Abstract
In this article, the author discusses the benefits of using psychodynamic theory in researching black masculinities of adolescent boys in Alexandra Township, South Africa. Both individual interviews and focus groups were conducted with thirty-two adolescent boys, aged thirteen to eighteen years. These boys were provided with disposable cameras to take twenty-seven photos under the theme “my life as a boy” in the new South Africa. Arrangements were made for photos to be collected and processed. In the individual interviews, the participants were asked to give a description of each photo and why and how they had decided to take that photo to represent aspects of their masculine identities. Group interviews were also conducted in which the participants were asked to select five photos that best described their masculinities. Follow-up interviews were also conducted with four boys who were conforming and another four boys who were rejecting traditional notions of masculinity. In analyzing the data, the researcher used Frosh and Emerson’s (2005) psychodynamic-informed discursive interpretive framework to analyze feelings of ambivalence, hesitations, and contradictions revealed in the spoken texts about hegemonic and non-hegemonic masculinities. In addition, the attention in the analysis was paid to the researcher’s countertransference reactions to understand emotional concerns and tensions of being an adolescent black boy living in a township context. In conclusion, it is recommended that safe spaces should be created for adolescent boys to reflect on the subjective meanings, feelings, and emotions of what it means to be a boy in the new South Africa. It is argued in this article that psychodynamic theory has an important value in informing such community-based interventions.
Value of Using Psychodynamic Theory in Masculinity Studies
Over the last few years, studies about the social construction of hegemonic masculinity 1 among boys and men have been gaining popularity in the new South Africa (Langa 2008; Lindegger and Maxwell 2007; Morrell 2001, 2007; Ratele 2006; Shefer et al. 2007). Some of these studies show that there is a strong link between the construction of hegemonic masculinity and adolescent boys’ involvement in risk-taking behaviors such as drinking and driving (Connell 1995), engagement in violent crime (Barker 2005; Gear and Ngubeni 2002; Jensen 2008), and having sex with multiple partners which puts them at risk of HIV infection and sexually transmitted diseases (Wood and Jewkes 2001).
All these problems of adolescent boys associated with “hegemonic” masculinity have attracted considerable attention from many researchers in the fields of sociology, education, and anthropology, but often with little attention to psychodynamic aspects of masculinity (Frosh 1994; Edley and Wetherell 1999). Increasing the psychodynamic understanding of how adolescent boys construct hegemonic masculinity has become important.
Recently, there has been a growing interest in drawing upon psychodynamic theory to explore the lived or subjective experiences of being and becoming masculine (Frosh 1994; Hollway 1989). Based on the work of Stephen Frosh (1994), it has been demonstrated that psychodynamic theory is a useful theoretical tool of analysis in identifying contradictory desires, conflicts, and emotional comprises in the negotiation of both hegemonic and subordinated forms of masculinity. The current study (which this article is based on) has been influenced by Frosh and his colleagues’ work that psychodynamic theory can be a useful psychosocial framework for understanding gender and sexual identities, particularly of young boys who are at an adolescence stage of negotiating and renegotiating their subjective masculine identities (Frosh, Phoenix, and Pattman 2002, 2003).
The psychodynamic theory has also been found useful in many qualitative studies (see, e.g., Cartwright 2004; Kvale 1999). Using a psychodynamic theory is in line with the aim of the current article which is to make an important theoretical contribution to understanding the emotional costs and tensions that township boys experience in negotiating hegemonic and particularly non-hegemonic masculinities. There seem to be many challenges for adolescent boys living out alternative versions of masculinity, and it is important to understand what happens psychodynamically when adolescent boys negotiate such multiple voices of masculinity in their daily lives. Frosh (1994,) supports the use of psychodynamic theory as a tool of research in gender studies, as it offers fertile ground for exploring the problem of what it means to be a gendered male subject. One distinctive characteristic of psychodynamic theory on gender is its focus on subjective experiences of being positioned as masculine or feminine. However, some criticisms have been leveled against psychodynamic theory for its individualizing, pathologizing, and essentializing tendencies (Frosh and Baraitser 2008). However, it is clear that contemporary applied psychodynamic theory sees the subject as both social and psychological, with behavior influenced by the interplay between “external” social and “internal” psychical processes (Frosh and Baraitser 2008). This article aims to hold true to reflecting an appreciation of this interplay, recognizing that it is important that internal processes involved in the negotiation of masculinity are analyzed and interpreted within the context in which the male subject is located. The idea that it is important to study the construction of masculinity in different contexts is based on Connell’s (1995) thesis that masculinity is not a single construct. The decision to “choose” or “live” one form of masculinity over any other is influenced by contextual factors such as culture, race, class, and ethnicity. Another important contribution of this article is to understand how adolescent boys subjectively construct their masculinities within the particular social and historical context of Alexandra Township in postapartheid South Africa.
It is important to bear in mind that using Lacanian’s notion of the phallus is that power and struggle are central to the experience of masculine identities and that the costs of pursuing an appropriate masculine identity can be a burden, which symbolizes something powerful, but also something empty. Drawing upon this idea, but giving it his own shape, Frosh (1994, 165–84) argues that “phallus is such a burden to a man; living up to it becomes the necessary condition of masculinity, which is always in danger of being betrayed and undermined.” The difficulty of sustaining a masculine identity produces an internal struggle for most boys and men. Having the phallus becomes a burden in that it signifies some kind of performance pressure. In her seminal text, Gender Trouble, Judith Butler (1990) builds on psychoanalytic ideas of both Freud and Lacan, to provide an account of the way in which individuals become gendered and are continually compelled to enact and reenact gender roles. According to Frosh (1994), masculine success is derived from phallic mastery, but this is a complex and multifaceted process, provoking feelings of anxiety and fear about possible failure.
Displaying competence to others in the public self is the key signifier of successful masculinity, whereas failure to live up to the public masculine image is anxiety provoking and shameful. As a result, adolescent boys often find themselves feeling pressurized to indulge in risky behaviors in the public performance of the gender role (Renold 2004). They also find themselves shifting from one position to another in order to manage expectations of being a “real” man. Taking up certain subjective positions and foregoing others may evoke feelings of anxiety, ambivalence, loss, and sadness (Frosh and Baraitser 2008; Hollway and Jefferson 2000). One of the central questions in the current article is why adolescent boys emotionally invest in certain subject and subjective positions. What are the conscious or unconscious reasons behind taking up certain discursive positions? What are the emotional costs involved in this process? It is arguably only through drawing upon psychodynamic theory that the author was able to explore these kinds of questions about the adolescent boys from Alexandra Township whose experiences the article is centered around.
