Gender based violence still remains an international public health and human rights issue and a concern to many. Very few studies have been undertaken to address the impact of gender based violence on men. The aim of this dissertation is to try and fill this gap by exploring gender based violence against men in the Clermont Township using qualitative and quantitative research methods. The quantitative method used was a survey conducted with 100 men, and the qualitative method used was in-depth interviews with 20 men in Clermont Township. Consistent with previous research, this study found that abused men experience different forms of gender based violence at the hands of their intimate partners. This study found various reasons why abused men stay in abusive relationships. This study also found that abused men do not report the incidents because they feel that no one will believe them and the community will ridicule them. This under reporting of gender based violence against men makes it difficult to have accurate statistics and also to prevent further abuse of men in intimate relationships. Various reasons were given for not reporting the incidents to the relevant institutions. This study also shows that there are not any institutions that provide services for male victims of gender based violence. This is of concern as this pandemic is escalating and it puts men at risk of future violence. Communities should also embark on door-to-door campaigning about GBV against men, so that the communities will know that it is happening, and that it is a threat to many families. / Thesis (M.Dev.Studies)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2011.

Hegemonic masculinity (HM) is considered by many boys and men to be the "gold standard" of masculinity to which they are expected to conform (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005). However, many boys feel that they fall short of this standard and are thus challenged to negotiate their sense of masculinity through positioning themselves in relation to masculine standards in various ways (Wetherell & Edley, 1999). This research therefore aims to explore the process of subject positioning in relation to HM and, if it occurs, the process of successfully aligning masculine identity with alternative (non-hegemonic) forms of masculinity. Eight late adolescent boys from rural KwaZulu-Natal were interviewed, and the data were qualitatively analysed by focussing on the boys' narratives used to describe masculinity and how they position themselves in relation to the various norms of masculinity. The results indicate that these boys did not show signs of having non-hegemonic masculinities. However, all boys reframed HM into a new discourse still based on the acceptance of the hegemonic domination over women and femininity (including less masculine boys), while disavowing practices relating to alcohol use, crime and risky sexual practices. This discourse represented a sanitised version of HM. It was suggested that boys maintain these multiple versions of masculinity in parallel, and use psychological splitting to maintain them. Soccer emerged as serving an important function for the creation and maintenance of these sanitised masculinities. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2008.

Formed in Toronto in 1969, the trio of artists known as General Idea developed a body of work focused on the construction of Active identities and elaborate mythologies parodying the popular myths of art and the artist: the artist as genius, celebrity and avant-garde rebel. It is often said that General Idea's work is at its core an inquiry into art's methods of production, dissemination and reception - an example of the tendency in Western art of the 1960s and '70s towards the dematerialization of the art object and the critique of art's institutions. In this thesis, I argue that General Idea's work also demands to be seen on a broader level, as an exploration of artifice and the manipulation of conventional codes in everyday life. I maintain that, above and beyond their critical interest in art and pop culture, G.I.'s project was to reveal and question the most fundamental social conventions of all: gender and identity. Through their use of pseudonyms, Active identities, pageants and performances, General Idea invite us to consider the masks we wear, the poses we assume and the identities we perform even in our most banal moments, through bodily gestures, speech acts and the manipulation of surfaces. A project like The 1971 Miss General Idea Pageant - staged at a time when normative gender roles and sexual identities were being called into question by the Gay Liberation Movement and the feminist movement - suggests an awareness on the part of General Idea of the constructed nature of identity and gender (a notion later popularized in academic discourse and cultural practice of the 1980s and '90s). General Idea's artistic collaboration spanned more than twenty-five years, but it is the period from the early 1970s to the mid-'80s that constitutes the focus of this thesis. I argue that the boundaries separating masculine and feminine, straight and gay, fact and fiction, are complicated and challenged most effectively in the first two phases of their collaboration. The first phase is typically described as General Idea's "conceptual" phase because of the ephemeral, idea-based nature of the work. It can be said to begin with The 1971 Miss General Idea Pageant and end with the symbolic arson of The 1984 Miss General Idea Pavillion in 1977. The second phase, marked by a proliferation of poodle imagery in a variety of media, followed hot on the heels of the torching of the Pavillion and continued until the mid-1980s. Although the shift from "conceptual" art to a more material art object necessarily entails a shift in strategies of representation, I argue that both phases of artistic production rely on visual and verbal signifying practices broadly defined as Camp. At a time when it had fallen out of favour as a viable form of self-expression in politicized gay communities, Camp was taken up by General Idea as both a critical tool and a key to attaining visibility - a ticket to ride and a strategic kick in the ass of the dominant order.

