Girls, sexuality and playground-assemblages in a South African primary school
Abstract
Inspired by new feminist materialism, this paper seeks to reimagine existing knowledge of girls, sexuality and playgrounds by considering how the socio-material reality may unlock girls' capacities for what is possible through play. Focusing on semi-structured interviews of girls (aged 12–13), the paper draws attention to the playground as an ‘assemblage’ of human and non-human matter that connect to illuminate other ways of being, feeling and doing. We argue that the assemblage not only creates spaces for girls to disrupt hetero-patriarchal ideologies but simultaneously serves to reinforce them. Interventions require attention to the oppressive materialities that underpin play.
INTRODUCTION
School playgrounds have been identified by several scholars as significant spaces where both boys and girls negotiate and experience heterosexuality through playful activities (Bartholomaeus, 2012; Blaise, 2014; Mayeza, 2018; Renold, 2005). Beyond play, more evident from these studies is the attention given to playgrounds as key arenas for the cultivation of unequal gender relations. Play may appear innocent and enjoyable but, on the school playground, it is a highly gendered practice, serving as a platform for the reproduction of heterosexual norms and associated hierarchies (Renold, 2005). Earlier studies in the west have shown how school playgrounds are masculine dominated spaces that limit girls' capacities for sexual expression (Epstein et al., 2001; Renold, 2005) with recent work confirming girls' playground experiences as bound up with sexual harassment and female sexual objectification (Huuki & Renold, 2015).
In South Africa, the context for this study, a small but growing body of research on playground cultures in the primary school has demonstrated how heterosexual performances are connected to the surrounding socio-cultural context where the display of rough and aggressive behaviour is associated with hegemonic masculinity (Mayeza, 2018; Mayeza & Bhana, 2020). Even when boys and girls come together to play, they patrol the borders of acceptable masculinity and femininity (Thorne, 1993). Mayeza (2018) in South Africa finds that violent sexualized practices are routinely experienced in the playground. While girls can challenge such violence, they do so under constrained conditions where gender norms and the compulsion of heterosexuality reinforces male power and re-positions girls as subordinate and as objects of male desires (Bhana, 2018).
A continual emphasis on and critique of girls' as vulnerable beings on the school playground suggests that we have a reached a cul-de-sac in how we intervene in addressing girls' diminished power. Notwithstanding the small body of research in South Africa on school playground cultures, the complex ways in which objects, things, ideas, space, feelings and expressions assemble together to expand what we currently know of girls, sexuality and the playground, remains unacknowledged. As Blaise (2014) notes, researching gender and sexuality in children's play requires a careful consideration of the ontological approach at work. In this regard, we adopt a new feminist materialist framework to extend the contribution on school playground cultures by reconceptualizing this space and play as deeply embedded in and compounded by socio-material forces that mediate girls' sexual capacities (Mayeza & Bhana, 2020).
We draw on Deleuze and Guattari's (Deleuze & Guattari, 1988, pp. 88) concept of ‘assemblages’ to address the ways in which primary schoolgirls aged between 12 and 13 years old entangle with materialities in both human and more-than-human forms to produce new possibilities of feeling, doing and being that transcend the current stalemate around girls' incapacity to act on playgrounds. To do this, we focus on girls' participation in games such as hide and seek, spin the bottle and love dice that are played on the school playground. We ask: what else is possible of girls as they entangle with matter during play? We draw from semi-structured interviews to identify how girls' movements between events, as well as the affects and capacities produced, momentarily transformed girls into new sexual becomings.
Additionally, we show how heteronormative ideologies are regulated through such movements to constrain girls' capacities on the playground. Heterosexuality underpins the work of play and its associated inequalities (Butler, 1990). Based on rigid and binarized understandings of gender, heterosexuality shapes how children navigate the playing fields. An idealized version of gender is rendered ‘intelligible’ through heterosexual expressions and activities that simultaneously revolve around female submissiveness and male dominance. In other words, the real expression of masculinity and femininity is produced in and through a compulsory heterosexual matrix (Renold, 2005). Girls' activities and experiences on the playground are inextricably bound up with gender norms and tied to heterosexual presumptions. The playground is an active site where these norms are produced which often harm girls.