Psychodynamic-informed Qualitative Research Methods
Psychodynamic-informed qualitative research “is one innovative form of knowledge production that has remained outside the discussions of scientific method of psychology” (Kvale 1999, 87). The interest in psychodynamic-informed qualitative research methods is in the origins and nature of subjectivity to engage with more personally experienced or lived aspects of social identities and social location. The book, Changing the Subject, by Henriques et al. (1984), is regarded as one of the major texts to grapple with the notion of subjectivity as a focus of psychodynamic theory in psychology, challenging traditional research conceptions that people are mechanically positioned to behave in a particular manner. Wendy Hollway (1989) also made another major contribution to the topic in her book, Subjectivity and Method in Psychology. In this book, Hollway clearly challenges the positivist scientific tradition of viewing the subject as unitary, rational, and noncontradictory. She argues that “it is not that rationality is non-existent, rather that it is always being contested by forces,” including the constant struggle to manage repressed material, which includes ideas, feelings, desires, and fantasies outside of conscious awareness (Hollway 1989, 29). Such repressed materials constantly threaten to overwhelm the (masculine) subject, as will be discussed in this article. There are thus arguably multiple forces governing male subjectivity, including unconscious contents. This shows the relevance of researching male subjectivity using psychodynamic theory to tap unto the internal complexities of how adolescent boys deal with subjective experiences of being positioned or positioning themselves as hegemonic or non-hegemonic. A psychodynamic theory as a qualitative research approach provided the researcher in this study with rich tools for understanding the workings of affect, for example, feelings of fear, desire, anger, envy, and anxiety, central to the construction of both alternative and hegemonic masculinities (Frosh, Phoenix, and Pattman 2003; Edley and Wetherell 1999).
Boys Taking Photos on What it Means to be a Boy
Thirty-two adolescent boys between the ages of thirteen to eighteen years doing grade 10 and 11 were recruited from two secondary schools in Alexandra Township where permission to conduct research was obtained. Ethical issues (e.g., confidentiality and anonymity) were also taken into account in the study by using pseudonyms and disguising any identifying information that may reveal participants’ identities. The researcher also gave all the potential participants (as they were minors) consent forms to take home for their parents/guardians to sign before taking part in the study. Only boys who returned the signed forms were included in the study (a total of thirty-two boys).
All the boys were given disposable cameras to take twenty-seven photos (the total available on the film) under the theme “my life as a boy.” In taking their photos, boys were encouraged to think about the following questions: What is it like to be a boy? What are the things that make boys feel like “real boys?” How do boys spend their time? What are some of the challenges that boys face? What do other people (e.g., friends, parents, teachers, and girlfriends) expect from young boys? What makes some boys more popular than others? Are there alternative ways of being a boy? Do they ever imagine becoming different to other boys? Boys were then given a period of two weeks to take photos. The space and time afforded to participants enabled them to think about how they wanted to represent themselves (Noland 2006), but also required them to focus on the task. After two weeks, arrangements were made for the researcher to collect all the disposable cameras. Two sets of the photos were processed and one set was placed in an album and returned to the participants. Following the photo collection phase, their accompanying narratives were collected by means of semi-structured individual interviews, focus groups, and follow-up individual interviews (Langa 2008).
Semi-structured individual interviews were conducted over a period of two months in June 2009. Each individual interview lasted for more than one to two hours. Boys were invited to come to group interviews following their individual interviews. The three group interviews took place after the individual interviews were completed in the first week of August 2009. The first focus group consisted of five boys and the second and third focus groups were attended by six boys.
After all of the individual interviews had been transcribed, the researcher read all the transcripts and decided to conduct follow-up individual interviews with eight boys two months after both individual and group interviews were completed (November 2009 to February 2010).
Photography as a Form of Free Association
In the classical psychoanalytic theory, free association is defined as a “free-floating attention on the part of the analyst—to gain access to an understanding of the patient’s inner world” (Bronstein 2002, 478). In this article, the term free association is adapted to refer to a situation where the interviewee freely associates about what it means to be a boy through the photos taken. The use of photo-narrative also allowed boys to tell their stories about what it means to be a boy spontaneously without feeling pressurized about what might be wrong or right. Many photos contained everyday boys’ experiences of life, but also allowed the participants to create and express their fantasies about life and their futures as young males. This could be seen in photos taken that included flashy cars and big houses with swimming pools (see figure 1 and figure 2), suggesting a projection into a different desirable future.
A big house with a swimming pool.
Flashy cars.
Interpreting photos involves giving voice beyond simple description of the images to tell someone else what others think about the photos taken. Photo-narrative therefore seemed to offer a gratifying sense of self-expression, as participants in this study were able to express and educate the interviewer about the photos taken. The participants seemed to enjoy explaining the context of an image to the interviewer, for example, why a particular brand of shoes (see figure 3) was taken:
All Stars (popular shoes among boys in Alexandra Township).
Through the use of photography, the participants were active participants in data collection and in the selection of images that best described and represented their own masculine identities. When asked about the process of taking photos on what it means to be a boy, Themba,
2
William, Thabiso, and Simon responded as follows: Extract 1: It was a nice experience that I wish I can do it again. I wish there were thirty to fifty photos. I needed to think if I take this photo what I’m going to say this and that. I take this picture and analyze the story yeah. Taking photos was okay because you were taking photos of things that you value. Ya. I actually think of who I take a photo of. At first when you gave me [the camera] that first day; I thought about it, and I was like okay; I am gonna come back to this idea. And then I thought about it a lot, and then I thought who can I take? Where I can I take this camera to? A photo of who can I take? What am I gonna say about this photo?
It is clear that the participants put considerable thought and reflection in deciding which photos they took. The quotations suggest that they experienced a sense of agency (e.g., suggested in the strong use of the personal pronoun “I”) and also had a strong sense of responsibility in undertaking the task. Both William and Simon also convey that the act of taking photos led to the process of self-reflection; in questioning how they would account for their decisions, they engaged in some internal dialogue which could be seen as a useful by-product of the researcher and/or lead in the interview discussions.
