Black women across gender lines are pushing back against the gaze of patriarchy, policing and respectability by owning their bodies and exploring pleasure on their own terms. Ntombizikhona Valela explores how women are defining for themselves a pleasure aesthetic that centres on their humanity and reclaiming ownership of their bodies.
The different expressions of pleasure through the African body in colonial and post colonial Africa have been strongly regulated and silenced. Before the disruption that was colonialism, there were traditional spaces, both public and private, that allowed for the discussion of sexual matters and the expression of its pleasure. However, African sexual pleasure and dance are now being reclaimed as powerful forms of communication and expression.
What does being a non-monogamous, bisexual woman living in Ghana mean? How do I live out my love life? One woman honestly shares her experiences in this philosophical exploration of what love is, what it can be, how it can be felt or expressed outside the norms of what love has been made to be.
Wairimũ Mũrĩithi writes on womxn’s pleasure (or not) in Kenya’s public imaginary.
The case of pleasure and sex in Northern Nigeria is not a matter of forced conservatism or a robotic followership to a certain doctrine. It is an in-built self-censorship mechanism, and the people are comfortable with it as a way of life.
Is kissing unAfrican? Is foreplay unAfrican? These questions speak to ideas which view certain aspects of pleasure and sexuality as foreign. Through fiction, Rafeeat Aliyu says African writers can challenge stereotypes and assumptions of the place of both romance and pleasure in history by creating stories that push at imposed boundaries.
Men have always had a monopoly over pleasure, more so in many of the patriarchal African societies. But times have changed. The availability of more information in the public space on such issues as sexuality and gender fluidity, alongside feminist theory, has served to challenge the established rules.
An ongoing visual sex and sexualities documentation project which came about because of a lack of positive, empowered and diverse images of African women, sex and sexualities.
Virginity is a social construct, which defines sex in narrow ways, resulting in the policing, stigmatization and shaming of women’s bodies. Sandy Abdelmessih says we should stop talking about hymens altogether, and instead be more concerned with pleasure; with our bodies and their extraordinary capabilities.
Warning: article contains nudity. Black women’s bodies have been sites for the world’s battles for so long that we have forgotten how to imagine them as sites of pleasure; a space where we can own it rather than give it away.
OPINION
LIFESTYLE
