Being queer in South African township secondary schools: experiences of queerphobic violence and creating opportunities for change.
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Date
2022
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Abstract
Despite the fact that the rights of South African queer persons are enshrined in the Constitution,
queer youth continue to experience marginalization and queerphobic violence in communities
and schools. The aim of this study was to investigate how, despite the protective constitutional
context, queer African youth experience, respond to and resist queerphobic violence in and
around their township secondary schools. The main research question addressed by the study
was How do queer African youth experience, respond to and resist negative experiences in
township secondary schools? The study is located within the constructivist paradigm to
understand the world in which the participants live and learn, and the critical paradigm to
critically examine and challenge the unequal social norms that informs their marginalization
and violence they experience. Linked to these paradigms, the study adopted a qualitative
methodology, and in particular, participatory visual methodology (PVM) as an approach to
addressing the research question. Working with 10 queer African youth, the study generated
data through participatory visual methods, drawing and cellphilms-making, during a series of
workshops. In addition, using the visual artefacts (drawings) they generated, I held one-on-one
interviews with each participant. The emerging data was analysed using thematic analysis and
John Fiske’s three layers of analysis of visual texts. These layers include the primary texts
(drawings and cellphilms), the secondary text (what the participant had to say about what they
have made), and the audience text which involves what the audience (including other
participants in the workshops and others outside the workshop) says about the primary text.
To address the main research question, the study posed three critical questions. In response to
the first critical question, What does it mean to be a queer African youth in a township
secondary school?, the findings suggest that the schools are configured around unequal gender
and heteropatriarchal norms. In these spaces, for these participants, queerphobic violence,
including name-calling, bullying, physical and sexual assaults, was part of every aspect of
schooling, with little support from teachers, who were often perpetrators. In response to the
second critical research question, How do they respond and resist their negative experiences
from peers and teachers?, the findings suggest that despite the heterosexist school contexts,
the participants drew on their agency to develop friendships, love, and a sense of belonging.
The participants’ resistance and agency involved avoiding certain spaces (such as toilets), but
also knowingly going into queerphobic areas to disrupt and subvert the unequal gender norms
that informed interactions in and around the school. In response to the third research question,
What changes do queer African youth want to see in their township secondary school?, the
study found that, informed by their experiences of queerphobic violence, the changes the
participants wanted to see in the schools included changing school policy, improving teacher
preparation for teachers to address queerphobic violence and queer issues, and changing the
curriculum to include queer content and affirm queer youth in schools. These findings have
implications for interventions aimed at addressing the safety of queer learners in these schools
and communities. Based on these findings, interventions might include changes to school
policy (particularly the Code of Conduct), working with communities and parents to identify
and develop strategies aimed at making schools safe, improving school and classroom practice,
and teacher education and professional development to ensure that curricula for training include
the needs and issues of queer learners.
Description
Masters Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.