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Rangatahi pūrākau

These pūrākau are from some of the rangatahi interviews. They address challenges that can arise in a journey to becoming a sexual being. Each is followed by enquiry questions taken from the research interviews, these are designed support you to reflect on how they relate to people, how unhelpful ideas about gender and sexuality can impact them, and how they can create new ways of being and becoming sexual.

Explore more rangatahi pūrākau that might be helpful guidance in a journey to becoming a sexual being.

Katie & Hone's Story

Katie and Hone are used to seeing heterosexual relationships like theirs in tv and movies all the time. People don’t ask them whether they want to change their sexuality, or whether there is something wrong with them. They just leave them be. Sometimes they get asked when they are going to get married, start a family and have a baby, but they are quite happy with their relationship as it is.

  • What kinds of relationships might we assume are heterosexual?

  • How are straight couples be seen as normal?

  • Why might it be easier to be straight or look like you are straight than other sexualities?

Charlie's Story

Charlie is popular at school, has a lot of friends, and is well liked by the teachers. Since his last break up, Charlie identifies as bisexual. Charlie has had a few relationships with girls, and a few relationships with boys. Recently, his sister became pregnant and needed to get an abortion, and that was really hard on her and the whole whānau. This also made Charlie nervous about exploring a future relationship with a girl in case they got pregnant. He was also nervous about exploring a relationship with a boy, because he had been bullied in the past for that. Charlie felt like he had to be strong because his family were busy with their own struggles. He couldn’t wait to move to Wellington after high school.

  • What advice would you give Charlie?

  • Have you ever felt different to the people around you?

  • How might the people around us limit how we express our gender and sexuality?

Frankie's Story

Frankie doesn’t think too much about gender. She has always been friends with anyone and everyone.  Frankie expected to grow up, get married to a man, have children, and become a mother like her Church group wants her to. Lately, Frankie has been wondering if she might also be attracted to women. She wonders if she is attracted to people’s personality and deeper elements, rather than just men. As far she knows, all of her friends are straight so she isn't sure if she can talk about it with them. Some of her aunties and uncles are takataapui but they don’t always spend time with the whānau and it is difficult to find people to talk to. She thinks she might be bisexual or pansexual but doesn’t really know where to start with meeting other queer people who she can safely explore this with. Frankie joined a LGBT ally group on facebook and realised she could listen to other people’s conversations to see what felt right and what didn’t. This gave her more confidence and comfort in talking about sexuality in raising conversations with her friends and family.

  • How might our expectations about our sexuality and who we are attracted to change over time?

  • How might learning more about sexuality and desire shape new possibilities for our lives?

  • How might the people we spent time with change our expectations about sexuality?

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