Browsing by Author "Slabbert, Philip Neethling"

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    “Let me live” - Exploring a Group of Bisexual SA University Students' Experiences in their Various Communities
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2022-04) Slabbert, Philip Neethling; Van Wyk, Sherine Bronvin; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Psychology.
    ENGLISH SUMMARY: An expanding body of international literature has identified dual-sourced binegativity from straight and gay/lesbian individuals as a risk factor for the mental health disparities among bisexual individuals, compared to straight and gay/lesbian individuals’ experiences. Existing studies frequently attribute these disparities to bisexual specific minority stressors, including erasure, as well as invisibility and invalidation due to bisexual incomprehensibility. In South Africa, there is a lack of research into bisexual individuals’ experiences because data about bisexual individuals have frequently not been differentiated from gay men or lesbian women. My qualitative study aimed to address the knowledge gap by exploring self-identified bisexual university students’ lived experiences of their bisexuality, including experiences of binegativity and support within their family and community environments, among their university peers, and within the queer community. A group of 12 self-identified bi-individuals registered at a South African university, diverse in terms of their sex, race, religious background, and age, participated in this study. After receiving institutional permission and ethical clearance from the university’s Research Ethics Committee, I conducted virtual, in-depth, semi-structured interviews with each participant. I managed the data using Atlas.ti and applied reflexive thematic analysis and an inductive approach to the qualitative data. I used a queer epistemological framework to conceptualise and understand the participants’ experiences, and a queered social constructionist paradigm informed my methodological approach. From the data, I generated five key themes: (1) isolation on the margins of normativity; (2) erasure through gendering; (3) playing with the closet; (4) barriers to bisexual identity development; and (5) unlearning binegativity. These themes evidenced how regimes of power/knowledge rooted in dominant norms and confirmed the prevalence of dualbinegativity that keep these participants in their proper straight or gay/lesbian place. This influences participants to internalise these norms and engage in self-policing. Consequently, revealing one’s sexual orientation becomes a complex interplay of strategic outness and concealment according to contextual variables, as opposed to a one-time event. Furthermore, continual exposure to dual-sourced binegativity is evidently internalised. Internalised binegativity affected participants’ interaction with their environment and their perception of their sexual orientation. They reported how subscribing to dominant norms increased feelings of shame and self-hate, and led to them constantly self-monitoring, regulating their behaviour and devaluing their own experiences. Cumulatively, external and internalised binegativity seemingly has an injurious effect on the participants’ psychological well-being and sets in motion a ripple effect of marginalisation, loneliness, self-isolation and bisexual identity uncertainty. Through reflection and introspection, participants understood the ignorance at the foundation of societies’ sexualities knowledge, power/privilege dynamics of their various contexts, and the importance of grounding their truth in personal experience. Social support and selfeducation restored epistemic justice, establishing the base that makes this possible. This allowed the participants to start developing a bisexual affirming identity, enabling them to further queer and trouble dominant norms and establish a reverse discourse. Based on the findings of this study, the need for more research with bisexual individuals as a group, as well as the need for more interventions to decrease internalised binegativity while increasing resilience are evident.