by NGOs in schools is viewed as "matter out of place" on the one hand and as work that ultimately matters on the other.
... There is a dearth of literature in rural universities related to the exclusionary practices of queer students through their lived experiences. The voices of the queer students remain inaudible due to teaching and learning spaces that normalize intolerance and a breeding ground to bullying and marginalization levelled against queer students (Francis and McEwen, 2023). Today, the invisibility queer students in rural universities and their concerns remains untapped; hence, it becomes imperative to take the initiative to acknowledge their presence, take cognisance of their predicament and work towards their unique needs by capturing their lived experiences (Blumenfeld et al., 2016). ...
Ruraqueer students constantly experience higher levels of victimization, and negative university experiences than their urban and suburban peers. Further, rural students have limited access to university resources while, queer events and workshops related to queer community, as well as university-based ongoing activities to support positive sexuality and gender identity development are scanty. This has been worsened by extant research written from an ‘outsider’ perspective lacking breadth and depth of experiences of queer students especially in rural universities from an African perspective. Anchored on a qualitative approach using purposive sampling, in depth semi-structured interviews were conducted in this study with eight under and postgraduate students who identified as queer. Emerging themes show how rurality intersects with actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity or sex characteristics of queer students in university spaces. Findings challenge the homogenization of university residencies; non-inclusive LGBTQ curricular; university environment that remains homophobic and how traditional, cultural and societal norms contribute to queer students sense of belonging. Implications suggest inclusive teaching and learning and ongoing awareness programmes that acknowledge diversity and enhance visibility of students with intersecting marginalized identities.
... Bathroom spaces (toilet facilities) have not received much attention in South African literature discussions involving gender 'transgressions' (Brown et al. 2020). The problem with these spaces, however, is that they continue to exclude transgender and gender nonconforming students at schools (Francis & McEwen 2023) and universities (Brown et al. 2020). In this study, the participants demonstrated again that these spaces, which are usually segregated by sex, are sites of their 'transgression' and therefore negatively affect their lives as students of transgender identity. ...
This study aimed to critically assess the current state of transgender student inclusion in South African universities, highlighting the challenges, progress and potential areas for improvements that exist. This article highlights the complexities of legal identity, self-determined identity and the recognition of transgender identity in South Africa. Using photovoice and drawings as data collection tools, this study explored the lived realities of seven transgender university participants in a society that upholds heteronormative values and practices. Purposive and snowball sampling approaches allowed us to identify participants for the study among a population that would otherwise be difficult to reach.
Contribution: The findings of this study are discussed under themes that are evocative of the students’ experiences of exclusion practices in their institutions of learning. We argue that South African universities should focus not only on increasing diversity but also on creating inclusive environments that support the success and well-being of all student populations, in this case, transgender students.
Family affirmation is an important factor in the psychological adjustment and resilience of LGBTQ+ youth. However, owing to hetero-cisnormative discourses in most rural communities, Gender and sexually diverse youth thrive through the most devastating adversities while negotiating for their LGBTQ+ identity in families. To understand systemic factors within and beyond family that influence the capacity of families to affirm LGBTQ+ youth, this article draws on data from a PhD study. This article presents qualitative interpretive phenomenological results from research involving 12 participants identifying as LGBTQ+ youth from a rural community in the Free State province. Participants were selected using nonprobability purposive and snowball sampling methods. The article explores factors that influence families to affirm their children with gender and sexual diversities, thereby highlighting the utility of ecological interventions that extend beyond working with a nuclear family to champion its resilience. The article also explores tensions that shape affirmation and marginalisation within a family context. It also demonstrates how risk exposure in families is perpetuated by multiple intersecting variables, such as family religious beliefs and cultural ideals that encourage heterosexuality and cisgender expression. Moreover, it shows the family’s openness and adaptive role in fostering the resilience of LGBTQ+ youth despite the prevalent hetero-cisnormative discourses. Despite the influence of the identified systemic factors, some families still navigate the affirmation of gender and sexual diversity. To this end, the article gives useful insights for practice and future research.
