Welcome to the InfoSci Platform
Women Embodiment and Sexual Services in Africa

Women Embodiment and Sexual Services in Africa

Tsitsi Mhike Musingafi
Copyright: © 2023 |Pages: 20
ISBN13: 9781668497210|ISBN10: 1668497212|ISBN13 Softcover: 9781668497227|EISBN13: 9781668497234
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-6684-9721-0.ch010
Cite Chapter Cite Chapter

MLA

Musingafi, Tsitsi Mhike. "Women Embodiment and Sexual Services in Africa." Women Empowerment and the Feminist Agenda in Africa, edited by Maxwell Constantine Chando Musingafi and Chipo Hungwe, IGI Global, 2023, pp. 157-176. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-6684-9721-0.ch010

APA

Musingafi, T. M. (2023). Women Embodiment and Sexual Services in Africa. In M. Musingafi & C. Hungwe (Eds.), Women Empowerment and the Feminist Agenda in Africa (pp. 157-176). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-6684-9721-0.ch010

Chicago

Musingafi, Tsitsi Mhike. "Women Embodiment and Sexual Services in Africa." In Women Empowerment and the Feminist Agenda in Africa, edited by Maxwell Constantine Chando Musingafi and Chipo Hungwe, 157-176. Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2023. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-6684-9721-0.ch010

Export Reference

Mendeley
Favorite

Abstract

This chapter reflects on the evolution and construction of African women bodies as racialised, eroticized, and exoticised objects of desire, repudiation, and control, giving justification to colonisation. Before European contact with Africa, human sexuality and sexual services were sacred and highly valued. Africa had a well-organised and consistent socialisation process where elders initiated young members of society into the concepts and the acts of sexuality without shame, ridicule, or condemnation. Most sexual energies in pre-colonial Africa were expressed differently through multiple sexual behaviours including incest, concubinage, public sexual services, and ritual sex, among others. Nevertheless, these behaviours rarely involved direct payment for the sexual services rendered. With the advent of colonialism in Africa, women who innocently engaged in these various sexual services were demonised, sexualized, and most of them labelled and integrated into a system of regulated prostitution.

Request Access

You do not own this content. Please login to recommend this title to your institution's librarian or purchase it from the IGI Global bookstore.