Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-06T04:23:19.325Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

8 - African Traditions of Sexualities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2024

Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Mathew Kuefler
Affiliation:
San Diego State University
Get access

Summary

African history enriches the comparative study of sexualities, demonstrating a breadth of practices, inflected by location, era, and historical contingency. Despite pervasive stereotypes, earlier sexualities were often varied and expansive. Examples challenge conventional academic categories, revealing the intersections between aspects personal and societal, romantic and transactional, and even sacred and sensual. Some African cultures endorsed varied pre-marital sexual explorations among adolescents and many emphasized initiations that shaped youths into gendered adults. Marriages and children often represented sources of power for families, elders, and elites, including older women. African cultures often defined gender according to role and status, not biology, such as the widely occurring instances of female husbands who married women in recent times. Both marriages and lovers factored into African politics, providing important means of alliance-building. Yet, interests in sexual partners extended beyond these concerns and included instances of same-sex partnerships along with practices aimed at mutual pleasure. Sexuality also mattered to many Africans’ cosmologies about well-being, healing, and power. Some healers gained power through sexual acts, and others through abstinence.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Further Reading

Achebe, Nwando. Female King of Colonial Nigeria: Ahebi Ugbabe. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Achebe, Nwando. Female Monarchs and Merchant Queens in Africa. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2020.Google Scholar
Arnfred, Signe. ‘Female Sexuality as Capacity and Power? Reconceptualizing Sexualities in Africa’. African Studies Review 58, no. 3 (2015): 149–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cole, Jennifer, and Thomas, Lynn M.. Love in Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Currier, Ashley, and Migraine-George, Thérèse. ‘“Lesbian”/Female Same-Sex Sexualities in Africa’. Journal of Lesbian Studies 21, no. 2 (2017): 133–50.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Currier, Ashley, and Migraine-George, Thérèse. ‘Queer Studies/African Studies: An (Im)Possible Transaction’. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 22, no. 2 (2016): 281305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dankwa, Serena Owusua. Knowing Women: Same-Sex Intimacy, Gender, and Identity in Postcolonial Ghana. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epprecht, Marc. Heterosexual Africa? The History of an Idea from the Age of Exploration to the Age of AIDS. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Epprecht, Marc. Hungochani: The History of a Dissident Sexuality in Southern Africa. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epprecht, Marc, and Nyeck, S. N.. Sexual Diversity in Africa: Politics, Theory, and Citizenship. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Fourshey, Catherine Cymone, Gonzales, Rhonda Marie, and Saidi, Christine, ‘About African Matrilineal Histories’, African Matrilineal Histories, 2019. https://africanmatrilinealhistories.blogs.bucknell.edu/.Google Scholar
Fourshey, Catherine Cymone, Gonzales, Rhonda Marie, Saidi, Christine, and Vieira-Martinez., CarolynLifting the Loincloth: Reframing the Discourse on Gender, Identity, and Traditions – Strategies to Combat the Lingering Legacies of Spectacles in the Scholarship on East and East Central Africa’. Critique of Anthropology 36, no. 3 (2016): 302–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoad, Neville. African Intimacies: Race, Homosexuality, and Globalization. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Jimenez, Raevin. ‘“Slow Revolution” in Southern Africa: Household Biosocial Reproduction and Regional Entanglements in the History of Cattle-Keeping among Nguni-Speakers, Ninth to Thirteenth Century ce’. Journal of African History 61, no. 2 (2020): 155–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Jennifer L.Fish, Family, and the Gendered Politics of Descent Along Uganda’s Southern Littorals’. History in Africa 45 (2018): 445–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kendall, K. Limakatso.Women in Lesotho and the (Western) Construction of Homophobia’. In Female Desires: Same-Sex Relations and Transgender Practices across Cultures, ed. Blackwood, Evelyn and Wieringa, Saskia, 157–78. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Macharia, Keguro. ‘Queering African Studies’. Criticism 51, no. 1 (2009): 157–64.Google Scholar
Magadla, Siphokazi, Magoqwana, Babalwa, and Motsemme, Nthabiseng. ‘Thirty Years of Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Revisiting Ifi Amadiume’s Questions on Gender, Sex and Political Economy’. Journal of Contemporary African Studies 39, no. 4 (2021): 517–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mbah, Ndubueze L. Emergent Masculinities: Gendered Power and Social Change in the Biafran Atlantic Age. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2019.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Munro, Brenna M. South Africa and the Dream of Love to Come: Queer Sexuality and the Struggle for Freedom. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Murray, Stephen O., and Roscoe, Will. Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies in African Homosexualities. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2021.Google Scholar
Ocobock, Paul. An Uncertain Age: The Politics of Manhood in Kenya. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Onah, Chijioke K.Naked Agency: Genital Cursing and Biopolitics in Africa’. Research in African Literatures 52, no. 1 (2021): 205–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oyěwùmí, Oyèrónke. Gender Epistemologies in Africa: Gendering Traditions, Spaces, Social Institutions, and Identities. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oyěwùmí, Oyèrónke. What Gender Is Motherhood? Changing Yorùbá Ideals of Power, Procreation, and Identity in the Age of Modernity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.Google Scholar
Saidi, Christine. Women’s Authority and Society in Early East-Central Africa. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saidi, Christine, Fourshey, Catherine Cymone, and Gonzales, Rhonda M.. ‘Gender, Authority, and Identity in African History: Heterarchy, Cosmic Families and Lifestages’. In The Palgrave Handbook of African Women’s Studies, ed. Yacob-Haliso, Olajumoke and Falola, Toyin, 1257–73. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International, 2021.Google Scholar
Schoenbrun, David. ‘Gendered Themes in Early African History’. In A Companion to Gender History, ed. Meade, Teresa A. and Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E., 249–72. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2006.Google Scholar
Shell-Duncan, Bettina, and Hernlund, Ylva. Female ‘Circumcision’ in Africa: Culture, Controversy, and Change. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000.Google Scholar
Stephens, Rhiannon. ‘Birthing Wealth? Motherhood and Poverty in East-Central Uganda, c. 700–1900’. Past & Present 215, no. 1 (2012): 235–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stephens, Rhiannon. A History of African Motherhood: The Case of Uganda, 700–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Watkins, Sarah E.“Tomorrow She Will Reign”: Intimate Power and the Making of a Queen Mother in Rwanda, c. 1800–1863’. Gender & History 29, no. 1 (2017): 124–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×