Teaching Resources | Bibliography on Sexuality

by Charmaine Pereira

Contents

I Introduction

II Texts

1. Heterosexuality

a. Virginity
b. Sexual relations
c. Marriage
d. Reproduction
e. Sexuality and gender
f. Race, empire, nation, gender
g. Sexuality, gender, feminism

2. African women's thought and activism

a. Constructs and meanings
b. Sexual economies
c. Reproductive health and rights
d. Genital mutilation
e. Gender based violence and sexual harassment
f. HIV/AIDS
g. Disability
h. Religion
i. Sexual rights

3. Other bodies of thought and activism

a. African liberationists
b. Feminisms in the global South
c. Diasporic feminisms in the global North
d. Euro-American feminisms
e. Transcontinental organising
f. Political economy of sexuality
g. Freud
h. Post-structuralism
i. Queer theory

4. Research methodologies

5. Understanding constructions of sexuality

a. Pre-colonial
b. Colonial
c. Postcolonial
d. Age
e. Culture, tradition, religion, nation
f. Sexual economies, sex trade

6. Subjectivity, the unconscious and desire

7. Compulsory heterosexuality/heteronormativity

a. Masculinities
b. Homophobia

8. Transgressive sexualities

a. Male heterosexuality
b. Female heterosexuality
c. Women's same-sex relations, practices, identities
d. Men's same-sex relations, practices, identities
e. Intersex
f. Transexuality

9. Sexuality and pleasure

III Websites

IV Films/videos

V Courses

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I Introduction

Teaching and curricula on gender and women's studies in Africa have predominantly focused on issues of development and/or policy, as indicated by a recent and ongoing survey carried out by the African Gender Institute. At the same time, scholars, practitioners and policy makers recognise that there is a “gap” between policy and its implementation. What is surprising about this is not so much the existence of the “gap” but any expectation otherwise, given the lack of concerted attention paid to understanding the diverse and complex contexts in which policy is formulated and interpreted. It is now becoming clear that understanding the context requires paying attention to the conditions that give rise to particular meanings and interpretations of women and their lives. These meanings and interpretations are ones in which sexuality, culture and identity are deeply embedded.

What are the interconnections between sexuality, culture and identity? And what makes sexuality strategic to strengthening gender and women's studies in Africa ? Sexuality is an integral part of the experience of being human yet its visibility in academic discourse in Africa is relatively recent. Its strategic import in gender and women's studies teaching and curricula lies in the way it draws attention to the failure of analyses and interventions that rely solely on unitary levels of understanding of “the way things are”. Such approaches are unable to address the ways in which social realities are embedded in multiple levels of complexity simultaneously . For example, this could mean addressing social issues – such as sexual violence perpetrated against women – simply at the level of “the state” or “the family”, without considering the implications of the “sexual” at the level of emotionality, subjectivity and social relations (such as age, race, class, ethnicity, religion) or at other institutional levels, such as communities, religious bodies, customary authorities, educational institutions and so on.

More directly, a focus on sexuality connects intellectual and political agendas regarding bodies and the sexualised ways in which gendered bodies are differently treated in and beyond “sexual” arenas; emotional, sensual and psychological experiences of desire, pleasure, pain, intimacy, fulfilment and otherwise; the practices of sexual partners and how the “il/legitimacy” of gendered partners, practices and relationships gets defined by whom, from micro- (e.g. psychic) to macro- (e.g. state) levels; and the meanings and relations of giving and/or exchange , monetary or otherwise, within which sexual encounters are embedded. Sexuality is thus articulated with the ways in which gendered human beings become defined within particular, singular identities and the cultural frameworks that give meaning to such constructions at given historical moments.

A key historical period for understanding constructions of African sexuality is the colonial era. The need to distinguish between the historical conjuncture and its impact on people's subjectivities is critical since neither can be reduced to the other, yet the two are inter-related (see section 6). In a discussion of key theorists of colonial discourse analysis, Robert Young's Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (section 6) highlights ways in which colonialism involved not only military and economic activity but also permeated forms of knowledge as well as ambivalent protocols of fantasy and desire. The ambivalence of colonialism was constituted by its simultaneous attraction towards and repulsion from the colonised.

This raises the question of how to understand “bodies” in the contemporary era, when the sources available are colonial. Yvette Abraham's PhD thesis on Sarah Bartman addresses questions such as these, drawing on the available historical sources as well as historical imagination. Yaba Badoe's documentary I Want Your Sex examines the mythical character of colonial and imperial representations of sexuality, male and female, through a variety of visual sources. Her discussion of the documentary in Feminist Africa 2 (see section 5b) explores questions surrounding the presentation and analysis of such material without its being sensationalised.

African women's sexuality has been constructed as transgressive (see section 8) in a number of ways, apart from those directly concerning representations of the body. Two of the most prominent of such modes are criminalisation and medicalisation. Nawal El Saadawi's Woman at Point Zero illustrates how women's rebellion against the exploitation and brutalisation of their sexuality is criminalized whilst the criminality of men who abuse women's sexuality is allowed to continue with impunity. In the sphere of medicalisation, colonial campaigns against sexually transmitted diseases were predicated on a view of African women's sexuality as inherently pathological and regressive, as Megan Vaughan discusses in Curing Their Ills .

Although the interconnections of sexuality, culture and identity are implicit in this bibliography, sexuality is placed in the foreground here, not least because it has so far received the least attention. At the same time, existing work in this field points to the imperative of recognising that women's and men's relationships to sexuality require greater theorising. This is particularly so in Africa , where this relationship is increasingly recognised as having its own specificities, marked as it is by considerable fluidity and dynamism in the face of histories of authoritarian misrule. For those teaching in the area, one of the key questions here is that of definition. How has sexuality been defined, whether in the literature or in practice? Whilst teachers and students are often keen to arm themselves with definitions, it should be recognised that definitions are rarely obtained outside a framework of theorising. Differing perspectives are evident and epitomised in two recent viewpoints published in Feminist Africa 2, the first by Patricia MacFadden and the second, a response by Charmaine Pereira (see section 2a, under ‘Texts').

The bibliography does not treat “theory” and “activism” as partitioned from one another. This is done partly to destabilise the implied hierarchy set up by the dualism and partly because the conceptualisation inherent in theorising is treated as emanating (whether explicitly or otherwise) from the specific conditions, experiences and struggles of particular categories of women and men. The bibliography contains two key sections on thought and activism, the first by African women, the second comprising other bodies of thought and activism. The aim here is largely to encourage the development of more organic intertwining of thought and activism in African teaching and research on sexuality, such that activism is supported in creating the discursive space for addressing feminist priorities and concerns, which in turn become the focus of more nuanced theoretical engagement.

Particular attention is paid to heterosexuality, given that this is the form of sexuality marking the sexual majority as well as being hegemonic. As such, heterosexuality requires critical interrogation. Sexuality is more often explicitly examined when addressing same-sex relations, identities and practices. However, the power relations that configure the compulsory character of heterosexuality, and that produce the resulting homophobia, cannot be understood solely within the confines of same-sex sexuality. Nor is it possible to understand how heterosexuality is normalised across diverse cultural contexts, without exploring heterosexuality directly and its articulations with politics and economies.

It is not assumed here that all same-sex relations, identities and practices are synonymous with such relations among groups overtly identifying as “lesbian” or “gay”. This is because the terms “lesbian” and “gay” have emerged in contexts that often differ markedly from those in which certain same-sex relations are found in Africa (such as, for example, Kendall's “Looking for Lesbians in Lesotho” – section 8d; Dunbar Moodie's chapter on “Black Migrant Mine Labours and the Vicissitudes of Male Desire” – section 6). At the same time, it is clear that many groups do actively use the terms “lesbian” and “gay”, as well as “bisexual” and “transgender” to identify themselves (see “The Johannesburg Statement on Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Human Rights” – section 7b).

Given the restricted character of access to textual and other teaching resources for most scholars on the African continent, this bibliography is designed to map the intellectual and political terrain that has given form and substance to the diverse expressions of sexuality in Africa . As such, it is intended to facilitate the reader's choice of resources likely to be most significant for teaching and learning about the central themes in a given course. Decisions about how to group the bibliographical material analytically have drawn on group discussions and debates among members of the Curriculum Working Group of the Feminist Studies Network (FSN); individual and group discussions with members of the African Gender Institute, the institutional host of the FSN; and my reading and analysis of the material available. I have also drawn on existing bibliographies addressing sexuality, such as Desiree Lewis's African Women's Studies: 1980-2001 A Bibliography , published by the African Gender Institute in 2002.

The bibliography is premised on the maxim that the relationship between practice and theory is critical, the principle being that theory needs to be grounded in concrete social realities in order for it to illuminate our understandings and inform strategies for social change in the direction of gender justice. As mentioned above, the bibliography refers early on to African women's thought and activism, indicating areas of focus as well as silence. The themes most often addressed include sexual violence, female genital mutilation, reproductive health and rights, and HIV/AIDS. Where considerably more work needs to be done is in the development of theory that is grounded in African contexts. Silence is greatest around the themes of eroticism and pleasure, and positive sexual identities.

The production of African knowledge that is feminist and reflexive in its orientation is privileged, at the same time as the bibliography draws from non-African sources, to the extent that these allow a strengthening of our own knowledge production. Since context and location are of critical significance, I distinguish between bodies of thought and activism that are grounded in different historical and geopolitical contexts: African feminisms, feminisms elsewhere in the global South, diasporic feminisms in the global North, Euro-American feminisms. The categories are intended to be heuristic, not definitive, and are substantiated in relation to sexuality , not across all bodies of scholarship. Distinctions between the categories are not based on any notion of primordial characteristics or essential differences but rather, on the differing sets of conditions shaping cultural, political and economic dimensions of power.

Although there may be considerable mobility amongst some scholars and activists between locations in Africa , the global North and the global South, the categories are nevertheless not coterminous. The heterogeneity of “the global South” is moreover, not intended to be erased in this use of the category. Rather, the aim is to further understanding of the various configurations of power within which sexuality is manifested, and the struggles surrounding these manifestations, in contexts that share histories of imperial domination. The first three of the categories used ( Africa , the rest of the global South, diasporas in the global North) have often been lumped together under the rubric of “postcolonial”. It is my view, however, that aggregating these different streams may be more likely to obscure our understanding of the specificities of African realities, and the commonalities across diverse contexts, than to clarify them.

The analytical bases for aggregation of material in this bibliography include, in addition to context and location (above), some bodies of thought that are thematically defined. These are: the political economy of sexuality, the corpus of work by Freud, post-structuralism, and queer theory. These categories are not exhaustive of all the possibilities but reflect a critical selection of the available material, informed by an awareness of present concerns as well as significant gaps in contemporary work in Africa .

This bibliography is structured as follows. I begin with a section that problematises heterosexuality first, before addressing the various bodies of thought and activism referred to earlier. These sections are followed by a discussion of research methodologies. Next comes material that addresses various ways of understanding how sexualities may be constructed, including constructions across time and space – from pre-colonial and colonial eras to the present – to constructions based on culture, tradition and religion. Following this is a section on subjectivity, the unconscious and desire. The compulsory character of heterosexuality, or heteronormativity, is then foregrounded, as is its significance in constructions of masculinities as well as homophobia. The primacy of heteronormativity is also highlighted in references on transgressive sexualities, sexualities that in some way cross the accepted boundaries of what is considered “normal”. The final section of the bibliography covers material on sexuality and pleasure.

The resources covered in this bibliography include texts, websites, films/videos and existing courses. The texts referred to, vary in the extent to which they address sexuality. Some focus directly on particular dimensions of sexuality; others treat aspects of sexuality in passing. To the extent that the texts illuminate the issues outlined above, they are included in the bibliography. Other resources that teachers or facilitators may consider compiling in their own contexts include television and radio programmes (particularly television soap operas), newspaper cuttings, women's life histories, organisational histories, and accounts of significant events.

II Texts

1. Heterosexuality

The themes addressed here include virginity, sexual relations, marriage, reproduction, the relations between sexuality and gender, and among sexuality, gender and feminism. The role of race, empire, nation and gender in sexuality are also referred to.

Ayse Altinay's (1a) chapter on virginity highlights not only the centrality of this aspect of heterosexuality in defining and controlling women's sexuality in Turkey, but also the way in which activism brings issues of sexuality to the surface. Tensions and contradictions around female sexuality and sexual relations are explored in both Assitan Diallo's and Mumbi Machera's chapters (1b) in a recent collection edited by Signe Arnfred, Rethinking Sexualities in Africa . Prajapati Sah's article (1b) on the tensions he experiences in the expression of middle class male heterosexuality is also interesting, from a different perspective. The article by Kofi Awusabo-Asare et al. (1b) points to the erosion of women's traditional rights over their sexuality, as a result of deepening economic dependence on men, among the consequences being increased vulnerability to sexually transmitted diseases and AIDS.

Much of the material included under the sub-theme ‘Sexual relations' addresses the difficulties for women of negotiating sexual relations, and the underlying violence inherent in sexual relationships, in the South African context (see articles co-authored by Tammy Shefer and the work of Katherine Wood and Rachel Jewkes). The authors point to the significance of violence underlying heterosexual constructions of masculinity, and the sense in which many women accept unequal power relations in which violence is a normalised expression of sexual intimacy. Tammy Shefer and Don Foster's article on discourses of female heterosexuality highlights the lack of a positive discourse on women's sexual desires.

Kristin Mann's (1c) writing on marriage in colonial Lagos is a meticulously researched historical piece of work that affords an examination of shifts in the significance of marriage across gender and class, in the differing cultural contexts of metropole and colony. A number of authors address the politics of reproduction and its salience (see 1d), such as Ginsberg and Rayna Rapp's edited collection on Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Politics of Reproduction , Marcia Inhorn's chapter on women's inabilities to conceive in contexts where female fertility is at a premium, and Lynn Thomas's work on the Politics of the Womb: Women, Reproduction and the State in Kenya . The latter explores the vigorous defence of female excision in Kenya , by women and men alike, in the context of colonial attempts to prohibit the practice, anti-colonial protest and the development of nationalist politics. In other texts, the control of reproduction is manifested in differing contexts and treated from different perspectives. Musallam's exploration of the historical existence of practices of birth control in Sex and Society in Islam: Birth Control Before the Nineteenth Century may be set against the divergence between practice and principle in Renee Pittin's chapter on contemporary Nigeria .

The analytical categories of ‘sexuality' and ‘gender' (section 1e) and their imbrication may be traced in diverse contexts, from historical and geopolitical arenas such as “18 th- and 19 th- century Egypt (Hatem) and “the [contemporary] Arab world” (AbuKhalil); to institutional contexts (Morrell, on South African schools); and discursive arenas (Whitsitt – on romantic fiction, Schoepf – on AIDS and economic crisis). The interplay of race, empire, nation and gender (section 1f) in expressions of sexuality is poignantly conveyed in the pioneering work and tremendous expanse covered by Women Writing Africa: The Southern Region .

A few analysts explore critically a range of interrelations between key concepts such as sexuality, gender and feminism (section 1g). Jane Bennett's article traces differing feminist emphases in African higher education, one strand comprising an intellectual challenge to the virtual absence of gender analysis in curricula and research, another pointing to the existence of sexual harassment and sexual violence as critical sources of injury to women on campus. Evelyn Accad's chapter on sexual politics in the Middle East is an evocative account of the conflicts and contradictions inherent in denials of the significance of sexuality in feminist as well as nationalist agendas.

In her examination of the relationship between gender, feminism and masculinity, Barriteau (section 1g) cautions against the notion that the gender subordination experienced by women can be automatically equated with the exclusionary practices intended to deny the masculinity of homosexual men. Silva (section 1g) challenges the ways in which men have appropriated women's bodies and experiences as objects of entertainment. She argues that women activist-poets, by “writing” the body, are not simply registering the significance of sexed bodies but effecting a political intervention and commitment to transforming masculinist structures of domination.

a. Virginity

Altinay, A. 2000 “Talking and Writing Our Sexuality: Feminist Activism on Virginity and Virginity Tests in Turkey ”, in P. Ilkkaracan (ed.) Women and Sexuality in Muslim Societies Istanbul : Women for Women's Human Rights (WWHR)/Kadmin Insan Haklari Projesi (KIHP)

Cloudsley, A. 1984 Women of Omdurman : Life, Love and the Cult of Virginity London : Ethnographica

Dialmy, A. 2003 “Premarital Female Sexuality in Morocco ”, Al-Raida , 20, 99: 75-83.

b. Sexual Relations

Ankomah, A. “Sex, Love, Money and AIDS: The Dynamics of Premarital Sexual Relationships in Ghana ”, Sexualities , 2, 3: 291-308.

Awusabo-Asare, K., Anarfi, J. and Agyeman, D. 1993 “Women's Control Over Their Sexuality and the Spread of STDs and HIV/AIDS in Ghana ”, Health Transition Review , 3, Supplementary Issue, 69-83.

Davis, P. 2000 “On the Sexuality of ‘Town Women' in Kampala ”, Africa Today , 47, 3/4: 28-60.

Diallo, A. 2004 “Paradoxes of Female Sexuality in Mali : On the Practices of ‘Magnonmaka' and ‘Bolokoli-kela'”, in S. Arnfred (ed.) Re-thinking Sexualities in Africa Uppsala : Nordic Africa Institute.

Machera, M. 2004 “Opening a Can of Worms: A Debate on Female Sexuality in the Lecture Theatre”, in Arnfred, S. (ed.) Rethinking Sexualities in Africa Uppsala : Nordic Africa Institute.

Nicholas, L. and Daniels, P. 1997 “Gender Differences in First Sexual Intercourse Experience”, Journal of Community and Health Sciences , 4, 1: 30-33.

