Girls' experiences of cellphone porn use in South Africa and their accounts of sexual risk in the classroom.

Violence remains a persistent challenge in South African schools, prompting investigations into underlying risk factors and mitigation strategies. However, an under-explored aspect of this violence is the potential link between the consumption of Internet porn via cellphones among girls and boys, and girls' risks to sexual violence inside the classroom. To address this gap, we used focus group discussions with 14-17-year-old South African girls to examine their experiences of porn access via cellphones and their accounts of sexual violence at school. The study illuminates the nuanced ways in which the girls experience risks and express agency. First, the girls illustrate a link between sexual harassment and boys accessing porn on their cellphones during class. Second, the findings show how girls negotiate their sexual agency and safety through contesting sexual violence. Third, there are conflicting views about porn: while some girls admitted liking and viewing porn, others objected to it as harmful and degrading. Finally, this study offers crucial insights into strategies to create safer school environments and gender equality by drawing attention to the intersections between cellphone porn consumption, sexuality, and girls' negotiations of sexual agency amidst sexual risk in the classroom.

Umhlalaphansi and inkwari: teenage men's accounts on becoming fathers.

This paper explores how some South African teenage fathers in rural KwaZulu-Natal engage in heterosexual relationships. Drawing on findings from a qualitative based study with twenty teenage fathers aged between seventeen and nineteen years old, we examine how they talk about two highly sexualised gatherings - umhlalaphansi (an overnight Zulu dance ceremony) and inkwari (a weekend-long rave-like party). We find that these social and cultural gatherings provide opportunities to express gender and sexuality whilst simultaneously increasing the risk for early childbearing. Umhlalaphansi is produced at the cultural nexus which supports respect and cultural norms that prohibit sexual secrecy and unregulated sexuality. Paradoxically, umhlalaphansi is a key site in which teenage men and women engaged in courtships, sexual relationships and risky sexual conduct. Inkwari lacks cultural scripts and is based on partying, alcohol, drug use and engagement in spontaneous sexual encounters. We show how these two sites provide opportunities for young men to pursue sexuality in ways that are risky as they increase vulnerability for unplanned teenage fatherhood. Our conclusion provides some implications for school-based interventions to tackle sexual risk within rural contexts in South Africa.

Love grows with sex: teenagers negotiating sex and gender in the context of HIV and the implications for sex education.

How do teenagers located in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa, the epicentre of the HIV pandemic, give meaning to sexuality? This paper examines teenage black Africans investments in sex and sexuality and the gendered dynamics through which sexuality is articulated. Whilst unequal gender relations of power continue to feature prominently within relationship dynamics fuelling the gendering of HIV, attention to the micro-processes through which relationships are forged remain significant in illustrating the complex connections between love, sex and gender. Drawing on empirical findings with teenagers between the ages of 16 and 17 years old, the paper shows how relationships are conceptualised based on discourses of love. Love is inextricably bound up with sex and when teenagers talk about love and sex they also talk about condom use, multiple sexual partners and gender inequalities. What teenagers were interested in for their sexual relationships was not raised in sex education programmes at school. Implications for addressing teenage constructions of sexuality are discussed in the conclusion.

When African teenagers become fathers: culture, materiality and masculinity.

Between 1996 and 2010, the percentage of African children living with their fathers in South Africa dropped from 44% to 31%, with only a third of preschool children living with their parents. Concern about the spate of father absence and its effects on children's well-being has led to a growing focus on fathers in family interventions, although there is relative silence on teenage fathers. In this paper, we draw on an interview-based study with teenage fathers living under conditions of poverty to show how their understandings of fatherhood and constructions of provider masculinity intersect with cultural demands that express both weakness and power. In expressing the desire to care and be involved with their children, and aligning with patterns of masculinity that sought enhanced options for contraceptive use based on gender-equitable relationships, we show a new direction in the making of teenage fatherhood, diverging from hierarchical gender relations where men make the decisions. These changes, however, are limited by constructions of masculinity that contradictorily reinforce provider status, gender inequalities and male patterns of sexual entitlements within a context where teenage fathers are unable to achieve the cultural status of provider masculinity. Implications are discussed in the conclusion.

Sabelo's Journey as a Young Black Gay Man in South Africa and the Potential of the Grindr App.

