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.

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 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 cellphones and their accounts of sexual violence at school.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.