Sah, P. 1996 “Confessions of a Male Ingenue: Love as Manipulation”, Manushi , 95. http://free.freespeech.org/manushi/95/ppsah.html

Shefer, T. and Foster, D. 2001 “Discourses on Women's (Hetero)Sexuality and Desire in a South African Local Context”, Culture, Health and Sexuality , 3, 4: 375-390.

Shefer, T. and Strebel, A. 2001 “Re-Negotiating Sex: Discourses of Heterosexuality Among Young South African Women Students”, Journal of Psychology in Africa , 11, 1: 38 -59.

Shefer, T., Strebel, A. and Foster, D. 2000 “‘So Women Have to Submit to That …' Discourses of Power and Violence in Students' Talk on Heterosexual Negotiation” South African Journal of Psychology , 30, 2: 11 -19.

Varga, C. and Makubalo, L. 1996 “Sexual Non-Negotiation”, Agenda , 28: 31-38.

Wood, K. and Jewkes, R. 1997 “Violence, Rape and Sexual Coercion: Everyday Love in a South African Township ”, Gender and Development , 5, 2: 41 -46.

Wood, K. and Jewkes, R. 1998 “Love is a Dangerous Thing: Micro-dynamics of Violence in Sexual Relationships of Young People in Umtata ” Medical Research Council of South Africa, Tygerberg

c. Marriage

Adeokun, L. 1983 “Marital Sexuality and Birth Spacing Among the Yoruba”, in C. Oppong (ed.) Female and Male in West Africa London : Allen and Unwin

Mann, K. 1985 Marrying Well: Marriage, Status and Social Change among the Educated Elite in Colonial Lagos Cambridge : Cambridge University Press

Murray, C. 1994 “Is Polygamy Wrong?” Agenda , 22, 37-41.

Owomoyela, O. 2002 Culture and Customs of Zimbabwe London : Greenwood Press

Roberts, P. 1987. “The State and the Regulation of Marriage: Sefwi Wiawso ( Ghana ) 1900-40”, in H. Afshar (ed.) Women, State and Ideology: Studies from Africa and Asia London : Macmillan Press

Vellenga, D. 1983. “Who is a Wife: Legal Expressions of Heterosexual Conflicts in Ghana ”, in C. Oppong (ed) Female and Male in West Africa London : Allen and Unwin

d. Reproduction

Corea, G. 1985 The Mother Machine: Reproductive Technologies from Artificial Insemination to Artificial Wombs London : The Women's Press

Feldman-Savelsburg 1994 “Plundered Kitchens and Empty Wombs: Fear of Infertility in the Cameroonian Grassfields”, Social Science and Medicine , 39, 4: 463-474.

Garenne, M., Tollman, S., Kahn, K., Collins, T. and Ngwenya, S. 2001 “Understanding Marital and Premarital Fertility in Rural South Africa ”, Journal of Southern African Studies , 27, 2: 277-290.

Ginsburg, F. and Rapp, R. (eds.) 1995 Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Politics of Reproduction University of California Press

Inhorn, M. 2000 “Missing Motherhood: Infertility, Technology and Poverty in Egyptian Women's Lives”, in H. Ragone and F. Twine (eds.) Ideologies and Technologies of Motherhood: Race, Class, Sexuality, Nationalism New York , London : Routledge

Makhaba, L. 1994 “Men and Condoms”, Agenda , 22, 92-95.

Musallam, B. 1983 Sex and Society in Islam: Birth Control Before the Nineteenth Century Cambridge : Cambridge University Press

Pittin, R. 1985 “The Control of Reproduction: Principle and Practice in Nigeria ”, in A. Imam, R. Pittin and H. Omole (eds.) Women and the Family in Nigeria Dakar : CODESRIA

Preston-Whyte, E. and Zondi, M. 1992 “African Teenage Pregnancy: Whose Problem?” In Questionable Issue: Illegitimacy in South Africa Cape Town: Oxford University Press and Centre for Cross Cultural Research on Women, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford .

Runganga, A., Sundby, J. and Aggleton, P. 2001 “Culture, Identity and Reproductive Failure in Zimbabwe ”, Sexualities , 4, 3: 315-332.

Thomas, L. 2003 Politics of the Womb: Women, Reproduction and the State in Kenya Berkeley : University of California Press

e. Sexuality and Gender

AbuKhalil, A. 1997 “Gender Boundaries and Sexual Categories in the Arab World”, Feminist Issues , 15, 1-2: 91-104.

Adams , M. 1991 “Celebrating Women: Girls' Initiation in Canton Boo, We/ Guere Region , Cote d'Ivoire ”, L'Ethnographie , 86, 2: 81-115.

Ahlberg, M. 1991 Women, Sexuality and the Changing Social Order Philadelphia , Reading: Gordon and Breach

Early, E. 1993 Baladi Women of Cairo : Playing with an Egg and a Stone Boulder , London : Lynne Rienner Publishers

Hatem, M. 1986 “The Politics of Sexuality and Gender in Segregated Patriarchal Systems: The Case of 18 th - and 19 th - Century Egypt ”, Feminist Studies , 12: 251-274.

Kassam, M. 1996 “Some Aspects of Women's Voices from Northern Nigeria ”, African Languages and Cultures , 9, 2.

Kilbride, P., Suda, C. and Njeru, E. 2001 Street Children in Kenya : Voices of Children in Search of a Childhood London : Bergin and Harvey

Kumsa, M. 2002 “Negotiating Intimacies in a Globalised Space: Identity and Cohesion in Young Oromo Refugee Women”, Journal of Women and Social Work , 17, 4: 471-496.

Morrell, R. 1998 “Gender and Education: The Place of Masculinity in South African Schools”, South African Journal of Education , 18,4: 218-225.

Schoepf, B. 1997 “AIDS, Gender and Sexuality During Africa's Economic Crisis”, in G. Mikell (ed.) African Feminism: The Politics of Survival in sub-Saharan Africa Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press

Whitsitt, N. 2003 “Islamic-Hausa Feminism Meets Northern Nigerian Romance: The Cautious Rebellion of Bilkisu Funtuwa”, African Studies Review , 46, 1: 137-153.

Zinanga, E. 1996 “Sexuality and the Heterosexual Form”, Safere: Southern African Feminist Review , Sexuality, Identity and Change, 2, 1: 3-6.

f. Race/Empire/Nation/Gender

Collen, L. 2003 The Rape of Sita New York : The Feminist Press

Daymond, M., Driver, D., Meintjes, S., Molema, L., Musengezi, C., Orford, M. and Rasebotsa, N. 2003 “Introduction”, in Daymond, M. et al., (eds.) Women Writing Africa : The Southern Region , The Women Writing Africa Project, Volume 1 New York : The Feminist Press at the City University of New York

Keegan, T. 2001 “Gender, Degeneration and Sexual Danger: Imagining Race and Class in South Africa ”, Journal of Southern African Studies , 27, 3:459-477.

Lewis, D. 1996 “Winnie Mandela: The Surveillance and Excess of “Black Woman” as Signifier”, Safere: Southern African Feminist Review , Sexuality, Identity and Change, 2, 1: 7-13.

Moolman, B. 2004 “Gang Rape – an Expression of Black, Heterosexual Masculinity”, Agenda , forthcoming.

Parker, A., Russo, M., Sommer, D. and Yaeger, P. (eds.) 1992 Nationalisms and Sexualities London , New York : Routledge

g. Sexuality, Gender and Feminism

Accad, E. 2000 “Sexuality and Sexual Politics: Conflicts and Contradictions for Contemporary Women in the Middle East”, in P. Ilkkaracan (ed.) Women and Sexuality in Muslim Societies Istanbul: Women for Women's Human Rights (WWHR)/Kadmin Insan Haklari Projesi (KIHP) [Also in C. Mohanty, A. Russo and L. Torres (eds.) 1991 Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism Bloomington: Indiana University Press]

Barriteau, V. 2003 “Confronting Power and Politics: A Feminist Theorising of Gender in Commonwealth Caribbean Societies”, Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism , 3, 2: 57-92.

Bennett, J. 2002 “Exploration of a “Gap”: Strategising Gender Equity in African Universities”, Feminist Africa , 1: 34 -63.

Silva, N. 2003 “Shameless Women: Repression and Resistance in ‘We Sinful Women: Contemporary Urdu Feminist Poetry'”, Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism , 3, 2: 28-51.

2. African women's thought and activism

In their attention to the experiences of diverse categories of African women in relation to sexuality, African women advocates and scholars have focused their energies upon specific areas of thought and activism. The sub-themes address constructs and meanings impinging on sexuality, women's insertion in sexual economies, reproductive health and rights, genital mutilation, gender based violence and sexual harassment, HIV/AIDS, disability, religion, and sexual rights. The fact that only one article could be found on sexuality and disability (Majiet, section 2g) is perhaps as much an indication of an area that is under-researched as it is a sign that not all the work that has been carried out is always accessible to researchers.

In her analysis of Cameroonian women writers' fiction, Juliana Nfah-Abbenyi (section 2a) engages with issues such as the dilemma of exchange and control in sexuality. In Zanga Tsogo's fiction, this concerns the exchange of women's sexual services for relative economic security, and men's control over women's labour as well as their wombs. Calixthe Beyala's fiction is explored for its articulation of a sexual politics that does not necessarily define womanhood in relation to motherhood, and that explores intricate linkages between subjectivity and sexuality. Memoirs of a Woman Doctor , a novel by Nawal el Saadawi (section 2a), addresses the question of what it means to be a woman in Egyptian society, and the personal resistance of the female protagonist to hegemonic understandings of gender and sexuality.

Mumbi Machera's (section 2a) chapter on female sexuality argues that the construction of female sexuality is influenced by the meanings attached to the female genitalia, which are often derogated yet simultaneously viewed as powerful. The nuances of language and power in relation to the naming of female genitalia are explored by Makhososana Xaba (section 2a). She identifies four categories of naming: terms implying male sexual gratification and possession; vulgar and derogatory terms; euphemistic or “little girl” terms; and vague or “polite” terms.

Jane Bennett (section 2a) points to concrete experiences of struggle and advocacy that have given rise to concepts such as “reproductive rights” and “sexual rights”. In specific contexts, African activists addressing sexual rights by challenging homophobia are often also addressing reproductive rights, in efforts to criminalise marital rape, ensure young people's access to condoms in the context of HIV/AIDS, and the like. This is made possible by a theoretical understanding of gender as a force that links relations to labour, performance, authority as well as sexuality.

The tensions between sexual fear, occasioned by the realities of rape and numerous other forms of sexual abuse for many African women, and the notion of sexual freedom as an ideal, have been addressed in a variety of ways. Patricia MacFadden (section 2a) puts forward the viewpoint that the notions of “pleasure” and “choice” are rarely recognised as being among the most contentious aspects of female sexuality. The fear of sexual pleasure is directly linked to the construction of women's sexuality as “filthy”, arising as it does out of the recognition of an intimate relationship between sexuality and power. Moreover, the non-recognition of pleasure as fundamental to women's rights has led to debates and activism around sexuality, reproduction and rights being confined to “safe” zones within culturally sanctioned understandings of women's roles and bodies.

In a response to this piece, Charmaine Pereira (section 2a) points out that MacFadden erases significant complexities and contradictions in African women's lives, making claims that rest on problematic assumptions. Pereira argues that there is a need to understand how sexual pleasure and sexual power are understood by diverse categories of women and men, just as there is a need to understand changing constructions of sexuality and the relations between sexuality and economic, political and social arenas. Taken together, these two essays offer an accessible introduction for students and interested others, to a range of conceptual and political issues regarding sexuality in African women's lives.

Sexual economies in Africa have been addressed in literature on sex work and prostitution (see Amina Mama, section 2b) and more recently, in work on trafficking in women. Much of the literature on sex work, as Mama points out, focuses on the women involved, rather than the organisation of the trade or the connections between the trade, militarisation and international tourism. In contrast, recent work such as Patience Elabor-Idemudia's (section 2b) examination of the trafficking of women from southern states in Nigeria to Europe and the USA , locates trafficking in the profound changes caused by poverty, wars, increasing debt burdens coupled with structural adjustment, and unequal global trade patterns. The displacement and destruction of ties at family and community levels, as well as increasing global inequalities, have given rise to a situation where women have become increasingly used as items for export and exploitation in a global market.

Grace Osakue and others (section 2c) map the state of reproductive health in diverse communities in Nigeria , as part of a transnational project carried out by the International Reproductive Rights Research Action Group (IRRRAG). They focus in particular on Nigerian women's understandings of what constitutes reproductive rights, highlighting differences on the basis of age, religion, urban/rural location, and ethnicity. Another example of transnational collaboration is that between the Centre for Reproductive Rights and the Association des Juristes Maliennes (section 2c), in the latter's work on pregnancy and childbirth in Mali .

Nkoli Ezumah (section 2c) explores the perceptions, norms, attitudes and practices underlying sexuality and gender relations in South Eastern Nigeria, and the implications for women's reproductive health and rights. She concludes that the social constructions of sexuality and gender relations in the South East are major deterrents to women's attainment of reproductive health and rights. South African women's efforts to regulate their fertility over the last 150 years are charted by Helen Bradford (section 2c), against the backdrop of patriarchal controls over female fertility and sexuality. Today, South African women's lives and deaths continue to fall beyond the scope of legal and righteous norms as defined by those who neither bear nor raise children, and abortion remains a site of struggle. Also in the South African context, Vanessa-Lynn Neophytou (section 2i) recounts the denial of reproductive rights experienced by lesbian mothers, women who have been constructed as “beyond” reproduction and whose identities as mothers have to be asserted in the face of overly sexualised depictions of their womanhood as “unnatural”.

Considerable attention has been paid to the theme of genital mutilation, by several authors, predominantly in Sudan , Somalia , and Egypt , but also in Kenya , Nigeria and Ghana . Early accounts focused on the traumatic experiences of the girls and women undergoing genital mutilation and the consequences of the different practices deployed (Abdalla, El Dareer – section 2d). Other perspectives evident at the time, and since then, include autobiographical accounts (e.g. Dairie, section 2d), political analyses linking genital mutilation with power and violence (e.g. Abdel and Asma, Ahmadu, AAWORD – section 2d), discussion of responses and strategies for change (e.g. Abusharaf, Assaad, Dorkenoo, Giorgis, Koso-Thomas – section 2d), including specific themes such as the debate around medicalisation (Mandara, section 2d). Yet other studies have examined prevalence (Ebomoyi, section 2d) and the processes of continuity and change in practices of genital mutilation (Badri, Gwako – section 2d).

The theme of eradicating violence against women and within that, sexual violence, has been prominent, as evident from December Green's (section 2e) review of African women's responses to gender violence across the continent. A tremendous amount of work has been carried out in South Africa, including discussions of sexual and other forms of gender based violence in the context of women's health (Goosen and Klugman, section 2e), hearing the views of women activists who provide services and support to survivors of rape (Hansson, section 2e), and unravelling the ways in which narratives about rape reveal how the abuse is legitimised and perpetuated in social relations (Moffett, section 2e). Katherine Wood and Rachel Jewkes (section 2e) explore Xhosa township youths' discussions of their experiences of engaging in violence, particularly assault and coercive sex, against their sexual partners. The authors examine connections between such violence and the understandings of masculinity that prevail among the young men.

Working across the Southern African region, Jane Bennett (section 2e) brings together a wide range of resources and strategies aimed at preventing sexual violence and sexual harassment in higher educational institutions. Whilst contributing to the broader goal of democratising social relations and institutions, the aim is also to use context-specific strategies in order to change the institutional cultures that support sexual harassment and sexual violence. In the Nigerian context, Charmaine Pereira (section 2e) explores concepts such as power, responsibility and authority, with a view to understanding how these are intertwined with issues of agency and ethics in gendered institutional practices. The convergence within sexual harassment and gender based violence, of disparate discourses of violence, relationships of exchange and notions of acceptable relations between authority figures and students are also outlined.

In Ghana , the first comprehensive study of violence against women (Appiah and Cusack, section 2e) was carried out in 1999. Seeking to establish the prevalence of violence, its various forms, contexts, reactions by women and the rest of society, and barriers to effective responses, the study was carried out with several non-governmental organisations. The process included sensitising the NGOs on issues concerning violence against women and building their capacity to conduct the research.

The terrible threat posed to African societies by HIV/AIDS, where transmission is predominantly heterosexual and affects far more girls and women than men, has prompted much work on various facets of the phenomenon. Christine Obbo (section 2f) maps a range of cultural ideologies – the perspectives of elite men, of women, and of male and female youth – that need to be understood in order to devise effective strategies for reducing HIV transmission. Discussions on sex, HIV and condoms, she states, are necessary in order to use culture as a tool to negotiate societal survival, whilst simultaneously exposing class and gender-based indifference to that survival. Catherine Campbell (section 2f) addresses the question of how large numbers of black men working in South African gold mines become HIV positive, by analysing the work and living context shaping their sexual appetites. Recently, campaigns against the spread of AIDS in Africa have begun to target men. Janet Bujra (section 2f) explores the theoretical and practical implications of this shift. Key features of the debate include the ways in which masculinity is defined and theorised, how the enactment of masculinity might increase the spread of HIV/AIDS, and the options for change.

Ayesha Imam (section 2h) discusses a number of Muslim discourses that have implications for sexuality, prefacing her argument with a discussion of the various essentialisms and conflations plaguing the study of Muslim people and their societies. The discourses she examines include divorce, seclusion and access to education. Her analysis highlights the variations among Muslim discourses of sexuality, not only across communities but also over time. Nakanyike Musisi (section 2h) examines the missionary and colonial education in Uganda that offered girls an education predicated on an ideology of domesticity for women. Such education was constructed in order that women might become better wives, mothers and guardians of the family and household, entrenching women in a domestic role that was separate from and subordinate to men.

