Gender and Young People's Digital Sexual Cultures

“This collection – bringing together up-to-the-minute, detailed, grounded and nuanced studies of digital sexual cultures and experiences – is a major contribution to several fields, including gender, sexuality, young people and young adulthood, and human-technology relations, both in South Africa and more globally.”
—Jeff Hearn, Professor, Hanken School of Economics, Finland; co-author of Digital Gender-Sexual Violations and Knowledge, Power and Young Sexualities

This volume focuses on the role of gender in young peoples’ digital sexual cultures in South Africa. Offering a snapshot of their lives as they navigate the online world, this book explores young people’s heterosexual desires, and the materialisation of gender inequalities. The chapters in the book take heed of human and more-than-human elements and understand the connection between devices, technologies, images, sexting, filters, pornography, sexuality and violence as affective flows with potential for new becomings and new constraints. Chapters also detail how these experiences are woven with global and local norms regarding heterosexuality, masculinity, and femininity, shaping young peoples’ web surfing experiences: amid pleasure and peril.

Deevia Bhana is the South African Research Chair in Gender and Childhood Sexuality at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.