Drawing from a case-study, this paper examines 18-year-old Sabelo's journey as a young black gay man in South Africa. Against the backdrop of heteronormativity and entrenched gender roles, Sabelo navigates a landscape where expressions of queer sexuality are often met with resistance. Focusing on a semi-structured interview, Sabelo's narrative reveals the pressure to conform to traditional masculinity and a sense of living a "double life" where acceptance is tied to economic success. Sabelo "acts straight" to manage the obligatory norms around masculinity and "coming out" increased tensions and the pressure to conform. Despite this, the emergence of the dating platform, Grindr, reflects a paradoxical landscape of opportunities and possibilities. Using the concept of the "queer assemblage," the paper argues for the significance of dating apps as more-than-human entities, in providing alternate pathways for sexual expression for young black gay identifying men. In conclusion, digital platforms offer space for transformative potential in subverting heteronormativity and providing queer individuals with spaces for self-expression.

Digital sexual identities: Between empowerment and disempowerment.

In the digital age, people increasingly explore and express their sexual identities online. The management and development of digital sexual identities can provide opportunities of empowerment on the individual, interpersonal, and societal level. At the same time, social media users are confronted with risks of sexual disempowerment in terms of identity de-validation, social exclusion, discrimination or even criminalization. The review article summarizes the current state of research on six selected sexual identities: (1) heterosexual, (2) LGBTIQ+, (3) asexual, (4) kink and fetish, (5) polyamory, and (6) sex worker identities in digital contexts. Covering a variety of social media platforms and cultural backgrounds, the review demonstrates that digital sexual identities are best understood as multifaceted socio-technical phenomena with ambivalent outcomes.

Girls want money, boys want virgins: the materiality of love amongst South African township youth in the context of HIV and AIDS.

How do young South Africans give meaning to love? In this paper we draw on findings from an interview study to examine the ways in which young Africans, aged 16 to 17 years in a poor township in KwaZulu-Natal province, express ideals of love and romance. Their claims to love we show are strategic advantages as they negotiate poverty and economic marginalisation. Girls' ideals of love are tied to their aspirations towards middle-class consumerism. Love becomes inseparable from the idealisation of men who provide. Upholding provider masculinity is a strategic means to claim money, fashionable clothes and prestige. Unlike girls, the boys' love investments were focused on farm girls from rural areas in South Africa. Farm girls were constructed as virgins with little investment in commodification. Farm girls are a strategic option through which boys' economic marginalisation experienced in the township girls is reconciled through an exalted masculinity. Love is produced by particular sets of economic and social circumstances through which gender inequalities are reproduced, and should be taken more seriously in working with young people to address gendered social environments and HIV risk.

South African teachers' responses to teenage pregnancy and teenage mothers in schools.

South African law forbids excluding pregnant teenagers from school and permits young parents to continue with their schooling. However, the existence of progressive policy and law does not by itself ensure that pregnant teenagers and young parents remain in school or experience as little disruption to their studies as possible. Two of the factors influencing the experiences that pregnant girls and young parents have are the attitudes and practices of teachers. We explore how teachers in diverse South African secondary schools respond to young women's pregnancy and parenting. Teachers' responses are situated within a complex set of meanings invoking sexuality (and sexual censure), gender, class and race. We argue that many teachers view teenage pregnancy and parenting as social problems - a domain of sexual shame with negative effects and disruptive to the academic life of the school (including teachers and other learners). Teachers do not monolithically subscribe to such negativity and, in the context of changing policy and gender equality, there are glimmers of hope. Without much support, training or any formal school-based support, many teachers show care and concern for pregnant women and young parents, providing some hope for better experiences of schooling.

HIV Education: Reflections on the Past, Priorities for the Future.

From early in the epidemic, education has been central to HIV prevention, treatment, and care. This paper reflects on lessons learned over the last 30 years. It signals the limits of high level international commitments to education and HIV and the strategies of information-giving and life skills development adopted in their wake. It argues for the adoption of a more genuinely educational approach to HIV, sex, and sexuality education in which difficult questions are raised, diversity is recognized, and options are provided for a differentiated yet effective response. The lead currently offered by community organizations and the social media should be built upon in developing forms of HIV education that are more honest and contextually relevant than previously.

Gender, relationship dynamics and South African girls' vulnerability to sexual risk.