Furthermore, Zillier (1990, cited in Seedat et al. 2006) argues that photos set up a discourse between the photographer and the viewer. The photographer is compelled to attend selectively to elements of personal interest, decides what to show the viewer and how it will look to the viewer, and anticipates how viewers might react to it. Riley and Manias (2003, cited in Seedat et al. 2006, 304) identified three ways of looking at photos: “(1) looking at the image to analyze information internal to it; (2) looking at the image to examine the way in which the content is presented; and (3) looking behind the image to examine the context, or the social and cultural relations that shape its production and interpretation.” In this study, the researcher followed the three steps of Riley and Manias (2003, cited in Seedat et al. 2006, 304) in interpreting photos to understand the internal meanings of a photo, how the photo was produced, and how it is made meaningful by its taker in the construction of young masculinities among adolescent boys in Alexandra Township.
Interviews as Another Form of Free Association
Individual interviews were arranged with each boy to provide a description of each photo and why and how they decided to take that particular image. What was the intention in taking a particular photo and what were the feelings and emotions that accompany the photos taken? How did the participant relate feelings and emotions back to the photo both at the time and in the interview? This kind of interview process is referred to as photo-elicitation, where photos are used to prompt interview responses (Blackbeard and Lindegger 2007; Noland 2006). Boys were also asked to describe how the images represented aspects of their masculinities. In the individual interviews, the researcher also ensured that a wide range of issues were covered, including boys’ self-definition of themselves as male/masculine; their role models; their relationship with other boys and girls, intimacy and friendships, HIV/AIDS, violence, careers, and substance abuse. I observed that boys were more relaxed (in the individual interviews) in free associating about their feelings, emotions, and alternative voices of young masculinity than they were in the group interviews (as is perhaps to be expected; Frosh, Phoenix, and Pattman 2002).
In the group interviews, boys were asked to choose only five images (photos out of their twenty-seven photos) that best described them as boys and to show them to the other boys in the group. The use of photographic images as a route into discussing masculinity in both contexts seemed to enhance the discussion and produced a heightened level of engagement on the part of the boys.
After reading transcripts of all the individual interviews, follow-up individual interviews were also conducted with four boys who were conforming and another four boys who were rejecting traditional notions of masculinity, despite all the tensions and contradictions that characterize how young boys negotiate their masculine identities. The researcher arranged to meet each boy individually. Each of the eight boys was given the transcript of his interview to read and think about a week prior to their follow-up individual interview. In the follow-up individual interviews, the researcher asked the participants whether the transcript appeared to truly reflect what they had said in their first individual interview and their thoughts about the material. Was there anything that they felt they wanted to add or change? Was there anything that had changed markedly since the last individual meeting? Follow-up individual interviews were aimed at clarifying and exploring contradictions and gaps in the material that had emerged in the first individual interview and in asking for elaboration of interesting points and issues. In the follow-up individual interviews, the researcher was fairly specific about detailed pursuit of major themes in the transcripts. The method of follow-up interviews was also used to good effect in the study conducted by Frosh, Phoenix, and Pattman (2002) into adolescent masculinity. The researcher found the follow-up individual interviews very useful in clarifying issues and supplementing narratives that had emerged in both individual interviews and focus groups. The boys also reported that they found the follow-up individual interviews useful in helping them to reflect at a deeper level on what it meant for them to be boys in their township context.
Psychodynamic-informed Discursive Interpretive Framework for Data Analysis
The psychodynamic-informed discursive interpretive framework based on the work of Frosh and Emerson (2005) was used to analyze feelings of ambivalence, hesitations, and contradictions revealed in the spoken texts about hegemonic and non-hegemonic masculinities. Psychodynamically based analysis draws upon a more interpretive or hermeneutic understanding in which spoken texts are linked to intrapsychic formations, conflicts, and unconscious processes in the formation of masculine identity. The use of psychodynamic ideas and concepts in data analysis helped the researcher to move beyond mere redescription of the participants’ ideas and constructions to account psychologically for how and why boys took up certain subjective positions. It was clear that there were internal tensions and contradictions in the participants’ narratives that appeared to be both interpersonally and intrapsychically generated.
Particular attention was also paid to the points in the interviews when emotions, such as anxiety, fear, aggression, anger, guilt, loss, frustration, or disappointment, emerged, either explicitly or implicitly. This allowed the researcher to make more psychodynamic interpretations of the emotional processes involved in taking up particular subjective masculine positions. Attention was paid to the ways boys invested emotionally in particular subject positions, as well as the anxieties and defenses evoked in taking up such positions. According to Frosh, Phoenix, and Pattman (2002), internal conflicts and personal contradictions are indicative of the struggles involved in dealing with the fluidity of masculinity among adolescent boys. Further attention was paid to identifying gaps, silences, pauses, subtle messages, and emotional investments implicated in particular masculine subject positions. Discursive practices of silencing, discriminating, and isolating noncompliant boys were also noted and analyzed. The psychodynamic understandings and interpretations of the research material will be evident in the elaborated discussion of the key themes in the article.
Thinking about Countertransference Aspects in the Research
Psychodynamic-informed data analysis underlines the importance of a researcher’s reflexivity, which is about how the researcher’s own values, experiences, interests, beliefs, political commitments, and social identities may have shaped his or her choice of a particular research topic (Hollway and Jefferson 2000; Potter and Wetherell 1989). In her work, Hunt (1989) argues that researchers should reflect on their own “countertransference” reactions in the research process. In the current study on young masculinities, the researcher drew upon his awareness of the psychoanalytic principles of countertransference, transference, and resistance in deepening his data analysis. This lens gave the researcher the opportunity to think critically about his own feelings, thoughts, fantasies, and emotions, and his personal responses to the participants’ responses to certain research questions. According to Cartwright (2002) and Kvale (1999), being “reflexive” is an integral part of understanding how knowledge is coconstructed, a process in which both “transference” and “countertransference” material may be critically analyzed.
As a researcher, I have always had an ongoing and applied academic interest in working with youth at risk. This has included working with juvenile offenders in prison and young former combatants in postapartheid South Africa (Langa 2007b, 2007a). The young masculinities research topic resonated deeply with my own experiences as a young black teenager who grew up in a township, had been exposed to different types of pressures, and had engaged in risk-taking behaviors. In the current research project, I was interested in exploring multiple voices of masculinity, particularly alternative voices which were not sexist and were non-harmful to self and others. Relying on stereotypes of race, gender, and class (Jensen 2008), people tend to associate young black males from townships such as Alexandra Township with crime and violence. In this research project, I wanted to dispel some of these stereotypes and demonstrate that not all such boys are involved in antisocial activities. My interest in the current research topic was to explore psychological strategies that adolescent boys might use in resisting, subverting, and challenging the existing popular norms of “township” masculinity, in order in the longer term to inform public policies and intervention strategies aimed at helping young people in the new South Africa. Thus, I had some investment in exploring counter hegemonic positions or apparent options for resistance to dominant framings among the boys in the study. In order to do this, however, I also had to appreciate what the dominant or hegemonic versions of masculinity were in this context.