Comprehensive Sexuality Education is vital in educating youth about gender and sexuality diversity, and yet there has been a growing debate about including LGBTIQ+ content. Using focus group interviews with 11 cisheterosexual school-attending youth in Cape Town, South Africa, this article considers their accounts of whether and how cisheteronormativity features in their sexuality education curriculum. The participants’ responses are a mixed bag, indicating that while they appear to support their LGBTIQ+ peers and an inclusive sexuality education curriculum, there is little recognition of how cisgender and heterosexual privilege features in schooling. The paper concludes that cisheteronormative structures, discourses, and practices have deep roots that mediate and continue to shape the teaching and learning of sexuality education, ensuring that schools remain as normative spaces that enable just straight bodies to extend into them.
Over the course of the past two decades, the role of U.S. Christian Right groups in setting the stage for the creation of anti-LGBTIQ+ legislation in African countries has become increasingly recognised. This awareness was largely prompted in 2009 when investigative researchers uncovered connections between American anti-LGBTIQ+ Christian Right actors and the Ugandan lawmakers who proposed the original Anti-Homosexuality Bill. Despite their immediate efforts to distance themselves from having been involved in the process of developing the legislation, U.S. Christian Right groups have continued to strengthen and adapt their anti-LGBTIQ+ campaigning across the region. This chapter discusses how U.S. pro-family actors mask their homophobic and transphobic prejudice and present their existential attacks on LGBTIQ+ people as ‘common sense’ through alternative language and framing strategies.
Offering a vital, critical contribution to debates on gender, sexuality and schooling in South Africa, this book highlights how South African educational practices, discourses, and structures normalise cisheteronormativity, along with how these are resisted within schools and through contemporary forms of activism. Not only does it add fresh insights to the existing research literature on gender, sexualities and schooling, it also underscores the valuable contributions of queer and transgender social movements, which have made influential legislative, teaching, learning and support contributions to education. Drawing on ethnographic research with queer and transgender activists, teachers, school managers, parents and school attending youth, the book provides everyday real-life quotes and observations offering a deeply critical contribution to the debates on gender and sexualities, education and activism. Using spatial and affect theories, it troubles the assumptions that frame this field of research to make a novel contribution to the national and international literature and research. The book provides research-based insights for thinking about and calls for informed action to challenging cisheteronormativity within and beyond schools.
Whilst significant progress has been made in recent years with respect to advancing health and education, the ESA region’s young people still experience challenges in relation to their SRHR. This study brings together learning from the available data and reports, as well as the experiences of those closely connected with the process of affirmation/endorsement and implementation of the ESA Commitment between 2013 and 2018. Whilst challenges remain – particularly in relation to monitoring and accountability – the ESA Commitment has instigated notable progress, made possible in part by the emphasis on multisectoral collaboration between health and education sectors nationally and regionally. Sustained political, technical, and financial investment in young people’s health and rights will ensure that the countries of the region are able to build upon these successes and deliver on their commitments to young people during this decade of action towards the realisation of the SDGs and harnessing the demographic dividend for Africa for years to come.
In spite of progressive and inclusive laws, gender and sexual minority individuals in South Africa continue to experience high rates of violence. Drawing on a single descriptive case study, this paper explores the adverse experiences and the sources of individual and relational resilience of Dee, a transgender youth living in a resource-poor, rural community in South Africa. Through her narrative, Dee provides a rich, textured description of the resources she draws on to strengthen her resilience and the resistance she stages in addressing violence and discrimination within a traditional community. Referencing a socio-ecological framework of resilience, rooted in social justice, the article considers the ways in which personal, interpersonal and systemic factors intersect to both hinder and foster resilience. The paper emphasises the need for multi-systemic interventions that challenges adversity rather than adjusts to it.
During South Africa’s apartheid era, the social and political ideology of Afrikaner nationalism Othered those who disrupted an idealised vision of white heteronormative Afrikaner masculinity. While protections from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation were enshrined in the post-apartheid constitution in 1996, anti-LGBTQ violence remains a reality. It is common for young LGBTQ individuals to exercise the personal freedoms associated with leaving home to attend university to express their sexual orientations and/or gender identities more readily. This paper applies interpretive phenomenology to interview data with members of the LGBTQ student community at a rural university town in an overwhelmingly white Afrikaans region. It explores the complex and ill-defined relationships between LGBTQ student experiences, local heteronormative values, and shifting institutional identities in an era of social transformation.