By re-conceptualizing the school playground as an assemblage that is materially embodied and focusing on the flow of capacities produced on the playground, we move the discussion beyond fixed understandings of girls' experiences, to unlock possibilities for how their capacities can occur differently. We argue that assemblage thinking and attention to the socio-material realities that underpin girls' play can provide new insights into the ways in which we address girls, sexuality and unequal power relations on the school playground.
NEW FEMINIST MATERIALISM AND THE PLAYGROUND-ASSEMBLAGE
In South Africa, the conceptualization of young children, sexualities and playground cultures are predominantly understood through socio-constructivist frameworks (Mayeza, 2018) which limits our understanding of the affective flows and agential capacities of the non-human forms. Elsewhere however, the potential of a new feminist materialist framing has demonstrated the interconnection between the social and material world to forge new possibilities of meanings in playground cultures (Huuki & Renold, 2015; Kostas, 2022). In this paper, we shift thinking about girls on the playground by drawing on ‘assemblage’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1988, pp. 88) thinking and related concepts of new feminist materialism (Barad, 2007; Bennett, 2010). In doing so, we address the ways in which materialities in the form of bodies, objects, things, space, ideas and feelings entangle with social forces to expand what is currently known of primary school playgrounds. Deleuze and Guattari's (1988) idea of an assemblage refers to a network of relational and ephemeral connections between heterogeneous elements in the form of both human and more-than-human that generate affects and capacities. In this paper, we consider the playground as an assemblage of not just bodies and things, but ‘relations of movement and rest between molecules or particles’ and its' ‘capacities to affect and be affected’ on the field that mediate what girls can do, feel or become within a moment in time through play (Deleuze & Guattari, 1988, pp. 261).
What girls can do is contextual. Thus, we locate the playground-assemblage within the South African context where young girls navigate a highly complex socio-cultural landscape underlined by historical legacies of colonialism, apartheid and contemporary inequalities which have affects for the ways in which gender and sexuality is produced. For instance, Jewkes and Morrell (2012) have elucidated the ways in which materiality, gendered histories and cultural norms reify female subordination. Specifically, these authors claim that while young South African women are capable of defying these norms which are harmful to their well-being, the broader socioeconomic system and historical processes place limits to what they are able to do.
Within a new feminist materialist framing, these historical processes are not isolated entities but are bound to assemblages and come to matter in shaping girls' opportunities for sexual expression. The effects of colonialism and apartheid are made visible through essentialized understandings of gender, sexuality, race and class, underlined by heteropatriarchal structures and dominant discourses that reify the subordination of femininity. Such affects combine with local cultural practices to reinforce the expectation of young femininity around respectability and sexual docility while engendering male power (Mayeza, 2018). Attention has been drawn to cultural expectations that revolve around girls' acquiescence to socio-cultural norms based on an idealized femininity while diminishing their capacities (Jewkes & Morrell, 2012).
Within playground spaces, these relations are practiced, accommodated or resisted as a variety of forces intra-act to provide a nuanced understanding of girls' experiences during play. The implication of a materialist understanding is that girls' engagement in play is not separate from, but deeply embedded within dominant ideologies and socio-cultural norms. Studies of heterosexual cultures on the school playground confirm mechanisms that police and regulate girls' capacities within an overall climate of heterosexual domination and male power (Mayeza, 2018; Mayeza & Bhana, 2020). Yet Deleuze and Guattari's (Deleuze & Guattari, 1988, pp. 400) concept of ‘rhizome’, suggests that these practices are not fixed. The rhizome suggests that parts and relations in the assemblage may shift and join with other matter including objects, things and space during play to unlock different affects and capacities (Delanda, 2006). In this study, girls' intra-action with other matter has the potential to affect and be affected, providing possibilities for girls to challenge dominant patriarchal ideologies. This dynamism between matter in assemblages is indicative of girls' capacities for sexual becomings as infinite and always in flux.
The process of new becomings is made possible through three distinct movements where existing relations may ‘territorialise’, ‘de-territorialise’ or ‘re-territorialise’ producing consequences for what girls can or cannot be on the playground (Deleuze & Guattari, 1988, pp. 88–89). A territory in materialist thinking is not confined to geographical connotations but constituted through its relations that specify capacities of what a body may do, feel or be. As noted earlier, affects associated within an assemblage underlined by heteropatriarchal norms and girls' sexual docility may seek to territorialize girls' capacities for new becomings on the playground, creating limits to their ability to experience and express sexuality. Alternatively, girls may interrogate the disempowering affects associated with such an assemblage through de-territorialization by connecting with other matter to open new ways for what they can do or feel. Thus, the utility of rhizomatic understanding of the assemblage and its territorializing and deterritorializing affects is that we have a more sophisticated understanding of girls' capacities beyond their subordination. However, given that affects are unstable, relations produced may also ‘re-territorialise’ with former elements of previous assemblages that may serve to curtail girl's capacities through play (Deleuze & Guattari, 1988, pp. 88).
