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Faculty of Humanities School of Human and Community Development 9505866y bowmab@unisa.ac.za / Through an analysis informed by the genealogical method as derived from Foucault (1980a), this study examines the discourses and material conditions that have produced the South African paedophile. Archival texts and contemporary discursive matter are critically analysed against the backdrop of the material conditions of political possibility with which they intersected to construct the paedophile of the South African present. The study traces constructions of the paedophile as a relatively innocuous nuisance in a selected sequence of past historical periods through to the recidivism, sexual malice and aggression that define its contemporary characterisations. In South Africa, practices such as surveillance and disciplines the likes of demography and psychology became integral to the effective management and regulation of a distinctly racialised population. It was precisely through these forms of apartheid governance and power that the conditions for the emergence of the paedophile in South Africa were produced. This early paedophilia threatened the future purity of South African whiteness and therefore the integrity of the apartheid state. The racialised constructions of sexuality of the time precluded the assimilation of blackness into the discursive matrix of paedophiliac desire. The impending collapse of apartheid signalled the reconstitution of black children. While apartheid constructed black children as posing a fundamental threat to white hegemony, discourses beginning in the mid 1980s repositioned them as vulnerable victims of apartheid itself. It was from within these discourses that child sexual abuse (CSA) as a public health concern began to crystallise. Paedophilia however, remained a powerful component of this burgeoning discourse. Locating blackness within the fields of discipline and desire, in turn produced the material conditions for an everexpanding net of paedophiliac suspicion. This new biopolitical dispensation affixes the paedophiliac crime to all in its scope, such that the symptomatic desire of the once peripherally pathological paedophile can now be insinuated into the fantasies and practices of all of the citizens of a recently “liberated” and democratic South Africa.

Due to the patriarchal and racial hierarchies that structure education, girls, and specifically girls of color, occupy a marginalized space within it. This is in contrast to boys, who are considered more intellectually gifted, yet held to lower academic and behavioral standards. This study explores the impacts of gender, racial, and ethnic stereotypes perceived by 30 white, Black, and/or Latinx women (ages 18-22) during their experiences in U.S. public middle schools (grades 6-8). Participants were surveyed to ascertain general information about them and their middle school experiences, then invited to participate in focus groups to share their individual narratives. In total, seven focus groups were conducted with 17 women. Utilizing intersectional feminist and constructivist grounded theories as frameworks, this mixed methods research concentrates on the multiple, intersecting barriers, including complex expectations regarding their academic and social-emotional performance, that challenge girls in education compared to boys generally. The survey results suggested a positively correlated relationship between girls' socioeconomic status and perceived positivity of middle school experience. The coded data procured by the focus groups, once organized into categories and analyzed for themes and subthemes, indicated girls' propensity to monitor perceptions of themselves by eight mechanisms: limiting their self-expression, seeking to please others, trying to fit in, worrying about what others think, self-inflicting pressures, struggling with identity, avoiding getting in trouble, and seeking to appease their families. Advancing the representation of girls' internalization of these individually and institutionally conveyed stereotypes is a primary aim of this thesis.

The digital space has offered fertile new territory to connect with like-minded individuals and discuss anything and everything. This has resulted in the creation of the Manosphere, a collection of men concerned about the state of men and masculinity and how society views and treats men. One of the places online this community has found a home is the popular website Reddit, which offers the ability to create individual pages in which communities can form around and discuss and share information on almost any topic they desire. This study aimed to investigate the ways in which one community on Reddit, The Red Pill, views and discusses gender, sex, and consent through the use of thematic and linguistic analysis of popular content posts. Results found that this community does not have unique or novel views of any of the topics, but taken these views to their inevitable extremes. Seeing men as stoic, rational, and concerned with increasing their success in life as well as their number of sexual partners and encounters. Women, on the other hand, are seen as emotional, child-like, manipulative, and concerned with leeching off of men's financial and social success. This study represents one of the first examinations of the Manosphere and the emerging views of masculinity, femininity, and sex therein which have been ideologically connected to violent acts committed by young men within these groups. This study provides need detail and examples of how these online groups view gender and sex, and the ways in which they apply those views day-to-day out in the real world.

The problem of this study was to prepare a comprehensive family living textbook for use by high school students. The primary purposes of the study were the following: (1) to provide teenagers with factual information concerning sexuality which will better equip them to make responsible decisions; (2) to prepare young people to become better marriage partners, better parents and ultimately to produce stronger families for the future.

Increasingly defined by my status as a Nonimmigrant Alien, I have lived longer in the United States than in my native Venezuela. Knowing my stay in this country will be temporary, I examine feelings of uncertainty about my future by deconstructing communication—both visual and verbal. Through ambiguity I express anxieties on my personal circumstances and retain objectivity in regard to my process through intellectual inquiry. I layer words, images, and sound to mirror my frustrations, and project the conflict of my internal dialogue.

Using in-depth interviews with 20 transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC) young adults (aged 18-24) in Florida, I examine how TGNC people navigate accountability structures to meet gendered expectations in the US healthcare system. While a growing body of sociological literature has expanded West and Zimmerman's "doing gender" and social accountability concepts, gaps remain in understanding how transgender populations encounter accountability structures, and the navigation of such structures by TGNC youth. Utilizing thematic analysis, I examine how TGNC people manage a practice I call "cisnormative accountability." Specifically, I demonstrate how the majority of respondents were often held accountable to a cisgender standard of accessing and utilizing health services through the gendered expectations of 1) enforcing a cisnormative standard of care through medical notions of binary gender and 2) upholding the medical model of transgender identity. Further, I outline the process of and consequences of "cisnormative accountability" and its potential implications for sociological studies of transgender experiences in healthcare.

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This study examined the biases of individuals regarding what is perceived as feminine and what is masculine, as well as the freedoms and limitations of being labeled a tomboy. This research examined the associations among several factors: perceptions of masculine and feminine traits, perceptions of lesbian and gay identity, self-identification, and the confluence of tomboy and lesbian identity. Students in high enrollment psychology courses at a large southeastern metropolitan university (N = 385) participated in an anonymous online survey. A series of hypotheses were generated but results were highly inconsistent. Possible reasons for these inconsistencies are explored with an eye toward the need for future research in this area.