Love is good even when it is bad: Competing sexuality discourses in a township high school in South Africa

abstract

Despite schools' and adults' need to preserve children's innocence and their efforts to heavily regulate or deny young people's expressions of their sexual desires, children continue to position themselves as sexual agents. This Article presents empirical data from a broader doctoral school-based ethnography which aimed to explore informal sexual cultures among teenagers in a township high school in KwaZulu-Natal. The main data source was transcripts of participant observations, focus groups and conversations with grade 11 learners. Framed within feminist theory, the Article explores the meanings which the teenage girls and boys attach to sexuality in their everyday lives and the ways they define and group themselves as boys and girls in relation to dominant discourses of sexuality. In a setting where children are expected to be sexually innocent and where teen sexual agency is viewed as dangerous and an impediment to the academic purpose of schooling, grade 11 learners construct sex and sexuality as a positive development that enables active, self-aware, pleasure-seeking agents to negotiate their identities. Informed by their expressed gendered view of adult sexuality, they talk about high school years as ‘the’ time for sexual fun, sexual identity constructions, sexual exploration and sexual freedom. The Article draws attention to how township teenagers assert their sexual agency and the importance of developing insights on their sexuality constructions.

keywords:

• Sexuality
• sexual agency
• teenagers
• township
• school

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sibonsile Mathe

SIBONSILE MATHE is a Lecturer in the School of Applied Human Sciences, Social Work Discipline, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Howard College, Durban. Her main teaching and research interests include gender, AIDS and sexuality; human behaviour and social environment and Social Work practice. Email: [email protected]