“You're not a man if you hit a girl”: Coloured high-school boys articulating more peaceable expressions of heterosexual masculinity

abstract

Wentworth, a predominantly ‘Coloured’ working class community in the south Durban basin of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, is characterised by a high prevalence of HIV and AIDS, poverty and unemployment—the socio-economic context from which participants in this study emerge. This article draws from a completed doctoral study drawing from ethnographic methods and included semi-structured, open-ended interviews and participant observation of 13 ‘Coloured’ high-school boy (Anderson, 2010). The findings suggest that despite a misogynistic and violent culture in this community, some boys resist and abhor sexual and physically violent practices that serve to dominate and subjugate girls. This article captures the conflicting constructions and manifestations of masculinity which demonstrate the ambivalences and confusions that permeate the everyday experiences and performances of these boys. Demonstration of alternate, non-violent and non-sexist masculinities among this group can be interpreted in ways that suggest pro-feminist dispositions, and can provide opportunities for working with these boys to create awareness in schools as catalysts for change in such gender relations. This paper focuses largely on the more exemplary, alternate and non-violent masculine articulations, destabilising the negative perception of all ‘Coloured' males as essentially violent. Evidence points to the existence of caring maternal and familial relationships that translate into the boys’ desire for respectful and peaceful relationships with girls. However, the lack of alternatives to the existing violent expressions of masculinities is real and it is therefore crucial to provide boys with other, more exemplary versions of masculine behaviour.

keywords:

• ‘Coloured’
• peaceable masculinities
• maternal relationships