As mentioned earlier, I conducted interviews with thirty-two boys over a period of ten to twelve months. Similar to the research approach in Frosh, Phoenix, and Pattman’s (2002) study, I also recorded my impressions of the interview processes (e.g., whether it was an “easy” or “difficult” interview, whether there were any unexpected aspects in the interview, etc.). Similar to Hollway (1989) and Swartz (2010), I also used a notebook to write down my field notes and my personal reflections immediately after each interview with the participants. This was in line with Mead’s (Steiner 1991, 2) suggestion that reflexivity is all about “turning-back one’s experience upon oneself.” I had to look back and explore possible “countertransference” feelings. Countertransference is defined as the therapist’s unconscious emotional reactions to a patient (McWilliams 1999) and is generally a term used in connection with therapeutic or counseling relationship. However, as suggested previously, the term has now been extended or introduced into the research terrain (Kvale 1999). In this context, I used the term countertransference to reflect on my feelings in response to conducting interviews with the adolescent boys in Alexandra Township. Was I, for example, overidentifying with the emerging material in the interviews? How did I experience the participants or how did they experience me? What kinds of feelings did participants evoke in me and how did I handle all these feelings? My awareness of my own countertransference feelings and fantasies was useful throughout the research process. I also used these feelings to better understand the boys’ emotional concerns and difficulties as an added dimension of the data analysis.
I also had to reflect on the issue of the power relations between me and the participants as part of the research process (see Reicher 1994, cited in De La Rey 1997). All of the participants knew that I was a psychologist and lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand. My professional background automatically gave me a position of power because I was seen as an educated person and a middle-class person who drove a reasonably expensive car and was assumed to live in a wealthy suburb (like Sandton, 3 a place that represents a desirable future for many young boys in Alexandra Township). As a researcher, I needed to be aware of this position of power in my interaction with the participants. All the boys called me Mister Langa perhaps in some ways locating me as similar to a teacher in their environment. I believe it was out of respect and perhaps some idealization that I was called Mister, as opposed to by my first name, which would have been a more casual form of address.
What about my race and gender? Did my identity as a young black male play any role in my interaction with these boys? How did the participants experience me? Did the participants see me as a more distant or more caring male figure? My field notes included my observations of how boys in the study responded to me and my questions and some observations are also included in the data analysis. Many of the participants commented that most of my questions were fine, but that the questions on sex and sexuality were a bit difficult. Talking about sex was a sensitive subject. Some of the participants spoke about their uneasiness and found this part of the interview quite uncomfortable, although they were aware that they could choose not to answer questions and some boys exercised this prerogative. However, not all the boys found it difficult to talk about sex and sexuality and some of the boys answered these questions in detail (e.g., telling me about the importance of satisfying a girl sexually) and boasting about the number of girls that they have had sex with. Many of the participants said that the research questions also explored issues that we were too private and personal (especially in talking about relationships with their fathers and the deaths of their loved ones). There were some instances in which participants cried during the interviews. My professional training as a counseling psychologist helped me to contain the participants’ feelings and emotions, although it was not always easy to respond to the participants’ emotions as a counselor and still fulfil my role as a researcher. I sometimes felt torn in carrying out these two roles at the same time. Overall, however, reflecting on my countertransference feelings provided useful data on the emotional world of the participants, which also facilitated a deeper understanding on my part of the boys’ feelings about their relationships and difficulties in their everyday lives.
Thinking about Transference in Relation to the Data Analysis
My interaction with these boys seems to have mobilized feelings of what might be understood as transference for some of the boys. In clinical terms, the word “transference” is defined as unconscious, archaic images that the patient imposes on the analyst (McWilliams 1999). However, as with countertransference, the term has also been introduced into the research domain to describe aspects of participant reactions toward the researcher and research process. In this research project, several of the participants experienced me as a caring male figure, as mentioned earlier. I agree with Hunt (1989) that the data collection process in research can also invoke feelings of love and care. Rather than seeing myself as a distant and emotionally detached researcher, talking to these boys about what it means to be a boy, I became involved in some of their personal lives. I remember, for example, one of the boys disclosing to me that he was “gay” and the helplessness I felt when he spoke about the difficulties he faced as a young black “gay” boy living in Alexandra Township in which he was subjected to abusive homophobic attacks. I remember sharing my feelings with my supervisor about this interview, this supervision meeting served as a kind of debriefing session. Another boy phoned to tell me he had failed and another that his brother had been murdered. I thus became more involved in these boys’ lives than initially anticipated. Where I could I offered direct support, such as attending the funeral of one of the participants’ brothers, but I also encouraged him to attend the free counseling service at Alexandra Clinic as I thought this might be beneficial. All the participants reported that they found the interview processes to be useful in helping them talk about and reflect upon their emerging masculine identities and future goals in life.
Moreover, it seems talking “man to man” in the interviews made many boys feel relaxed, because I had an interest in their stories and was also not judgmental about their risk-taking behaviors, such as having sex with multiple partners, smoking, drinking, and use of illegal drugs. There was a sense of comraderie and brotherhood in sections of the interviews. One participant said, “I have never spoken to my brothers like the way I spoke with you.” Another participant said, “I know that you are also a male. You also grew up. You were also once my age. You were also a teenager. Stuff like that. That made me talk more and feel free and comfortable.” It was evident here that interviews evoked different feelings in the participants. Some had wishes that their parents (especially fathers) and brothers were also open enough to talk to them about intimate issues such as sex, girlfriends, HIV, and AIDS, and their involvement in experimental behaviors, such as drinking, smoking, and drug use.
It is also possible that the repeated visits to the schools and contact with the boys to give and collect the disposable cameras may have enhanced the researcher’s emotional relationship with the participants. Some of the boys insisted that the researcher come to their homes for follow-up interviews. The rapport was well enough developed to allow for in-depth disclosure of intimate material in the interviews and for boys to volunteer self-doubt and their misgivings about some of the commonly accepted portrayals of their boyhood. By the end of the research project, all of the participants were interested in continuing with the project. Many of the boys experienced the interviews as cathartic, and they said the process also helped them to reflect on their male identities and on their wishes in life. It is possible that the end of the project represented some loss of an ideal and caring male figure in their lives. All boys were given copies of their photos as a reminder of the research project. Following the data collection phase of the research project, the researcher became involved in school life skills workshops in which many of the boys participated. However, the difficulty in ending the research project was unanticipated and required careful closure in some instances.