The meanings attributed to sexual rights, as interpreted by the diverse actors developing the Beijing Programme for Action and those within the Southern African Development Community, are explored by Barbara Klugman (section 2i). In the African context, the lack of sexual rights is understood to be a consequence of poverty as well as gender inequality, particularly in sexual relationships. This is distinct from claims to sexual rights, in the European context, specifically in relation to sexual orientation. Zanele Hlatshwayo and Barbara Klugman (section 2i) point out that the failure to observe women and adolescent girls' sexual rights has rendered them overly susceptible to sexual violence and HIV infection. An enabling environment, argues Gupta (section 2i), would give women and adolescent girls the power to make choices and maximise their sexual rights.

a. Constructs and Meanings

Abrahams, Y. 2004 “Colonialism, Dysjuncture and Dysfunction: Sarah Bartmann's Resistance” http://www.gwsafrica.org/knowledge/index.html

Bennett, J. 2000 “Thinking Sexualities”, African Gender Institute Newsletter , 7.

El Saadawi, N. 1988 Memoirs of a Woman Doctor London: Saqi Books

MacFadden, P. 2003 “Sexual Pleasure as Feminist Choice”, Feminist Africa , 2: 50 -60.

Machera, M. 2004 “Opening a Can of Worms: A Debate on Female Sexuality in the Lecture Theatre”, in Arnfred, S. (ed.) Rethinking Sexualities in Africa Uppsala : Nordic Africa Institute.

Mager, A. 1996 “Sexuality, Fertility and Male Power” Agenda , 28: 12-24.

Musisi, N. 2001 “Gender and the Cultural Construction of “Bad Women” in the Development of Kampala-Kibuga, 1900-1962”, in “Wicked” Women and the Reconfiguration of Gender in Africa Portsmouth , NH : Heinemann/Oxford: James Currey/Cape Town: David Philip

Nfah-Abenyi, J. 1997 Gender in African Women's Writing: Identity, Sexuality and Difference Bloomington , Indianopolis: Indiana University Press

Oyegun, J. 1998 “Working Masculinities Back Into Gender”, Agenda , 37,13-23.

Pereira, C. 2003 ““Where Angels Fear to Tread?” Some Thoughts on Patricia McFadden's “Sexual Pleasure as Feminist Choice””, Feminist Africa , 2: 61-65.

Salo, E. 2002 “Condoms are for Spares, Not the Besties: Negotiating Adolescent Sexuality in Post-apartheid Manenberg”, Society in Transition , 33, 3: 403-419.

Tamale, S. 2001 “How Old is Old Enough? Defilement Law and the Age of Consent in Uganda ”, East African Journal of Peace & Human Rights , 7, 1: 82-100.

Xaba, M. 1994 “And What Do Zulu Girls Have?” Agenda , 23: 33-35.

b. Sexual Economies

Dirasse, L. 1991 The Commoditisation of Female Sexuality: Prostitution and Socio-Economic Relations in Addis Ababa , Ethiopia New York : NYAMS Press

Elabor-Idemudia, P. 2003 “Migration, Trafficking and the African Woman”, Agenda , 58, 101-115.

Mama, A. 1996 Women's Studies and Studies of Women in Africa During the 1990s CODESRIA Working Paper Series 5/96

c. Reproductive Health and Rights

Adomako Ampofo, A. 2001 ““When Men Speak, Women Listen” Gender Socialisation and Young Adolescents' Attitudes to Sexual and Reproductive Issues”, in African Journal of Reproductive Health, 5, 3:196-212.

Bradford, H. 1991 ““Her Body, Her Life”: 150 Years of Abortion in South Africa” Paper presented at a Conference on Women and Gender in Southern Africa, 30 th January – 2 nd February 1991, University of Natal, Durban. Organised by the Gender Research Group

Center for Reproductive Rights and Association des Juristes Maliennes 2003 Claiming Our Rights: Surviving Pregnancy and Childbirth in Mali New York : Center for Reproductive Rights

Ezumah, N. 2000 “Perceptions of Sexuality and Gender Relations among the Igbo and Implications for the Reproductive Health of Men and Women: Selected Findings from Awka and Agulu, Anambra State , Nigeria ”. In E. Salo (ed.) African Gender Institute, University of Cape Town, Associate Publications Cape Town: African Gender Institute

Horn, J. 2003 “AMANITARE and African Women's Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights”, Feminist Africa , 2: 73-79.

Kaleeba, N. 1991 “Success Campaigns in Uganda ”, Women's Global Network for Reproductive Rights , 34

Khattab, H. 1996 Women's Perceptions of Sexuality in Rural Giza Giza , Egypt : The Population Council: Monographs in Reproductive Health No. 1

Neophytou, V. 1994 “Lesbian Mothers”, Agenda , 22, 24-28.

Osakue, G., Madunagu, B., Usman, H. and Osagie, J. 1995 Voices: Findings of a Research into Reproductive Rights of Women in Nigeria Benin City : International Reproductive Rights Research Action Group (IRRRAG), Nigeria

Tahzib, F. 1985 “Social Factors and the Aetiology of Vesico-Vaginal Fistulae”, in A. Imam, R. Pittin and H. Omole (eds.) Women and the Family in Nigeria Dakar : CODESRIA

d. Genital Mutilation

Abdalla, R. 1982 Sisters in Affliction: Circumcision and Infibulation of Women in Africa London : Zed Press

Abdel, H. and Asma, M. 1992 “Claiming Our Bodies and Our Rights: Exploring Female Circumcision as an Act of Violence in Africa ”, in M. Schuler (ed.) Freedom From Violence: Women's Strategies From Around the World New York : United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM)

Abdel, H. and Asma, M. 1995 “Rituals and Angels: Female Circumcision and the Case of Sudan”, in M. Schuler (ed.) From Basic Needs to Basic Rights: Women's Claim to Human Rights Washington : Women and Development International

Abusharaf, R. 2001 “Revisiting Feminist Discourses on Infibulation: Responses from Sudanese Feminists”, in B. Shell-Duncan and Y. Hernlund (eds.) Female “Circumcision” in Africa : Culture, Controversy and Change Boulder : Lynne Rienner

Ahmadu, F. 2001 “Rites and Wrongs: An Insider/Outsider Reflects on Power and Excision”, in B. Shell-Duncan and Y. Hernlund (eds.) Female “Circumcision” in Africa : Culture, Controversy and Change Boulder : Lynne Rienner

Assaad, M. 1980 “Female Circumcision in Egypt : Social Implications, Current Research and Prospects for Change”, Studies in Family Planning , 11, 1: 3-16.

Association of African Women for Research and Development (AAWORD) 1983 “A Statement on Genital Mutilation”, in M. Davies (ed.) Third World – Second Sex London : Zed Press

Badri, A. 1992 “Female Circumcision in the Sudan : Change and Continuity”, in Women and Reproduction in Africa Dakar : Association of African Women for Research and Development (AAWORD)

Badri, A. 1984 “Female Circumcision in the Sudan ”, Ahfad Journal, 1: 11 -21.

Dirie, W. 2002 Desert Dawn London: Virago

Dirie, W. 1998 Desert Flower: The Extraordinary Life of a Desert Nomad London : Virago

Dorkenoo, E. 1994 Cutting the Rose: Female Genital Mutilation: The Practice and its Prevention London : Minority Rights Group

Ebomoyi, E. 1987 “Prevalence of Female Circumcision in Two Nigerian Communities”, Sex Roles , 17, 3/4: 139-151.

El Dareer, S. 1982 Woman, Why Do You Weep? Circumcision and its Consequences London : Zed Press

Giorgis, B. 1981 Female Circumcision in Africa Addis Ababa : African Training and Research Centre for Women (ATRCW)/Association of African Women for Research and Development (AAWORD)/United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA)

Gwako, E. 1995 “Continuity and Change in the Practice of Clitoridectomy in Kenya : A Case Study of the Abagusii”, Journal of Modern African Studies , 33, 2: 333-337.

Khalifa, N. 1994 “Reasons Behind Practising Re-Circumcision Among Educated Sudanese Women”, Ahfad Journal , 11, 2: 16 -32.

Koso-Thomas, O. 1987 The Circumcision of Women: A Strategy for Eradication London , New Jersey : Zed Books

Kouba, L. and Muasher, J. 1985 “Female Circumcision in Africa : An Overview”, African Studies Review , 28, 1: 95-110.

Mandara, M. 2001 “Female Genital Cutting in Nigeria : Views of Nigerian Doctors on the Medicalisation Debate”, in B. Shell-Duncan and Y. Hernlund (eds.) Female “Circumcision” in Africa : Culture, Controversy and Change Boulder : Lynne Rienner

e. Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment

Amapofu, A. 1993 “Controlling and Punishing Women in Ghana ”, Review of African Political Economy , 56.

Appiah, D. and Cusack, K. 1999 Breaking the Silence and Challenging the Myths of Violence Against Women and Children in Ghana : Report of a National Study on Violence Accra : Gender Studies and Human Rights Documentation Centre (GSHRDC)

Arac de Nyeko, M. 2001 “Chained”, in V. Barungi (ed.) Words from A Granary: An Anthology of Short Stories by Ugandan Women Writers Kampala : Femrit

Bennett, J. 2002 Southern African Higher Educational Institutions Challenging Sexual Violence/Sexual Harassment: A Handbook of Resources (for Network of Southern African Higher Education Institutions Challenging Sexual Harassment and Sexual Violence) Cape Town : African Gender Institute

Binaifer, N. 1993 Seeking Refuge, Finding Terror: The Widespread Rape of Somali Women Refugees in North Eastern Kenya Washington: Africa Watch

El Saadawi, N. 1983 Woman at Point Zero London : Zed Books

Ezumah, N. 2003 “Understanding Sexual Harassment in Institutions of Higher Learning in Nigeria ”. Paper presented at the 13 th General Assembly of the Social Science Academy of Nigeria, 23-25 July 2003, Abuja .

Goosen, M. and Klugman, B. 1996 The South African Women's Health Book Cape Town : Oxford University Press

Green, D. 1999 Gender Violence in Africa New York : St. Martin 's Press

Hansson, D. 1991 “Working Against Violence Against Women: Recommendations from Rape Crisis ( Cape Town )”, in S. Bazzili (ed.) Putting Women on the Agenda Johannesburg : Ravan

Moffett, H. 2002 “Entering the Labyrinth: Coming to Grips with Gender War Zones – the Case of South Africa”, in INSTRAW (ed.) Working with Men to End Gender-based Violence International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW), Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

Mulugeta, E., Kassaye, M. and Berhane, Y. 1998 “Prevalence and Outcomes of Sexual Violence Among High School Students”, Ethiopian Medical Journal , 36: 167-174.

Pereira, C. 2003 “Sexual Harassment in Nigerian Universities: Exploring Practice, Ethics and Agency”. Paper presented at the 13 th General Assembly of the Social Science Academy of Nigeria, 23-25 July 2003, Abuja .

Sesay, F. 2001 “Gender-Specific Forms of Persecution Suffered by Women in Sierra Leone ”, in Canadian Council for Refugees (ed.) Refugee Women Fleeing Gender-Based Persecution Conference Proceedings Montreal : Canadian Council for Refugees (CCR)

Tamale, S. 1992 “Rape, Law and the Violation of Women in Uganda : A Critical Perspective”, Uganda Law Society Review , 1, 2.

TAMWA (Tanzanian Media Women's Association) 1993 “Violence Against Women in Tanzania ”, Review of African Political Economy , 56.

Taylor, J. and Stewart, S. 1991 Sexual and Domestic Violence: Help, Recovery and Action in Zimbabwe Harare : A. von Glehn and J. Yaylor/Women and Law in Southern Africa

Wood, K. and Jewkes, R. 2001 “‘Dangerous Love': Reflections on Violence among Xhosa Township Youth”, in R. Morrell (ed.) Changing Men in Southern Africa Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press

Wood, K., Maforah, F. and Jewkes, R. 1996 “Sex, Violence and Constructions of Love Amongst Xhosa Adolescents: Putting Violence on the Sexuality Education Agenda” Medical Research Council of South Africa , Tygerberg

f. HIV/AIDS

Adomako Ampofo, A. 1999 “Nice Guys, Condoms and Other Forms of STD Protection: Sex Workers and AIDS Protection in West Africa ”, in Becker, C., Dozon, J., Obbo, C. et Touré, M. (eds.) Vivre et Penser le Sida en Afrique / Experiencing and Understanding AIDS in Africa Paris : CODESRIA, IRD, Karthala, PNLS: 561-90 /559-88.

Bujra, J. 2000 “Targeting Men for a Change: AIDS Discourse and Activism in Africa ”, Agenda , 44: 6-23.

Campbell, C. 2001 “'Going Underground and Going After Women': Masculinity and HIV Transmission amongst Black Workers on the Gold Mines”, in R. Morrell (ed.) Changing Men in Southern Africa Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press/London, New York : Zed Books

McFadden, P. 1992 “Sex, Sexuality and the Problems of AIDS in Africa ”, in R. Meena (ed.) Gender in Southern Africa : Conceptual and Theoretical Issues Harare : SAPES

Obbo, C. “Gender, Age and Class: Discourses on HIV Transmission and Control in Uganda ”, in H. Brummelhuis and G. Herdt (eds.) Culture and Sexual Risk: Anthropological Perspectives on AIDS Amsterdam : Gordon and Breach

Sisulu, E. 2000 “A Different Kind of Holocaust: A Personal Reflection on HIV/AIDS”, African Gender Institute Newsletter , 2000, 7.

g. Disability

Majiet, S. 1996 “Sexuality and Disability”, Agenda , 28: 77-80.

h. Religiosity

Imam, A. 2000 “The Muslim Religious Right (‘Fundamentalists') and Sexuality”, in P. Ilkkaracan (ed.) Women and Sexuality in Muslim Societies Istanbul : Women for Women's Human Rights (WWHR)/Kadmin Insan Haklari Projesi (KIHP)

Musapole, A. 1992 “Sexuality and Religion in a Matriarchal Society”, in M. Oduyoye and M. Kanyoro (eds.) The Will to Rise: Women, Tradition and the Church in Africa New York : Orbis Books

Musisi, N. 1992 “Colonial and Missionary Education: Women and Domesticity in Uganda , 1900-1945”, in K.T. Hansen (ed.) African Encounters with Domesticity Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick

i. Sexual Rights

Fine, D. and Nichol, J. 1994 “'The Lavender Lobby': Working for Lesbian and Gay Rights in the Liberation Movement”, in M. Gevisser and E. Cameron (eds.) Defiant Desire: Gay and Lesbian Lives in South Africa Johannesburg : Raven Press

Gupta, G. 2000 “Strengthening Alliances for Sexual Health and Rights”, Health and Human Rights , 2, 3.

Hlatshwayo, Z. and Klugman, B. 2001 “A Sexual Rights Approach”, Agenda , 47: 14-20.

Klugman, B. 2003 “Sexual Rights in Southern Africa : A Beijing Discourse or a Strategic Necessity?” http://www.wits.ac.za/whp

3. Other bodies of thought and activism

Here I have referred to the work of African liberationists, feminisms in the global South, diasporic feminisms in the global North, Euro-American feminisms, transcontinental organising, the political economy of sexuality, Freud, post-structuralism and queer theory.

African liberationists, such as Amilcar Cabral and Frantz Fanon, whilst addressing the development of national culture and colonised subjectivity respectively in their work, have paid little attention overall to sexuality in their writing. The exception is Fanon's (1980) essay “Algeria Unveiled” in Studies in a Dying Colonialism (section 3a), where he discusses French men's violent sexual obsessions with veiled, therefore inaccessible, Algerian women and Algerian men's difficulties in continuing their relations with wives who had been raped by the French. In Black Skin, White Masks (section 3a), Fanon summarily characterises the black women he had met in France and in the Antilles as being obsessed with attracting white partners and bearing children lighter than themselves.

Fanon's other texts, The Wretched of the Earth (section 3a) and Toward the African Revolution (section 3a), may each be used to demonstrate the permeability of bodies to historical forces. Cabral's argument in Return to the Source (section 3a) that the comprador bourgeoisie engage in a spurious ‘return to the source' as a means of resisting challenges to the status quo, is particularly useful for feminists in countering “culture talk”. In Unity and Struggle (section 3a), Cabral points to the need for the liberation movement to base its struggle on a thorough knowledge of the people and the elements of culture, a task that has yet to be carried out in most African countries, as Amina Mama points out (see section 5b).

Amongst feminists in the global South who have worked on sexuality, the themes of sexual violence and the complexities surrounding sexual politics have been of particular interest. Patricia Mohammed discusses shifts in gender relations and increasing sexual violence, in the context of sexual politics in Trinidadian society and Trinidadian feminism (1991 – section 3b). Migration from India to Trinidad as indentured labourers had ruptured to some extent the caste system and gender relations structuring Indian patriarchy (Mohammed 1995 – section 3b). Mohammed argues that Indian women's new status as wage earners, their low proportion in the Indian population, and the resulting premium on their sexuality gave them some bargaining power and allowed them a measure of freedom in sexual relationships. Kalpana and Vasanth Kannabiran (section 3b) explore their political engagement as feminists and document the praxis of the women's movement in Andhra Pradesh. They observe that any emphasis by feminists on sexuality or any concern for sexual politics is promptly reduced by male nationalists to an obsession with sex and sexual behaviour. This is then cast as inconsequential when pitted against the “larger” political concerns of class and nation.

