‘If you a bitch, we treat you like a bitch’: South African teenage boys’ constructions of heterosexual masculinity

ABSTRACT

Literature on masculinities in South Africa lacks in situ examinations of how teenage boys draw upon heterosexuality as a key resource to make sense of identities. Beyond recognition that heterosexual masculinity is key to understanding male culpability in the triple challenge of HIV, gender inequalities, and violence, there is a lack of attention to race- and class-based realities in the production of young masculinities. To address this gap, we draw on focus group discussions with coloured teenage boys (aged 15–19) in a Durban township, and examine their understandings of heterosexual relationships. The data suggests that heterosexuality was a compelling force informed by dominant expectations of how to be a ‘real’ man. Indeed, relationships with girls were frames for ratcheting up ‘compelling heterosexuality’ and risky hypersexual performances based on misogyny, the subordination of women and girls, and male sexual entitlement. We argue that, in a context of socioeconomic marginalisation, underpinned by the legacies of apartheid, race and class inequalities continue to emasculate men and boys. Heterosexual performances offer ways for perceived male weakness to be mediated through power expressed within oppressive gendered cultures.

KEYWORDS:

• Heterosexuality
• race
• socioeconomic marginalisation
• South Africa
• teenage masculinities

Acknowledgements

We thank Dr Bronwynne Anderson for collecting data upon which this study is based.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The term ‘coloured’ is a racial and cultural identity associated with mixed-race South Africans, who may have any combination of African, European, Asian, and indigenous (including Khoi and San) ancestries (Adhikari 2009). While coloured is a somewhat contested appellation in the post-apartheid climate, historian Mohamed Adhikari (2009) observes that it is both a socio-cultural and racial identity that has origins in the colonial past. Coloured South Africans, like others, have always been, and continue to be, the authors of their own identities. Accordingly, this paper uses ‘coloured’ to describe people who have historically identified as such, though we recognise the complex politics of racial vocabularies in the post-apartheid era.

2 Also known as whoonga or nyaope, ‘sugars’ is a cheap street drug which consists of powdered heroin with chemical additives such as Rattex – a type of rat poison.

Additional information

Funding

This work is based on the research supported by the South African Research Chairs Initiative of the Department of Science and Technology and National Research Foundation of South Africa [grant number 98407].