It was evident that the application of psychodynamic ideas was useful in data analysis and in gaining a reflexive awareness. Being aware of my “countertransference” and of participants’ “transferential material” assisted me a great deal in deepening my analysis and in understanding some of the boys’ emotional concerns and difficulties. Where relevant, some of the reflexive observations are revisited in the discussion of the key themes subsequently that were identified as salient for the purpose of this article.
Shame, Humiliation, and Emasculation in Boys’ School Violence
The interviews revealed recurring allusions to different “types” of boys at schools in Alexandra township, namely, tsotsi and academic boys. For this section of the article, the tsotsi boys in this study were identified as boys who miss classes, defy teachers’ authority, and perform poorly in their grades. The academic boys, conversely, conform to school rules and perform well academically. Being violent was described as a key marker of being a tsotsi boy as illustrated in the following extracts: Extract 2: Sometimes we feel that if I do not fight they would say that I am weak or I am scared of him. That guy would then take advantage that I did not fight him. He would then look down on me, and say awful things about me. Extract 3: So when we fight you are proving yourself that I am a man, you can’t tell me anything? We fight as boys. We fight and fight to show that you must not disrespect me. For me, if someone calls me mfana (Sotho word for a little boy) it shows that he does not respect me, he is looking down on me, and I’ll show him the other side of me.
Aspects of psychodynamic theory proved useful in analyzing and understanding some of the internal psychological processes involved in the public display of violence. One wonders why there was a need to display violence publicly. Chodorow (1994) argues that such public displays arise from pre-oedipal and oedipal psychic conflicts, arguing that willingness to compete with other males and display dominance is a key marker of being a male. The present study confirmed that participation in fights or enactments of violence against other boys was all about gaining respect and proving that “I am a man.” The boy who is defeated loses his status of being a “real” boy and in the Alexandra context is seen as an mfana (Sotho word for a little boy). Interestingly, the process of emasculation can occur only if the violence is directed by a male against another male peer (Whitehead 2005). In other words, boys consider other boys as worthy opponents to fight against in order to achieve some kind of power and authority. In this respect, tsotsi masculinity is somewhat precarious, as it depends on “weak” male opponents for its confirmation. Dominance has to constantly be reiterated through either threats of or enactment of violence against another male person.
It emerged in the study that tsotsi boys’ display of violent masculine identity was a compensatory mechanism for their lack of self-esteem, lack of academic skills, and inability to compete with the academic boys in the classroom. Extract 4: You see many of these guys (referring to tsotsi boys) are bullies, but failures at school. They are failures you know when it comes to school work. They get zeroes in tests and assignments. Extract 5: These guys (also referring to tsotsi boys) think they are clever, but you know///I perform better than them in tests and homework. Many of these guys fail because they don’t study. They only know how to bully other kids.…
It was reported in the interviews that tsotsi boys perform consistently poorly in their grades. As a result, it might be speculated that they feel undermined and possibly “emasculated” in the classroom context. It seems that the bullying of the academic boys was also based, at least in part, on envy, because these boys knew the answers in the classroom and consequently occupied a position of power within the classroom environment. It can therefore be argued that bullying is a tool used by the tsotsi boys to render the academic boys powerless, helpless, or emasculated outside of the classroom context (especially in the school toilets where it is reported that bullying often happens there). In the interviews, tsotsi boys simply justified their involvement in violence as a means of proving their “manhood.” However, the use of psychodynamic theory as a tool of analysis allowed for critical analysis which entertained the possibility that the violence represented a projection of unwanted feelings of failure, lack, rejection, and deprivation as observed by other researchers (Perelberg 1999).
In the follow-up individual interviews, many tsotsi boys mentioned feeling sad and depressed about their personal lives. For example, William, a self-identified tsotsi boy said “(Eish!) I feel empty in a way. Like there is a space that is left opened. I had to see things for myself. I started doing bad things at an early stage like smoking, drinking, and going to parties. And I know if my father was here, I wouldn’t have done that.” Many tsotsi boys attributed their emotional difficulties to the absence of father figures (one of the major themes to be discussed in this article) and a lack of emotional support at home and also at school. It seems these feelings of emotional deprivation, rejection, and neglect were then often projected onto other boys at school as a defense mechanism to preserve the fragile psychological self (Target and Fonagy 2002), suggesting that teachers and parents can play an important role in supporting these adolescent boys in their emotional development and experience.
Tsotsi boys seemed to constantly feel the need to affirm their positions as “real” boys, but the rewards for their public violent masculine performance appeared to be temporary, leaving them wondering what they needed to do next in order to maintain the same status. This again revealed the artificiality of their violent masculine identities, and some fear of the “true” self being exposed beyond the macho mask (Cartwright 2002; Perelberg 1999). This shows the emotional and energetic cost of being a tsotsi boy since the identity requires constant enactment and interpersonal contestation. It is also an identity that may be experienced as frustrating or precarious, since it requires willingness to enact violence. At the same time, many of these boys feel insecure, empty, and unhappy, which suggests that occupying this kind of hegemonic position is not necessarily satisfying, but costly emotionally. The discussion up to now has revealed some of the processes involved in how tsotsi boys negotiate their identity and position in the school environment, but it should be reemphasized that not all boys in Alexandra Township are involved in the violent or defiant acts of tsotsi boys. Some adolescent boys, as will be shown in the subsequent section, were embracing “alternative” voices of masculinity, which were nonviolent and cooperative within the school environment. Extract 6: Yes, you see fighting makes you popular yeah and doing rough stuff at school also, but sometimes you see yeah it makes you so tired. You really, really get tired that yeah you just want to be a normal guy who does not fight with other people…
Emotional Struggle of Being a Different Boy
As mentioned earlier, academic boys were classified as boys who conform to school rules and perform well academically. They are often seen as mature, responsible, and studious. These boys subverted and rejected the automatic association of masculinity with violence as normative among adolescent boys living in predominantly black townships, such as Alexandra Township. These boys embraced masculine voices that were nonviolent, non-risk taking, and school orientated. I had a positive countertransference reaction toward these boys as their aspirations to be educated were similar to my own aspirations when I was a teenager who also grew up in disadvantaged community, and now working as a senior lecturer at a historically white university (Wits University). It was evident that the need to do well academically was a major protective factor in avoiding becoming involved in violent situations at school. Extract 7: I don’t care about being popular or what. I only care about my future. My future comes first. Extract 8: I care only more about my school work. Yeah, myself I don’t care about being violent or showing other boys that I’m strong and I can fight with other boys. Extract 9: I just walk away, I just walk away or I try telling the person. If someone’s arguing with me I just leave and say okay you’re right. I don’t like fighting. If you walk away won’t they laugh at you that you’re a coward and you’re scared. I don’t look up to people. I’m not interested in what people say. But they will laugh at you. Yeah but it’s not going to be something that’s gonna go on forever. They can laugh for that day or the week when they see me but it’s not something that can go on forever.