The playground itself is a highly sexualized and gendered space located within a specific time-period in the school day (Renold, 2005). The assemblage is constituted within these time–spaced specificities and provides affordances to create potential for intra-action. This understanding of the playground space sits in conflict with public health narratives that see playground spaces as opportunities for children's healthy development, leisure and physical activity (Reimers & Knapp, 2017). Schools are also viewed as places of academic learning and as such playground spaces are seen as arenas for respite from learning while allowing children time for movement and play. However, missing in these narratives is an awareness of the playground space as a significant heterosexual field. Herein boys, girls, play, games, bodies and objects assemble together in a specific space within a time-bounded period that is relatively uncontrolled in comparison to classroom spaces regulated by the presence of an adult teacher.
Understood in this manner, the playground provides the space for making new configurations of socio-material realities possible. These new possibilities provide girls with capacities to express sexuality, as a rhizomatic experience, de-territorializing what we know of their potential while also weighed down by an assemblage embedded in gendered and cultural norms that limit what girls can do and feel. It is precisely the affective flows within the in-between-ness of intra-actions and a specific time–space context that we seek to identify and understand how girls come to be, feel and do during play that transcends our understanding of playground cultures as more-than-human.
Of relevance here is an understanding of relations that are formed within the assemblage as an ‘intra-action’- a process constitutive of infused matter through which capacity emerges (Barad, 2007, pp. 33). According to Barad's (2007) agential realism, individuals do not simply exist with capacities that precedes their actions; rather their capacity is immanent to its relations, is productive and becomes realized only upon its ‘intra-action’ with other matter (Murris & Bozalek, 2022). This notion of ‘intra-action’ gives rise to what Barad terms, ‘entangled agencies’ (Barad, 2007, pp. 33). Herein, we can only understand capacities to act as an emergent phenomenon upon its relationship with other matter. Following this way of thinking, girls' capacities and incapacities are constantly reconfigured through an ongoing entanglement with matter as we later see in the analysis. Of significance too is the intra-action with the more-than-human forms which provide potentials for capacities or incapacities.
The implication of a new feminist materialist framing through assemblage thinking, that takes heeds of rhizomatic potential (through territorialization, re- and de-territorialization) and through intra-active forces is the recognition that all things and objects are ‘vibrant’ and embedded with ‘thing-power’ that is only possible to realize upon its intra-action with other matter (Bennett, 2010). This challenges our understanding of girls' capacities on the playground as only possible to know in terms of their subordination and as exclusively a human encounter. It is upon its intra-action with matter, that affects generated in an assemblage has the capacity to transform bodies into a new state of being known as new ‘becomings’.
Thus, in this study, girls' intra-actions with matter and its affective flow produced within the assemblage may unlock specific (in) capacities that mediate the possibilities for sexual capacities including pleasure and excitement through new sexual becomings. In relation to this study, the possibilities for new sexual becomings are complex as relations are never fixed but unique and considered as ‘micropolitical’, occurring at the location of the assemblage (Alldred & Fox, 2017, pp. 1164).
CONTEXT AND METHODS
The context for this study is Dolphin Primary School (DPS—a pseudonym), situated within a peri-urban town, in the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province of South Africa. Like all schools in South Africa, DPS was categorized according to racial segregations sanctioned during apartheid and classified as a former Indian school. However, post-1994 and after democracy, DPS reflects changing racialized dynamics. About 80% of the school is now populated by Black learners while 20% comprises Indian, coloured and White learners. The race and class profile in the school has consequences for girls' play, as we shall see. In South Africa, public schools are categorized within quintiles ranging from quintile one as the least resourced, to quintile five as the most resourced. Ranked as quintile four, DPS has access to a range of resources and infrastructure, including two playgrounds which learners from grades 0–7 occupy during the lunch breaks and physical education (PE) lessons.