Elsewhere, researchers have addressed women's sexuality in the context of communal violence (the anthology edited by Kumari Jayawardena and Vasanth Kannabiran – section 3b), conservative interpretations and implementations of Muslim laws in Pakistan (Zia – section 3b), and repressive uses of “culture” against women (Banerji – section 3b). Pioneering studies of sexual economies have been carried out addressing Thailand (Troung – section 3b), the range of geopolitical locations covered in the edited collection by John and Nair (section 3b), and the global sex trade (Kempadoo, Kempadoo and Doezema – section 3b). Kathleen Maltzhan (section 3b) recounts the difficulties and necessities of the advocacy work carried out by her organisation in supporting women marginalised by prostitution. Reproductive health and rights also receive concerted attention (the collection edited by Cornwall and Welbourne – section 3b, Sonia Correa – section 3b).

The literature produced by diasporic feminisms in the North is disparate and multi-layered. Diasporic communities in the global North have differing political histories shaped by colonial and imperial relations that have given rise to, and continue to maintain, different forms of division among nations, racialised groups, ethnic groups, classes and so on. The character of the dispersion – such as its occurrence due to slavery, indentured labour or migration – and the period of its duration are also critical features of the relationship between diaspora and mainland (see for example, Kalpana and Vasanth Kannabiran – section 3b). These features complicate the construction of sexuality in diverse diasporic locations and communities and are, to varying extents, reflected in the scholarship produced.

Within relatively recent diasporic communities, for example, it may be noted that differing emphases on sexuality are registered in the chapter on South Asian migrants in Britain by Bald (section 3c), relative to Raissiguier's (section 3c) analysis of working class girls of Algerian descent in a French school. Haideh Moghissi (section 3c) makes the critical point that the position of Muslim minorities in the West, where they do not hold state power to impose their views and moral standards on others, is structurally different from that of Islamist movements and regimes that do hold state power in the Middle East and North Africa. Debates about multiculturalism and identity politics in the West are not appropriate for understanding the gender politics of fundamentalism in societies such as Afghanistan , Iran or Sudan . Moghissi's argument may be generalised to state that intellectual and political positions elaborated in a given diaspora, with its own power configurations, cannot simply be transposed onto social realities arising out of quite different relations of power on the mainland.

A much older strand of diasporic feminisms in the global North is that of Black feminism in the USA . Alongside this, emerging from a different trajectory and working in alliance with Black feminism, is the feminism of Chicana and Latina activists and writers in the USA , as manifested in the two germinal anthologies, This Bridge Called My Back and Making Soul: Haciendo Caras (section 3c). The Black lesbian feminist collective, the Combahee River Collective (section 3c), based their politics on an active commitment to struggling against interlocking systems of racial, sexual, heterosexual and class oppression. The Collective's aim was to build integrated analysis and practice based on this understanding. Within Black feminism, a major concern has been that of combating racism within white women's organising and intellectual politics. Audre Lorde (section 3c), for example, critiques Mary Daly's assumption in Gyn/Ecology that the myths and herstories of white women necessarily represent those of all women, including those of Black feminists.

Defying categories is the philosopher Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, who uses deconstructive strategies to engage theoretically with various bodies of thought – feminism, Marxism, literary criticism. Her chapter (section 3c) points to sexuality as a zone permeable to exploitation as a consequence of the capacity for monetary exchange embodied in sexual acts, a capacity that women living in poverty may have no other option than to utilise. Spivak wraps this understanding in a critical discussion of the ways in which language may be used to represent women's bodies and sexuality.

In a classic text, Kate Millett (section 3d) poses the question of whether the relations between the sexes can be viewed in a political light. Politics is understood here to refer to relationships structured by power, involving personal contact and interaction between members of specific groups (such as races, castes, classes and sexes), such that one group of persons is controlled by another. Her response to this question is affirmative, in the light of the relations between the sexes being defined by a relationship of male dominance and female subordination. Gayle Rubin (section 3d) points out that disputes over sexual behaviour often become the channels for displacing social unease, and relieving the resulting emotional intensity. In times of great social stress, sexuality should be treated with special respect. At the same time, sexuality has its own internal politics, inequities and modes of oppression. The author examines these through an analysis of ideological formations that limit the theorising of sexuality as well as through a consideration of sexual stratification and sexual conflicts.

Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell and Sharon Thompson (section 3d) provide what they call a political and intellectual history of sex, outlining the ways in which feminist and socialist women and men, in the West, have sought to understand the relationships between sexuality and broader movements for human freedom. Working at a broader international level, Cynthia Enloe (section 3d) examines the question of how the dynamics between masculinity and femininity constructed the Cold War and are today, being played out at its end. As Enloe points out, however, the end of superpower rivalry has not in itself guaranteed an end to the militarisation of masculinity on which it flourished.

At the transcontinental level, considerable work has been carried out on the relationship of sexuality to reproduction, health and rights (e.g. Cornwall and Welbourne, Family Care International – section 3e), as well as violence (Cuthbert and Slote – section 3e). Sonia Correa (section 3e) examines the controversies related to sexuality, expressed in United Nations negotiations, and unravels the challenges inherent in different modes of conceptualising sexual rights. She argues that it is crucial to debate the unintended implications of choices in terms of the philosophies underlying human rights approaches. A critical task, in addition, is the identification of human rights principles that would be appropriate for defining entitlements in relation to sexuality. One of the critical areas around which women organised across continental boundaries concerned the specific impact of armed conflict on women (see Rehn and Sirleaf – section 3e), fuelled by the refusal of UN member states to include systematic rape during armed conflict on the list of crimes against humanity.

A range of authors and perspectives are considered under the rubric of the political economy of sexuality. Writing in Russia at the turn of the twentieth century, Alexandra Kollontai's ultimate aim was the complete liberation of working-class women and the establishment of the foundation of a new sexual morality. In “The Social Basis of the Woman Question”, Kollontai (section 3f) argues that the solution of “the family question” was no less important than the attainment of political equality and economic independence for women. Women's liberation ultimately encompassed freedom in love, an ideal that was unattainable without transformation of the social and economic conditions defining the obligations of working-class women, fundamental change in all social relationships between people, and a thorough change of moral, psychological and sexual norms.

Kollontai develops these ideas further in “Sexual Relations and the Class Struggle” (section 3f), pointing to the sexual crisis of the time and the hypocrisy of relegating sexual matters to the “private” realm, beyond the consideration of the social collective. Her point that a social group works out its ideology, and thus its sexual morality, in the process of struggle with hostile social forces is as relevant today as it was in her time. Kollontai's autobiography (section 3f) is an interesting example of the battle she experienced against the intervention of the male into a woman's ego, a struggle that revolved around a complex of decisions: work or marriage or love. Her novel Red Love (section 3f) is a psychological exploration of sexual relations in the post-war period, against a backdrop of changes in the contexts of women's engagement in public affairs and out-of-home work.

In the USA , the anarchist Emma Goldman was working and writing around the same time as Alexandra Kollontai. Goldman's two-part autobiography, Living My Life (section 3f), focuses on her passionate commitment to the political ideals of anarchism and her accompanying personal search for love and intimacy. Goldman's political aims concerned the quest for women's economic self-determination and for women's right to sexual freedom. Her fight for birth control was part of this larger struggle. Candace Falk's (section 3f) biography explores the intersection of Goldman's public and private lives, offering a critical analysis of the theory and practice of anarchism and Goldman's relation to it, through the trajectory of her personal life. Goldman's life-long companion and mentor, Alexander Berkman, was imprisoned for fourteen years for his attempt to assassinate Henry Clay Frick. His prison memoirs (section 3f) recount the brutality of the prison regime, his evolving attitudes towards fellow prisoners and include a sympathetic discussion of homosexuality in the prison context.

In more recent times, Michele Barrett's highly influential Women's Oppression Today (section 3f) has put forward the view that it is necessary for feminists to engage with and transform Marxist class analysis. Barrett addresses questions to do with the family and child rearing through a feminist critique of psychoanalytic theories of sexual development, based upon critical and literary examination of texts within the Freudian and Marxist canons. Gayle Rubin's (section 3f) review and critique of Marxism, structuralism, and Freudian and Lacanian literature draws on perspectives in political economy to postulate a universal “sex-gender system”. She locates the universal existence of gender asymmetry within a framework of compulsory heterosexuality. Prohibitions on same-sex relations not only bar women from phallic power, they legitimise heterosexual alliance, or the traffic in women.

Micaela di Leonardo and Roger Lancaster (section 3f) trace the contours of Western historical political-economic work on gender and sexuality. They show that the taboo on homosexual relations in Europe was implicated in, among other things, the rise of capitalism, the fanning of religious and political intolerance, the emergence of the modern nation-state and the discourses and forms of colonialism. John d'Emilio (section 3f) refutes the myth that gay men and lesbians have always existed in all societies at all times. Instead, he argues that they are a product of history and have come into being in a specific era. The historical development of capitalism, specifically its free labour system, has allowed large numbers of men and women, aggregated in urban areas, to call themselves gay and lesbian and to organise politically on the basis of that identity.

Nineteenth-century European perceptions of the “prostitute” were that there was little difference between her and the “black”, since loss of control over female sexuality meant degeneration into primitivism (see Megan Vaughan, section 5b). Freud's influence in the twentieth century represents continuity with these earlier images, as demonstrated in his Three Essays on Sexuality (section 3g). Freud's understanding of sexuality is ultimately biological, embedded as it is within a model of instincts, their restraints and a “natural” libido subjected to repression. At the same time, the resurgence of interest in Freudian theory is principally due to the relevance of Freud's core theory of the dynamic unconscious.

In contrast to Freud's emphasis on repression, Foucault's contention was that the modern European history of sexuality is not so much one of repression as one of the power of description and production. Volume one of Foucault's The History of Sexuality (section 3h) unravels historically specific discursive relations in which power is always implicated, thus providing a starting point for thinking about available discourses of sexuality and their dynamic, changing inter-relatedness.

Ann Stoler (section 3h) refers to some of the ways in which Foucault's work has been received. These include the criticisms on the part of historians dismissing his empirical work as highly flawed, and the engagement on the part of social analysts with his theoretical insights, who treat his historical claims as less significant. She questions the neat partitioning of history from theory implied in these practices, pursuing a critique of her own regarding Foucault's chronologies. Her argument is that the discursive and practical field in which nineteenth-century European bourgeois sexuality emerged was rooted in an imperial landscape that was shaped in unexamined ways by the politics and language of race.

Amongst a number of post-structural feminists, the distinction between “sex” and “gender” has been the focus of considerable attention. One of the most complex analyses of the distinction comes from Judith Butler, in Gender Trouble (section 3h). She argues that the relationship between gender and culture is not parallel to that between sex and nature but rather, that gender as a discursive element culminates in a belief in a prediscursive, “natural” sex. In other words, gender comes before sex, the latter being retrospectively produced through our understanding of gender.

The concept of “queerness” (see section 3i) has arisen as an expression of resistance to binary categories such as heterosexual/homosexual and dominant/subordinate. Instead, queer theory recognises more complex realities of multiple and shifting positions of sexuality, identity and power. Within the global South, queer theory has critically engaged with the politics of nation (Hayes, 3i) and decolonisation (Bhaskaran, 3i). The question of sexual orientation has been of considerable interest in the global North (e.g. Stein, 3i). The interview by Osborne and Segal with Judith Butler (section 3i) provides a useful introduction to the scope of Butler 's work, given the overlap between her view of herself as a post-structural feminist and the keen uptake of her work in queer theory.

a. African Liberationists

Cabral, A. 1970 National Liberation and Culture Syracuse University Press

Cabral, A. 1973 Return to the Source Africa Information Service

Cabral, A. 1973 Return to the Source: Selected Speeches New York : Monthly Review Press

Cabral, A. 1980 Unity and Struggle London : Heinemann Educational Books

Fanon, F. 1963 The Wretched of the Earth Harmondsworth: Penguin

Fanon, F. 1964 Toward the African Revolution New York : Grove Press

Fanon, F. 1986 Black Skin, White Masks London : Pluto Press

Fanon, F. 1989 Studies in a Dying Colonialism London : Earthscan Publications

b. Feminisms in the Global South

Abeysekera, S. 1999 “Sexuality: A Feminist Issue?” Women in Action , 1, 10-14.

Banerji, R. 1999 “Still on Fire”, Manushi , 113, 18-21.

Cornwall , A. and Welbourne, A. (eds.) 2002 Realizing Rights: Transforming Approaches to Sexual and Reproductive Well-Being London : Zed Books

Correa, S. 1994 Population and Reproductive Rights: Feminist Perspectives from the South London , New Jersey : Zed Books/New Delhi : Kali for Women/DAWN (Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era)

Jayawardena, K. 1995 The White Woman's Other Burden: Western Women and South Asia During British Rule New York : Routledge

Jayawardena, K. and de Alwis, M. (eds.) 1998 Embodied Violence: Communalising Women's Sexuality in South Asia London : Zed Books/New Delhi: Kali for Women

John, M. and Nair, J. (eds.) 2000 A Question of Silence? The Sexual Economies of Modern India London : Zed Books

Kannabiran, K. and Kannabiran, V. 2002 De-Eroticising Assault: Essays on Modesty, Honour and Power Calcutta : STREE

Kempadoo, K. 2001 “Women of Color and the Global Sex Trade: Transnational Feminist Perspectives”, Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism, 1, 2: 28-51.

Kempadoo, K. and Doezema, J. 1998 Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance and Redefinition New York , London : Routledge

Louie, K. 1999 “Sexuality, Masculinity and Politics in Chinese Culture”, Modern Asian Studies , 33, 4: 853-867.

Maltzhan, K. 1995 “Support Work for Prostituted Women”, Women in Action , 1, 67-69.

Mohammed, P. 1995 “Writing Gender into History: The Negotiation of Gender Relations among Indian Men and Women in Post-Indenture Trinidad Society, 1917-1947”, in V. Shepherd, B. Brereton and B. Bailey (eds.) Engendering History: Caribbean Women in Historical Perspective Kingston : Ian Randle/London: James Currey

Mohammed, P. 1991 “Reflections on the Women's Movement in Trinidad : Calypsos, Changes and Sexual Violence”, Feminist Review , 38: 33-47.

Thiruchandran, S. 1997 “Single Women's Sexuality and its Cultural Version”, Nivedini: A Sri Lankan Feminist Journal , 5, 1: 4-14.

Truong, T. 1990 Sex, Money and Morality: Prostitution and Tourism in South East Asia London : Zed Press

Zia, A. 1994 Sex Crime in the Islamic Context: Rape, Class and Gender in Pakistan ASR Publications

c. Diasporic Feminisms in the Global North

Bald, S. 1995 “Coping with Marginality: South Asian Women Migrants in Britain ”, in M. Marchand and J. Parpart (eds.) Feminism/ Postmodernism/ Development London , New York : Routledge

Christian, B. 1990 “The Race for Theory”, in Anzaldua, G. (ed.) Making Face, Making Soul: Haciendo Caras San Francisco : Aunt Lute Foundation Books

Combahee River Collective 1983 “A Black Feminist Statement”, in Morraga, C. and Anzaldua, G. (eds.) This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color 2 nd edition New York : Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press

Lorde, A. 1983 “An Open Letter to Mary Daly”, in Morraga, C. and Anzaldua, G. (eds.) This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color 2 nd edition New York : Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press

Lorde, A. 1990 “I Am Your Sister: Black Women Organising Across Sexualities”, in Anzaldua, G. (ed.) Making Face, Making Soul: Haciendo Caras San Francisco : Aunt Lute Foundation Books

Moghissi, H. 1999 Feminism and Islamic Fundamentalism: The Limits of Postmodern Analysis London : Zed Books

Mohanram, R. 1999 Black Body: Women, Colonialism and Space Minneapolis , London : University of Minnesota Press/Public Worlds, Volume 6

Raissiguier, C. 1995 “The Construction of Marginal Identities: Working-Class Girls of Algerian Descent in a French School ”, in M. Marchand and J. Parpart (eds.) Feminism/Postmodernism/Development London , New York : Routledge

Spivak, G. 1992 “Woman in Difference: Mahasweta Devi's “Douloti the Bountiful””, in A. Parker, M. Russo, D. Sommer and P. Yaeger (eds.) Nationalisms and Sexualities New York, London: Routledge

d. Euro-American feminisms

Daly, M. 1979 Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism London : The Women's Press

Enloe, C. 1993 The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War Berkeley , London : University of California Press

Ferguson , A. 1989 Blood at the Root: Motherhood, Sexuality and Male Dominance London : Pandora Press

Janssen-Jurreit, M. 1982 Sexism: The Male Monopoly on History and Thought (transl. Verne Moberg) London : Pluto Press

Knudsen, C. 1994 The Falling Dawadawa Tree: Female Circumcision in Developing Ghana Hojbjerg: Intervention Press

Millett, K. 1970 Sexual Politics New York : Ballantine

Moi, T. 1985 Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory London , New York : Methuen

Richardson , D. 2000 Rethinking Sexuality London : Sage

Rubin, G. 1984 “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality”, in C. Vance (ed.) Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality Boston : Routledge and Kegan Paul

Segal, L. 1990 Slow Motion: Changing Masculinities, Changing Men London : Virago

Snitow, A., Stansell, C. and Thompson, S. 1983 “Introduction”, in Snitow, A., Stansell, C. and Thompson, S. (eds.) Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality New York: Monthly Review Press

e. Transcontinental organising

Achterberg, A. 1995 “Violence Against Women: Women in Algeria Live in Terror”, in Women's Global Network for Reproductive Rights , 49.

Bhavnani, K., Foran, J. and Kurian, P. (eds.) 2002 Feminist Futures: Re-Imagining Women, Culture and Development London : Zed Press

Cornwall , A. and Welbourne, A. (eds.) 2002 Realizing Rights: Transforming Approaches to Sexual and Reproductive Well-Being London : Zed Books

Correa, S. 2002 “Sexual Rights: Much Has Been Said, Much Remains to be Resolved”. Lecture in the Sexuality, Health and Gender Seminar, Department of Social Sciences, Public Health School, Columbia University, October 2002.

