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A monosexual configuration of sexuality assumes that sexual desire is directed at either men or women. Bisexuality resists a choice between oppositional categories and is often theorised as having a transgressive potential to destabilise binary logic, not only in relation to sexuality but also to gender. There is, however, a lack of empirical work exploring how this potential might be realised in the accounts of bisexual individuals. Drawing on interviews with South African bisexual women, we use a narrative-discursive lens to examine the discursive resources employed by participants to trouble or resist hetero-gendered norms. Our findings demonstrate how resistance to the gender binary hinges on citational politics that are fundamentally gendered and linked to sexuality. Instead of entirely destabilising hetero-gendered norms, participants draw on gendered scripts that simultaneously expand norms to accommodate their sexual difference and, through processes of othering, function to reiterate hetero-gendered norms. While complete subversion of gender binaries is not possible in participants' discursive contexts, what does occur is a 'slow bending' of norms. Theorising bisexuality as transgressing oppositional categories closes off opportunities to interrogate the pervasive influence of gender binaries in contexts that remain marked by pervasive heteronormativity and heterosexism. Significantly, it also obscures more modest improvisations of gender scripts that hold potential for destabilising gender binaries.

There is increasing visibility of dissident sexualities and genders in media debates about families, including resistant discourses that challenge delegitimising claims about queer families. There remains, however, a lack of research that assesses the ways in which discourses seeking to defend queer parenthood function to challenge or, at times, reinforce hetero-gendered norms. Families formed by gay men have generally received less attention, both in the media as well as academic scholarship. In this paper, we explore resistant discourses deployed in mainstream print media, attending particularly to news reports about queer fathers and their children. Through a critical thematic analysis of South African newspapers, informed by feminist discursive psychology, we identify four themes in resistant ways of talking: de-gendering parenthood, normalising queer parents, valorising queer parenting, and challenging the heteronormative gold standard. We conclude with the political implications of such resistant talk, as part of a project of transforming restrictive hetero-gendered norms.

Worldwide, sexual and gender minorities struggle to access sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services. In South Africa, sexual prejudice is entrenched and pervasive in health systems and SRH services do not cater for a diverse range of people. Though health reform is underway, little attention has been given to how sexuality is being addressed in this process, particularly in the National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme currently being piloted. We analyse interview data generated in an NHI pilot district, using discursive methodology, informed by a sexual and reproductive justice standpoint. We show how sexual and gender minorities are discursively in/visibilised in health settings and discuss these findings in relation to the social justice and solidarity aims of health systems reform.

Although heteronormativity remains firmly in place in many contexts, challenges to a construction of heterosexuality as natural and superior increasingly emerge. However, despite increasing visibility of such challenges, bisexuality remains largely absent from such debates. Bisexual women occupy a potentially interesting position in discourses around heteronormativity and this paper explores how heteronormativity functions in the accounts of 13 South African bisexual women. Through a discourse analysis of interview data, a discourse of heterosexual marriage as normative and socially valued is identified as exerting a powerful influence on participants' constructions of relationships and families. The findings further explore ways in which bisexuality is complicated by such a heteronormative marriage discourse and indicate a lack of integration of a bisexual identity in participants' accounts. We suggest that drawing bisexuality into debates around heteronormativity can contribute to increased positions from which to challenge the coercive effects of heteronormativity.

Introduction. Queer kinship in South Africa / Tracy Morison, Ingrid Lynch and Vasu Reddy. Part I. The politics of belonging: questioning queer kinship and belonging. 1. Chosen family: a photographic essay / Germaine de Larch -- 2. Focus on 'the family'?: How South African family policy fails queer families / Catriona Ida Macleod, Tracy Morison and Ingrid Lynch -- 3. Revisiting 'familyhood' and queer belonging: exploring queer collectives created through culture and leisure practices / Desiree Lewis -- 4. Spectres to come: reproductive futurism, queer Africa, die-ins and drag / Jaco Bernard-Naudé -- 5. Esibathandayo -- Kin we love: an essay / Zethu Matebeni. Part II. Domestic and parenthood desires: the voices of queer youth. 6. The domestic desires of queer youth: narratives of domesticity and dissent among queer students at three South African universities / Gabriel Hoosain Khan -- 7. Surviving heterosexism: queer youth's parenthood intensions / Azwihangwisis Helen Mavhandu-Mudzusi. Part III. Lesbian women's marriage and family-making. 8. 'Mna ndiyayazi uba ndizotshata intombazana' -- I ... for one, know that I will marry a woman: (re)creating 'family' and reflections on rural lesbian women's experiences of child rearing and kinship / Gcobani Qambela -- 9. Just a piece of paper: marriage and family formation for lesbian women in South Africa / Jessica Scott -- 10. Integration and emergence: black lesbians re/negotiating marriage and lobola / Norma Pakade. Part IV. Queer men's production and performance of family. 11. The production and performance of 'queer' family by African men who engage in same-sex relations / Thabo Msibi -- 12. 'Living two lives' and 'blending in': reproductive citizenship and belonging in the parenthood narratives of gay men / Tracy Morison and Ingrid Lynch -- 13. Interracial gay partnerships in post-apartheid South Africa: the 'journey' of a heterosexual researcher / Olwufemi Adeagbo -- 14. Queer kinship in South Africa: where to next? / Vasu Reddy, Ingrid Lynch & Tracy Morison.

The subject of human well-being continues to gain traction in disciplines as diverse as psychology, sociology, development studies, and economics. Current scholarship, however, is still largely framed by normative assumptions about what being well means, and the overwhelming majority of conceptual approaches to well-being being have been conceived and applied by researchers in the industrialized, wealthy contexts of the global North. We critique the current conceptualizations of well-being and assess their applicability to research in the global south, particularly in contexts marked by poverty and inequality.