All the academic boys maintained that it was “stupid” to think that being violent made one a “real” boy. Despite all these positive voices of being a boy, these boys asserted that were experiencing conflicting emotions and considerable ambivalence about their masculine identities. Some of them seemed to appreciate that there were costs and tensions in occupying a kind of mid-hierarchy identity. Extract 10: Yes. It’s like I am that simple guy. I wouldn’t say I am popular, I wouldn’t say I am a loser. I feel that I am in between. Extract 11: Yes, being like in between, you wouldn’t impress people doing bad things. And again you wouldn’t be that guy that doesn’t socialize, like you lock yourself out.
In these extracts, the participants speak about the benefits of being “in between” or “in the borderland” (Martino and Pallotta-Chiarolli 2003). Academic boys in the study thought it was better to be “in between” and a “simple guy” who was neither popular nor a “loser.” However, being in the middle constituted a dilemma as they wanted to do well academically, but, at the same time, they did not want to be categorized as teachers’ pets or bookworms. They still wanted to be considered “real” township boys by doing what other boys did, such as socializing and spending time with other boys on the street corners, but they also wanted to get good grades at school. The balance was difficult to achieve, and it was evident that being an academic boy involved conscious management of behavior and the perceptions of others. As Reay (2003, 161) puts it, “to be both academically successful and acceptably male requires a considerable amount of careful negotiation on the part of academic boys.” Like the adolescent boys in Reay’s study, academic boys in this study were also caught between two opposing positions in attempting to ensure that their sufficiently tough and socially integrated township masculinities were kept intact, while simultaneously endeavoring to maintain their academic success. It was both an internal and external battle that many of the academic boys had to manage in order to be seen as “real” township boys, but still doing well academically. The common strategy that many academic boys employed was to pretend as if they did not care about their school by fooling around in the classroom, while studying privately at home or in secret places (such as the library in town) so as not to attract negative attention from other adolescent boys (especially tsotsi boys). As a result, academic boys were able to occupy multiple positions by pretending to be tsotsi boys, while privately still maintaining their studious behavior and commitment to school. Being “in-between” was experienced as emotionally draining and frustrating. One academic boy said, “I hate to pretend. I just want to be myself.” This sentiment was echoed by other academic boys, namely, that pretending to be something they were not was taking its toll on them emotionally. I remember one of the boys cried in the interview when he spoke about this, which evoked some feeling of anger in me as a researcher that it was not easy for boys to embrace alternative voices of masculinity, which were nonviolent and non-risk taking. I found myself feeling helpless in the interviews. Many academic boys felt they were being dishonest to their “real” selves for the sake of wanting to be seen as “cool.” Aligning oneself with tsotsi identity thus had both costs and benefits and conscious effort was expended in positioning oneself as an academic type and yet non-marginalized.
However, some of the academic boys were confidently able to reject the dominant norms of tsotsi boys without having to straddle or occupy multiple positions. These boys were aware of the peer pressure to conform to certain practices but were able to deal with the negative input of their peers as illustrated in the interview with Themba, a sixteen-year-old boy. He mentioned that when tsotsi boys teased him by calling him a bookworm, he consoled himself by thinking, “let’s put five years down the line and see what is going to happen; who is going to be a bookworm, who is going to wash whose car, who is going to be whose garden boy, who is going to … you know stuff like that.” Themba seemed to be coping well and resisted peer pressure to engage in anti-school behaviors such as missing classes or defying school teachers. He narrated that he saw education as an investment for the future. He believed that although he currently occupied an inferior position later he would be in a superior position. In his photo album, he had photo of a new Mercedes Benz and a big house (see figure 4).
Mercedes Benz parked outside a big house.
Referring to this photo (see figure 4), Themba remarked that tsotsi boys now thought they were clever, but, later in life, they would be working as his servants, washing his Mercedes Benz, and also working as “garden boys” in his big house. In his fantasy, it would be payback time. Although Themba appeared reasonably confident in his academic identity, it is apparent from his fantasy that he felt considerably angry toward tsotsi boys. He appeared to manage some feelings of current impotence by entertaining a dream of becoming an object of envy and of dominating those very same boys by whom he was currently feeling oppressed. His resistance was covert rather than overt, but it is evident that he was invested in punishing those occupying tsotsi positions rather than merely escaping their scrutiny.
It was evident that the use of photography in the research project enabled participants such as Themba and others to create and express their fantasies about life and their futures as young males living in a working-class community such as Alexandra Township. Photographs of flashy cars and big houses were fairly common and suggested self-projection into a different, desirable future. Brett, another sixteen-year-old academic boy, also had a photo of a big house with swimming pool in his album. He also mentioned feeling hurt when tsotsi boys at school call him a “fool” for reading and doing his schoolwork. He recounted that the coping strategy he used was to ignore all these negative comments and concentrate on his goal of becoming a civil engineer. The photograph also seemed to represent the dream he hoped to achieve, a fantasy future-orientated goal that sustained him in the difficult present of being mocked and teased as a “teacher’s pet” because of his studious behavior.
However, the narratives also pointed to the psychic and interpersonal tensions that many of the academic boys experienced in negotiating the paradoxes of township masculinity. Their narratives were characterized by contradictory sentiments and ambiguities, as it was not easy to be a “different” boy who consciously adopted non-popular masculine positions. As Ratele et al. (2007, 126) put it, being a different boy is “hard work,” so it is important that young adolescent boys are assisted in negotiating these challenges of boyhood and also the transition into healthy manhood.