In this paper, we draw on data from a qualitative case study that forms part of a broader research project entitled Learning from the Learners: Growing up as Girls and Boys and Negotiating Gender and Sexuality, which sought to explore how grade seven girls (aged 12–13) in their final year of primary schooling construct and negotiate femininities. A total of 40 participants were recruited through purposive sampling. The criteria in selecting 40 female learners specifically in grade seven was to gain an in-depth understanding of how a cohort of girls in their senior year of primary school experienced femininities in the context of gender and sexual violence. The larger study incorporated a range of data collection methods such as semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions and participant observation. For this research, we draw on the semi-structured interviews with 14 primary girls to reflect the intra-actions and affective flows produced through play.
Prior to the commencement of the study, ethical approval was obtained from the Human and Social Sciences Ethics Committee at the university as well as the provincial Department of Education in KZN. Access to the research site was permitted by the school principal. The selection of participants was managed by a research assistant who also informed learners about the nature of study and that participation was voluntary. Parents/guardians of potential participants received formal letters outlining the purpose of research and were required to sign consent forms while participants completed assent forms. In abiding all ethical measures, the school and all participants were assigned pseudonyms to avoid identification. Participants were also informed of their rights to withdraw from the study in the event of any discomfort. Semi-structured interviews were considered effective in presenting the affective flow within intra-actions that materialized (in) capacities for girls within the assemblage (Fox & Alldred, 2015). The researcher developed an interview guide that included questions such as: What games do you play at school? What do you use to play these games? Do these games involve boys? What do you do in these games? Do you enjoy playing? Do boys harm you while you play? Participants were interviewed at school, during the second lunch break. All interviews were conducted at the school science laboratory, which was a private space, with high-rise windows and presented fewer distractions from other learners during the break. Each interview was approximately 30 min and was conducted in English, the medium of instruction at DPS. All interviews were audio-recorded and manually transcribed by the research assistant. In ensuring that no psychological harm or discomfort were experienced by the participants, access to the school guidance counsellor was made available for support.
In following a methodological approach that takes heed of the interconnectedness of the assemblage we rely on scholars such as Fox and Alldred (2015, 2022) that allow for understanding the intra-active forces of bodies, place, time, things and method of inquiry to affect knowledge production. Within a new feminist materialist framework, ‘qualitative approaches can provide more nuanced data on affects and capacities…’ (Fox & Alldred, 2022, pp. 7). Fox and Alldred (2022) claim that all research is part of a research assemblage involving different components or research machinery that flows through the entire research process. Data collection and analysis is part of the research machinery within the assemblage. Each part of the research process has an affective flow to produce affects that enable the research assemblage to function. In this regard, like Fox and Alldred (2022) we view semi-structured interviews, the process of data collection, analysis and member checking as part of the research machinery designed to aid the research assemblage. Thematic coding too is part of the analysis machinery that processes the data according to specific guidelines.
In line with Fox and Alldred's (2022) ethological conceptual toolkit, we sought to identify both human and more-than-human relations in the playground. Murris (2022) argues that research methods are intra-actional within specific contexts of material-discursive conditions all of which are already entangled. Thus, within a materialist lens, the focus in semi-structured interviews is not on individual voices. Rather participants in semi-structured interviews are perceived as ‘key informants’ within a time–space context (Fox & Alldred, 2022, pp. 4). As Murris (2022) confirms the entanglements allow us to attend to the intra-actions along with its affects and capacities that arise from girls' responses. Doing semi-structured interviews in ways that illustrate the interconnections between human and more-than-human allows us to illuminate how the playground-assemblage both aids and constrains girls' capacities.
