‘You must be thinking what a lesbian man teacher is doing in a nice place like Dipane Letsie School?’: enacting, negotiating and reproducing dominant understandings of gender in a rural school in the Free State, South Africa

Abstract

In this article I explore two questions – how does, Thatho, a transgendered life orientation teacher enact, resist and reproduce dominant understandings of gender and sexuality in terms of his own identity and practice; and what specific possibilities, challenges and resistances exist for a transgender educator in the rural. Using life-history research, I show that Thatho challenges essentialist assumptions of gender and identity as he enacts multiple masculinities. My article troubles the common typification of men solely as hegemonic, marginalised or subordinate when indeed the actual accounts of their lives are far more fluid than these rigid distinctions. Thatho's enactment of multiple masculinities talks to the ‘durability or survivability of non-hegemonic patterns of masculinity’ outlined by Connell and Messershmidt [2005. “Hegemonic Masculinity Rethinking the Concept.” Gender & Society 19 (6): 829–859. doi:10.1177/0891243205278639], which in many ways characterises a well-crafted response to his own marginalisation and stigmatised sexuality. Yet, Thatho's narrative also suggests a significant flexibility in the gender order in Qwaqwa, which looks different from the sometimes inflexibility of rural society and in some research from the developed world and, perhaps, from some urban contexts in contemporary South Africa.

Keywords:

• masculinities
• queer sexualities
• life methods
• social theory

Acknowledgements

This article draws on discussions with Renee Depalma, Zoë Francis, Finn Reygan and Gabriel Hoosein. I am grateful for the insights I gained from sharing ideas with them. Many thanks also to the three anonymous reviewers for giving very helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this article. One of the reviewers went to great pains to help me restructure my argument and I have used his/her kind direction. I would like to thank Thatho for his participation. This research was supported by a National Research Foundation (NRF) grant [Education Research in South Africa (ERGR) grant no: 90366]. The findings and opinions expressed in my research do not necessarily reflect the position or policies of the NRF.

Notes

1. Thatho is a pseudonym.

2. LO was introduced as a learning area in South African schools in 1998. This change came about with the post-1994 shift in education policy to Outcomes-Based Education. Life Orientation comprises a diverse number of components: guidance, life skills education, health promotion, physical development and movement, environmental education, citizenship and human rights education and religion education (see Francis 2010).

3. Here I follow Thatho's own use of the male pronoun, in line with transgender-affirming practice.

4. Qwaqwa was one of the 10 homelands in South Africa introduced by the apartheid government (see Bank 1994).

5. Disbelief or the exclamatory rhetorical nature of what was being said.

6. Means an older brother a sign of respect.

7. Get out of here.