In 2016, The trans* Collective student activist group brought to light the erasure of gender counter-normative students' contributions to the success of the #RhodesMustFall movement in 2015. Equally important, the Trans University Forum released a report in 2017 that compiled the experiences of gender counter-normative individuals at seven South African higher education institutions. The report evinced that universities are sites that marginalise and alienate gender counter-normative staff, students and workers. Employing life history research, the present article explores the experiences and responses of three gender counter-normative Stellenbosch University students as they navigate the university environment. Drawing on queer theory, the article highlights their challenges while at the same time it emphasises their agency and strategies of resistance to tackling cis-heteronormativity. The article concludes by highlighting how gender counter-normative students acknowledge and incorporate their relationships with others, allies and their communities as a collective response and action - collective agency - to challenge the normative, and sometimes adverse, university space.
There is a critical need for sex, sexuality and relationships education to be LGBTQI inclusive. Numerous studies, internationally and in South Africa, highlight this need but what constitutes an inclusive curriculum has not been sufficiently addressed. This paper seeks to advance this conversation by imagining a curriculum beyond compulsory heterosexuality and considers what knowledges and practices are necessary for the South African context. To do this, the authors consider the corpus of research about how sexualities are characterized in schooling generally and in the teaching of sexuality education specifically. Using the theoretical tools offered by Freire and hooks on critical consciousness, three arguments are made. First, the authors argue for the theoretical and empirical contributions of the sociology of gender and sexualities which are social constructions informed by history, social relations and power. Second, there is a need for a curriculum to recognize the intersectionality of learners and how identity knowledges shape the way that youth sexualities are understood and experienced. Finally, the teaching and learning of an LGBTQI inclusive curriculum will steer away from moralistic and didactic instruction in favor of more participatory pedagogies that acknowledge young people as agents and legitimate sexual beings.
This article investigates how lesbian students experience microaggressions in bathrooms at a South African university. We conveniently and purposively used in-depth interviews with 17 lesbian students largely from one of the faculties. Our findings show that notions of microaggression in university bathrooms were not always subtle but pervaded with strong intentions of cissexism and heteronormative messages that had serious implications for the wellbeing of same-sex sexual identity students. Although the university’s intent to introduce gender-neutral bathrooms was to address concerns of safety and forceful sexing of the body through the architecture of the traditional gender-binaried bathrooms, lack of engagement with the diverse student populations created confusion and anxiety. In light of the severity of hate crimes towards lesbians in South Africa, participants were of the view that the newly queered bathrooms made them more vulnerable to violence and ostracism. Implications are that the protection and inclusion of people with same-sex sexual identities in university bathroom spaces remain compromised. Tokenistic attempts at gender transformation in institutions of higher learning are indicative of the need for more focused and thought-through approaches with various stakeholders to consider the voices and needs of those directly affected.
Background:
Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) is increasingly gaining traction within the international community. CSE is regarded as an important means of informing young people about their rights and sexual health, improving public health outcomes and contributing to sustainable development.
Context and objective:
Considerable variation exists in understandings regarding what makes sexuality education ‘comprehensive’. To gain greater clarity on what CSE is seen to be and entails, and how this form of sexuality education compares with other approaches, a review of existing programmatic and scholarly literatures was conducted.
Design:
This literature review analyses a range of CSE guidelines and academic sources engaging with the subject of CSE, and sexuality education more broadly.
Method:
Analysis of stated goals and means of CSE to identify core components of this form of education.
Results:
Four sets of core CSE components are identified, yet the analysis shows that the intended breadth of this type of sexuality education leaves considerable space for interpretation, with key concepts often remaining abstract. Furthermore, addressing the core elements of CSE and achieving its ‘emancipatory’ goals can work to exclude particular perspectives and subjectivities.
