Dangerous pleasures: Risks associated with the silencing and invisibilising of LGBT youths in life orientation

South Africa has had numerous workshops and training programmes to educate learners about the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) as a means to fight and take control of the disease in the absence of a cure (Dube & Ocholla, 2005). It is estimated that in 2023 approximately 8,000,000 people in South Africa were living with HIV and AIDS, with 232,400 new infections in the same year alone. Nineteen per cent of the new infections were adolescents between 10 and 16 years old (Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS [UNAIDS], 2023). Statistics reveal that 50,000 school youths between the ages of 10 and 16 were infected with HIV in 2023 (UNAIDS, 2023). The possibility of contracting HIV makes all humans vulnerable regardless of their sexual orientation (Brown, 2016). Unfortunately, schools do not educate learners on issues of safe sex in life orientation (Ngabaza & Shefer, 2019). This leaves non-heterosexual school youths inadequately equipped to protect themselves and make informed decisions. In this article we report on the post-school experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youths about what they have learned about HIV and AIDS in life orientation. We employed qualitative methodology, drawing, telling and focus group interviews. The findings reveal that sexuality education in relation to HIV and AIDS is not taught in schools due to homophobia, a lack of knowledge on the part of the teachers, ignorance, and stereotyping of gender and sexuality. The silencing of gender sexual diversity in schools perpetuates compulsory heteronormativity. It is with these statistics that we aimed to render learners with diverse sexual orientations visible and make their voices heard.