Cuthbert, C. and Slote, K. 1999 Intimate Partner Sexual Abuse: An International Survey and Literature Review Wellesley : Wellesley Centers for Women

Family Care International 1999 Meeting the Cairo Challenge: Progress in Sexual and Reproductive Health New York : Family Care International

Rehn, E. and Johnson Sirleaf, E. 2002 “Progress of the World's Women 2002” Volume 1 Women, War, Peace: The Independent Experts' Assessment on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Women and Women's Role in Peace-building New York: United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM)

Thorbek, S. and Pattanaik, B. (eds.) 2002 Transnational Prostitution: Changing Patterns in a Global Context London : Zed Press

f. Political Economy of Sexuality

Barrett, M. 1980 Women's Oppression Today: Problems in Marxist Feminist Analysis London : Verso

Baxandall, R. 1995 “Marxism and Sexuality: The Body as Battleground”, in Callari, A., Cullenberg, S. and Biewener, C. (eds.) Marxism in the Postmodern Age: Confronting the New World Order New York : Guildford Press

Berkman, A. 1970 Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist New York : Schocken Books

D'Emilio, J. 1997 “Capitalism and Gay Identity”, reprinted in Lancaster , R.N. and di Leonardo, M. (eds.) The Gender/Sexuality Reader New York , London : Routledge (original 1979)

Di Leonardo, M. and Lancaster, R. 1996 “Gender, Sexuality, Political Economy”, New Politics , 6, 1: 21 .

Falk, C. 1990 Love, Anarchy and Emma Goldman New Brunswick , NJ: Rutgers University Press

Goldman, E. 1986 Living My Life (2 volumes) London : Pluto Press

Kollontai, A. 1927 Red Love New York : Seven Arts Publishing Company (Transcribed in 1998 by slr@marx.org ) http://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/works/r100.htm

Kollontai, A. 1971 The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman Translated by Salvator Attansio Herder & Herder (first published in 1926) http://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/works/bio.htm

Kollontai, A. 1977 “The Social Basis of the Woman Question”, in Selected Writings of Alexandra Kollontai Allison & Busby (first published 1909 as a pamphlet) Translated and edited by Alix Holt http://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/works/1909/social-basis.htm

Kollontai, A. 1977 “Sexual Relations and the Class Struggle”, in Selected Writings of Alexandra Kollontai Allison & Busby (written 1921) Translated by Alix Holt http://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/works/1921/sex-class-struggle.htm

Kollontai, A. 1977 “Prostitution and Ways of Fighting it”, in Selected Writings of Alexandra Kollontai Allison & Busby (Speech by Alexandra Kollontai to the third all-Russion conference of heads of the Regional Women's Departments, 1921) Translated by Alix Holt http://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/works/1909/social-basis.htm

Rubin, G. 1975 “The Traffic in Women”, in R. Reiter (ed.) Toward an Anthropology of Women New York : Monthly Review Press

g. Freud

Freud, S. 1977 On Sexuality The Pelican Freud Library Vol. 7

Freud, S. 1991 On Sexuality: Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality and Other Works London : Penguin Books

h. Post-structuralism

Butler , J. 1990 Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity Routledge: London , New York

Butler , J. 1993 Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” London , New York : Routledge

Foucault, M. 1990 (Translated from French by Robert Hurley) The History of Sexuality Vol. 1: An Introduction New York : Vintage Books

Foucault, M. 1990 (Translated from French by Robert Hurley) The History of Sexuality Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure New York : Vintage Books

Hollway, W. 1996 “Recognition and Heterosexual Desire”, in D. Richardson (ed.) Theorising Heterosexuality Milton Keynes : Open University Press

Irigiray, L. 1985 This Sex Which is Not One New York : Cornell University Press

Stoler, A. 1995 Race and the Education of Desire Durham , London : Duke University Press

Weedon, C. 1987 Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory Oxford : Basil Blackwell

Weeks, J. 1985 Sexuality and its Discontents – Meanings, Myths and Modern Sexualities London : Routledge and Kegan Paul

i. Queer theory

Bhaskaran, S. 2004 Made in India : Decolonizations, Queer Sexualities, Trans/national Projects Palgrave Macmillan (forthcoming November 2004)

Hayes, J. 2000 Queer Nations: Marginal Sexualities in the Maghreb University of Chicago Press

Osborne, O. and Segal, L. 1994 “Gender as Performance: An Interview with Judith Butler”, Radical Philosophy , 67: 32-39.

Stein, E. 1999 The MisMeasure of Desire: The Science, Theory and Ethics of Sexual Orientation Oxford : Oxford University Press

4. Research methodologies

Robert Connell (1994) discusses the absence of bodies from social analysis, and from mainstream as well as more radical theoretical frameworks (sociobiology and social constructionist approaches, respectively) that aim to reintegrate the body and gender. He argues that neither of these frameworks is adequate, opting instead for a theoretical position in which bodies are seen as sharing in social agency, by generating and shaping courses of social conduct. Connell's earlier work (1987) points to the social relations of gender as a starting point for analysis; such relations are central in structuring the ways in which the plurality of bodies are organised.

The important point that research methodologies cannot be partitioned from ideological orientations is made, in differing ways, by Goldstein and Manlowe's edited collection on the gender politics of HIV/AIDS in women in the USA , and by Carole Vance's chapter on “Gender Systems, Ideology and Research”. Bullough's Science in the Bedroom provides a useful historical overview of “sex research”, including examples of some of the more reductive quantitative tendencies that it would be advisable to avoid. Such approaches may be interestingly juxtaposed to Ken Plummer's Telling Sexual Stories , which exemplify more accessible and qualitative modes of engaging in research on sexuality.

Wendy Hollway's and Tony Jefferson's article on “Eliciting Narrative Through the In-depth Interview”, whilst not specifically on sexuality, could nevertheless be utilised for engaging with the question of methodology in research on sexuality. Focus group discussions have often been championed as a method of choice for eliciting discussion among participants on issues of sexuality. Kamran Ali, however, writes about going beyond focus groups to engage in informal discussions and a free exchange of views with his rural and urban informant-friends. This allowed him to develop a more contextualised understanding of men's decisions about contraceptive use.

Kendall discusses research methods and ethics in relation to her research on Zulu traditional healers, Izangoma . Specifically, she raises questions about her own positioning as a white scholar from the United States working with a cohort of research students, only a minority of whom were Zulu. The group were, on request, observing, interviewing and writing about a ritual performance. The latter was designed to re-invent aspects of Zulu tradition that had been overshadowed by colonisation and Christianity. This it did by providing a showcase for teenage girls, in particular, to perform “traditional” song and dance, and by attempting to restore what was believed to be ancient Zulu respect for virginity.

The references cited below tend to foreground methodological considerations. However, they are not the only references cited in this bibliography that have implications for methodology in research on sexuality. Each of the other bibliographic sections refers to texts that may be useful in this regard, depending on the thematic focus of the research.

Ali, K. 1996 “Notes on Rethinking Masculinities”, in Zeidenstein, S. and Moore, K. (eds.) Learning About Sexuality: A Practical Beginning New York : The Population Council/International Women's Health Coalition

Bullough, V. 1994 Science in the Bedroom: A History of Sex Research New York : BasicBooks

Connell, R. 1987 Gender and Power: Society, the Person and Sexual Politics Stanford: Stanford University Press

Connell, R. 1994 “Bodies and Genders”, Agenda , 23: 7-18.

Goldstein, N. and Manlowe, J. (eds.) 1997 The Gender Politics of HIV/AIDS in Women: Perspectives on the Pandemic in the United States New York , London : New York University Press

Hollway, W. and Jefferson, T. 1997 “Eliciting Narrative Through the In-Depth Interview”, Qualitative Inquiry , 3, 1: 53 -70.

Kendall (n.d.) “The Role of Izangoma (Traditional Healers) in Bringing the Zulu Goddess Back to Her People” http://www.unp.ac.za/UNPDepartments/politics/gender/kendall2.htm

Plummer, K. 1995 Telling Sexual Stories: Power, Change and Social Worlds London , New York : Routledge

Ross, E. and Rapp, R. 1997 “Sex and Society: A Research Note from Social History and Anthropology”, in R. Lancaster and M. di Leonardo (eds.) The Sexuality Reader: Culture, History, Political Economy New York , London : Routledge

Vance, C. 1983 “Gender Systems, Ideology and Research”, in Snitow, A., Stansell, C. and Thompson, S. (eds.) Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality New York : Monthly Review Press

Zeidenstein, S. and Moore, K. 1996 (eds.) Learning About Sexuality: A Practical Beginning New York : The Population Council/International Women's Health Coalition

5. Understanding constructions of sexuality

Foucault's conception of sexuality (see section 5e), not as an innate or “natural” aspect of the body but rather the effect of historically specific power relations, provides a useful analytical framework for explaining how women's experience is diminished and controlled within certain culturally shaped notions of female sexuality. Moreover, Foucault's idea that the body is produced through power and is thus a cultural, rather than a “natural” entity, supports a critique of essentialism.

Key absences in Foucault's work, namely, the history of empire and the construction of race, are brought to the fore by Ann Stoler's (section 5b) critique. Stoler suggests that the production and distribution of desires in the 19 th century European discourse on sexuality was filtered through an earlier set of discourses and practices that were prominent in imperial technologies of rule. Amina Mama's (section 5b) discussion of imperial culture highlights the sexual politics of European culture in which the despised Other became a receptacle for the repressed sexuality of Europeans. This, she points out, explains the consistent rendition of African men and women as hypersexual.

A number of essays provide analyses of changing constructions of sexuality across time, grounded in historical materialism and politics. Anne Mager (section 5b) argues that in the decade following the second world war, the increasing marital instability and violence against African women were the outcome of complex social changes in South Africa . These were changes in which African men were desperately trying to reassert patriarchal domination. Men's valuation of women was also shifting: from being previously valued for their fertility, women were now viewed as objects of sexual gratification. Jane Parpart (section 5b) examines women's resistance to the use of urban African courts and new “customary” laws redefining sexuality in terms of patriarchal power. These processes occurred in the context of male rural elders' loosening control of women's productive and reproductive labour. Agnes Runganga and Peter Aggleton (section 5c) show how changes in the political economy of Zimbabwe over the last 100 years or so, have changed dominant meanings of sexuality among indigenous people. New meanings have permeated existing systems, profoundly changing elements of more traditional sexual culture.

Differences in the legitimacy of members of particular groups engaging in sexual activity are also constructed, as are the activities themselves in the context of hierarchical constructions of “appropriate” sexuality. Children are a prime example of a social category whose sexuality is more likely to be proscribed than not. Sylvia Tamale (section 5d) argues against the use of standardised regulatory mechanisms, such as the “age of consent”, to determine the boundaries of legitimate sexual activity. Zachie Achmat (section 5d) destabilises the received view of sexual activity amongst adults and adolescents. From another perspective, practices that adults call “sex”, may not be categorised as such by street children, as Rakesh Rajani and Mustafa Kudrati demonstrate (section 5d). Elaine Salo (section 5d) highlights the tensions that adolescents in Manenberg in the late 1990s experience in their navigation of co-existing and divergent meanings of sexuality and personhood – those emanating from the dominant local moral economy and newer, more cosmopolitan ideas.

Conflicts around the sexuality of young people and the pregnancies of young unmarried women have been analysed by Heike Becker (section 5e), in her historical perspective on customary law and power relations. Tejaswini Niranjana (section 5e) contrasts the formation of the “Indian” in the subaltern diaspora – Trinidad – with the hegemonic construction of “Indians” in India . She analyses two distinct historical moments that each foreground the question of female sexuality – the early 20 th century campaign against indenture by nationalists in India , and a contemporary controversy around East Indian women and popular music in Trinidad . Bruce Dunne's (section 5e) discussion of power and sexuality in the Middle East highlights the way in which sexual relations, whether heterosexual or homosexual, are understood as relations of power that are linked to rigid gender ascriptions. Men who are dominant in sexual relations with other men are not considered homosexual; more threatening to the sexual order would be the suggestion of equality in sexual relations, whether heterosexual or homosexual.

Haideh Moghissi (section 5e) points to the conception of women in Muslim societies as weak in moral judgement and deficient in cognitive capacity, yet sexually forceful and irresistibly seductive. Women's susceptibility to corruption, in this view, underlies the obsession with sexual purity in the Middle East and hence the surveillance of women by family, community and state. At the same time, the relative variations in religious and political traditions, from Indonesia and Malaysia to Morocco , indicate that Islamic traditions and values may accommodate local cultural practices and processes of social and economic development. Nawal El Saadawi (section 5e) refers to the use of religion as an instrument by political and economic forces, and those who rule to keep down those who are ruled. She points out how, in any society, it is not possible to separate religion from politics, and politics from sex.

Prostitution in Thailand is the focus of Thanh-Dam Truong (section 5f) study. She begins from the perspective of the political economy of women's labour, sexuality and tourism, in contrast to the prevailing conception of prostitution as a manifestation of promiscuity and crime. Truong argues that the thriving sex industry is in large part due to the contradiction between recognition and denial of particular aspects of prostitution: recognition of prostitutes as criminals, but not clients, pimps or brothel owners; the silencing of economic policy and international relations; and the ethics of business and sexual conduct as bases for prostitution. The transcontinental character of trafficking in women, and its African dimensions, are outlined by Patience Elabor-Idemudia (section 5f). At another level, transcontinental sex tours via the Internet are increasingly being promoted, as Donna Hughes (section 5f) points out.

a. Pre-colonial

Akyeampong, E. 1997 “Sexuality and Prostitution among the Akan of the Gold Coast c.1650-1950”, Past and Present: A Journal of Historical Studies , 156, 144-173.

Becker, H. 2000 “A Concise History of Gender, ‘Tradition' and the State in Namibia ”, in C. Keulder (ed.) State, Society and Democracy: A Reader in Namibian Politics Windhoek : Gamsberg MacMillan

Mernissi. F. 1993 Hidden From History: Forgotten Queens of Islam (translated by M.J. Lakeland) Cambridge : Polity Press/Blackwell Publishers

Rowson, E. 1991 “The Categorisation of Gender and Sexual Irregularity in Medieval Arabic Vice Lists”, in J. Epstein and K. Straub (eds.) Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity New York : Routledge

Smith, M.F. 1981 Baba of Karo: A Woman of the Muslim Hausa New Haven, London : Yale University Press

b. Colonial

Abrahams, Y. 2000 “Colonialism, Dysfunction and Dysjuncture: The Historiography of Sarah Bartmann”, PhD thesis, University of Cape Town

Boswell, B. 2003 “Conversation with Yaba Badoe”, Feminist Africa , 2: 80-87.

Dunne, B. 1994 “French Regulation of Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century Colonial Algeria ”, Arab Studies Journal , 2, 1: 24 -30.

Jackson, L. 2002 “‘When in the White Man's Town': Zimbabwean Women Remember Chibeura”, in J. Allman, S. Geiger and N. Musisi (eds.) Women in African Colonial Histories Bloomington

Kanogo, T. 1987 Squatters and the Roots of Mau Mau 1905-63 London : James Currey/Nairobi: Heinemann Kenya

Mager, A. 1996 “Sexuality, Fertility and Male Power” Agenda , 28: 12-24.

Maloka, T. 1997 “'Khomo Lia Oela!' Canteens, Brothels and Labour Migrancy in Colonial Lesotho , 1900-1940”, Journal of African History , 38.

Mama, A. 1997 “Shedding the Masks and Tearing the Veils: Cultural Studies for a Post-Colonial Africa ”, in A. Imam, A. Mama and F. Sow (eds.) Engendering African Social Sciences Dakar : CODESRIA

Mann, K. 1985 Marrying Well: Marriage, Status and Social Change Among the Educated Elite in Colonial Lagos Cambridge : Cambridge University Press

McClintock, A. 1994 Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Conquest New York : Routledge

Musisi, N. 2001 “Gender and the Cultural Construction of “Bad Women” in the Development of Kampala-Kibuga, 1900-1962”, in D. Hodgson and S. McCurdy (eds.) “Wicked” Women and the Reconfiguration of Gender in Africa Portsmouth , NH : Heinemann/Oxford: James Currey/Cape Town: David Philip

Pape, J. 1990 “Black and White: The ‘Perils of Sex' in Colonial Zimbabwe ”, Journal of Southern African Studies , 16, 4: 699-720.

Parpart, J. 1986 “Sexuality and Power on the Zambian Copperbelt, 1926-1964” Working Papers in African Studies No. 120, African Studies Centre, Boston University

Ranger, T. 1989 “The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa ”, in E. Hobsbaum and T. Ranger (eds.) The Invention of Tradition Cambridge : Cambridge University Press

Stoler, A. 1995 Race and the Education of Desire Durham , London : Duke University Press

Tashjian, V. and Allman, J. 2002 “Marrying and Marriage on a Shifting Terrain: Reconfiguration of Power and Authority in Early Colonial Asante”, in J. Allman, S. Geiger and N. Musisi (eds.) Women in African Colonial Histories Bloomington

Vaughan , M. 1991 Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness Cambridge : Polity Press

c. Postcolonial

Afary, J. 1997 “The War Against Feminism in the Name of the Almighty: Making Sense of Gender and Muslim Fundamentalism”, New Left Review , 224, 89-110.

Ahlberg, B. 1994 “Is There a Distinct African Sexuality? A Critical Response to Caldwell et al.” Africa , 64, 2: 220-242.

Dirusweit, T. 1998 “Sexuality and Space: Sexual Identity in South African Mine Compounds and Prisons”, Development Update , 2, 2: 107-112.