Conclusion:
The review draws attention to the politics of knowledge production at play in decisions concerning what is deemed ‘comprehensive’, for whom, when and where. It concludes that the notion of ‘comprehensive’ is a matter of degree, and that reaching consensus on a set of universal standards regarding what can be deemed as ‘comprehensive’ may neither be possible nor desirable. The analysis will be useful for those interested in more careful engagement with CSE and, specifically, in examining features that, in practice, may run counter to the original goals.
Low educational attainment, often a lack of a high school diploma or matriculation degree, has been linked to negative health outcomes and lower quality of life for sexual and gender minorities globally. However, optimism and resiliency have been demonstrated to provide buffering effects on school dropout. We conducted a study in a South African rural setting to understand the school experiences of gay men, drag queens, and transgender women in Mpumalanga, South Africa. We recruited 35 HIV-positive participants using a purposive sampling method and then conducted a series of focus group discussions. A semi-structured focus group protocol was used, which covered three main domains: educational attainment and goals, experiences as a gender or sexual minority in school before matriculation, and personal and social values placed on education. Through a constant comparison analytical approach, we identified four themes to include school violence and discrimination, dropping out or staying silent to cope, competition between drag queens and girls, and education is social power. Our study suggests that sexual and gender minority youth navigate harassment and discrimination, which negatively impacts their educational attainment, but there is opportunity to support their academic achievement and leadership in society by building upon their acts of resiliency.
Drawing on Rich’s [Rich, A. 2004. “Reflections on ‘Compulsory Heterosexuality.’.” Journal of Women's History 16: 9–11; Rich, A. 1980. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 5: 631–660] conceptualization of heterosexuality as an institutionalized and compulsory system that supports gender and sexuality inequality, this paper answers the following questions – how do queer youth take up, question and say what they need from sexuality education. The study is based on in-depth interviews with 19 queer learners, aged between 16 and 19 years and living and schooling in the Free State Province, South Africa. This paper contends that what queer youth say need from sexuality education is a curriculum that – recognizes sexuality diversity; is without assumptions about their sexual experience or lack of it and does not focus solely on associating non-normative sexualities with issues of disease, deviance and danger. The findings highlight the inescapable power of compulsory heterosexuality and its perilousness and argue for a more defined and inclusive sexuality education curricula framework.
Theories of intersectionality have fundamentally transformed how feminists and critical race scholars understand the relationship between race and gender, but are often limited in their focus on contemporary experiences of interlocking oppressions. In The Specter of Sex, Sally L. Kitch explores the "back story" of intersectionality theory--the historical formation of the racial and gendered hierarchies that continue to structure U.S. culture today. Kitch uses a genealogical approach to explore how a world already divided by gender ideology became one simultaneously obsessed with judgmental ideas about race, starting in Europe and the English colonies in the late seventeenth century. Through an examination of religious, political, and scientific narratives, public policies and testimonies, laws, court cases, and newspaper accounts, The Specter of Sex provides a rare comparative study of the racial formation of five groups--American Indians, African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and European whites--and reveals gendered patterns that have served white racial dominance and repeated themselves with variations over a two-hundred-year period.
Teacher training programmes that improve teachers’ capacity and confidence to address homophobia in schools will engender non-homophobic school contexts. Currently there is a dearth of educational research on future teachers’ preparation for homophobic school contexts. By drawing on group interviews with student teachers, semi-structured interviews with lecturers and course coordinators and analysing course outlines of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual and Intersex (LGBTI) offerings at three South African universities, this paper shows that such programmes exist, albeit in a limited form. While they enable greater awareness they do not translate into future teachers being enabled to apply their learning in classrooms, school contexts and in their personal lives. It is recommended that more systematic efforts to capacitate teachers for their role in engendering non-homophobic behaviour in schools is needed in teacher training programmes in South African universities.
