Sexuality, Africa, History

In: Rachel Spronk and Thomas Hendriks (Eds.). Readings in Sexualities from Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp 1-17.

Introduction. Hendriks, T & R. Spronk. READINGS IN SEXUALITIES FROM AFRICA. Bloomington: Indiana University Press., 2020

The notion that Africans share a common sexual culture distinct from people elsewhere in the world has for many years been a staple of popular culture, health, academic, and political discourse in the West as well as in Africa. Sometimes overtly racist (Black Peril) but sometimes intended to combat patronizing or colonialist stereotypes, the idea of a singular African sexuality remains an obstacle to the development of sexual rights and effective sexual health interventions. Where did the idea come from, and how has it become so embedded in our imaginations right across the political spectrum? This article traces the idea back in time to its earliest articulations by explorers, ethnographers, and psychiatrists, as well as to contestations of the idea in scholarship, fiction, and film influenced by Africa’s emerging gay rights movement. It asks, what can we learn about the making of ‘African sexuality’ as an idea in the past that may suggest ways to challenge its enduring,harmful impacts in the present?

History Compass, 2010

The notion that Africans share a common sexual culture distinct from people elsewhere in the world has for many years been a staple of popular culture, health, academic, and political discourse in the West as well as in Africa. Sometimes overtly racist (Black Peril) but sometimes intended to combat patronizing or colonialist stereotypes, the idea of a singular African sexuality remains an obstacle to the development of sexual rights and effective sexual health interventions. Where did the idea come from, and how has it become so embedded in our imaginations right across the political spectrum? This article traces the idea back in time to its earliest articulations by explorers, ethnographers, and psychiatrists, as well as to contestations of the idea in scholarship, fiction, and film influenced by Africa's emerging gay rights movement. It asks, what can we learn about the making of 'African sexuality' as an idea in the past that may suggest ways to challenge its enduring, harmful impacts in the present? 'African sexuality'-the idea that Africans share a common sexual culture distinct from people elsewhere in the world-has had numerous incarnations over the centuries. These include as 'Black Peril' (McCulloch 2000), 'African as Suckling' (Ritchie 1944), 'Voodoo Eros' (Bryk 1964 [1925]) and MCP (Multiple Concurrent Partners-Kenyon and Zondo 2009). Despite differences in emphasis and veneer of science, the overarching theme has been that African sexuality is a problem. In colonial times, Africans' supposed stunted or brutish sexuality was thought to oppress and degrade women, engender laziness and stultify intellectual growth in men, threaten public health and safety, and impoverish culture and the arts (no love or higher emotions, just lust and steely transactions). In modern times, African sexuality has been invoked to explain the high rates of HIV ⁄ AIDS in much of the continent (and by implication in the Diaspora). An influential article by Australian demographers Caldwell, Caldwell and Quiggan (1989) surveyed the ethnography to conclude that Africans were less prone to feel guilt, less concerned with female virginity or fidelity, and hence more relaxed toward having multiple sex partners than Asians or Europeans. More controversially, Phillipe Rushton (1997) argued that there was a direct co-relation between penis size, intelligence, respect for the law, and sexual behavior. 'Negroids', in this analysis, were genetically predisposed to be sexually precocious, permissive, and criminal. 1 African sexuality, in short, needed to be fixed by propaganda, legislation, and perhaps a global rescue mission. It is tempting to decry this stereotyping and the policies that have stemmed from it as straightforward racism-'five hundred years… of white racist imperialism' and 'white words' as Greg Thomas puts it (2007, 21). Certainly, those who uncritically draw upon on nineteenth-century European travelers for their empirical facts about African sexuality are at the very least extremely naive. But racism cannot explain why so many African

This article presents two themes: how young professionals personally experience sexuality and issues of cultural belonging or identification; and how these issues are interrelated in their lives. I identify ways in which "young professionals' as a social group are in the vanguard in respect of societal reconfigurations of gender, sexuality and culture. I argue that this group embodies postcolonial transformations concerning reconfigurations in gender, sexuality and culture. I work out the complexities of sexuality and culture by focussing on public debates about African heritage, gerontocratic power relations and conventional morality on the one hand, and personal sexual relationships, intimacy and self-definitions on the other. Finally, I explore how sexuality has become central to self-expression and how cultural selfidentification is an ambiguous concern for young professionals.

