Using a Film to Challenge Heteronormativity: South African Teachers “Get Real” in Working with LGB Youth

ABSTRACT

The author explains how the film “Get Real” enabled him to explore, with a group of South African student teachers, the complex ways in which queer adolescents negotiate their daily lives, the struggles they have with “coming out” to their friends and families, the problems with representation, and the connections between hegemonic masculinity, heterosexism, and homophobia.

KEYWORDS:

• Coming-out
• “Get Real,”
• film
• heterosexism
• homophobia
• masculinities
• pedagogy
• South Africa
• teacher education

At the time of writing this article, Eric M Richardson was a lecturer in School of Education, Philosophy of Education, and Social Justice Education, in the School of Education at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. He is now Managing Director of the Themba HIV/AIDS Organisation in Johannesburg, South Africa.