This paper focus on the challenges homophobia and transphobia pose to LGBTIQ students at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), a historically black peri-urban university located on the margins of Cape Town. Both the geographical location as well as the internal environment of the university give rise to various challenges for LGBTIQ identifying, and particularly gender non-conforming, students around their sexual freedom and self-affirmation. In transcending the vacuum between the challenges faced by these students and the existing human rights discourse on non-normative sexual orientations and gender identities, the Gender Equity Unit, through its student-driven LGBTIQ programme LoudEnuf, its support staff and in collaboration with the student structure GaylaUWC has been educating and sensitising the campus community through its intersectional awareness-raising initiatives. This paper focuses on the effectiveness of awareness-raising in creating a welcoming, comfortable, liberating and safe campus for LGBTIQ students to access comprehensive quality education.
Post-apartheid, there has been an increase in research on issues of gender and sexuality diversity in South African schools. To build upon and advance gender and sexuality diversity studies, I conducted a review of the literature that addresses how lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth experience schooling and how schools, if at all, respond to gender and sexuality diversity. Of the 27 publications reviewed, the findings show how schools proliferate compulsory heterosexuality and heteronormativity. The proliferation makes explicit gender and sexuality binaries in the curriculum, pedagogy, and school culture that assume that learners identify as heterosexual and embody heteronormative gender expression and expectations. In a nutshell, the corpus of research describes the challenges LGBT youth face in schools and points to the need for change. I conclude by offering ideas about schooling, teacher education, and future research on gender and sexuality diversity in South African education.
Over the past two decades, sexual citizenship has emerged as a new form of citizenship coupled with increased interest in the challenges to citizenship and social justice faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people and, in particular, by sexual minority youth within education systems. In South Africa, the rights of LGBTI people have been institutionalised in legislation, and research has begun to consider how educators may facilitate a more inclusive school environment for LGBTI youth. Given the focus of the Department of Education on social justice, the present study examines how selected Life Orientation (LO) textbooks for Grades 7 to 12 in South African schools represent and construct LGBTI identities. The study generally finds inconsistency in the representation of these identities. Gay male identities are represented in some instances, lesbian and bisexual identities rarely so, and transgender and intersex identities not at all. Two of the four series examined are almost entirely silent about LGBTI identities. This invisibility negates the different 'ways of knowing' of LGBTI learners; tends not to facilitate students in critiquing the discrimination, prejudice and social injustices faced by many LGBTI people, and lessens the importance of social justice and citizenship education in this field in South Africa.
There is a common impulse within academic research on sexuality education to draw on the notion of moral panic in order to better understand 'unreasonable' and emotional opposition to the implementation of sexuality education programs. The aim of this article is to interrogate this tendency to classify religious opposition to the sexuality education curriculum as suggestive of a 'moral panic'. I begin with a brief discussion of how the notion of 'moral panic' is commonly used in academic and popular discourse, and proceed to a discussion of 'moral panic' in the field of sexuality education, specifically focusing on the work of US researcher Janice Irvine. I also consider some research on recent South Australian controversies related to sexuality education in schools. Finally, I consider the attribution of 'moral panic' in accounting for religious opposition to sexuality education as a secular formation.
South African schools have been found to be homophobic. Teachers can play an important role in offering a critique of homophobia grounded in South Africa's legal claim to equality on the basis of sexual orientation. Currently there is a dearth of educational research about how teachers understand and address homophobia. By drawing upon focus-group interviews with teachers based atfive schools, this paper shows dominant teaching views which contribute to homophobia, although this is not the only view. Informed by theoretical framings that seek to uncover heterosexual domination, the analysis shows three interrelated discursive constructions through which homophobia is both produced and resisted by teachers. Silencing homosexuality, denying its existence in the curriculum, and religious prohibitions were found to be dominant. It must be understood however that teachers are working in a context without any intervention and support. Their views also show potentialfor working against the climate of homophobia. Recommendations for such work are indicated in the conclusion of the paper.
The assertion “homosexuality is un-African” is widely viewed as an expression of homophobia. However, without knowledge of what homosexuality and “Africanness” mean in a given context, any understanding of how to shift the prejudices associated with this assertion remains limited. Research conducted in 2010 with police, high school learners (students), and a sample of more than one thousand residents from two urban townships in South Africa contributes to this understanding. This article draws on data from the research to explore the significance of cultural translation when considering what constitutes same-sex prejudice and how it may relate to notions of authenticity or “real Africanness.” While the research provides evidence of same-sex prejudice, there is also evidence of qualified acceptance of same-sex sexuality and of efforts to combat prejudice. Opportunities for change are discussed with reference to the data.