South African researchers have stressed the importance of gender and relationship dynamics underlying sexual risk, particularly among 15- to 19-year-olds. Nevertheless, we know little about these factors among young girls, who are especially at risk of HIV. The main objective in this study was to explore the ways that young girls aged 16 to 17 years give meaning to boys and boyfriends and the processes through which these relationship dynamics are shaped. In-depth interviews were conducted with a group of black girls in a working class context in Durban about their sexual relationships with boys. Dominant gender norms underlined the ways in which girls discussed these sexual relationships in relation to their lack of power and condom use. Factors such as their class, race and gender interacted with girls' vulnerability to risk of HIV. While girls were complicit in their subordination, particularly in relation to cheating boyfriends, many were critical of boys who displayed patterns of sexual domination. Efforts aimed at reducing sexual risk must work toward shifting dominant patterns of masculinity over femininity to broaden pathways of love, trust, loyalty and understanding.

"AIDS is rape!" gender and sexuality in children's responses to HIV and AIDS.

This paper examines young African school children's understanding of HIV and AIDS. Based on focus group interviews with children aged 7-8 in KwaZulu-Natal province, South Africa, it explores the ways in which gender and sexuality feature in their responses to the disease. Data were collected between 2003 and 2004 through 26 focus groups involving 55 boys and 64 girls. The paper argues that younger children are active agents in giving meaning to the disease. Their agency is negotiated within complex social processes involving sexual violence, highly unequal gender/age inequalities, but also sexual expression. Those expressions are subsumed however under a regime of violence and fear catapulting men, albeit with contestation, as chief vectors in the spread of the disease and a source of girls' anxieties. Children's responses to the disease are the effects of material, symbolic and discursive forces effectively constraining the opportunities available to them and creating patterns of vulnerability especially for young girls. Interventions aimed at scaling up efforts to address young children responses to the disease must be situated in parallel efforts to end poverty, sexual violence and pervasive gender inequalities in order to foster more comprehensively the exercise of young children's agency.

Beyond stigma? Young children's responses to HIV and AIDS.

This paper explores the manifestation of HIV-related stigma in seven- and eight-year-old white South African children's responses to HIV and AIDS. Drawing from elements of ethnographic and interview data, it shows how young children's responses to HIV and AIDS are inscribed within popular accounts of contagion and articulate gendered, sexual, raced and classed discourses in South Africa. Rejecting static accounts of stigma, the paper shows how children resist and confirm power inequalities involving intense self-regulation as well as inscribing within discourses of care and concern for others infected with HIV and AIDS. The findings have implications for scaling up educational efforts to address awareness of HIV and AIDS and stigma, but also to build on positive insights that young children demonstrate with regard to the disease.

Discourses of childhood innocence in primary school HIV/AIDS education in South Africa.

This article draws from interview data to examine the meanings that teachers in two race and class-specific contexts in greater Durban, South Africa, may give to children's right to sexual health information as a part of HIV/AIDS education. The article focuses on the regulation and production of childhood innocence by means of the ways the primary school teachers talked about sex in their HIV/AIDS education lessons to grade-four students. I argue that discourses of childhood innocence regulate and limit the possibilities of conversing about sex in such a context. The dominant discourses construct children as 'too young to know' and displace children's right to sexual health information to older children, while stressing anxieties about parent hostility to sex education, which precludes effective coverage of sexual topics in HIV/AIDS education. Showing how race, class and culture are deployed in upholding innocence, I contend that the notion of childhood innocence is embedded within the varying social contexts that make up the South African landscape. But, I suggest that an assumption that primary school teachers will engage with HIV/AIDS education while mediating information about sex in health promotion is simplistic. In conclusion, I propose a need for ongoing theoretical and practical work with teachers and the need to build alliances with parents.

Childhood sexuality and rights in the context of HIV/AIDS.

The primary objective in this study was to explore what HIV and AIDS mean to seven- and eight-year-old children in South Africa and how sexual and gender dynamics are embedded within these meanings. Against representations that associate young children with innocence, the paper argues for a more capacious view of young children as sexual and gendered agents with the ability to exercise their rights. In contrast to research that addresses children as relatively passive desexualised beings, focusing on their dependence on adults, their innocence and their need for protection, this paper examines how HIV and AIDS are constructed and negotiated by young people. It views children not simply in terms of their need for sexual rights but as potentially active participants in the negotiation of their rights. Viewing children's rights as highly contested, the notion that young children have sexual rights opens up possibilities for children (including those from marginalised groups) to talk about their concerns and pleasures, fears and hopes, as well as issues relating to sexual rights and resistances. By working creatively with teachers, it may be possible to broaden young children's knowledge of HIV and AIDS and sexuality within a more supportive environment.