Dunbar , M. 2001 “Black Migrant Mine Labourers and the Vicissitudes of Male Desire”, in R. Morrell (ed.) Changing Men in Southern Africa Pietermaritzurg: University of Natal Press

Elder, G. 2003 Hostels, Sexuality and the Apartheid Legacy: Malevolent Geographies Ohio : Ohio University Press

Glaser, C. 1992 “ The Mark of Zorro: Sexuality and Gender Relations in the Tsotsi Subculture on the Witwatersrand ”, African Studies , 51, 1:47 -67.

Hodgson, D. and McCurdy, S. (eds.) 2001 “Wicked” Women and the Reconfiguration of Gender in Africa Portsmouth , NH : Heinemann, Oxford : James Currey, Cape Town : David Philip

Madutjok, J. 1999 “Militarisation and Gender Violence in South Sudan ”, Journal of Asian and African Studies , 34, 4: 427-442.

Murray, S. and Roscoe, W. (eds.) 1998 Boy-Wives and Female-Husbands: Studies of African Homosexualities Bloomsburg: Macmillan Press

Runganga, A. and Aggleton, P. 1998 “Migration, the Family and the Transformation of a Sexual Culture”, Sexualities , 1, 1: 63-81.

Vogelman, L. 1990 The Sexual Face of Violence: Rapists on Rape Johannesburg : Ravan

Weeks, J. 1991 “The Body and Sexuality”, in The Polity Reader in Gender Studies Cambridge : Polity Press

Zack, N. (ed.) 1997 Race/Sex: Their Sameness, Difference and Interplay New York : Routledge

d. Sexuality in Children and Adolescents

Achmat, Z. 1990 “My Childhood as an Adult Molester”, in M. Gevisser and E. Cameron (eds.) Defiant Desire: Gay and Lesbian Lives in South Africa Johannesburg : Raven Press

Bohmer, L. and Kirumba, E. 2000 “Socio-economic Context and the Sexual Behaviour of Ugandan Out of School Youth”, Culture, Health and Sexuality , 2, 3: 269-285.

Fredman, L. and Potgieter, C. 1996 “Sexuality Too Narrow to Fit?” Agenda , 28: 48-53.

Rajani, R. and Kudrati, M. 1996 “The Varieties of Sexual Experience of the Street Children of Mwanza , Tanzania ”, in Zeidenstein, S. and Moore, K. (eds.) Learning About Sexuality: A Practical Beginning New York : The Population Council/International Women's Health Coalition

Salo, E. 2002 “Condoms are for Spares, Not the Besties: Negotiating Adolescent Sexuality in Post-apartheid Manenberg”, Society in Transition , 33, 3: 403-419.

Tamale, S. 2001 “How Old is Old Enough?: Defilement Law and the Age of Consent in Uganda ”, East African Journal of Peace & Human Rights , 7, 1: 82-100.

e. Culture, Tradition, Religion, Nation

Asante , K. 1994 “Images of Women in African Dance: Sexuality and Sensuality”, Sage , 8: 16 -19.

Becker, H. 1996 “Shikumbu!' Premarital Female Sexuality and Customary Law in Northern Namibia ” South African and Contemporary History Seminar, 1 st October 1996 , Department of History and Institute for Historical Research, University of Western Cape

Dunne, B. 1998 “Power and Sexuality in the Middle East ”, Middle East Report, 206, 28, 1. http://www.merip.org/mer/mer206/bruce.htm

Ekpo, V.I. 1995 “Traditional Symbolism of the Women's War of 1929”, in P.Dike (ed.) The Women's Revolt of 1929: Proceedings of a National Symposium to Mark the 60 th Anniversary of the Women's Uprising in South Eastern Nigeria Lagos: Nelag & Co. Ltd.

El Saadawi, N. 1980 The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World London : Zed Press

Fanusi, L. 1992 “Sexuality and Women in African Culture”, in M. Oduyoye and M. Kanyoro The Will to Rise: Women, Tradition and the Church in Africa New York : Orbis Books

Farah, N. 1970 From A Crooked Rib London : Penguin Books

Foucault, M. 1990 (Translated from French by Robert Hurley) The History of Sexuality Vol. 1: An Introduction New York : Vintage Books

Lalloo, S. 2000 “Hindu Women and Sexuality”, African Gender Institute Newsletter , 7.

Mack, B. and Boyd, J. 2000 One Woman's Jihad: Nana Asma'u, Scholar and Scribe Bloomington , Indianopolis: Indiana University Press

Moghissi, H. 1999 Feminism and Islamic Fundamentalism: The Limits of Postmodern Analysis London : Zed Books

Niranjana, T. 1997 ““Left to the Imagination”: Indian Nationalisms and Female Sexuality in Trinidad ” South African and Contemporary History Seminar, 23 rd May 1997 , Department of History and Institute for Historical Research, University of Western Cape

Salo, E. 2003 “Negotiating Gender and Personhood in the New South Africa ”, Cultural Studies , 6, 3: 345 365.

Shaarawi, H. 1998 Harem Years: The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist Cairo : The American University in Cairo Press

Steegstra, M. 2002 “‘A Mighty Obstacle to the Gospel': Basel Missionaries, Krobo Women and Conflicting Ideas of Gender and Sexuality” Journal of Religion in Africa , 32, 2: 200-230.

Women and Law Project - Sudan 1999 Women and Law in Sudan : Customary Laws of Indigenous Groups and Islamisation Women and Law Project – Sudan

f. Sexual Economies, Sex Trade

Dirasse, L. 1991 The Commoditisation of Female Sexuality: Prostitution and Socio-Economic Relations in Addis Ababa , Ethiopia New York : NYAMS Press

Elabor-Idemudia, P. 2003 “Migration, Trafficking and the African Woman”, Agenda , 58, 101-115.

Holmes, R. 1994 “Selling Sex for a Living”, Agenda , 23: 36 -48.

Hughes, D. 1996 “Sex Tours via the Internet”, Agenda , 28: 71-76.

Kempadoo, K. 2001 “Women of Color and the Global Sex Trade: Transnational Feminist Perspectives”, Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism, 1, 2: 28-51.

Kempadoo, K. and Doezema, J. 1998 Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance and Redefinition New York , London : Routledge

Leggett, T. 2002 Rainbow Vice: The Drugs and Sex Industries in the New South Africa London : Zed Books

McClintock, A. 1991 “The Scandal of Whorearchy: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi ”, Transition , 51: 104-123.

Schoepf, B. 1991 “Political Economy, Sex and Cultural Logics: A View from Zaire ”, African Urban Quarterly , 6, 1/2: 94-106.

Truong, T. 1990 Sex, Money and Morality: Prostitution and Tourism in South East Asia London : Zed Press

White, L. 1990 The Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi Chicago , London : University of Chicago Press

6. Subjectivity, the unconscious and desire

The second and third volumes in Foucault's The History of Sexuality, unlike volume one of the trilogy, go some way towards elaborating a notion of the self through Foucault's discussion of technologies of subjectification. These are practices and techniques through which individuals actively shape their own identities.

Robert Young points to sexual exchange as the dominant paradigm through which colonialism was conceived, highlighting the intimate connection of racism with sexuality and desire. In Beyond the Masks , Amina Mama theorises the processes by which subjectivities are constructed, first by deconstructing the black subject construed in racist terms by academic psychology and then by addressing the construction of specific historically racialised, post-colonial black subjectivities.

The dualism between reason and desire that is central to modern Western thought was not a feature of migrant men's sexual relationships, whether with young men in the mine compounds or town women. This is a central thesis of Dunbar Moodie's analysis of the economy of African male desire on the mines. The making of young black professional men in South Africa is the subject of Kopano Ratele's chapter, focusing on the intersection of race, class and heterosexual masculinity in the formation of men's subjectivities. Tony Jefferson's examination of the links between the highly visible, external world of social power associated with hegemonic masculinities, and the internal world of men's psychic vulnerability allows us to make sense of the actual difficulties men experience in relating to hegemonic masculinities and the response or resistance to these evident in the emergence of new masculinities.

Foucault, M. 1990 (Translated from French by Robert Hurley) The History of Sexuality Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure New York : Vintage Books

Foucault, M. 1988 (Translated from French by Robert Hurley) The History of Sexuality Vol. 3: The Care of the Self New York : Vintage Books

Jefferson, T. 1994 “Theorising Masculine Subjectivity”, in T. Newburn and E. Stanko (eds.) Just Boys Doing Business? Men, Masculinities and Crime London : Routledge

Mama, A. 1995 Beyond the Masks: Race, Gender and Subjectivity London , New York : Routledge

Moodie, T. 2001 “Black Migrant Mine Labourers and the Vicissitudes of Male Desire”, in R. Morrell (ed.) Changing Men in Southern Africa Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press/London, New York : Zed Books

Ratele, K. 2001 “Between ‘Ouens': Everyday Makings of Black Masculinity”, in R. Morrell (ed.) Changing Men in Southern Africa Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press/London, New York : Zed Books

Sayers, J. 1986 Sexual Contradictions: Psychology, Psychoanalysis and Feminism London : Tavistock Publications

Young, R. 1995 Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race London , New York : Routledge

7. Compulsory heterosexuality/heteronormativity

Lisa Lindsay's and Stephan Miescher's edited collection, Men and Masculinities in Modern Africa (section 7a) addresses the construction of masculinities during the socio-economic and cultural transformations of the colonial and postcolonial periods. These changes were such that Nigerian railway men in the colonial era were able to strategically deploy gendered arguments with British administrators to win material benefits, even when those arguments did not necessarily reflect their lives and values, as Lindsay (section 7a) suggests.

The contributions to Men and Masculinities in Modern Africa combine empirical research on African history with theoretical attention to the construction and maintenance of gender relations and identities. In the introduction, the editors contest Connell's (section 7a) argument that, at any given time, one particular form of masculinity is culturally exalted, arguing instead that in colonial Africa, it was not always clear which notions of masculinity were dominant. Colonial ideologies had limited power and the social flux created by new opportunities and constraints meant that there was a multiplicity of competing masculinities.

Kopano Ratele (section 7a) grapples with Fanon's question of whether the sexual superiority of black people is real, whilst asking also whether this is an issue worth serious attention. He addresses these questions using discursive psychological understandings of how individuals' practices and identities are produced in a racist society such as South Africa, and how these practices and identities are related to racialised masculine heterosexual desire. With regard to male homosexual identity in South Africa , Ronald Louw (section 7a) registers the point that constructions of masculinity in South Africa have been produced within the context of neo-colonialism, capitalist development and racial domination. Homophobia, whilst not all pervading or uniform, often prevented the emergence of alternative masculinities.

Maleness characterised by potency is a key feature of many African cultures, Bawa Yamba (section 7a) argues. Men practice at being men, a process which necessitates frequent sexual contact with women in order to maintain the characteristics of masculinity. The belief that retaining one's semen is harmful has implications for how men rid themselves of it. Yamba points that this construction of masculinity often has harmful consequences for women. In the context of masculinity in Egyptian men, Kamran Ali (section 7a) shows how men's preoccupation with their spouses' orgasmic pleasure is an important element in the construction of masculinity. This construction operates against the backdrop of the popular Muslim belief system of sexual relations being important not only for procreation but as a source of enjoyment for women as well as men.

Anne Mager (section 7a) draws attention to the ways in which organisations of Xhosa-speaking young men and boys were key spaces for the construction of masculinities in rural Ciskei and Transkei , during the 1950s and 1960s. Given the absence of migrant fathers, boys and young men constructed their masculine identities more on the basis of inter-group rivalry, aggressive behaviour and control over girls than intergenerational conflict.

The denial of rights to gays and lesbians is marked by inconsistencies, empirical errors and irrationalities, as Marc Epprecht (section 7b) demonstrates. He points out that the very vehemence of homophobia poses the question of why the power of the state, and mob violence, are required to enforce heterosexual masculinity. More fundamentally, he poses the question of what kind of relationship exists between homophobia and male dominance, suggesting that this relationship is at the heart of the intolerance of sexual diversity, the persistence of gender inequity and the “feminisation” of poverty. Organised action against homophobia spurred the adoption of the Johannesburg Statement on Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Human Rights (section 7b), in February 2004. The statement was formulated and adopted by a meeting of African lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender organisations, comprised of fifty-five participants from twenty-two groups in sixteen African countries across the continent.

Liz Frank (section 7b) challenges President Sam Nujoma's condemnation of homosexuals in his address to the SWAPO Women's Council Congress, in December 1996. Women's reactions against the homophobia expressed in the President's speech, illustrate the diverse grounds for solidarity with homosexuals. Women's arguments included opposing discrimination against homosexuals as a defence of human rights; observing the constitutional prohibition of discrimination on the basis of sex, which includes sexuality; resisting the homophobia of black men who believed that they controlled everything, including women; fighting against the scapegoating of marginalized groups by those in positions of power; and opposing the dominance of heterosexuality in sexual relations and lifestyles.

Following her defence of the rights of homosexuals as members of marginalized social groups in Uganda , Sylvia Tamale (section 7b) experienced virulent homophobic attacks. She reflects on the contestations and discourses surrounding homosexuality in Uganda , highlighting issues of gender, power and identity. Homosexuality, she argues, presents a fundamental challenge to the masculine basis of power entrenched in sexual relations, thus destabilising the core of the heterosexist social order.

Justifying homophobia on the basis of cultural authenticity is a common strategy. Scott Long (section 7b) examines the dynamics of the Queen Boat trial in Cairo , where dozens of gay men were arrested and charged with “debauchery”, and with forming a blasphemous cult. Observing that across the world, sexuality has become a battleground where “rights talk” is set against “culture talk”, Long unravels the political motivations for the crackdown, the history of the legal regime underlying “authentic” tradition and the shifting social understandings of male sexuality in Egypt .

a. Masculinities

Ali, K. 1996 “Notes on Rethinking Masculinities”, in Zeidenstein, S. and Moore, K. (eds.) Learning About Sexuality: A Practical Beginning New York : The Population Council/International Women's Health Coalition

Collinson, D. and Hearn, J. 1994 “Naming Men as Men: Implications for Work, Organisation and Management”, Gender, Work and Organisation , 1, 1: 2-22.

Connell, R. 1995 Masculinities Cambridge : Polity

Friedman, D. 2001 A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis London : Penguin

Kandiyoti, D. 1994 “The Paradoxes of Masculinity: Some Thoughts on Segregated Societies”, in A. Cornwall and N. Lindisfarne (eds.) Dislocating Masculinity: Comparative Ethnographies London , New York : Routledge

Kimmel, M. (ed.) 1987 Changing Men: New Directions in Research on Men and Masculinity Beverly Hills : Sage

Lindsay, L. 1998 “'No Need … to Think of Home?' Masculinity, and Domestic Life on the Nigerian Railway, c.1940-61”, Journal of African History , 39, 439-446.

Lindsay, L. and Miescher, S. (eds.) 2003 Men and Masculinities in Modern Africa Westport , CT : Heinemann

Louw, R. 2001 “Mkhumbane and New Traditions of (Un)African Same-Sex Weddings”, in R. Morrell (ed.) Changing Men in Southern Africa Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press/London, New York : Zed Books

Mager, A. 1998 “Youth Organisations and the Construction of Masculine Identities in the Ciskei and Transkei ”, Journal of Southern African Studies , 24, 4: 653-667.

Mager, A. and Blake, M. 2001 Masculinities: In the Making of Gendered Identities A Getnet Guidebook for Trainers Gender Education and Training Network (GETNET), Cape Town

Ratele, K. 2004 “Kinky Politics”, in Arnfred, S. (ed.) Rethinking Sexualities in Africa Uppsala : Nordic Africa Institute

Shefer, T. and Ruiters, K. 1998 “The Masculine Construct in Heterosex”, Agenda , 27, 39-45.

Shire, C. 1999 “Men Don't Go to the Moon: Language, Space and Masculinities in Zimbabwe ”, in A. Cornwall and N. Lindisfarne (eds.) Dislocating Masculinities: Comparative Ethnographies London : Routledge

Yamba, B. 2004 “The Wailing Song of Male Sexuality: A Valedictory Note on African Masculinity, Sexuality and Maleness in the Times of AIDS”. Paper presented at the Nordic Africa Days, organised by the Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala , 5-7 October 2001.

b. Homophobia

Epprecht, M. 1996 “Culture, History and Homophobia”, Southern Review , 9, 6: 33 -38.

Frank, L. 1999 “Human Rights are Indivisible”, Sister Namibia , 9: 4-8. http://www.hrw.org/lgbt/pdf/joburg_statement021304.htm

Long, S. 2004 “The Trials of Culture, Sex and Security in Egypt ”, Middle East Report, 230. http://www.merip.org/mer/mer230/230_long.html

Tamale, S. 2003 “Out of the Closet: Unveiling Sexuality Discourses in Uganda ”, Feminist Africa , 2: 42 -49.

The Johannesburg Statement on Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Human Rights

Yuzgun, A. 1993 “Homosexuality and Police Terror in Turkey ”, Journal of Homosexuality , 24, 3&4, 159-169.

8. Transgressive sexualities

This section addresses a range of sites of sexualities that are either constructed as transgressive by the dominant sexual order, or that are transgressive, from the perspective of feminist politics, within the dominant sexual order. The sites include male heterosexuality; female heterosexuality; same-sex relations, identities and practices in women; and the same in men; intersex; and trans-sexuality. The character of the “transgression” differs in each of these sites. Section 8c, on “Same-sex relations, identities and practices in women and men”, comprises references that address female and male homosexuality within the same text. Where texts address female and male homosexuality separately, they are listed separately (sections 8d and 8e, respectively).