2007

us with the opportunity to continue some of the debates initiated by Patricia MacFadden, Charmaine Pereira and Sylvia Tamale in an earlier issue (see Feminist Africa 2). In keeping with Feminist Africa's intellectual development agenda, the present issue also provides a platform for new research carried out by leading African feminist thinkers. The three feature articles present thoughtprovoking material drawn from the Mapping Sexualities Research Project. This is possibly the first project in the transnational field of sexuality research to have been carried out by African researchers rooted in feminist praxis. Through this new knowledge, we provide ourselves with the opportunity to deepen and further inform the ongoing debates and struggles around various aspects of sexuality. Much of the literature available on the global market addresses African sexuality by proxy – in terms of grand theorisations of race and imperialism, colonial histories of regulation and population contr...

Culture, Health, and Sexuality

Wiley , 2021

Contrary to anthropological discourse, which establishes exclusive links between homosexuality and initiation rites, and colonial discourse, which often documents unequal relationships between partners, present‐day literature increasingly projects the Plutarchan charis or reciprocal obligingness. This chapter outlines developments regarding gender and sexuality in three stages. The first stage is from the mid‐nineteenth century and the fin‐de‐siècle European sexual imaginary to the sexual initiation models of the 1970s in African countries as well as diasporic milieus, such as in France at a time when philosophy is imbued with Sartrean existentialism, and the United Kingdom with its first “Afro‐Queer” protagonists. The second stage is from the late‐twentieth‐century narratives of sexual emancipation to the turn of the millennium to the contemporary moment culminating in transgenderism and the last stage include new vocabularies and new subjectivities created via the new media in the first two decades of the twenty‐first century.

International Journal of Social Sciences and Management Review, 2022

In recent times, gender and sexuality have increasingly become a focus of academic studies, within diverse disciplines and as well as feeding into interdisciplinary studies in Africa. This field presents new theoretical and methodological challenges to contemporary researchers in many ways. In this paper, we argue that much secrecy prevail[ed] in the area of human sexuality that restricted open discussions and exchange of information on the subject. We argue that such Africa’s secretive morality has increasingly led to much confusion, misinformation and misrepresentation of actual sexual dynamics in the region. Moreover, investigation on pre-colonial and colonial attitudes towards sexuality often reveal wider social anxieties and tensions. Drawing primarily on theoretical literature from the social sciences, we reveal how notions of gendered and sexualized identifications in sub-Saharan Africa can affect the very production of history and other analysis in African sexuality.4 It is ...

Research interests in gender study the world over has brought to bear remarkable weight of influence on the balance of the sexes and this has influenced major sociocultural engagements in the repositioning of the contemporary woman. These interests of course, have opened up interesting areas of study which are actually quite revealing. Surprising as the plethora of imbalances found in the study of the sexes are, their historicity is actually very distant and probably may have been as old as the first couple and as a result most African traditions have attempted justifications for these inherent inequalities. In this research which is about gender identities, in-depth attention is paid to instances of such justifications from biblical implications through traditional practices and the contemporary status of the woman, where she is almost at the crossroads of indecision: whether to be consigned to passivity and subservience or to dare the status quo and emerge as a holistically equal person with the masculine gender. This paper critically considers male power over female sexuality in Africa vis-a vis African traditions and the postcolonial Africa. Questions bothering on the ownership and control of the female body, marriage issues like bride-price (connoting purchase) and its ownership and a host of other sexuality-related issues are considered. The crux of the matter is that the female body must also gain maximum freedom in expression and control just as that of the male.