“Did you just say I was lit ?” Transgender and non-binary youth doing gender; resisting cisnormativity in South African schools

ABSTRACT

Using concepts of power and resistance, this article explores how cisnormativity is (re)produced in schools through everyday practices and how such practices are resisted. The research draws on ethnographic interviews with seven 16–18-year-old racially diverse school attending transgender and non-binary youth. In schools where cisnormativity is ubiquitous and unquestioned, the participant’s identification as transgender or non-binary is itself a significant act of resistance against cisnormative power structures. The article argues that they are in charge of their gender identities, expression (and bodies) and are resistant actors as opposed to simply being targets of their peers and educational staff’s cisgenderist narratives. The transgender and nonbinary youth recognize the prevailing cisgenderist scripts and, at the same time, assert a knowing script of who they are. As resilient agents, they talk back, sometimes even masking their defiance through hidden transcripts. The article concludes with implications for how schools can meet the needs of trans and gender diverse learners.

KEYWORDS:

• Transgender
• non-binary
• cisnormativity
• schooling
• South Africa

Acknowledgment

I would like to sincerely thank esethu monakali and the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions for strengthening this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Slang for somebody or something that is excellent or exciting.

2. a whites-only institution during apartheid.

3. See #StopRacismAtPretoriaGirlsHigh.

4. Derogatory term in Afrikaans used to refer to same-sex attracted or effeminate man.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of South Africa [Grant No: 136523].

Notes on contributors

Dennis A Francis

Dennis A Francis is a South African-based scholar and activist whose work engages with questions related to gender, sexualities and schooling. Dennis is a former Dean of Education and currently Professor of Sociology at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. Their research, located in the sociology of education, focuses on how educational structures, discourses and practices reproduce cisheteronormativity and social inequality in schools, and how these are also resisted and challenged. Their most recent books are Troubling the Teaching and Learning of Gender and Sexuality Diversity in South African Education (Queer Studies and Education – PalgraveMacmillan, 2017), Queer Social Movements and Outreach Work in Schools: A Global Perspective (Queer Studies and Education – PalgraveMacmillan, 2020, co-ed with Jon I Kjaran & Jukka Lehtonen and Queer Activism in South African Education: Disrupting Cis(hetero)normativity in Schools (Routledge Critical Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 2022).