Pleasurable (Im)Possibilities in Education: Teenage Girls' Sexual Desires and the Use of Sexually Explicit Materials

• In Event: Rethinking Curriculum and Pedagogies Through Feminist Praxis

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate how teenage South African girls give meaning to gender and sexualities through online sexually explicit materials (SEM). We choose to move away from protectionist discourses which produce constructs of young people, especially girls, as vulnerable, passive and susceptible to online dangers. Instead we focus on young girls’ online agentic practices and pleasure-seeking behaviours. Poststructural feminist and queer theorisations are used to examine young South African girls’ sexual agency and their complex reactions to SEM, which have implications for sexuality education curriculum in South Africa. Centralising young girls’ voices in the research process and the development of sexuality education programmes is emphasised, and power is redirected to girls by acknowledging their sexual subjectivities.

Authors

• Nicci Carboni, University of KwaZulu-Natal

• Deevia Bhana, University of KwaZulu-Natal