Feminist Africa 17: Researching Sexuality with Young Women: Southern Africa

In Conversation piece between Shereen Essof, director of JASS Southern Africa, and Jane Bennett of the African Gender Institute, Shereen Essof suggests that the question of security needs to be taken seriously À“ more seriously than it has ever been À“ by feminists working towards sexual rights in our contexts. Her analysis comes from a sense that the vocabulary of gender equality is too thin, in contemporary discourses around the ownership of women’s and girls’ bodies, to manage the threats against the right to choose one’s sexual partners, one’s own reproductive path, one’s own sources of sexual pleasure, and one’s right to accessible sexual and reproductive healthcare. While it may be the vocabulary of gender equality which has facilitated new forms of access to higher education for some young women, over the past fifteen years, this vocabulary À“stripped of its feminist roots À“ cannot theorize sexuality as political. It cannot, thus, offer protection to young women fighting for their rights to the termination of pregnancy, to sexual pleasure and choice, for their humanity as people whose sexuality and genders cannot be deployed against them. Security may entail active networks of safe-houses, liaisons, mobilization, and living space but it also demands its own language. This issue of Feminist Africa hopes, through the conversations generated not only with Shereen Essof but among all the pieces, to contribute to the growth of such a language.

ISBN: 1726-4596
Publisher: African Gender Institute
Edition: Issue 17
Year of Publication: December, 2012
Download : 20138_fa17_text_web.pdf