Male peer talk about menstruation: Discursively bolstering hegemonic masculinities among young men in South Africa
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I , Glover, Jonathan M , Makuse, Manase , Kelland, Lindsay , Paphitis, Sharli A
- Date: 2023
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/441253 , vital:73870 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/23293691.2022.2057830"
- Description: In this paper, we show how male peer talk about menstruating women may be used to discursively bolster hegemonic masculinities and denigrate women. Focus group discussions among 37 young isiXhosa-speaking men from two South African schools were facilitated by two young men; statements garnered from a sexuality education class about menstruation conducted in the same schools were used as cues. Data were analyzed using discourse analysis. The interactive talk constructed a bifurcation: “disgusting” menstruating women versus “reasonable” non-menstruating women who abide by idealized feminine behavior and are available sexually. We argue that as the non-menstruating woman cyclically become the other (menstruating woman) in women of particular ages, the trace of disgust inhabits the signifier “woman” for these men. Menstruation also disrupted a core identity strategy of local hegemonic masculinities: virile (hetero)sexuality. Given this, discursive distancing of the self from the very topic of menstruation is necessary. Small moments of resistance to these constructions were quickly closed down, and caring masculinity emerged only in the context of negotiating sex during menstruation. Involving men in menstrual hygiene management programs may provide spaces for resistance to denigrating discourses about menstruation.
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- Date Issued: 2023
Improving the mental health of women intimate partner violence survivors: Findings from a realist review of psychosocial interventions
- Authors: Paphitis, Sharli A , Bentley, Abigail , Asher, Laura , Osrin, David , Oram, Sian
- Date: 2022
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/426453 , vital:72355 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264845"
- Description: Intimate partner violence (IPV) is highly prevalent and is associated with a range of mental health problems. A broad range of psychosocial interventions have been developed to support the recovery of women survivors of IPV, but their mechanisms of action remain unclear.
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- Date Issued: 2022
Male Peer Talk About Menstruation: Discursively Bolstering Hegemonic Masculinities Among Young Men in South Africa
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I , Glover, Jonathan M , Makusem, Manase , Kelland, Lindsay , Paphitis, Sharli A
- Date: 2022
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/426502 , vital:72358 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/23293691.2022.2057830"
- Description: In this paper, we show how male peer talk about menstruating women may be used to discursively bolster hegemonic masculinities and denigrate women. Focus group discussions among 37 young isiXhosa-speaking men from two South African schools were facilitated by two young men; statements garnered from a sexuality education class about menstruation conducted in the same schools were used as cues. Data were analyzed using discourse analysis. The interactive talk constructed a bifurcation: “disgusting” menstruating women versus “reasonable” non-menstruating women who abide by idealized feminine behavior and are available sexually. We argue that as the non-menstruating woman cyclically become the other (menstruating woman) in women of particular ages, the trace of disgust inhabits the signifier “woman” for these men. Menstruation also disrupted a core identity strategy of local hegemonic masculinities: virile (hetero)sexuality. Given this, discursive distancing of the self from the very topic of menstruation is necessary. Small moments of resistance to these constructions were quickly closed down, and caring masculinity emerged only in the context of negotiating sex during menstruation. Involving men in menstrual hygiene management programs may provide spaces for resistance to denigrating discourses about menstruation.
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- Date Issued: 2022
Traumatic Imagination in Traditional Stories of Gender-Based Violence
- Authors: Ahmad, Ayesha , Ahmad, Lida , Andrabi, Shazana , Ben Salem, Lobna , Hughes, Peter , Mannell, Jenevieve , Paphitis, Sharli A , Senyurek, Gamze
- Date: 2022
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/426548 , vital:72362 , xlink:href="https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/traumatic-imagination-traditional-stories-gender-based-violence/2022-06"
- Description: Traumatic imagination includes creative processes in which traumatic memories are transformed into narratives of suffering. This article emphasizes the importance of storytelling in victims’ mental health and offers a literary perspective on how some women’s experiences of suffering can be expressed in the telling of traditional stories, which confer some protection from stigma to individual women in Turkish and Afghan societies.