Nuruddin Farah's novel Secrets , published by Penguin in 1998, does not fit any of the above categorisations, addressing as it does a range of trangressive forms of sexuality in the same text. The novel portrays the story of Somalia 's violent history of civil war, clan hatred and social and cultural disintegration, refracted through the prism of the protagonist Kalaman's quest for knowledge of his paternity. The breakdown of cultural taboos across a range of spheres is manifested in the range of transgressive sexual practices alluded to – menstruation-drinking, masturbation, homosexuality, bisexuality, voyeurism, paedophilia, and bestiality. Kalaman's final discovery that he is the result of a gang rape committed by members of a rival clan, points to the power of secrets not only to destabilize at the psychic level but also at the level of the nation.

The literature on male heterosexuality as a site of transgression seems to be most developed in the South African context. The ways in which “normal” male heterosexuality transgresses against women has already been referred to in the work on sexual relations (section 1b). These include the texts by Tammy Shefer and others, Christine Varga and Lindiwe Makubalo, Katherine Wood and Rachel Jewkes (in section 8a). The literature on masculinities (section 7a) is also relevant, including Anne Mager's (see section 8a) analysis of the construction of male youth identities in rural Ciskei and Transkei . Court evidence suggested that in some organisations, being masculine was synonymous with asserting male control over females in violent ways. Kopano Ratele (section 8a) focuses on the significance of racialised sexuality in the context of apartheid: the production of sexual desire and pleasure take place in a culture defined and fetishised by race. Ratele uses the phrase “kinky politics” to refer to racial perversion: personal and institutional practices, politics and cultures that naturalise difference, in this case, racialised difference.

Moolman (section 8a) argues that for coloured gang members in the Western Cape , the meanings of rape are intimately intertwined with the formation of a racially and economically subordinated masculinity in South Africa . Whilst Moolman concurs with feminist explanations of rape as ultimately an expression of control over women, she goes further to state that gang rape is also about communication among men in a process of claiming heterosexual male identity. Furthermore, some of the prevailing values of hegemonic masculinity, such as control, sexual performance, violence, achievement and competition, are inherent in the act of gang rape. Yvonne Vera's novel The Stone Virgins (section 8a) explores the ways in which male sexuality becomes depraved after the atrocities of war. Unable to feel any longer, the male protagonist, Sibaso, repeatedly rapes and kills in an effort to recapture the experience of transcendence associated with sexual ecstasy.

Female heterosexuality in Southern Africa has, since colonialism, been radically differentiated on the basis of race. The Introduction to Women Writing Africa: The Southern Region (section 8b) points out that the differential value accorded to white and black women's bodies meant that the rights of black women regarding sexual reproduction, health and their legal status were ignored, if not violated. Megan Vaughan (section 8b) traces the points at which African women's sexuality became the focus of shared attention and pathologising on the part of colonial medics, administrators and African male elders. For the colonialists, control over African women's sexuality symbolised control over society at large. For traditional African authorities, regaining control over women's sexuality was only to be welcomed, given the weakening of pre-existing controls in the wake of changes introduced by colonialism.

Heterosexual women may be transgressed against by their spouses, as was the case for Karugaba, interviewed by Lillian Tibatemwa-Ekirikubinza in Women's Violent Crime in Uganda (section 8b). Karugaba killed her husband who had subjected her to continual abuse and humiliation. She was vilified, however, for even mentioning that one of the several forms of abuse that she suffered at his hands was sexual deprivation. In Nawal El Saadawi's Woman at Point Zero (section 8b), Firdaus is sentenced to death for her killing of a pimp in a street in Cairo . Her response to a life of oppression is considered transgressive, not the conditions giving rise to the violations that she has suffered.

Brigitte Bagnol (section 8c) examines sexual orientation in two Mozambican provinces, distinguishing “affective-sexual orientation” (or sexual attraction) from gender identity and sexual behaviour. She highlights the need to develop a theoretical framework that is grounded in the Mozambican situation and appropriate to its specificities. The rights of men and women to choice in affective-sexual orientation, and the social, cultural and legal recognition of minorities are also stressed. Herdt's edited collection, Third Sex, Third Gender (section 8c) analyses the intersection of sexuality with politics and economy, in a manner that may be contrasted with the more anthropological treatment of same sex relations in Murray and Roscoe's edited collection, Boy-Wives and Female-Husbands (section 8c). Margrete Aarmo (section 8c) contextualises the positioning of lesbians and gays in Zimbabwe within the context of nationalism. She focuses on the discourse used by the ruling party in its effort to reinforce a national identity that is constructed by recourse to culture.

The idea that lesbians (and gays) are “unAfrican” is used by many differing regimes to exclude sexual minorities from legitimate membership of the nation. This claim is strongly contested by the article on “Black lesbians speaking out” (section 8d). The absurdities of efforts by members of the Namibian regime to eliminate gays and lesbians from the country, along with injunctions that Namibians should stop having sexual relations with foreigners, are the subject of Liz Frank's (section 8d) article. Frank outlines her experience of applying for permanent residence in Namibia on professional grounds and on the basis of her long-standing lesbian relationship with a Namibian. Kendall (section 8d) describes her search for lesbians in Lesotho , and not finding any women who identified themselves in those terms. What she did find, however, was the existence of widespread, erotic relationships among women. These relationships were not named as such, let alone conceived of as “sexual”.

Jim Wafer (section 8e) addresses the question of how equal rights for gays and lesbians might be achieved in countries where Islam is the dominant religion. He does this by examining the foundation texts of Islam to determine the extent of their condemnation of homosexuality. Whilst sex between males is condemned, the possibility of attraction between males is not considered unusual. Bruce Dunne (section 8e) points to the need for historical research to unravel the expression of homosexuality in the Middle East .

Ambiguities and overlaps in the use of language and the relationship between sexuality and gender are addressed in Rudo Gaudio's (section 8e) study of the yan daudu , men who dress as women and engage in sexual relations with other (straight) men. Ronald Louw discusses same-sex weddings among Africans in Mkhumbane, a settlement on the fringes of Durban . Such marriages were recorded during the 1950s for at least ten years, until the apartheid regime destroyed Mkhumbane in 1961. Prior to this, same-sex relations had been known to take place amongst gang members and in gold mines, in formations and processes that Louw locates in South Africa 's historical and economic context.

Julius Kaggwa's (section 8f) autobiographical account of growing up intersexed provides rare insights into this experience from an African perspective. As such, it may be interestingly juxtaposed to Lois Gould's fictional story of school children's interactions with “X”, an intersexed pupil, and what the children learn about gender in the process.

a. Male Heterosexuality

Keegan, T. 2001 “Gender, Degeneration and Sexual Danger: Imagining Race and Class in South Africa ”, Journal of Southern African Studies , 27, 3:459-477.

Mager, A. 1998 “Youth Organisations and the Construction of Masculine Identities in the Ciskei and Transkei ”, Journal of Southern African Studies , 24, 4: 653-667.

Moolman, B. 2004 “Gang Rape – an Expression of Black, Heterosexual Masculinity”, Agenda , forthcoming.

Ratele, K. 2004 “Kinky Politics”, in Arnfred, S. (ed.) Rethinking Sexualities in Africa Uppsala : Nordic Africa Institute

Sah, P. 1996 “Confessions of a Male Ingenue: Love as Manipulation”, Manushi , 95. http://free.freespeech.org/manushi/95/ppsah.html

Shefer, T., Strebel, A. and Foster, D. 2000 “‘So Women Have to Submit to That …' Discourses of Power and Violence in Students' Talk on Heterosexual Negotiation” South African Journal of Psychology , 30, 2: 11 -19.

Varga, C. and Makubalo, L. 1996 “Sexual Non-Negotiation”, Agenda , 28: 31-38.

Vera, Y. 2002 The Stone Virgins Harare : Weaver Press

Wood, K. and Jewkes, R. 1997 “Violence, Rape and Sexual Coercion: Everyday Love in a South African Township ”, Gender and Development , 5, 2: 41 -46.

b. Female heterosexuality

Daymond, M., Driver, D., Meintjes, S., Molema, L., Musengezi, C., Orford, M. and Rasebotsa, N. (eds.) 2003 Women Writing Africa : The Southern Region , The Women Writing Africa Project, Vol. 1 New York : The Feminist Press

El Saadawi, N. 1983 Woman at Point Zero London : Zed Books

Kishwar, M. 1997 “Women, Sex and Marriage: Restraint as a Feminine Strategy”, Manushi , 98. http://free.freespeech.org/manushi/99/sexuality.html

Tibatemwa-Ekirikubinza, L. 1999 Women's Violent Crime in Uganda: More Sinned Against Than Sinning Kampala : Fountain Publishers

Vaughan , M. 1991 Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness Cambridge : Polity Press

c. Same-Sex Relations in Women and Men

Aarmo, M. 1999 “How Homosexuality Became “Un-African”: The Case of Zimbabwe ”, in E. Blackwood and S. Wieringa (eds.) Female Desires: Same-Sex Relations and Transgender Practices Across Sexualities New York : Columbia University Press

Bagnol, B. 1996 “Assessment of Sexual Orientation in Maputo and Nampula”, Mimeo. (Anonymous translation from Portuguese) Maputo , May 1996, Royal Netherlands Embassy.

Gevisser, M. and Cameron, E. (eds.) 1990 Defiant Desire: Gay and Lesbian Lives in South Africa Johannesburg : Raven Press

Murray , S. 1997 “Gender-defined Homosexual Roles in sub-Saharan African Islamic Cultures”, in Murray , S. and Roscoe, W. with Allyn, E., Crompton, L., Dickemann, M., Khan, B., Mujtaba, H., Naqvi, N., Wafer, J., and Westphal-Hellbusch, S. Islamic Homoexualities: Culture, History and Literature New York , London : New York University Press

Murray, S. and Roscoe, W. 1998 “Diversity and Identity: The Challenge of African Homosexualities”, in Murray , S. and Roscoe, W. (eds.) Boy-Wives and Female-Husbands: Studies of African Homosexualities Bloomsburg: Macmillan Press

Nanda, S. 1996 “Hijras: An Alternative Sex and Gender Role In India ”, in G. Herdt (ed.) 1996 Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History New York : Zone Books

Tapinc, H. 1992 “Masculinity, Femininity and Turkish Male Homosexuality”, in K. Plummer (ed.) Modern Homosexualities: Fragments of Lesbian and Gay Experience London , New York : Routledge

d. Women's Same-Sex Relations, Identities, Practices

“Black Lesbians Speaking Out”, 1997, Agenda , 36.

Clarke, C. 1983 “Lesbianism: An Act of Resistance”, in Moraga , C. and Anzaldua, G. (eds.) This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color 2 nd edition New York : Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press

Elliston, D. 1999 “Negotiating Transnational Sexual Economies: Female Mahu and Same-Sex Sexuality in “ Tahiti and Her Islands ””, in E. Blackwood and S. Wieringa (eds.) Female Desires: Same-Sex Relations and Transgender Practices Across Sexualities New York : Columbia University Press

Frank, L. 2000 “Being a Public Lesbian in Namibia : Reflections on Some Recently Experienced Absurdities”, African Gender Institute Newsletter , 7.

Gay, J. 1985 “Mummies and Babies and Friends and Lovers in Lesotho ”, Journal of Homosexuality , 11, 3/4: 97-116.

Kendall 1995 “Looking for Lesbians in Lesotho ” Paper presented at a Conference on Lesbian and Gay History, Johannesburg .

Matzner, A. 1998 “Into the Light: The Thai Lesbian Movement Takes a Step Forward”, Women in Action , 3, 74-77.

e. Men's Same-Sex Relations, Identities, Practices

Achmat, Z. 1990 “My Childhood as an Adult Molester”, in M. Gevisser and E. Cameron (eds.) Defiant Desire: Gay and Lesbian Lives in South Africa Johannesburg : Raven Press

Dunne, B. 1990 “Homosexuality in the Middle East : An Agenda for Historical Research”, Arab Studies Quarterly , 12, 3&4, 55-82.

Gaudio, R. 1997 “Not Talking Straight in Hausa”, in A. Livia and K. Hall (eds.) Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender and Sexuality Oxford : Oxford University Press

Gaudio, R. 1998 “Male Lesbians and Other Queer Notions in Hausa”, in Murray , S. and Roscoe, W. (eds.) Boy-Wives and Female-Husbands: Studies of African Homosexualities Bloomsburg: Macmillan Press

Louw, R. 2001 “Mkhumbane and New Traditions of (Un) African Same-Sex Weddings”, in R. Morrell (ed.) Changing Men in Southern Africa Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press/London, New York : Zed Books

Luirink, B. 2000 Moffies: Gay Life in Southern Africa , translated by L. Nas Cape Town: David Philip

Wafer, J. 1997 “Muhammad and Male Homosexuality”, in Murray , S. and Roscoe, W. with Allyn, E., Crompton, L., Dickemann, M., Khan, B., Mujtaba, H., Naqvi, N., Wafer, J., and Westphal-Hellbusch, S. Islamic Sexualities: Culture, History and Literature New York , London : New York University Press

f. Intersex

Gould, L. 2001 ““X”: A Fabulous Child's Story,” in S. Shaw and J. Lee (eds.) Women's Voices, Feminist Visions, Classic and Contemporary Readings Mountain View , CA : Mayfield Publishing Company

Kaggwa, J. 1997 From Juliet to Julius: In Search of My True Gender Identity Kampala : Fountain Publishers

g. Transsexuality

Bolin, A. 1996 “Transcending and Transgendering: Male-to-Female Transsexuals, Dichotomy and Diversity”, in G. Herdt (ed.) 1996 Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History New York : Zone Books

Wikan, U. 1977 “Man Becomes Woman: Transsexualism in Oman as a Key to Gender Roles”, MAN , 12: 304-319.

9. Sexuality and Pleasure

The theme of pleasure in sexuality has rarely been addressed in the literature on Africa . Earlier, I referred to the privilege and politics of pleasure, in the pair of articles by Patricia MacFadden and Charmaine Pereira in Feminist Africa 2 (section 2a). The politics of sexuality is also the focus of Carole Vance's chapter (section 9), in this case being addressed through the dialectic of pleasure and danger. Writing on pornography, Marlene Wasserman argues that pornography is not, as generally portrayed, a mechanism for men's domination of women but proof that men lack power over women. Rather than distinguishing between pornography as derogatory of women, and erotica as sexually explicit material that celebrates mutuality in sexual pleasure, Wasserman eschews terminological labels. Instead, she states that she sees as positive all sexually explicit material that demonstrates positive choice and that celebrates all gendered people equally sharing physical pleasure. This view does not, however, get around the fact that some sexually explicit material exists that is misogynistic and degrading of women, regardless of how it may be labelled.

Audre Lorde conceptualises the erotic as the sensual; the power of the erotic comes from sharing deeply any pursuit with another person, particularly the sharing of joy. Lorde links the power of the erotic to women's responsibility to themselves, stating that the latter begins when women are in touch with the power of the erotic within themselves and allow that power to inform their actions upon the world. Juliana Nfah-Abbenyi's discussion of Calixthe Beyala's novel novels Tanga and Soleil , foregrounds women seeking women-grounded relationships that allow them to move beyond their marginality in institutionalised heterosexuality and patriarchal ideology. Beyala portrays sensuousness and eroticisation in women-centred existence, in a way that neither precludes heterosexuality nor necessarily signifies lesbianism. Following Lorde, Beyala's protagonists seek to make connections between domains that are otherwise separated in everyday life: the psychic and emotional (spiritual) from the physical and sensual (erotic), and all of these from the political.

Tshikala Biaya addresses three main questions concerning the relationship between eroticism and sexuality in Africa . The first is the question of whether eroticism in Africa is specific to the continent; secondly, the extent to which Africans conceive of sexuality and carnal pleasure independently of reproduction; and finally, the character of an African philosophy of nudity, and its impact on sexuality. At a more specific level, Abdoulaye Ly focuses on eroticism among the Lawbe ethnic group of Senegal , whose sculpture, language and perfumery are integral to their sexuality. The Lawbe are also the subject of Cheik Ibrahima Niang's chapter, in her case, the aim being to find ways of eroticising the condom in the context of HIV interventions, through the agency of Lawbe women in traditional erotic culture.

Musallam analyses, in some depth, the right to sexual pleasure among the four main schools of Muslim jurisprudence of the Sunni, and the tensions inherent in the dominant form of birth control, coitus interruptus. He discusses various arguments based on pleasure in sexual intercourse for free women, slave women and concubines (the latter two categories being in existence at the time the schools of jurisprudence were formed) and their varied rights to bear children. He also discusses Arabic erotica – popular literature comprised largely of anthologies of popular material on sex, which included specific birth control prescriptions. The place of birth control in Arabic erotica, as Musallam points out, is far more prominent than in either ancient Indian or Chinese erotica. Slaheddine Fradj, in his discussion of faith and pleasure in Islam, explores “traditional” and “modern” sexual orders in Tunisia , and young people's negotiation of the associated desires and expectations. In each of these sexual orders, marriage is viewed as the ideal context for sexual satisfaction.

Fatema Mernissi's Scheherazade Goes West is an exquisitely crafted exposition of Western men's fantasies of Muslim harems, juxtaposed against actual lived experiences of Muslim women in harems. Mernissi confronts the question of whether cultures manage emotions differently when it comes to structuring erotic responses. She illustrates how women's erotic power in many Arab cultures relies on their brainpower, particularly their capacity to communicate and to work at the level of the mind. The aim is to arrive at an intense sharedness of the imagination that is expressed in dialogue. Mernissi points out that a man who wishes to seduce an intelligent woman, who is concerned about the world, must necessarily master the erotic art.

Biaya, T. 1999 “Eroticism and Sexuality in Africa : Directions and Illusions”, CODESRIA Bulletin , 3 & 4: 41 -46.