Analytically, a new feminist materialist lens deviates from presenting the voices and experiences of girls as central to meaning, instead seeks to attend to the affective flow that is emergent within each intra-action in the assemblage (Fox & Alldred, 2015). We proceeded by organizing the interview data into transcripts which were read and re-read for familiarization. We focused on humans and more-than-human relations and its affects. In analyzing the data, we sought to highlight how capacities were aided and constrained within the assemblage. We applied Braun and Clarke's (2006) thematic coding system to enable us to organize the data responses into codes of its relations with human and more-than-human entities. Drawing from these codes, we were able to generate themes. These relations were documented textually and was subjected to a new feminist materialist analysis using Deleuze and Guattarian concepts of assemblage and new feminist materialism (intra-action; affect; de/re/territorialization) as explained in the theoretical section. In analyzing the data, concepts were identified and mapped out in the creation of new meaning. Central to the analysis are the capacities of the non-human forms without erasing the human subject. While the girls in the analysis matter, the material intra-actions that emerge as a phenomenon interrogate ‘power-producing binaries’ (Murris, 2022, pp. 2). The intra-actions between relations revealed moments of de/re/territorialization as girls' capacities for sexual becomings were in/capacitated by materialities filled with the power to affect and be affected. The use of an audio-recorder (non-human) during semi-structured interviews ensured accuracy and misinterpretation of participants responses. In a materialist ontology, validity can no longer be secured on human experiences that reflect new knowledge, rather, it is within the position of the human in relation to the assemblage through which meaning is derived that is evident of new knowledge (Fox & Alldred, 2015).
Finally, our research was also guided by the micropolitical consequences for bodies in the assemblage in ways that established how girls were able to express sexuality and how they were constrained. Thus, by making inferences about girls' capacities and incapacities and how to create better worlds for them, we align our work with Braidotti (2011). Braidotti argues that a methodological framework should take heed of the materially embedded and embodied which is both useful for researching the social world and for seeking change. Thus, intervening in and asking new questions about the pervasiveness of gender inequalities in the playground and finding ways to address it in its more-than-human forms is vital to understand and address inequalities and justice. Two themes were identified namely around pleasure and pain that focus on girls' sexual capacities produced through their intra-action as well as how their capacity to act is restrained. This is the focus of attention in the next section of the paper.
PLEASURABLE PLAYING FIELDS: GIRLS, BODIES AND HETEROSEXUAL PLAY
Zipho: When they [girls] play hide and seek, they go and hide with the person they love and sexual things such as twerking, kissing and sexual touching take place. Many girls allow boys to enter the toilets with them. Because when I was in grade three, girls and boys had separate toilets in the JP (Junior Primary) block and many girls played with boys in the toilets and many girls kissed boys and they went inside the toilets so such things could happen.
Zipho: I have seen them [boys] touch many girls. Girls enjoy being touched by boys in an inappropriate way, they feel very comfortable, and they feel happy. They do not care on who is watching them or who is looking at them. Boys usually kiss girls, touch them in their thighs, bums and other private places. They do not feel scared [be]cause every time you ask them what was happening, they just tell you it's none of your business you must find your own boyfriend. Girls do not report such actions and even if you threaten both girl and boy.
Sexualized touching was perceived as status enhancing and locked into heterosexual desirability operating under oppressive conditions. Here boys' sexual advances and entitlements were viewed as affirming of girls' desires and in doing so inappropriate touching was normalized. The word ‘inappropriate’ reflects Zipho's awareness of bodily violations and its oppressive form. Yet these touches were also viewed as pleasurable. Sexualized touching is thus embedded within contradictory norms. On the one hand, Zipho's statement reinforces such touches as a sexual violation while highlighting male power and girls' complicity in such violations. On the other hand, Zipho describes the experience of touching as pleasurable, opening up what we know about girls to their active investment in heterosexual activities and pleasures in defiance of adult norms and other peers. ‘Find your own boyfriend’ is an instantiation of the value and status that girls invoked in their experience of heterosexual relationships.
The affective flows produced through touching on body parts (thighs, bums) activated capacities that opened up opportunities in girls' experience of sexual pleasure, arousal and excitement. Furthermore, these girls were seen as ‘fearless’ in engaging in sexual practices and of the consequences that might arise if other learners reported such behaviour to teachers. It is within these movements of bodies, feelings, desires within the toilet that affectively capacitated girls to de-territorialize notions of girls as shy and incapable of expressing and acting on desires. Additionally, Zipho's statement is reflective of the unequal gender power relations that underline girls' experiences of sexuality. While girls derived a great deal of pleasure in their sexual encounters, what is apparent is also their compliance with and submission to male dominance and sexual entitlement. By failing to understand the operation of power within heterosexual relations, and by giving prominence to pleasures and desires, male sexual entitlements are normalized with little interrogation of the nature of touch and consent.
