Browsing by Author "Macleod CI"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    'Failed' mothers,‘failed’ womxn: Demarcating normative mothering
    (Routledge, 2019-12-09) Macleod CI; Feltham-King T; Mavuso JM-JJ; Morison T; Zuffrey, C; Buchanan, F
    In this chapter, we show how the boundaries of acceptable mothering are demarcated and regulated through reference to the ‘Other’ (Woollett & Phoenix, 1997). Using examples of ‘womxn’ who refuse motherhood, terminate pregnancies and reproduce when considered to be too young, we outline how womxn who ‘fail’ at normative mothering or who deviate from expected reproductive decisions form the pathologised presence that pre-defines the absent trace of normative mothering and the successful accomplishment of womxnhood (Macleod, 2001). We use the term ‘womxn’ and ‘womxnhood’ to disrupt normative assumptions about gender and sex, here taken to be socially constructed, which write gender and sex onto individuals. In this chapter, the term ‘womxn’ denotes and recognises womxn-identifying persons with the biological capacity to become pregnant, including intersex and transgender individuals. We also use this term to foreground the experiences of womxn of colour, womxn from/living in the global South, trans, queer and intersex womxn, as well as all womxn-identifying persons who have been excluded from dominant constructions of ‘womanhood’ and feminist praxis on the subject (Ashlee, Zamora & Karikari, 2017; Merbruja, 2015).
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Focus on ‘the family’? How South African family policy fails queer families
    (Unisa Press & Routledge, 2019-01-01) Macleod CI; Morison T; Lynch I; Morison, T; Lynch, I; Reddy, V
    The most policy document is the White Paper on Families, which aims to facilitate the mainstreaming of a family perspective into all government policy-making from the national to the municipal level and across multiple departments. The irony is that less than a third of South African families actually conform to the two cisgender heterosexual biological parent model that is favoured in family policy. South African research has shown that children of lesbian parents learn open-mindedness and to be comfortable with the family in which they live, and that men in same-sex relationships challenge gendered divisions of household tasks. Promoting the two-biological-parent family as the preferred family structure creates an impossible ideal for the majority of South Africans to live up to. Because such a family structure is strongly connected to class, it is out of reach for the majority of citizens, let alone those who live in queer relationships.