ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the ways in which young African teenagers negotiate sexuality and culture. Drawing on local research on young school-going South Africans as well as a growing body of work on sexualities education at school, we show how the assumption of heterosexuality as normative, the rejection of alternative sexualities and genders and outright homophobia is not uncommon amongst learners. Yet, there is also evidence of a more nuanced picture of how young people engage with sexuality. We show that despite the assumptions around the constancy of culture, young Africans are actively invested in changing sexual dynamics. These tensions and ambiguities occur within a material, racialised and cultural context where small shifts in the construction of culture and sexuality suggest potential to harness different conceptualisations of sexuality beyond homosexuality as un-African. We conclude with a framing of how schools might develop a more positive engagement with young people’s sexual agency that includes alternative pathways and imaginaries of sexual and gender practices, identities and desires.
