Sexual Diversity and Local Values in a Rural South African University Town

During South Africa's apartheid era, the social and political ideology of Afrikaner nationalism Othered those who disrupted an idealised vision of white heteronormative Afrikaner masculinity. While protections from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation were enshrined in the post-apartheid constitution in 1996, anti-LGBTQ violence remains a reality. It is common for young LGBTQ individuals to exercise the personal freedoms associated with leaving home to attend university to express their sexual orientations and/or gender identities more readily. This paper applies interpretive phenomenology to interview data with members of the LGBTQ student community at a rural university town in an overwhelmingly white Afrikaans region. It explores the complex and ill-defined relationships between LGBTQ student experiences, local heteronormative values, and shifting institutional identities in an era of social transformation.