The art of making young genders and sexualities in South Africa
Date
2021-03
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Abstract
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis is a visual arts-based exploration of young genders and sexualities in South
Africa. The data presented here was generated by a uniquely designed participatory online visual
arts course conducted with four young women aged 16-17 years who attend a co-educational high
school in KwaZulu-Natal. This research set out to centre young people’s perspectives and
experiences in understanding the making of young genders and sexualities, but also to provide a
space where participants were able to explore, question and unpack these ideas that they hold.
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) was used to bring together the artworks that participants made
with the broader systems of power within which they operate to understand the simultaneous forms
of conformity, compliance, agency, and resistance that young people enact. The analysis showed
how multiple versions of gender and sexuality are constructed, performed and experienced over
various temporal and spatial contexts. The ways in which femininities and young women’s bodies
become sexualised through the gaze of the heterosexual matrix was shown to be a product of the
intersection of age with gender and sexuality. This study also showed what happens when
participatory arts-based methods are used not to explore a particular social issue or identity, but
rather the making of gender and sexuality more broadly – the four young women raised
significantly under-researched topics such as divorce and asexuality. Furthermore, the analysis
revealed the inescapability of race in research focusing on gender and sexuality. In post-apartheid
South Africa these identities and systems of power are deeply and unmistakably intertwined. It is
in reflecting on the insights that a participatory visual arts-based approach to engaging young
people about gender and sexuality generates, that I argue for the value – analytically,
methodologically, and pedagogically – that this study holds.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Geen Afrikaanse opsomming beskikbaar nie.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Geen Afrikaanse opsomming beskikbaar nie.
Description
Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2021.
Keywords
Gender identity -- South Africa, Sex role -- South Africa, Education, Secondary -- Teenagers -- Women -- South Africa, Arts and Society -- South Africa, Art -- Teenagers -- Women -- Sexual behavior -- South Africa, Transgender people -- Art -- South Africa, Gays -- Art -- South Africa, Lesbians -- Art -- South Africa, UCTD