Guided by photovoice, a form of participatory action research that uses documentary photography and storytelling, this study examines how Black gay men and lesbians view themselves in relation to White gay men and lesbians in South Africa. Participants were from 4 South African townships and included 4 women and 3 men. Participants discussed interracial dating, a lack of education, and information regarding differing sexualities and health care. They reported being sexually and physically assaulted for challenging the heterosexual status quo. Other themes that emerged from this study were classism, cultural traditions of visiting African healers, and segregated social spaces. Amidst oppression and despair, participants showed signs of strength, hope, and optimism.
South African studies on rape culture have examined this issue in relation to heterosexuality. They demonstrate how toxic masculinity exercises sexual power by victimizing women and girls. However, little is known about manifestations of rape culture in contexts where both victims and perpetrators are same-sex attracted young people within intimate relationships. Thus, this article extends the scope of the scholarly discussions on rape culture by exploring how rape culture manifests itself in the social and intimate lives of sexually diverse South African youth. It will also reflect on some of the ways that could be explored to address rape culture.
In this paper, the author explores some of the issues associated with teaching about compulsory heterosexuality and schooling in an undergraduate sociology programme. Using a novel approach to gathering data, the article analyses the stories students submitted about themselves or others who were counter normative in terms of gender and sexuality in school. Informed by the work of Ahmed and Foucault, this article explores what kinds of gendered and sexualised subject positions become possible through the stories of students, and how are these subject positions interpellated and constituted relationally? Despite progressive legislation, queer activism and the significant visibility of gender and sexuality counter-normative identities in the South African media, the analysis highlights that students’ position school attending queer youth as (1) stereotyped caricatured subjects, (2) objects of fear and (3) subjects of violence. These subject positions serve as straightening devices that interpellate queer school attending youth as unfamiliar, not belonging and unworthy and therefore requiring change. Insights from this article can inform the research and practice which is pivotal to addressing cisheteronormativity not only in schools but cultural ideas, norms and practices too.
Not only does teaching about gender and sexuality diversity lead to some very interesting and often emotionally evocative, pedagogical exchanges; it can also create challenging issues for teachers and students alike. This article focuses on what happens when a module that addresses compulsory heterosexuality and schooling is broached in an undergraduate sociology class. More importantly, it offers an analysis of the critical incidents and tensions that pay specific attention to how power, knowledge, and emotion feature in teaching and learning. Using antioppressive and affect theories, this article offers an analysis of how we might understand pedagogical practice, especially as it relates to addressing the power of normative heterosexuality in a university classroom. With reflections emerging from the module, I argue for more sociological theorization and analysis of the role of affect in pedagogies that seek to advance liberatory teaching and learning in the area of anti-heterosexism education.
The majority of LGBT research in schools has focused almost exclusively on sexuality diversity, leaving the experiences of transgender and gender diverse youth a much neglected area of scholarly inquiry. Using qualitative in‐depth interviews, we explore the schooling experiences of transgender and non-binary youth in South Africa. Our findings highlight that transgender and non-binary youth face hostile schooling climates where discrimination, misgendering and exclusion punctuate their experience of schooling. What also emerges is that they are expected to forego their felt gender embodiment and expression and assimilate to the dominant cisnormative schooling culture. Our research, a first of its kind on trans and non-binary school attending youth in South Africa, has implications for educators, curriculum and pedagogy and points to the need for more work to understand how gender diverse youth can be supported in schools. It also points to the need for further studies that are inclusive of gender diverse youth.
