About this workshop:
Within the legal framework in South Africa, sexual consent means voluntary or unforced agreement between parties of a legal age, to engage in sexual activity. Implicit in this definition is the notion of unambiguity. The reality of sexual and consent cultures is somewhat different though. While the narrative around sexual consent among young adults tends to emphasise ongoing, explicit, enthusiastic and verbal consent at all stages of an encounter, social and cultural scripts have produced a codification of language that reflects the intersections of identity, gender, sexuality and power. How do such scripts play out in the arena of sexual violence? How do young adults make meaning of sexual consent whether in long-standing intimate relationships or brief sexual encounters? And what are the implications for mental health practioners working with young adults who have experienced sexual violence? This workshop will explore the notion of consent: is consent simply about what happens at a pivotal moment in a sexual/romantic encounter or should we think about consent in the language of a social movement which explores the role of gender, power, and sexual and youth cultures? In adopting a sex-positive lens, rather than only seeing sexual encounters as inevitably risky and contested, we ask the question, can we have new conversations about consent, starting from where young people are at?
PsySSA Workshop Series 2022: Workshop 1: Sexual consent among young adults: a moment or a movement?
Meet our Presenters
Angeline Stephens is the current Senior Manager of the Support Services division in the College of Humanities, UKZN, which offers a range of psychological and psychosocial support to registered students in the college. As a mental health practitioner, she works within a framework that recognises the interconnectedness between person and context. She is particularly interested in the intersections of gender, race, and sexual identities and how these intersections play out in experiences of citizenship. She has a PhD in Psychology from UCT.
Janine Hicks is a Lecturer at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, School of Law. Janine also serves as Chairperson of the UKZN Gender Based Violence Committee, and as convenor for the Navi Pillay Research Group, a collective of academics from the School of Law seeking to address critical emergent issues of race, class, gender and disability in post-Apartheid South Africa through research, law and policy reform. Janine is Project Leader for the South African Law Reform Commission’s Project 143: Maternity and Paternity Benefits for Self-Employed Workers, a council member of the Human Resource Development Council, and a former Commissioner with the South African Commission for Gender Equality. Janine holds a PhD from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, an MA degree from the University of Sussex, an LL B degree from the former University of Natal, and a BA degree from the University of Cape Town. Janine has published extensively on participatory democracy and on gender equality.
Deevia Bhana is the DSI/NRF South African Research Chair in Gender and Childhood Sexuality. She is known for the large international fields of study crossing the sociology of childhood and youth studies with particular focus on gender and sexuality across the young life course. Deevia Bhana has published over 146 scientific papers and book chapters in leading journals and press houses. She has authored/edited 11 books. Her sole authored books include Girls and the Negotiation of Porn in South Africa: Power, Play and Sexuality (In press, Routledge); Love, Sex and Teenage Sexual Cultures in South Africa (2018, Routledge); Gender and childhood sexuality in the primary school (2016, Springer); Childhood Sexuality and AIDS Education: The Price of Innocence (2016, Routledge) and Under Pressure (2014, MaThoko’s Books). Her latest co-edited books include Sex and Sexualities, Sexual Health and Justice: Perspectives from Southern Africa (In press, Routledge) and Gender, sexuality and violence in South African educational spaces with S Singh and T Msibi (2021, Palgrave Macmillan).
She is one of the Editors-in-Chief of Children & Society and an Associate Editor of Health Education Journal. She is currently the co-Chair of RINGS (International Research Association of Institutions of Advanced Gender Studies). RINGS ‘connects leading research institutes and centres from Africa, Australia, Europe, and North and Central America and aims to facilitate collaboration and contacts within gender studies across the world’. As Research Chair Deevia Bhana is actively involved in supervising a large cohort of students and has a significant impact in building the research profile of the next generation of young scholars in the field of gender, childhood sexualities and schooling.
Deevia Bhana is an NRF B1 rated scholar.
Naledi Mpanza is a Junior researcher, lay counsellor and facilitator at the Centre for Sexualities, AIDS and Gender and a Master’s graduate from the University of Pretoria. She has a BA (Honours) degree in Sociology from the University Still Known as Rhodes (USKAR/Rhodes University) where she developed her interest in climate change, social justice, human rights, health policy and youth; the former of which is evident in her academic studies titled: ‘A critical analysis of strategies aimed at addressing HIV and AIDS in the Makana Municipality: a case study of the HIV and AIDS agenda in Grahamstown, South Africa’ and ‘‘I see myself as an activist’: Youth participation in public policy-making: A critical analysis of young people’s involvement in the National Health Insurance policy submissions’- from which she has published articles from and featured on Power Fm and SABC 1’s Daily Thetha.
Naledi is currently working on her contribution to an International Research Handbook on the Sociology of Youth, based on her work in the Youth space as an activist, lecturer, project manager and researcher.
Kayla Beare is a young, passionate researcher interested in inclusivity and women’s health. Her major research projects revolve around power structures and sexual consent. Kayla is a graduate of UCT (MSocSci in Research Psychology) and UCL (MSc Women’s Health). Her work has been published in academic spaces such as the peer-reviewed journal Psychology and Sexuality as well as mainstream spaces such as The New African Magazine.
Etienne de Beer is a Counselling Psychologist in private practice. He is registered with the Health Professions Council of South Africa, having completed his Masters degree in Community-based Counselling Psychology through the MaCC programme at the University of the Witwatersrand. During his internship; as part of his training he worked at the Counselling and Careers Development Unit at the University of the Witwatersrand. Upon completing his studies, he joined the Houghton House Group of Addiction Recovery Centres. Aside from his private practice, Etienne focuses on community and social development work on issues of diversity, inclusion and equality. The issues of gender, race and sexual orientation are very important to him. As a student, he was involved in a number of projects in these areas. Amongst these projects were community mobilisation initiatives in the human rights sector through the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation. He was also one of the co-coordinators of the inaugural Silent Protest Wits, a pro-survivor anti sexual violence campaign, in 2013.
Pierre Brouard is the Deputy Director of the Centre for Sexualities, AIDS and Gender (CSA&G) at the University of Pretoria and a registered Clinical Psychologist. He has worked in HIV since the mid 1980’s and at the Centre since 2001. Pierre is the secretary of the Sexuality and Gender Division of the Psychological Society of South Africa, has co-authored a protocol for the University of Pretoria on trans inclusivity, is a member of the Southern African Sexual Health Association, helped to develop and run workshops on sexual harassment for the University of Pretoria, and is part of a team of psychologists who ran a 5-year transformation, diversity, and inclusion project at a Johannesburg High School.