Browsing by Author "Sparrow, Melissa Jade"
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- ItemBeing a queer womxn within the context of tertiary education institutions in South Africa: Identity and queerphobia(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2019-12) Sparrow, Melissa Jade; Painter, Desmond; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Psychology.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In a cisheteronormative society, queer people are often silenced and othered by cisheterosexual researchers. This study was to be different in that a queer womxn researcher was to highlight and amplify the voices of queer womxn. The purpose of the study was to explore the way that queer South African womxn in tertiary education make sense of as well as negotiate queerness and queerphobia in their daily lives. These experiences were explored in a process consisting of three steps: Firstly, an in-depth semi-structured interview was conducted. Secondly, the womxn participated in a two week long process in which they made use of journaling. Lastly, a short debriefing interview took place in order to ensure that the researcher completely understood the journals. Ten participants were recruited using purposive sampling, and thereafter the data was examined through the lens of queer theory. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used in order to organise the data into meaningful themes. Five main themes arose from the data: identity, experiences of queerness, gendered queerphobia, systematic and institutionalised queerphobia, and being a queer womxn at university. Throughout the results it became evident that the intersectionality of the womxn’s varying identities and the uniqueness of each queer individual impacted heavily on the way that they experienced being queer, on how they experienced queerphobia, as well as the way that they interpreted queerphobia. Queer students did not feel that the university was an inclusive space for queer people, and continued to feel marginalised and othered within tertiary education institutions.