Fradj, S. 1999 “Faith and Pleasure in Islam”, CODESRIA Bulletin , 3 & 4: 48 -51.

Lorde, A. 1984 “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power”, in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde Freedom, California : The Cutting Press

Ly, A. 1999 “Brief Notes on Eroticism Among the Lawbe, Senegal ”, CODESRIA Bulletin , 3 & 4: 46 -48.

Mernissi, F. 2001 Scheherazade Goes West New York : Washington Square Press

Musallam, B. 1983 Sex and Society in Islam Cambridge : Cambridge University Press

Nafzawi (16 th century) Rawd : Muhammad Ibn Muhammad al-Nafzawi, Al-Rawd al-‘atir fi nuzhat al-khatir (Maktabat al-Manar, Tunis , n.d.) English translation by Sir Richard Burton, The Perfumed Garden of the Sheykh Nefzawi New York : Castle Books, 1964

Nfah-Abenyi, J. 1997 Gender in African Women's Writing: Identity, Sexuality and Difference Bloomington , Indianopolis: Indiana University Press

Niang, C. 1996 “Integrating Laobe Women into AIDS Prevention Strategies”, in S. Zeidenstein and K. Moore (eds.) Learning About Sexuality: A Practical Beginning New York: The Population Council/International Women's Health Coalition

Said, E. 2000 “Homage to a Belly-Dancer”, in E. Said Reflections on Exile and Other Essays Cambridge : Harvard University Press

Vance, C. 1984 “Pleasure and Danger: Towards a Politics of Sexuality”, in C. Vance (ed.) Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality Boston : Routledge

Wasserman, M. 1996 “Positive, Powerful Pornography”, Agenda , 28: 58-65.

III Websites

Rainbo (Research, Action and Information Network for the Bodily Integrity of Women): http://www.rainbo.org

Rainbo is an African led international non-governmental organisation that addresses women's empowerment, reproductive health, sexual autonomy and freedom from violence as key dimensions of an agenda for African development. Established in 1994, Rainbo has offices in New York and London . The organisation's major focus is on the elimination of female circumcision/female genital mutilation (FC/FGM) by facilitating women's self-empowerment and furthering social change. Rainbo has redefined FC/FGM to position it in the context of gender, human rights and the violation of women.

Rainbo works in two main programme areas: the Integrated Initiative Against FGM and AMANITARE (see below). Rainbo's Integrated Initiative Against FGM was launched in 2003 and comprises support in the form of training, consultations and technical assistance to international donor and technical agencies, African governments and NGOs. The organisation has also developed tools for training, such as a CD-ROM on the design, monitoring and evaluation of interventions concerning female genital mutilation. In addition, Rainbo is developing a web-based centre for information on FGM, including news, key facts, recent advances and updates on successful projects. Finally, Rainbo offers direct grants to organisations with projects focusing on FGM in Africa .

AMANITARE, the African Partnership for the Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights of Women and Girls: http://www.amanitare.org/

AMANITARE aims to create a consolidated African forum for improving the status of African women and girls by promoting and protecting their sexual and reproductive health and rights. The organisation was formally launched as a ten-year programme (1999-2009), between 31 st January and 4 th February 2000 in Uganda . Currently, AMANITARE comprises 51 partner organisations in 18 African countries; its co-ordinating centres are in Kampala , Johannesburg and Calabar. The overall co-ordination of the partnership is located in Rainbo (see above). The name AMANITARE refers to one amongst many African queens renowned for their strength and fighting spirit in ancient Nubia .

AMANITARE provides the organisational structure for the exchange of technical skills, leadership training and institutional capacity building. The organisation's activities include facilitating the exchange and generation of information on sexual and reproductive health and rights in Africa; creating platforms for communication and discussion among partners and other groups at different levels; strengthening the active participation of partner groups in the policy and decision making process of regional and sub-regional bodies; and forging linkages between partners and other institutions working on issues of sexuality, health services and human rights.

Africa Regional Sexuality Resource Centre: http://www.arsrc.org

The Africa Regional Sexuality Resource Centre is one of four regional sexuality resource centres being established in Africa , Central and South America , Asia and North America , under the auspices of Ford Foundation's initiative on “Global Dialogue on Sexual Health and Well-Being”. The Africa Regional Sexuality Resource Centre seeks to promote informed dialogue, information exchange, public education, training and leadership development in the field of sexuality in Africa . In addition, the Centre's aims include building a network of professionals, advocates and organisations to drive changes in policy and research. The Africa Regional Centre is based in Lagos , Nigeria and hosted by Action Health Incorporated (AHI), a non-governmental organisation that works to improve the well-being of Nigerian adolescents.

A library of electronic documents on the subjects of population and health has been created by partner organisations working in reproductive and child health, HIV/AIDS and population. Documentation on sexuality is sparse. Articles may be downloaded off the web or delivered to readers by email. Partner organisations include a wide range of agencies, from advocacy organisations, solidarity platforms, political platforms, medical and health care organisations, documentation centres, universities, population agencies, municipal services and rural development groups.

Treatment Action Campaign (TAC): http://www.tac.org.za/

The Treatment Action Campaign was established on 10 th December 1998 , International Human Rights Day. Its national office is in Cape Town and there are six provincial offices. TAC's main objectives are to ensure greater access to affordable and quality HIV/AIDS treatment for all South Africans; to prevent and eliminate new HIV infections; and to improve access to affordable and quality health care for all. The Treatment Action Campaign works to achieve its objectives using a range of means. These include promoting treatment awareness and literacy among the population at large; campaigning for the prevention of HIV transmission from pregnant mothers to their children by using AZT and Nevirapine; targeting pharmaceutical companies to reduce the costs of all HIV/AIDS medications; and campaigning against profiteering by drug companies and other agencies. TAC is also engaged in building a mass membership and in building networks and alliances with unions, employers, women and youth organisations, religious bodies, lesbian and gay organisations, and other interested sections of the community. The visibility of TAC is maintained through the use of posters, pamphlets, meetings, street activism and letter writing.

Sex Worker Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT): http://www.walnet.org/csis/groups/sweat/sweat.html

The Sex Worker Education and Advocacy Taskforce was formed in September 1994 in Cape Town . SWEAT seeks to reduce the incidence of HIV infection and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) amongst Cape Town 's population of sex workers. The organisation addresses a range of social issues concerning sex workers' inability to gain access to mainstream services in the region and consequently, their access to HIV treatment.

SWEAT's centre provides the following services: support and counselling; crisis intervention; referrals to outside resources; condom distribution in city parlours, agencies and stripper/sex clubs to street sex workers; safer sex education in on-site workshops on HIV and STDs; a monthly newsletter; pictorial and easy-to-read guides to safer sex for sex workers and their clients; an information line and telephone counselling; nightly outreach by peer fieldworkers and professional support staff.

IV Films, videos [text taken from catalogues]

The Film Resource Unit, based in Johannesburg , distributes African films. Their website is http://www.fru.co.za/ Videos are distributed by Learning Resources, whose website is http://www.lr.co.za

Sexual Politics

LE WAZZOU POLYGAME
(The polygamous Wazzou)
Oumarou Ganda
50 min 16mm colour 1970 Niger , Argos Films (Francia)

On his return from Mecca , a devout Muslim takes on the title of “El Hadj”. He desires young Satou, although he knows she is promised to Garba. The furious Garba has no choice but to leave the village. Things grow more complicated: the Hadj's second wife does not accept the newcomer and decides to kill her on the eve of the wedding to prevent the marriage. She makes a mistake and kills one of the bridesmaids instead. The second wife is arrested whilst Satou flees to the town to see Garba. Unfortunately, she cannot find him and turns to prostitution.

SAITANE
(Satan)
Oumarou Ganda
55 min 35mm colour 1972 Niger

The film addresses the influence of marabouts on village life. A marabout begins to organise the secret love affairs of a girl, driving her to a sorry end. He is punished, ridiculed and loses his influence on the village.

L'ETOILE NOIRE
(The black star)
Djingarey Abdoulaye Maiga
95 min 16mm b/w 1975 Mali

A man is divided between two women: the traditional woman, his lawful wife, and the Westernized woman, a girl at the Black Star bar. He eventually sinks into loneliness. This film highlights the role of money and the extravagant display of success in the daily life of the modern African bourgeoisie.

A COMEDY IN SIX UNNATURAL ACTS
Jan Oxenburg
25 min 16mm b/w 1975 USA
Available on: 16mm VHS

This is a satire on the stereotyped images of lesbians. Each scene is also a take-off of a different genre of Hollywood film – the source of many stereotypes. The film's use of humour gives it a wide audience appeal.

INVISIBLE ADVERSARIES
Valie Export
109 mins 16mm colour 1977 Austria
Available on: 16mm VHS

Anna, a Viennese photographer and video artist, wakes up one morning to hear a radio broadcast about an invasion by the alien Hyksos. These are invisible adversaries who insinuate themselves into humans and encourage aggression and destruction. But when Anna sets about collecting evidence of their existence, she is not only contradicted at every turn by her ‘rational' male lover, but begins to realise that man's monstrosity is already everywhere and that these body snatchers have little to do to achieve their aims. Using a fast-moving variety of techniques – film, video, still photography, dance, performance art, montage – Valie Export demonstrates the meanings and interventions of the media in our lives, while the sci-fi narrative becomes a surreal vehicle for her discussion of sexual and national politics.

17 ROOMS (OR WHAT DO LESBIANS DO IN BED)
Caroline Sheldon
10 mins 16mm colour 1985 UK
Available on: VHS

The audience is shown women doing everything in bed from blowing noses, knitting and drinking tea, to having raucous pillow-fights and intense conversations. This accentuates the point that women are seldom portrayed visually in their beds apart from when they are having sexual interaction with men. In these 17 rooms, ironically, everything is shown except sex.

I WANT YOUR SEX
Yaba Badoe
Colour UK (video)

This documentary examines representations of black sexuality over more than two centuries, spanning figures as diverse as Saartje Baartman (also referred to as Sarah Bartman), Josephine Baker, Grace Jones, Manet's Olympia, inter-racial “buddy” movies in Hollywood, and Mapplethorpe's black male nudes. The documentary highlights the basis of these representations of sexuality in myths that are rooted in a history of colonialism and imperialism. A broad range of material is drawn upon, including art, photographs and media images.

Violence

DAASI (Slaves)
Jabeen Siddique
45 mins Umatic colour 1983 UK
Available on: VHS

This documentary is about the social injustice and exploitation of sex workers living in the Karmathapuri area of Bombay , where over 200,000 women and girls (mainly from Nepal – a relatively poor country in comparison with urban India ), live and work under the most demoralising conditions. For many women, there seems to be no alternative, but the benefits are high for those who profit by the women's exploitation. The brothel ‘business' continues to thrive on the sexual, emotional and physical abuse of women. DAASI (Slaves) examines how society continues to endorse this twentieth-century slave trade – tracing the problem back to the days of British colonialism when large numbers of Indian women were brought in to supply the ready market of soldiers.

RAPE CULTURE
M. Lazarus, R. Wunderlich/Cambridge Documentary Films
35 mins 16mm colour 1983 USA
Available on: 16mm VHS

This film effectively explores those elements in US society that contribute to an ideology that supports rape. Mary Daly characterises ‘rapism' as a disease of a phallocentric society that puts all women under siege. When women are not being physically assaulted or confined they are psychologically bound by the knowledge that their society victimises them in the normal course of social interaction. Convicted rapists examine their own socialisation and behaviour in the film and critical attention is paid to media images such as advertising, news films and clips from popular mainstream movies.

PROPERTY RITES
Heather Powell/Birmingham Film & Video Workshop
59 mins 16mm colour 1984 UK
Available on: 16mm VHS

Cathy lives an apparently uneventful life in Birmingham , until she is asked to write an article for a community magazine. The mystery surrounding the death in 1817 of Mary Ashford, and the sensational trial and acquittal of Abraham Thornton for her rape and murder appears to be a straightforward subject, but Cathy gradually realises that things are not what they seem. Why was Mary's character debated at such length? Why were certain pieces of evidence ignored in the attempt to establish Thornton 's innocence or guilt? In her search for the missing links an event in Cathy's own life takes on new significance. The film investigates ideas and assumptions underlying common attitudes to sexual violence, and by using a mixture of fiction and documentary material, unravels a previously hidden version of British history.

FIRST COMMUNION
Martine Thoquenne
13 mins 16mm colour 1986 UK
Available on: 16mm VHS

The film addresses the theme of incest, which has been an important cause of mental breakdown in girls and women. Such breakdown is the result not only of the act itself but of sexual guilt – defined in religious terms as inherent in women, since Eve ‘tempted' Adam. Through fear, an oppressive silence is maintained. The film pieces together a montage of images and memories: bride-like girls shrouded in white, uniformed majorettes and an ever-present dour priest brandishing the symbol of the cross are seen as the voice of a young girl reads letters to her mother in which she tries to articulate her experience of incest. Her confessional tone merges with images of Catholic ritual, highlighting the power and influence of religious mystification over young girls.

JUST BECAUSE OF WHO WE ARE
Abigail Norman/Prod: Heramedia
28 mins Umatic colour 1986 USA
Available on: VHS

This documentary focuses on the subject of violence against lesbians. Incidents of police intimidation, physical and psychological harassment, arrests and alcoholism are recalled in interviews with women living in New York . The problems faced by lesbians, particularly Black lesbians who are more susceptible to all kinds of attack, are placed in a political context by linking issues of class, race and sexual identity. Public attitude, at a time when lesbians and gay men are becoming increasingly organised and visible, is highlighted by footage of religious protesters at a Gay Pride march and the testimonies of ‘concerned' citizens at a New York City Council hearing against the proposed Gay Rights Bill. The documentary raises questions about anti-lesbian violence: where it comes from, what the consequences are and what can be done about it.

Affirming sexuality

DIAL-DIALI
(Woman)
Ousmane William M'baye
26 min 16mm 1991 Senegal

The film is a tribute to the beauty of Senegalese women. Young modern Senegalese women rediscover the ancient methods of their grandmothers - fabrics, bead belts, incense, henna.

ERZULIE LA MAGNIFIQUE
(Erzulie the magnificent)

Veronique Dessout
10 min video colour 1991 Haiti

In contrast to the violence of the ton ton macoute and sensationalist depictions of Voodoo, the film examines an unusual aspect of Haiti , rediscovering the spiritual and artistic wealth of the island through the portrait of Erzulie, the Voodoo goddess of love, water and fertility.

AIDA SOUKA
(Aida Souka)

Mansour Sora Wade
16 min 35mm 1992 Senegal

Kine is a disquette (a young trendy girl) who is initiated into the arts of seduction by a dryanke (a woman who is an expert in the seductive arts). The film is a journey through the perfumes, stratagems and jewels that some Senegalese women use to seduce their men.

V Courses

 

Institutional

Site

Course

Level

Award

Contact

Person

Women's and Gender Studies (WGS),

University of the Western Cape , South Africa

Sexuality and Social Control

Undergraduate

(elective – 287 767)

 

Postgraduate

(elective – 287 808)

Honours, WGS

 

 

Masters, WGS

Dr. Christell Stander

cstander@uwc.ac.za

 

 

Dr. Christell Stander

cstander@uwc.ac.za

 

Women's and Gender Studies (WGS),

University of the Western Cape , South Africa

Women and Health

(two sessions on Gender, Sexuality and Social Control)

Postgraduate

(elective – 881 398)

Masters, WGS

Dr. Tammy Shefer

tshefer@uwc.ac.za

 

Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cape Town , South Africa

Anthropology of Gender and Sexuality

Postgraduate

(elective – SAN412Z)

Masters, Social Anthropology

Dr. Owen Sichone

osichone@humanities.uct.ac.za

 

Department of Historical Studies, University of Cape Town ,

South Africa

Gender and History

Undergraduate (core -

HST235S)

Honours,

History

Prof. Anne Mager

mager@humanities.uct.ac.za

Dr. Helen Scalon

hscanlon@humanities.uct.ac.za

 

African Gender Institute,

University of Cape Town , South Africa

Theories, Politics and Action

Undergraduate (core -

AGI300F)

Honours,

Gender Studies

Dr. Elaine Salo

esalo@humanities.uct.ac.za

 

African Gender Institute,

University of Cape Town , South Africa

Introduction to Graduate Study of Gender and Transformation: Identity, Theory and Change in African Contexts

Undergraduate

(core – AGI400X)

Honours,

Gender Studies

Dr. Jane Bennett

jbennett@humanities.uct.ac.za

 

Department of Sociology,

University of Ghana ,

Accra , Ghana

Gender and Sexuality

Undergraduate

(elective – SOC: 403)

 

Honours,

Sociology

Prof. Mansah Prah

m2prah@yahoo.com

 

Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana ,

Accra , Ghana

Culture and Gender in African Societies (Men and Masculinities)

Undergraduate (elective – AFST: 631)

Honours, African Studies

Dr. Akosua Adomako Ampofo

adomako@ug.edu.gh

Prof. Takyiwaa Manuh

tmanuh@ug.edu.gh

Mr. Aloysius Denkabe

Thanks are due to all members of the Curriculum Working Group of the Feminist Studies Network present at the workshop on ‘Sexuality, Culture and Identity', organised in Accra in May 2003: Amina Mama, Takyiwaa Manuh, Jane Bennett, Shereen Essof, Dzodzi Tsikata, Mansah Prah, Akosua Adomako Ampofo, Priya Narismulu, Emebet Mulugetta, Biola Odejide, Sylvia Tamale, Lebohang Letsie. A special thank you goes to Amina Mama, Jane Bennett, Elaine Salo, Shereen Essof, Helen Moffett, Brenda Martin, Joanne Henry and all the support staff of the African Gender Institute for their warmth and support during my two-week stay at the AGI for the preparation of this bibliography.