Games in the playground are not simply about human forces but are entangled with other girls and boys, other elements including specific areas on the playground, and objects such as bottle and clothing which are brought together in a dynamic playground-assemblage, illustrating the capacities of matter to affect and be affected. Spinning the bottle reaches into heterosexual repertoires from which girls learn of different ways of being (Renold, 2005). Spin the bottle, like other games, shows how the playground-assemblage through a variety of movements ignited affective flows, rhythms and intensities that cultivated conditions for the manifestation of heterosexual desires and performances. From Fizzy's excerpt, we see how spin the bottle provided affordances for girls to change their voices and walk in ways where specific movements of body parts (hips, bums) coalesced in a rhythmic arrangement to appear as sexually desirable. Materials such as underwear weaved into bodies and were filled with vibrant capacities to ignite sexual desire. Girls were acutely aware of its embodied power when viewed by boys during close interaction in games. Laughs, slow walks and shorter clothing in the presence of boys were machinic parts connected to ‘desiring machines’ that activated girls' enactment of sexual pleasure and arousal (Deleuze & Guattari, 1988). Below, we see how games like love dice unlocked capacities for girls:Fizzy: They [girls] play games like spin the bottle. So, when they play, they act strange… they change their voices and the way they walk and run. They walk like they are models. Their bodies go side to side. Like shake their hips, this side to this side (showing action) and bums also mam. They end up doing things that they are not supposed to be doing like kissing them; and letting boys touch them. They wear short clothes and always passing around boys and they walk slow and laugh when they see them. Their underwear shows at the top because they wear short shorts, and they don't tie their shorts.
A new feminist materialist perspective draws attention to understanding how the material affects fuel capacities for girls' enactment of heterosexual desirability. Objects like dice and numbers (although intangible) were not inert but embodied ‘thing-power’, illuminating the vibrancy of objects and forces to produce transformative affects (Bennett, 2010). The dice demonstrated the potential of what else girls could become or do within a moment in time through intra-action. In this case, affects produced through the use of the dice shaped the course of action taken by girls, which opened up new possibilities that enabled girls to explore sexual pleasure (Fox & Bale, 2018). The playground-assemblage branched to connect with other matter on the playground to show what else girls were capable of doing and becoming through play.Andiswa: In the love dice game we write kiss, hug, touch, suck, and the others had parts of the body (breasts and bum). It's your choice to play. The numbers mean certain things, if it turns on a kiss on the lips, [it] means you have to kiss the person on the lips or neck; they [girls] are not scared they do it.
Fox and Alldred (2015) note how objects serve as social agents. In this case, taps are not limited to the supply of drinking water but upon its entanglement with girls' intra-action (girls wet themselves to expose their intimate clothing underneath their school uniform) are reflective of multiple capacities as it now becomes a tool or mechanism for unlocking new sexual becomings in girls. Consequently, clothing such as a bra carry sexually explicit messages when viewed by boys. From Jaydene's response, boys clearly found the site of girls' wet bodies as desirable as they whistled and called out affectionate names, reinforcing discourses of heterosexuality. However, given that assemblages are unstable, girls' sexual capacities were fleeting as we see in the next section.Kerina: By the taps, the girls throw water on everyone, and the girls do this because some of the girls don't use vests on the inside. They use any colour bra they want to show so when they throw water the boys can see their bras.
Researcher: What do the boys do when they see these girls wet?
Jaydene: When the boys see the girls, they whistle at them and they call them, ‘baby’ and ‘babe’. Girl's smile.
PAINFUL PLAYING FIELDS: TERRITORIALIZING GIRL BODIES ON THE PLAYGROUND
It is within these games that heterosexual operation of power was most visible. Play unlocked capacities for boys to actively territorialize girls' bodies through inappropriate touches, violence and misogyny on the playground. Such coercive actions were not random but interrelated to the broader socio-cultural context where an idealized heterosexual male is made intelligible. In South Africa, patriarchal norms connect with local cultural practices to reinforce male sexual entitlement, violence, misogyny and heterosexual prowess as key to hegemonic masculinity (Ratele, 2015). Our findings resonate with other research that confirm playground cultures as sites for the operation of heterosexual masculine power and violence which position girls as subordinate and without capacities (Bartholomaeus, 2012; Mayeza & Bhana, 2020). Visible from the narratives above are the ways in which girls' active participation in heterosexual games generated affects that unlocked opportunities for boys to exercise male power and control of girl bodies. Ayanda's narrative ‘they like forcing girls to kiss them and they just hit us on our bums’ highlights the social forces of heteropatriarchal domination which girls are subjected to in games that not only restricts their potential of becoming something else but simultaneously reinforce heteronormative ideologies. While there are instances when girls like Primrose, as suggested by Inhle, tried to resist the affects of the oppressive assemblage, Victor's expression of power and physical strength re-territorialized the assemblage in ways that curtailed her capacity. The harmful affects produced in the games were not confined to play only, but manifested to other parts of the school playground:Ayanda: I feel uncomfy with this game [spin the bottle] because boys touch girls on the bums. At school, a lot of sexual violence goes on. Boys like forcing girls to kiss them and they just hit us on our bums. The teachers don't know what we go through, eish.