Absent Fathers and Positive Fantasies about Future Fatherhood
In the interviews, the participants spoke about many aspects of their lives, such as friends, girls, cars, and schooling, but issues about fathers, fathering, and fatherhood also emerged strongly in their narratives. Surprisingly, without being prompted, many participants spent a lot of time talking about their absent fathers in the individual interviews, despite very little discussion about fathers and fathering in the focus groups. Talking about fathers in group interviews seemed to be difficult, as it appeared to be a sensitive and emotional subject. Out of thirty participants, nineteen adolescent boys mentioned that they did not know their fathers, six knew their fathers, but were not living with them and their fathers had separated from their mothers. Only five boys were living with both their fathers and mothers at the time of the interviews.
Some participants expressed sad and painful feelings of growing without father figures in their personal lives: Extract 12: It is painful to grow without knowing your father. For examples, sometimes at school most of the time, people are like talking about their fathers and you can’t jump into that conversation because you never lived with your father. Extract 13: It is sad and very embarrassing to tell your friends that you do not know your father. Extract 14: I feel sad when I think about the fact that I have never met my father. I really wish to meet him. I will always avoid conversations where friends at school talk about their fathers.
All the participants asserted that they were envious of their friends who knew their fathers, and at school they were hurt to hear their friends talking about their fathers. Some boys mentioned that they found it difficult to tell their friends that they did not know their fathers, and consequently kept quite when their friends spoke about their fathers. It is possible that adolescent boys avoid talking to their male peers about their absent father figures because this topic is more likely to evoke sad feelings, and these are emotions that boys need to avoid expressing in “public” spaces. Boys who publicly express such feelings and emotions are seen as “sissies” and their sense of manhood becomes questionable (Pollack 1999). Interviews in the study gave the participants the opportunity to ventilate some of his feelings of anger and disappointment toward their absent father figures. Reflecting upon our interviews, one participant said: Extract 15: At first it felt strange in a way, like I am not used to talking about deep feelings and emotions—but as we went on I started opening up.… So it opened me up. And it made me free. And on the personal it made me feel relieved to talk about anger towards my father … I was nearly close to crying. I have never spoken with anyone the way I did with you.
Given my training as a counseling psychologist, I also had to play an important role in containing the participants’ feelings of anger and disappointment at their absent father figures, while still conducting interviews for my research on young black masculinities. As mentioned earlier, it was not easy to occupy multiple roles of being a counseling psychologist and researcher at the same time. However, the experience of being a psychologist with a strong psychodynamic theoretical orientation helped a great deal in facilitating interviews in this manner. It was evident that the interview process was cathartic for many boys to ventilate their feelings of pain, anger, and disappointment in growing up without father figures. The interviews also appear to have enhanced their insight in developing fantasies of wanting to be different fathers later in life. Extract 16: What kind of a father would you want to be? A father that is always there for his son, if I have a son or a daughter. I want to be always, always, always, there; I want to spend most of my time with my child. Even if I work on Saturdays and Sundays; make time. Whatever job I do I must make time for my child. Even if I work a simple job 8 to 5; I must make time between five o’clock when I come back; eight o’clock. Even if I have work to do I must make time to ask, what did you do at school today and all that? Because that thing affects a child. This thing affects … you know when you say to your dad; I’m just speaking generally; when you say to your dad; hey dad I heard this and this, and then your dad is focusing on his work and he is not interested in what you are saying; it affects that kid because they want to spend that time with their daddy. Why do you wish to have a baby boy? To relive that life, refill that space, react that life, making my son me and I would be my father. But then acting it the way I would have loved it to be. Not the way it would have been, but acting it the way I would have loved it to be. Extract 17: I want to be a father who is always there for his children, no matter what. Always guiding, a role-model most importantly. They must look up to me. They must not see me doing bad things, fighting with their mother and stuff like that, or drunk. Because I feel like by the time I have a baby, for sure, my life will change. And the way I see things, I will see things from a better perspective. Extract 18: And what kind of a family man would you be? Like I wanna treat my kids—like spoil them. I do not want them to grow as I did. I want them to have a family, a father, and a mother. And I want them to have a better life than I did have before.
All the participants spoke about the importance of fathers spending time with their children and providing them with paternal love and care. The participants seemed to embrace an alternative understanding of “fatherhood” that fathers should also make time to bond with their children and meet their emotional needs. As a researcher, I found all the participants to be very reflective and insightful. It seemed they had their own ideal fantasies about “fatherhood,” based in large measure on being “different” fathers as compared to their absent fathers. For example, Simon’s wish (Extract 16) particularly to have a baby boy was interesting at a psychological level. Psychodynamically, one wonders if having a baby boy would help Simon to fill gaps related to his unmet emotional needs as a baby boy. In his words, Simon said having a baby boy would help him to “relive that life, refill that space.” It seemed the birth of his baby boy would be compensatory to fulfill his childhood wishes and fantasies to have a loving and caring father. Like Simon, other adolescent boys also mentioned that they want to be “different” fathers as compared to their absent fathers. In their narratives, the participants tended to idealize themselves and denigrate absent and missing father figures. All the badness was located in the absent.
Here, it seemed lack of positive fathering experience facilitated the desire to become a different father, a desire not to repeat the pain that one has suffered as a child of growing without a father figure. However, it is difficult to predict whether these boys would be able to achieve their ideal fantasies of fatherhood, but it is important that they are supported to develop new voices of fathering and fatherhood as future fathers.
Maintaining Boundaries in Terms of Sexualities
The study also revealed how the participants policed each other in terms of their sexualities. For example, during my fieldwork, Brett, Mpho, and Martin saw me giving Marcus a camera so that he could also be part of the research project. Brett and his friends immediately asked me why I had given Marcus a disposable camera because he was not a “boy” but “gay.” I asked them why they thought Marcus was “gay,” and they replied he was “gay” because he spent most of his time with other “gay” boys at school. This, for me, was a clear indication of how the boys policed each other. Solely on the basis of his association with “gay” boys, Marcus was considered “gay” and by implication he was denied the identity of “real” boy. Brett and his friends suggested that Marcus should be excluded from the study on boys and masculinities because his masculinity was in doubt as he failed to maintain strict boundaries between “straight” and “gay” boys. It seemed that there was also an implicit fear that Marcus would contaminate the research project. As a result, he was not welcome to be part of the study.
