g_b Ffwd: Tamale article: "Exploring the contours of African sexualities: Religion, law and power"

[Aditya adit.b...@gmail.com [gay_bombay]]

Begin forwarded message:


>> On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 9:28 PM, Carole Vance wrote:
>> passing this on...from a sex work/human rights list
>>
>>
>> Important article describing how law, culture and religion in Africa act as 
>> oppressive force against sexual minorities ------ but could also be used 
>> strategically to obtain sexual citizenship.
>>
>> Article attached and extracts on sex work below.
>>
>> Exploring the contours of African sexualities: Religion, law and power
>> Sylvia Tamale*
>> AFRICAN HUMAN RIGHTS LAW JOURNAL
>> (2014) 14 AHRLJ 150-177
>>
>> Summary
>> This article explores of the diverse ways through which organised religion,
>> personal spiritual convictions, culture and the law shape, challenge         
>>     and
>> potentially transform the sexualities of African peoples. I argue that,
>> through the intersection of religion, statutory law and reinterpreted
>> traditional customs, the complexity of African sexualities (particularly
>> those of women) is instrumentalised, controlled and regulated by the
>> patriarchal state. As sources of power, the institutions of culture, religion
>> and law structure sexual morality in such a way that it congeals into
>> states of domination. Attempts to assert sexual citizenship have spawned
>> social movements on the continent, challenging the dominant sexual
>> discourses and demanding increased sexual autonomy and freedom.
>> These movements have the potential to profoundly reshape our
>> understanding of the links between sexualities and religion.
>>
>>
>>
>> Extracts:
>>
>> In this era of the HIV pandemic, political Christianity and Islam,
>> especially, have constructed a discourse that suggests that sexuality is
>> the key moral issue on the continent today, diverting attention from
>> the real critical moral issues for the majority of Africans, such as
>> financial security or the plunder, misuse, disuse and misappropriation
>> of public funds. The wanton and fraudulent diversion of public funds
>> by the powerful that prevent the masses from accessing basic human
>> needs such as health care, clean water, education, nutrition, shelter,
>> jobs, clothing, information and security is the number one moral issue
>> preoccupying the minds of the average African. Employing religion,
>> culture and the law to flag sexuality as the biggest moral issue of our
>> times and dislocating the real issue is a political act and must be
>> recognised as such.
>>
>>
>>
>> The offence of prostitution criminalises sex work in all but one
>> African nation. Senegal, which legalised prostitution in 1969, keeps a
>> tight regulatory leash on those engaged in the trade. Historically, the
>> reason for such a status in this former French West African colony was
>> not a result of a liberal government, but rather an attempt to protect
>> French colonial administrators from contracting sexually-transmitted
>> diseases (STDs) from native women.61 The continued total prohibition
>> of sex work in African states is justified on two main grounds: (a) that
>> prostitution promotes social immorality; and (b) that prostitution
>> poses a public health hazard to society, particularly STDs such as HIV.
>> The morality argument buckles in the               face of the apparent 
>> double
>> sexual moral standards that most African penal codes set for men and
>> women; the law targets and penalises only the sellers of sex (mostly
>> women), letting the clients (mostly men) off the legal hook.
>>
>> Professional public health literature indicates that the continued
>> enforcement of prostitution laws only exacerbates the problem of
>> public health. Indeed, this is borne out by the statistics of HIV adult
>> prevalence rates; 0,7 per cent in Senegal compared to Uganda (6,5
>> per cent), South Africa (17,8 per cent), Botswana (24,8 per cent),
>> Lesotho (23,6 per cent) and Swaziland (25,9 per cent).62 The
>> contradiction in the socio-cultural legal regimes is clearly seen in the
>> fact that most African countries now include sex workers among the

>> ‘most at risk’ populations in their multi-sectoral AIDS strategies, yet
>> they maintain the prohibitive legal regime.63 Studies on adult sex
>> work on the poorest continent in the world shows that those engaged
>> in the trade do so primarily for economic reasons and to meet the
>> appeal of financial autonomy.64