Inhle: This one boy, he tried to open the buttons of this one girl's dress. This grade six boy, Victor, he tried to touch Primrose and she tried to run away but the boy held her back.
Matibela: Boys follow you; I feel unprotected and unsafe. They say they love me and want to kiss me. I did not tell anyone.
As opposed to the former assemblage where the tap area was a site for new sexual becomings, we clearly see here the unstable nature of such affects as the tap area in girls' playground transformed into a site of oppressive relations. Fizzy claims that she and her friend were followed and physically harassed by boys who not only territorialized the girls' playground but also their bodies. Touching girls' ‘jackets’, ‘hair’ and hitting ‘bums’ were not insignificant to the assemblage but some of the ways in which boys actively declared their control over girls' bodies. The affective flow of fear and sadness emerged through such intra-actions which reinforced girls as vulnerable. We also see how girls' reduced capacities on the playground is further compounded by the absence of teacher support. While Fizzy was well aware of her rights in reporting misconduct to teachers, Fizzy and her friend were afraid of the violence that they would have to encounter after school. A materialist framework draws on teachers not as independent entities of matter to the playground-assemblage but interconnected. The lack of teacher supervision and support for children on the playground was a failure at recognizing the affective capabilities of play where sexualized touching easily capacitated boys while violating girl bodies. Paechter (2017) notes that daily interactions among children during play in primary schools escape adult notice proliferating the normalization of such events that have increased risk for girls. Furthermore, from Zindi's reference to her teacher's statement ‘you like to play with the boys, we cannot do anything’ it becomes clear how teachers reproduce normative gendered behaviour while blaming girls for their victimization. Embedded within teachers' attitudes are dominant gendered norms that reinforce the territorialization of girl bodies on the playground. Other forms of harassment during play produced affects that sexually objectified girl bodies:Fizzy: The boys during break were harassing me and Noni, when we went to the girls' ground taps. They [boys] were busy touching our hair and school jackets…they [boys] hit the girls and run, then after days they do it again and again.
Researcher: Did you report it to anyone?
Fizzy: No. We kept it to ourselves because we thought that after school, they were going to hit us.
Researcher: What would teachers do if girls report sexual harassment on the playground?
Zindi: They say that you like to play with the boys, we cannot do anything, but we [teacher] will write this boy's name in the defaulter's book, and phone his parents.
Through a materialist lens, teasing is complex, involving relational elements such as culture, race, emotions, animals, objects that produce negative ramifications for girls. Words articulated by learners carried sexual reference that disrupted dominant discourses of children as sexually innocent. Words articulated in IsiZulu contested local cultural norms and inhlonipha (respect). This cultural practice emphasizes compliance to gender and generational hierarchies where children and girls in particular are subordinated within these asymmetrical relations of power (Bhana, 2018). Herein, any association of sexuality between adults and children is regarded as a violation of inhlonipha. The use of pejoratives and the sexual objectification of girls reinforced ‘real boys’ and heterosexual masculinity (Mayeza & Bhana, 2020; Summit et al., 2016) while at the same time defying cultural norms. This is visible through teasing when girls are called ‘pussy’, ‘nquza’, and ‘msoonu’. From Yaka's response, words such as ‘ugly, black…’ were underpinned by racial connotations where darker skinned girls are considered unattractive to the heteronormative ideal. Similarly, both Nosipho and Aphiwe highlight how the anatomy of some girls are compared to the physical structure of a frog and perceived as commodities as seen through ‘ibhodlela’. Together they functioned to create hierarchies of bodies and desires where girls' bodies were objectified. The flow of affects along with its intensities, sexually objectified girls in ways that not only sought to reduce their self-esteem but activated sadness, and pain that reduced their capacities producing shame while feeling less desirable.Senamile: They do tease each other…sometimes, they [boys] call the girls ‘nquza’ (vagina)…sometimes it happens that they start playing this game about teasing each other, and boys say something bad like the girl looks like a pussy and the girl gets emotionally hurt and starts crying.
