ABSTRACT
Our autoethnographic narrative and visual vignettes explore gendered norms in childhood, framed by Noddings’ ethics of care, and Bourdieusian habitus. We offer experiences and memories of our gendered childhoods, where we lived lives circumscribed by family subcultures in Vietnam and South Africa. Giang tells of being a young, first-born gay boy in a traditional Vietnamese family, where he was obliged to act and be straight. Long’s understanding of gender and sexuality was influenced by his father, a straight Vietnamese male who was, ironically, obsessed with Freddie Mercury, a queer icon. Fiona reflects on her childhood in South Africa in a colonial British family with a mother who wished for her to become a femme ballerina.