The central assumption of this study is that the awareness of a historically constructed, culturally sanctioned condition of subalternity is at the heart of the fictional production of Francophone African women writers. Subalternity here is viewed as a narrative and spatial continuum inside which African women have to negotiate issues relating to subjecthood and identity, both marked by gender and colonialism. Various definitions of 'the subaltern' are relevant, ranging from Antonio Gramsci's to those of the South Asian Subaltern Studies group, and to John Beverley's and Fredric Jameson's discussions. Jameson's emphasis on subalternity as "the feelings of mental inferiority nad habits of subservience and obedience which... develop in situations of domination - most dramatically in the experience of colonized peoples" (Jameson, 1981) is crucial, because it demonstrates the constructedness of that ontological condition. The approach adopted here aims to include gender as a category in a discourse that often excludes it, and to bring social science-oriented concepts into dialogue with literary theory and criticism. Combined with a discussion of Africa-influenced versions of feminist theory (stiwanism, negofeminism, motherism), Subaltern studies provides a space for the emergence of a south-south postcolonial debate that can throw new light on writing by African women. Fictional works by Therese Kuoh-Moukoury, Mariama Ba, Aminata Maiga Ka, Angele Rawiri, Philomene Bassek, Evelyne Mpoudi-Ngolle, Regina Yaou, Fatou Keita, and Abibatou Traore are read as conveying the various stages of consciousness on the part of the subaltern. Kuoh-Moukoury's Rencontres essentielles (1969), Maiga Ka's La voie du salut (1985), and Bassek's La tache de sang (1990) exemplify a first stage of consciousness in which the subaltern woman submits passively to oppressive patriarchal, cultural and religious prescriptions. Ba's Une si longue lettre (1979), Mpoudi Ngolle's Sous La cendre le feu (1990) and Rawiri's Fureurs et cris de femmes (1989) present a more assertive, rebellious heroine whose efforts are undermined by a resilient social context. Finally, Traore's Sidagamie (1998), Kei'ta's Rebelle (1998) and Yaou's Le prix de la revoke (1997) address the possibility of a sustained African women's struggle resulting not only in transient personal and isolated victories but also in an enduring social transformation governed by the ethos of gender equality.

This dissertation explores the nature and ontogeny of infants' ability to match phonetic information in comparison to non-speech information in the face and voice. Previous research shows that infants' ability to match phonetic information in face and voice is robust at 4.5 months of age (e.g., Kuhl & Meltzoff, 1982; 1984; 1988; Patterson & Werker, 1999). These findings support claims that young infants can perceive structural correspondences between audio and visual aspects of phonetic input and that speech is represented amodally. It remains unclear, however, specifically what factors allow speech to be perceived amodally and whether the intermodal perception of other aspects of face and voice is like that of speech. Gender is another biologically significant cue that is available in both the face and voice. In this dissertation, nine experiments examine infants' ability to match phonetic and gender information with dynamic faces and voices. Infants were seated in front of two side-by-side video monitors which displayed filmed images of a female or male face, each articulating a vowel sound ( / a / or / i / ) in synchrony. The sound was played through a central speaker and corresponded with one of the displays but was synchronous with both. In Experiment 1,4.5-month-old infants did not look preferentially at the face that matched the gender of the heard voice when presented with the same stimuli that produced a robust phonetic matching effect. In Experiments 2 through 4, vowel and gender information were placed in conflict to determine the relative contribution of each in infants' ability to match bimodal information in the face and voice. The age at which infants do match gender information with my stimuli was determined in Experiments 5 and 6. In order to explore whether matching phonetic information in face and voice is based on featural or configural information, two experiments examined infants' ability to match phonetic information using inverted faces (Experiment 7) and upright faces with inverted mouths (Experiment 8). Finally, Experiment 9 extended the phonetic matching effect to 2-month-old infants. The experiments in this dissertation provide evidence that, at 4.5 months of age, infants are more likely to attend to phonetic information in the face and voice than to gender information. Phonetic information may have a special salience and/or unity that is not apparent in similar but non-phonetic events. The findings are discussed in relation to key theories of perceptual development.

Drawing on insights from feminist scholarship and gender studies, this thesis offers a new reading of selected medieval German texts with a special emphasis on the negotiation of gender and power. All three parts of the thesis demonstrate how the use of modern theories helps us to re-examine a medieval text's implications and ethical values, and to reconsider traditional views of the text. Part One focuses on the discussion of gender boundaries. Didactic and fictional texts, such as Thomasin von Zerclaere's Der welsche Gast and Ulrich von Liechtenstein's Frauendienst, show that violations of gender boundaries and the questioning of the traditional power relationship between the genders are crucial to the textual negotiation of masculinity and femininity. As I demonstrate in Part Two, the unequal relationship between men and women is especially important for the system of male homosocial bonding underlying medieval society. Examples of the physical and symbolic exchange of women and their favours are offered by didactic texts, such as Marquard vom Stein's Der Ritter vom Turn, and fictional texts, such as the Nibelungenlied. Aspects of this exchange are not solely related to medieval marriage practices, but are also reflected in courtly rituals, such as "frouwen schouwen" (watching the ladies). The importance of the conventionally beautiful female body as an object of exchange becomes obvious in Part Three, where I examine encounters between Christian knights and women defying the norms of feminine beauty. Here I focus on female figures that are defined as "doubly Other": both in their relationship to the masculine Self, and in their relationship to the ideal of medieval Christian femininity. Texts such as Wolfdietrich B and Der Strieker's Die Konigin vom Mohrenland show how the negotiation of gender and power assumes a new dimension in light male encounters with Wild Women, heathen women, "supernatural" women and old women, where the male partner often has to struggle to uphold his privileged masculine position.