Sisanda: They swear strong Zulu words like ‘msoonu’ (anus).
Yaka: They [boys] even talk about the way you look, it makes people really sad, it makes them lose confidence in who they are. They say: ‘You are ugly, you are black, you look like my ass and stuff’.
Nosipho: There's a girl, they [boys] call her frog because of her body shape, and it hurts her feelings.
Aphiwe: They [boys] say to a fat girl ‘ibhodlela’. It means bottle.
CONCLUSION
In this study we place the school playground in the centre of our analysis as an active space for playing and making of gender and sexuality. We focused on the ways in which the playground is entangled with heterosexuality, desire and hierarchies. Objects, things, bodies, ideas and feelings all come together to provide opportunities for girls to demonstrate their sexual becomings on the school playground. We have shown that the playground-assemblage brings play, games, discourses and material play objects together which are deeply rooted in heterosexuality and the gender hierarchies that it produces. In other words, while the playground-assemblage makes a mockery of childhood sexual innocence, it can also limit ways of being and becoming. Given that a new feminist material approach recognizes all relations within an assemblage as co-existing and in an affective relationship with one another, a suggestion, then, is that primary school contexts could do much more to unravel the heterosexual matrix.
These findings have implications for bringing the debate about gender hierarchies and inequalities as well as heterosexual prescriptions into the space of the school playground (Huuki & Renold, 2015; Thorne, 1993). Teachers are critical components within the assemblage and while the assemblage is dynamic and constitutes a range of other forms and forces, teachers can address the ways in which gender and sexuality are made within playground cultures that actually serve male interests. Of importance here is the acknowledgement that innocence as an approach to childhood does not serve girls' interests. While play may appear innocent, we have illuminated the way in which girls' made sense of sexuality through their entanglements with games, dominant discourses and materialities within a context defined by gendered hierarchies and oppressive heterosexual norms. If innocence is deconstructed, then it may be possible to shift the focus on the playground from frivolous play to one in which teachers can bring up the sexualized nature of games and its hierarchies to children's attention in the classroom.
First, there is need for primary schools to recognize that the playground is an active site for making of gender and sexuality. The games that girls (and boys) play provide the conditions for possibility which are embedded within an assemblage. In other words, the making of heterosexual subjectivities is material and generated relationally by things, objects, forces, gender, bodies and body parts. As Ingram (2022) states, in schools, bodies are not just constructed but girls participate in doing bodies and heterosexuality through material and relational entanglements. The playground as an assemblage is a dynamic space involving sexual, material and affective forces but often this is erased by dominant notions of childhood sexual innocence.
Blurring the lines between subversive and open spaces in the classroom could not only be especially empowering for children (providing entry into the social contract) but also could shift heteronormativity and sexism perpetuated by both children, teachers and non-human agentic matter of the classroom.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Naresa Govender is acknowledged for conducting the fieldwork for this study.
FUNDING INFORMATION
This work is based on the research supported wholly by the National Research Foundation of South Africa (Grant Number 98407).
CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Biographies
Raksha Janak, PhD, is a post-doctoral research fellow at the School of Education, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Her research interests include new feminist materialism, posthuman ontology, gender violence, childhood sexuality, masculinities, young femininities and teacher's work. Her recent co-authored publication is: A new feminist materialist analysis of girls and the sexual violence assemblage.
Deevia Bhana, PhD, is the DSI/NRF South African Research Chair (SARChI) in Gender and Childhood Sexuality at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Her research examines gender and sexuality across the young life course focusing on agency, masculinities, inequalities, reproduction, health, violence and education. Her recent publications include Gender, Sexuality and Violence in South African Educational Spaces (Eds. with S. Singh and T. Msibi, Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) and Girls Negotiating Porn in South Africa: Power, Play and Sexuality (Routledge, 2022).
Open Research
DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
The data are not publicly available due to privacy and ethical restrictions.
