Querying heteronormativity among transnational Pasifika teenagers in New Zealand: An Oceanic approach to language and masculinity

Abstract

© 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd This study aims to contribute to emerging dialogues on language, sexuality and gender, focusing on the performance and subversion of gender and sexual normativities in a New Zealand sexuality education classroom. In terms of theory, the aim is to focus on New Zealand's outlying, unsettled ‘global Southern’ status. It also aims to heuristically separate New Zealand from the global North to explore local relationships between sexuality and gender that might otherwise be imperceptible in the glare of globalisation. In two critical incidents, transnational Pasifika boys use language to perform what appears to be sexual fluidity and sexual objectification of the self. A transformation occurs in which a local version of hegemonic masculinity is countered, and the analytical purchase of the concept of heteronormativity becomes questionable in this context. Existing Southern theories from Oceania provide a possible pathway to better understanding the sociolinguistics of gender and sexuality in New Zealand and in the world at large.