Schools are places where youth do work on the construction of their sexual identities which is intimately connected with issues around gender. Using one-on-one in-depth interviews, this article addresses how queer youth navigate dominant understandings of gender and sexuality in the context of their identity and practice. Cognizant of how gender remains a significant force in organizing social relations in schools, the youth parody and abnormalize heteronormativity calling into question the fragility of hegemonic heterosexuality. Moreover, the findings demonstrate that despite evidence that associates schooling with social exclusion, the queer youth's accounts highlight, strikingly, that queer identity and inclusion are not necessarily separate storylines. Offering an alternative view of the schooling experiences of queer youth, the paper motivates that within exclusion, in a matter of speaking with all its unduly assemblages, is inclusion.
South African schools are tasked with providing sexuality education through the Life Orientation curriculum as a means of challenging continued high rates of HIV, unwanted pregnancy and gender-based violence. While in theory schools are well positioned to provide appropriate knowledge for reproductive health and navigating sexual challenges within a gender justice framework, research on sexuality education in South African schools indicates that this is not the reality in practice. This paper draws on a growing body of qualitative studies, with both educators and learners in South African schools, to understand the issues undermining the goal of a critical and social justice pedagogy of sexuality in Life Orientation classrooms. We argue that sexuality education has been deployed to regulate and discipline young sexualities, reinforce and perpetuate gender binarisms and heteronormativity, re-establish global northern family values of the nuclear family within a pro-family discourse, and represent continued assumptions of adult authority in a civilising mission over young people. We suggest that the failure to make critical use of Life Orientation is linked to the dominance of ‘expert’-based didactic pedagogy, and argue the possibilities of sexuality education as a productive space for young people’s active participation and agency in making meaning of gender and sexualities.
This article argues that the normative construction of ‘family’ in heteronormative ‘nuclear’ terms is infused with power relations, and therefore must not be taken for granted as an analytical category or concept. Not only a site where racialised and patriarchal western notions of sexed and gendered hierarchies have been naturalised and institutionalised, the ‘nuclear family’ model was positioned as a signifier of modernity, civilisation and progress within eurocentric knowledge construction that served colonial interests. This discussion reviews decolonial thinking on the nuclear family, as well as anti-imperialist literature on the colonial history of the nuclear family ideal. These perspectives are brought into conversation with current developments in which the nuclear family model is being reinvigorated by the conservative US-based ‘pro-family’ movement. The ‘family’, it is concluded, is entangled in multiple relations of geo-political power that should be taken into account in research and the production of knowledge around kinship in African contexts.
I. Empire of the Home 1. The Lay of the Land 2. "Massa and Maids 3. Imperial Leather 4. Psychoanalysis, Race and Female Fetish II. Double Crossings 5. Soft-Soaping Empire 6. The White Family of Man 7. Olive Schreiner III. Dismantling the Master's House 8. The Scandal of Hybridity 9. "Azikwelwa" (We Will Not Ride) 10. No Longer in a Future Heading
Heterosexism and heteronormativity are pervasive in the South African society, but to what degree are they present in Life Orientation (LO) textbooks? This question, explored through a content analysis of widely used Grade 10 LO textbooks, was framed by queer theory. The paper quantitatively examines the coverage of sexualities, and qualitatively examines how sexualities are constructed and projected in the texts. The quantitative analysis reveals a low percentage of statements devoted to sexuality overall and the normalisation of heterosexuality mainly through the exclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) sexualities but also through techniques of differentiation, hierarchisation and homogenisation. The qualitative analysis reveals inadequate information about sexualities and in its place a simplistic, moralistic ideological approach. Furthermore, discussions of the family, dating, safe sex and marriage assume heterosexuality as the norm. Nineteen years after the democratisation of South Africa and 17 years after the ratification of South Africa's constitution which explicitly forbids discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, LGBT sexualities are largely invisible in school LO curricula. Since this is a subject that is compulsory for all learners and its express aim is to prepare young South Africans for participation as citizens in a just and democratic society, the absence of LGBT issues and identities helps perpetuate prejudice and violence towards LGBT communities.