Dramatic literature and film are often political and work to deconstruct and dismantle some of the assumptions of a dominant ideology. Tomson Highway’s Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine, and Neil Jordan’s The Crying Game, show how gender roles are used in oppression and show that other social categories like race, class, and sexuality are interrelated and constructed. This shows the hollowness of the so-called inherent categories that cause “naturalized” divisions between people and groups. Through exploring these works I hope to draw attention to how these artists use theater and film to educate their audiences, as well as challenge them to take control over complicated issues surrounding power and oppression. These writers encourage their audiences to employ social criticism and to re-evaluate the social order that is often naturalized through dominant ideology and discourse. / v, 104 leaves ; 29 cm.

In this thesis, I will explore the different notions of performance as a political tool and gender/sexuality as a performative act that forms identity, within lesbian and gay academic and activist rhetoric. I posit that the extensive, and often contradictory, use of "performance" within lesbian and gay discourse serves as a useful entry point to explore existing theoretical precepts of identity formation, and the processes of representation and signification. Through this exploration, effective theoretical and practical techniques can be developed to subvert the dominant discourses of normative (hetero)sexuality that continue to create a "reality" which is physically and psychically harmful to those who do not adhere to these discourses. / Lesbian and gay activists have used various performance techniques as political tools to de-stabilize notions of identity and the fixity of the representational process. Some lesbian and gay academics have developed a "queer" theoretical perspective that concurrently binds and privileges fluid concepts of representation, identity formation, and gender/sexuality performativity. In this thesis, I argue that the convergence of performance and performativity within the work of Annie Sprinkle yields an especially clear potential for the disruption of a signification process that consistently demonizes the sexual "Other."

Sport is a particularly ideologically-charged terrain within contemporary gender relations because it is centered on the body. The body is our most 'natural' marker of sexual identity, and thus, in our socio-cultural imaginations, of gender identity. Accordingly, gendered boundaries in sport have traditionally constructed and promoted an ideology of 'natural' gender differences, and sport is a site--a microcosm--where traditional beliefs and assumptions about female weakness and male strength are promoted and maintained. Sport is understood to be both reflective as well as indicative of the female/male dichotomy which exists in the more general social mythology. Gendered boundaries are constructed, and work to ideologically contain the female athlete. However, these boundaries are also the ideological seams, through which one can potentially challenge the normalizing processes of sport.

The transnational migration of students is a vast yet under-researched area with most studies focusing on skilled and unskilled foreign immigrants. The transnational experience of studying outside their home country and constant negotiations of new social and cultural environments provides students with an opportunity to either challenge or reinforce their perspectives of gender. An examination of gender in a transnational context however continues to be a much neglected domain. Gender is salient in migration because not only do gender relations facilitate or constrain both men's and women's movements but they also structure the whole migration process including practices and the construction of self. This thesis interrogates the reconstruction of gender identities by foreign students of African origin at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN hereafter) in Durban South Africa. This study aims to contribute to the fields of gender and migration by examining ways in which gender shapes migratory flows and examining how migration shapes gender relations. Through exploring the tensions that students perceive and undergo and struggle with as they bring their own cultural insights , values and practices to a new context at UKZN, I seek to highlight the complexity of their gender identities as negotiated in a transnational context. By using an interpretivist theoretical paradigm which is a qualitative approach, I highlight how the communal process of the views and perceptions of the students and my multidimensional positionality intersected to produce knowledge. I also highlight the gender relations as an important dynamic in the data collection process. The body of data reveals that men and women cite different factors as influencing their propensity to migrate namely gender role socialisation on the part of the men and education and empowerment on the part of the women. In spite of the gender differences in facilitating their migration to South Africa, both men and women display resonance in terms of choosing South Africa and UKZN in particular as a study destination showing gender to be situational. This is in light of opportunity structures in place at UKZN that are available to both men and women thus enabling the foreign African women students to take advantage of opportunities they may not have had in their home countries The study also generates critical insights about the complexities experienced by these students as a result of immersing themselves in UKZN embedded in Durban a multiracial environment which is still a much divided society. I also examine how these students perceive and interpret gender norms in South Africa and how these gender norms challenge or support conceptions of gender norms in their country of origin. The themes presented in this study reveal that gender identity construction is related to the struggle over power and social status. A significant aspect of the findings was how the students were re-interpreting and re-defining their gender roles and expectations in the transnational space. Gender roles were enacted in different ways by students to express social status, position and power. This study also interrogates how the interplay of social ranking such as gender, class, ethnicity and nationality serve to construct several versions of masculinity and femininity in the transnational space. The exploration of the students' engagement with the gender discourse highlights the dilemma based on the dialectic between modern gender roles as a result of western education and maintaining traditional gender roles as a result of cultural upbringing. The study also explores the development of hybridised gender identities within the transnational space. In the course of the study religion was highlighted as key factor in influencing the ways in which migrants renegotiate their beliefs, practices and attitudes and personal as well as social identities in the host country. The study examined how religion informed the transnational students' ethnic and gender-based identities and their experiences of social life and their appropriations of religion to form alternative identities. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2010.