The Everyday Violence of Gendered Identities in Post-Apartheid South Africa

In South Africa, everyday violence shapes and is shaped<br/>by a historically grounded enmeshment of gendered,<br/>racialised, and classed inequities, or what María Lugones<br/>referred to as the coloniality of gender. In contributing to<br/>scholarship on the coloniality of gender in South Africa, we<br/>conducted focus group discussions and individual interviews<br/>in two marginalised South African communities. Research<br/>participants highlighted how patriarchal social relations<br/>structure quotidian life. Specifically, they described how<br/>violence is used to reify masculinised identities (e.g., that<br/>of the breadwinner) and to ‘protect’ women from other<br/>violent men. Several participants interrogated the gendered<br/>systems of meaning that are normatively attached to such<br/>violence. By examining the discursive interplay of violence,<br/>gender, and impoverishment in the data, we conclude by<br/>considering how the coloniality of gender works to entrench<br/>hierarchical social ordering in contemporary South Africa.<br/>Accordingly, we advocate for structural and political change<br/>over individualising interventions.