This paper explores how sexually marginalised black high-school students from conservative schooling contexts in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, experience schooling. It draws on queer theories through life narratives in presenting findings from a small-scale interventionist project designed by the author. The project involved 14 participants comprising teachers, school learners and pre-service teachers. The study found that queer youth have negative experiences of schooling which range from punitive actions expressed through derogatory language to vicious reactionary hate, often expressed through violence and often perpetrated by teachers. This paper also found resist-stances from queer learners in portraying a positive self-image for themselves as a mechanism for coping with homophobia. As a way of looking forward, it locates teachers at the centre of bringing about change for the queer learners and argues for a re-education of teachers in order to tackle homophobia in schools.
The last five centuries, described as the age of modernity, have been defined by a number of historical processes including the Atlantic Slave Trade and attendant institutions of slavery, and European colonization of Africa Asia and Latin America. The idea of modernity evokes the development of capitalism and industrialization, as well as the establishment of nation states and the growth of regional disparities in the World system. The period has witnessed a host of social and cultural transformations. Significantly, gender and racial categories emerged during this epoch as two fundamental axes along which people were exploited and societies stratified. A hallmark of the modern era is the expansion of Europe and the establishment of Euro/American cultural hegemony throughout the world. Nowhere is this more profound than in the production of knowledge about human behavior, history, societies, and cultures. As a result, interests, concerns, predilections, neuroses, prejudices, social institutions and social categories of Euro/Americans have dominated the writing of human history. One effect of this Eurocentrism is the racialization of knowledge: Europe is represented as the source of knowledge and Europeans as knowers. Indeed, male gender privilege as an essential part of European ethos is enshrined in the culture of modernity. This global context for knowledge production must be taken into account in our quest to comprehend African realities and indeed the human condition. In this paper, my objective is to interrogate gender and allied concepts based on African cultural experiences and epistemologies. The focus here is on the nuclear family system, which is a specifically European form and yet is the original source of many of the concepts that are used universally in gender research. The goal is to find ways in which African research can be better informed by local concerns and interpretations and at the same time, concurrently, for African experiences to be taken into account in general theory-building, the structural racism of the global system notwithstanding. Gender and the Politics of Feminist knowledge
A timely exposé of the efforts of the religious right to influence global policy. With little fanfare and profound effect, "family values" have gone global, and the influence of the Christian Right is increasingly felt internationally. This is the first comprehensive study of the Christian Right's global reach and its impact on international law and politics. Doris Buss and Didi Herman explore tensions, contradictions, victories, and defeats for the Christian Right's global project, particularly in the United Nations. The authors consult Christian Right materials, from pamphlets to novels; conduct interviews with people in the movement; and provide a firsthand account of the World Congress of Families II in 1999, a key event in formulating Christian Right global policy and strategy. The result is a detailed look at a new global player-its campaigns against women's rights, population policy, and gay and lesbian rights; its efforts to build an alliance of orthodox faiths with non-Christians; and the tensions and strains as it seeks to negotiate a role for conservative Christianity in a changing global order. Doris Buss is assistant professor of law at Carleton University in Ottawa. Didi Herman is professor of law at Keele University in the United Kingdom.
In The Antigay Agenda, Didi Herman probes the values, beliefs, and rhetoric of the organizations of the Christian Right. Tracing the emergence of their antigay agenda, Herman explores how and why these groups made antigay activity a top priority, and how it relates to their political history. "A penetrating analysis of the Christian Right's antigay agenda and of how that agenda is derived from the Christian Right's peculiar vision of American history and the Christian faith."âRev. Peter J. Gomes, Boston Book Review "Public intellectualism at its best. . . . A comprehensive summary of the conservative Protestant worldview."âMichael Joseph Gross, Boston Phoenix Literary Section "Presents considerable information not previously part of the nation's political discourse. . . . [Herman] dissects the Christian Right's antigay stance dispassionately giving, as it were, the devil his due. For anyone on either side of this passionate and important conflict, that is an impressive accomplishment."âHastings Wyman, Jr., Washington Post Book World
Under Pressure: The Regulation of Sexualities in South African Secondary Schools. Braamfontein: MaThoko’s Books
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ACDP pickets over Western Cape Schools’ Gender Policy
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Chatsworth Secondary Pupil Kills Himself after Disciplinary Hearing
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