Abstract
This chapter addresses the ways in which heterosexual femininity is produced by 12 and 13 year old girls in a primary school in KwaZulu-Natal. Rather than viewing young girls as sexually docile, the chapter focuses on how they make claims to and participate in heterosexual practices. Drawing on an ethnographic study, the chapter highlightes the ways in which boys, bodies, and dress configure in girls’ negotiation of heterosexual femininity. Given the relative silence around primary school girls’ constructions of heterosexuality, the chapter finds that girls’ investment in heterosexuality is a contradictory experience showing their desires and active agency, but also the oppressive ways through which their actions serve male interests. We conclude by calling for an approach that recognises girls’ pleasurable investments in the development of their own sexuality, as well as their damaging investments, while also underscoring the need for a greater focus on younger girls’ femininity in South Africa.
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Acknowledgement
This work is based on the research supported by the South African Research Chairs Initiative of the Department of Science and Technology and National Research Foundation of South Africa (Grant No. 98407).
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Govender, N., Bhana, D. (2021). Girls and the Negotiation of Heterosexual Femininities in the Primary School. In: Bhana, D., Singh, S., Msibi, T. (eds) Gender, Sexuality and Violence in South African Educational Spaces. Palgrave Studies in Gender and Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69988-8_5
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