Brett and his friends also accused Marcus of speaking like a girl. Brett joked that Marcus’s voice was too soft for him to be a boy. Despite these accusations, I invited Marcus to be part of the research project. I wondered what Brett and his friends thought about my “transgression” and whether they also questioned my sexuality as a researcher. In conducting interviews with lesbian school girls, Pascoe (2007) found that her research participants were curious about her sexuality. They wanted to know whether she was in a heterosexual or homosexual relationship. As discussed previously, Davison also found his sexual orientation and/or sexuality questioned in conducting research with adolescent boys, although questions concerning this were not put directly to him. Kong, Mahoney, and Plummer (2001, cited in Henderson and Shefer, 2008, 7) reported that “before being interviewed, many participants may want to know where both the researcher … is coming from, what kind of relationship they are having together and how intimate details will be presented and represented.” It was proposed that “deep levels of disclosure will come if the participant senses shared understanding from the interviewer” (Josselson, 1995, cited in Henderson and Shefer 2008, 7). However, perhaps contrary to Josselson’s suggestion about researcher self-disclosure, I decided not to reveal anything about my sexual identity as I thought that disclosure might change the dynamics of the interviews and may have possibly deterred the participants from freely expressing their views, including rather blatant misogyny and homophobia. At the same time, I was also not comfortable in including Marcus in the focus group because of the homophobic comments made by other boys in the school in previous interviews. Only two individual interviews were conducted with Marcus. Homophobia was evidently a pervasive problem in Alexandra Township. Throughout the first interview, Marcus did not say anything about the rumor that he was “gay” until he mentioned that he wanted to be a hairdresser when he grows up. Extract 19: Does this say anything about your identity? Yes. People would think that he is a hairdresser, he is gay or something. They do not understand that in life you need to have a career that you will follow. And you say it also says something, partly; it is not that it’s because of your identity. When I was asking you about who you are and all that, you did not say anything about your identity as a gay boy? No, I am not gay. I am Marcus, a person who likes people, and I am bright. I mean when you are a hairdresser people automatically think you are gay. Most people think that you have chosen to be a hairdresser, and most hairdressers are gay. And you say you are not? I am not (gay).
First, I need to acknowledge that I went into this interview with an agenda of wanting to find out whether Marcus was “gay” or not because of what Brett and his friends had told me earlier. My questions in the above extract reveal that I was explicitly pushing Marcus to say something about his sexual identity. With hindsight and self-reflection, I was also able to uncover my own prejudices in associating certain occupations (e.g., hairdressing) with being “gay.” In the interview, Marcus denied that he was “gay,” “No, I am not gay.” He said that he knew that the other boys at school thought he was “gay,” but it did not concern him unduly because he knew he was not. I observed that Marcus was confident in talking about his individual identity and masculinity (also disclosing that he was proud to be a virgin), and in rejecting risk-taking behaviors associated with being a “real” township boy in Alexandra Township. It is possible that other boys might have accused Marcus of being “gay” because he did not comply with the “unwritten rules” (Davison 2007; Pascoe, 2007) of hegemonic masculinity, such as displaying aggression, spending time with other boys, playing football, and dating multiple girlfriends. Marcus was thus perhaps being punished for not conforming to the gender expectations of compulsory hegemonic masculinity. In this context, his lack of conformity led to a categorization of him as “other” and in much of the conversations “Othering” was conflated with categorization as “homosexual.”
Concluding Remarks
Using a psychodynamic theory as a theoretical framework helped the researcher in this study to approach his interviews in the manner in which the participants were allowed to reflect deeply at an emotional level about what it meant to be a boy in a black township of Alexandra. The theory also allowed the researcher to analyze contradictory desires, conflicts, and emotional comprises within both hegemonic and subordinated forms of masculinity, showing the unstable and fragile nature of masculine identities at a deeper level. It is clear in this article that there are emotional costs and tensions involved in how boys negotiate multiple voices of masculinity. The subjective positions that boys occupied were fluid rather than rigid and fixed. In the main, the participants appeared to vacillate between multiple positions, simultaneously accepting and rejecting certain practices of township masculinity, although for some boys, identification with a certain type of masculinity remained quite consistent. What was apparent from the findings was that boys’ status was derived from holding or being ascribed a certain position within the peer group hierarchy. The findings revealed that being a “different” boy who adopted non-hegemonic positions was a complex process characterized by feelings of anxiety, hesitation, and ambivalence. These were contradictions that young academic boys in the study had to manage in order to maintain and sustain emerging alternative school-orientated voices of masculinity in this context of Alexandra Township.
The use of vulgar language and also threats of violence against “gay” boys revealed something profound about the power that “gay” masculinity has over “straight” masculinity. As suggested in the discussion, the virulence of the anti-gay sentiment expressed at points suggested that homosexuality could not easily dismissed, but was experienced as a powerful threat—perhaps at both a social identity and intrapsychic level. It was apparent that there was fear and anxiety that social relations with “gay” boys or any boy who behaves “gayish” might be contaminating and therefore should be avoided at all costs. As was found in Pascoe’s (2007) study, it could also be concluded in this study that homophobia may have represented a degree of defensive positioning to repress any homoerotic desires and impulses, given the virulence with which some ideas and sentiments were expressed in those sections of the interviews dealing with “homosexuality.”
It is therefore important that intervention programs are developed and implemented both in and outside school environments to assist and support adolescent boys to negotiate multiple voices of masculinity. In most cases, adolescent boys are given little opportunity to think about what it means to manage a male or masculine gender identity. It was clear in this study that some boys were reflective in talking about their feelings and views about what it meant to be a boy in a specific township context. It is argued that boys should be provided with safe spaces to freely express their views on their gender identities without fear of criticism and ridicule and should be supported to question, challenge, and subvert notions of hegemonic masculinity that are overly constraining or are associated with involvement in risk-taking and harmful behaviors.
A psychodynamic theory may be useful framework in informing such community-based and school-based interventions, as it has been proven in this study that it offers a rich insight in analyzing and understanding what happens psychologically when adolescent boys negotiate masculine identities in their daily lives. Many of these participants displayed high levels of self-reflection, introspection, and insight about what it meant to be a different boy and the determination required to maintain this stance. It seemed that being reflective, and insightful, and having educational aspirations and valuing academic achievement appeared to be some of the factors that helped some of these adolescent boys in this study to resist and reject involvement in hyper masculine behaviors that might place them and others at risk in various ways.
Footnotes
Acknowledgment
I would like to take this opportunity to thank my PhD supervisor Gill Eagle for her in-depth, detailed editorial, and constructive comments on the first draft of my article. Finally, thanks to all the boys who took part in the study.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research project was funded by SANPAD (South African Netherlands Partnership on Alternative Development) and the National Research Foundation (NRF) and the African Doctoral Dissertation Research Fellowship (ADDRF) offered by African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC) in partnership with the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and Ford Foundation.