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- Date Issued: 2022
Social and structural barriers related to menstruation across diverse schools in the Eastern Cape
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I , Du Toit, Ryan , Paphitis, Sharli A , Kelland, Lindsay
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/444385 , vital:74224 , xlink:href="https://hdl.handle.net/10520/ejc-educat-v40-n3-a9"
- Description: The barriers to education associatedwith menstruation vary from country to countryand within countries. We report on a cross-sectional survey conducted in diverse schools in 2districts of the Eastern Cape, South Africa. Using multi-stage sampling(stratified random sampling of schools, and purposive sampling of Grade 11 female-identifiediilearners), we accessed1,035 respondents with an average age of 17.2 years. Respondents completed a questionnaire developed from previous questionnaires and our readings of the literature. We report here on results pertaining to the social and structural barriers relatedto menstruation. Just over one fifth of young womeniiiacross the whole sample reported missing an average of 1.8 days of school per menstrual cycle, while a significant minority reportedrestrictions related to sporting and classroom activities. Results show, contrary to expectations, that young womenattending under-resourced schools report missing fewer days than young womenattending resourced schools, despite young womenin under-resourced schools experiencing inadequate sanitationfacilities and feeling unsafeusingthese facilities. This research indicates the importance of recognising social as well as structural features when considering the gendered barriers to education that menstruation may represent.
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- Date Issued: 2020
Community engagement in theory & practice
- Authors: Paphitis, Sharli A
- Date: 2019?
- Language: English
- Type: Book , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/98052 , vital:31534
- Description: The position of universities within our society has never been simultaneously more vulnerable nor important. Globally, the purpose and value of higher education in the twenty first century, is being seriously challenged more than ever before. Locally, we are confronted with social and economic problems that continue to plague the previously excluded and marginalised in South Africa. This fact is clearly evident in the location of Rhodes University, situated, as it is, in the midst of poverty, in a town with high unemployment and in one of the poorest and most neglected provinces in the country. This demands of us to ask the question that is currently resonating the world over: What then is the purpose of a university? And while we are attempting to answer this question, specifically for the South African context, we should be aware of the urgency to reimagine ourselves and step up, work collectively to redress the imbalances in our society. Universities do not exist in a vacuum - they exist within a particular social, economic, cultural, political and historical context and are an integral part of the community in which they exist. They shape and are shaped by the milieu in which they exist. Through their mission of knowledge creation, knowledge sharing and knowledge application, they are uniquely and ideally placed to play a critical role in the project of nation-building, social advancement and societal transformation. Given the complex and painful past of our nation that is characterised by centuries of colonialism and decades of apartheid, racial oppression and dispossession and the denial of opportunities to the majority of the citizens of this country, our universities cannot remain ‘ivory towers’ unconcerned with the daily struggles of those who were systematically excluded from opportunities to realise their full potential. It is our responsibility, indeed our duty, to ensure that we place at the service of our community and humankind the knowledge that we generate. In so doing, we will make it possible for ordinary citizens to become agents of their own emancipation and social advancement. On the occasion of my inauguration as the Vice-Chancellor of Rhodes University, I pointed out that: “If we remain true and faithful to our intellectual project, as we must, we will be able to advance the higher purpose of higher education: to transform individual lives for the better, to transform societies for the better and to transform the world for the better.” Indeed, the higher purpose of higher education is to transform lives for the better. Community engagement provides universities with opportunities to deepen and broaden our understanding of the role and purpose of our universities in the creation and sustaining of a better society and a better world. It is only when we build respectful, reciprocal and mutually beneficial partnerships with the previously excluded communities and draw on the different kinds of knowledge that reside in these communities that our knowledge project can start to respond meaningfully and appropriately to the cause of building and sustaining a more just, a more humane, a more caring, a more equitable, a fairer, a more compassionate and more inclusive society. Our University has committed itself to four guiding principles that will drive all our endeavours as an institution of higher learning. These are: • Sustainability – we need to ensure that the principle of sustainability permeates every aspect of our academic endeavour and every decision taken by our university. In the process, we want to produce graduates with an elevated sense of awareness and responsibility in building and sustaining sustainable communities. • Simultaneous local responsiveness and global engagement – our academic endeavour should seek to respond to the pressing and urgent local challenges while simultaneously contributing to our accumulated global stock of knowledge. This will allow us to enter the global knowledge system from our position of strength. • Advancing social justice – given the painful past of our country characterized by exclusion and denial of opportunities for some segments of our society, it is vitally important that we do all we can to restore the dignity and humanity of those who were treated as less than human by the previous dispensation. • Advancing the public good purpose of higher education – our university does not exist in a vacuum. It exists within social, cultural and economic milieu and has an important role to play in lifting the standard of living of our local community. These four principles should guide all academic endeavours in teaching, research and community engagement for the realisation of a society free of hunger, want, inequality and despair. And may it serve as a significant stepping stone towards placing community engagement on a more solid philosophical and moral footing. This publication is packed with a number of exciting and innovative case studies that amply demonstrate that Rhodes University is at the forefront of engaged scholarship and the nurturing of young, talented, committed and engaged citizens. All these initiatives are anchored on the five important pillars of community engagement – mutual respect, reciprocity, mutual benefit, co-creation, and sustainability. We thank all our colleagues and students who go above and beyond the call of duty to contribute in a very meaningful way in transforming the lives of our local community for the better. We are deeply grateful to our Community Engagement Office for enabling and facilitating the interaction between the Rhodes University staff and students and our local community. A word of deep gratitude and sincere appreciation to our community partners who are ever prepared to welcome us with open arms and are always ready to offer our staff and students a different kind of education to the one available within the walls of a lecture room. Our sincere appreciation and gratitude also to our Communications & Advancement Division for seeing to the production of this fabulous publication. I have no hesitation in strongly recommending this publication to all who share our vision of a better society and a better world and are committed to working with courage and conviction to the realisation of a society and a world of our dreams.
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- Date Issued: 2019?
A contemporary phenomenology of menstruation: Understanding the body in situation and as situation in public health interventions to address menstruation-related challenges
- Authors: Kelland, Lindsay , Paphitis, Sharli A , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2017
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/434293 , vital:73045 , ISBN 1879-243X , https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2017.09.004
- Description: Social science and public health research has pointed to, firstly, the challenges women face in terms of the management of menstruation and, secondly, to the negative symbolic associations made with the menstruating body. This research, however, seldom engages with philosophical issues relating to embodied subjectivity in order to explain and understand the trends noted. In this paper, we attempt to bridge the divide between feminist theory and current research on the menstruation-related challenges facing women today. We provide a feminist phenomenological account of menstruation in which women's shared bodily lived experiences of menstruation—the body as situation—are set within contexts that enable and/or restrain freedom—the body in situation. This account allows us to understand the universal and differentiated aspects of menstruation and menstrual management, thereby providing a nuanced picture of the interplay between the physical occurrence of menstruation, the symbolic associations made with menstruation, and the socio-material, historical and political conditions within which women live. Such an account, we suggest, should inform advocacy around public policy and institutional civic society that promotes the freedom of women to engage in important life projects, and ground public health interventions around menstruation related challenges.
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- Date Issued: 2017
Siyahluma: a critical health education intervention
- Authors: Kelland, Lindsay , Paphitis, Sharli A
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143638 , vital:38269 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: Recent social science research points to various menstruation-related challenges facing women in the global South - most notably for our purposes here, young school-going girls in the global South report a lack of access to (1) reliable and hygienic menstrual products with which to manage their menstruation, as well as (2) the information they need to understand the process of menstruation, how to manage menstruation and how to perceive and treat their menstruating bodies given that menstruation is surrounded by a culture of taboo and silence - menstruation is seen as dirty, impure, contaminating and, importantly, as something to be concealed from others and not spoken about, particularly in relation to male others. This lack of access to information, or in many cases, provision of false, misleading or stigmatised information has a severe negative impact on the management of menstruation for both young girls and women in the global South.
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- Date Issued: 2015