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By Deevia
Bhana
The Notion of Sexual Rights
In the context of the calamitous effects of the
HIV/AIDS pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa particularly
on African women [1], the question of sexuality
and sexual rights have become important areas of
research and intervention. Since the first declaration
of sexual rights in the Beijing Platform for Action
and its subsequent articulation in the United Nations
Department of Public Information [2] document, the
notion of sexual rights remains a contested field
with many African countries reformulating and reframing
the notion of sexual rights.
Sexual Rights in Marriage
What does ‘sexual rights’ mean and how
does it manifest within socially sanctioned relations
such as marriage? Can marriage in its current heterosexual
context produce an environment to support sexual
rights? How are sexual rights asserted, negotiated
and challenged within marriage? Marital relations
are gendered and sexualized producing and reproducing
inequalities. In the African context, discussion
around sexuality and sexual rights has been generated
through fear, disease and danger. Pleasure and agency
have received minimal attention with pleasure being
the site of the male domain.
In fact, sexuality is often considered to be a location
for women’s subordination. Through the institution
of heterosexual marriage, female sexuality is often
placed under the husband’s control, with women
often seen as sexual objects without the right to
deny sex and sexual activity. Being a wife in other
words is an entitlement to male sexual pleasure
and for patrilineal procreation. However, caution
must be raised in constructing women as victims
within marriage, unable to act and without sexual
agency [3] . Progressive states too, recognise that
marriage often involves unequal sexual relations
and in South Africa marital rape recognises women’s
freedom and sexual agency.
African Sexuality
African sexuality has historically been under censure.
The colonialists’ constructions and perceptions
of Africans as hypersexual led to intensified surveillance
and repression of African sexuality with the female
body being controlled and restricted while at the
same time constructing a rampant African male sexuality
exhibiting lust, desire, and danger.
HIV/AIDS has reframed and reinvented this censure
around African sexuality. Sexual pleasure and desire
have been marginalized as discourses of fear, danger
and death gain in momentum. The institution of marriage
is under attack as HIV/AIDS infections within marriage
point to the highly unequal and gendered nature,
not only of the infection but also of marriage.
One key strategy in reducing HIV/AIDS risk is to
delay sexual intercourse.
Many prevention programmes talk of abstinence and
the need to delay sex until marriage. Not only is
marriage regarded as the only sanctioned institution
permitting sexual freedoms but also one that is
safe from HIV. Yet as research shows, girls and
women both in and out of marriage between the ages
of 15-24 face heightened risk [1] . Women in marriage
are not safe from sexual diseases. Across Africa,
unstable family structures, urban migration, unemployment,
war and disease have wreaked havoc upon social relations
as social relations respond to structural and social
inequalities. Women’s vulnerability to HIV/AIDS
within these fragile social contexts and the inability
to negotiate sex produces unequal gender relations
and questions the ability of sexual rights within
marriage.
Political Landscape
At the political level, longstanding traditions
of male domination and cultural systems supporting
gender and sexual inequalities are being challenged.
Of course this is not true for all countries and
all contexts and there is unevenness in how gender
and sexual equality are being brought to the political
landscape. Female genital cutting for example has
increasingly come under attack and in many countries
this has been criminalized. The political environment
in countries like South Africa for example has produced
a context which is supportive of gender equality
yet South Africa has the highest rates of prevalence
in terms of rape, sexual violence and HIV/AIDS.
Domestic violence is endemic as well. Gender relations
are thus changing for better or worse. These changes
are dependent upon the particular political and
social context and the changes are not linear. Gender
and sexual relations within marriage are thus impacted
upon by discourses of equality but also by existing
unequal patterns which remain resilient. Gender
relations are thus changing and being contested.
Within these changing contexts, is it possible for
marriage as an institution to produce equitable
and harmonious gender and sexual relations? Gender
and sexual rights and marriage cannot be considered
separately. Sexuality and sexual rights in marriage
are key components of gender relations. And gender
relations are key to understanding the ways in which
race and class are developed. Marriage is thus not
simply about the negotiation of heterosexual relations
but these negotiations are situated within a context-social,
political and economic. The ways in which men and
women in marriage negotiate relations is impacted
by the social context within which marriage is framed.
Within the context of political, social and economic
transformation, men and women’s roles in marriage
are being redefined and fragmented. In some African
contexts fundamental ideas about sex, marriage and
gender have been radically reinvented. It is important
to stress that there are different versions of marriage
which defy dominant notions of monogamous heterosexually
sanctioned relations. In many parts of Africa the
existence of polygamous or customary marriages works
to redefine the dominant concept of marriage although
largely within hetero-normative constructions.
The obstacles to knowing about homosexual relations/marriages
are especially formidable in some contexts in Africa
where silence and deep seated prejudices around
homosexuality persist. The legitimacy of the progressive
political systems, like those in South Africa for
example, has been brought into question as debates
about rights and sexual rights continue. In South
Africa, same sex couples are now officially able
to marry with the same rights as heterosexual couples
after the signing of the Civil Union Act into law
on 1 December 2006.
Research Needed
New research is needed to explore these new configurations
of marriage and how sexual rights are managed within
lesbian, gay and transgendered relations. New ways
of understanding marriage, love and intimacy are
thus becoming more evident while there is also evidence
of religious and political resurgence. African patriarchs
like Robert Mugabe and Sam Nujoma being examples
of heterosexual fundamentalists with the desire
to invent a heterosexually pure Africa.
Conflicting Definitions
Conflicting definitions of what sexual rights are
and how they are to be realized remain an important
area of growth, contestation and limitation. How
is it possible to sustain a definition of sexual
rights as the domain of women only?
The human rights of women include their right
to have control over and decide freely and responsible
on matters related to their sexuality, including
sexual and reproductive health, free of coercion,
discrimination and violence [2: Par 96).
The formulation of sexual rights that applies to
women only and framed within the reference of violence
is problematic. While it remains true that women
and girls in sub-Saharan Africa are particularly
vulnerable to social economic distress and violence
and to HIV/AIDS risk, it is nevertheless important
to shift discussion to articulate agency and sexual
desire and pleasure rather than protection from
disease, harm and danger.
Arnfred [3] shows how women in marital relations
in Mozambique for example use tradition, food and
sex as instances of female power. She argues that
modern African women are able to seek sexual autonomy
and do so using certain aspects of African ‘tradition’.
The question of sexual rights requires far more
sophistication than that which constructs women
as subordinated and ignores men within its definition.
Sexual rights then are on the agenda being contested,
fragmented and developed.
Power Relations
The definition of sexual rights which makes men
invisible is simplistic. The progress towards including
men in development and men in HIV/AIDS prevention
programmes is beginning to take place. The need
to incorporate men into intervention programmes
has become important in development contexts. The
problem with excluding men from the definition of
sexual rights is that the assumption is that women
control their bodies, their health and their ability
to ensure sexual well being. However these assumptions
have significantly limited the impact of interventions
aimed at reducing domestic violence and addressing
HIV/AIDS. Within heterosexual marriage women’s
control of their body, of pleasure and desire is
inextricable linked to men’s ability to control.
Marriage is about gender and sexuality and power
is invested in these relations. Power relations
between men and women take on multiple forms and
research shows that these are commonly manifested
through sexual and physical violence [4]. The construction
of rampant heterosexual masculinity based upon violence
and multiple sexual partners is very much part of
marriage. In fact the construction of familiar notions
of being a husband and wife, man and women are debilitating
as it increases women’s vulnerability not
only to disease but to violence.
Versions of femininity make it difficult for example
for women to be assertive and make important decisions
in the household. Traditional notions of carer and
nurturer persist with women being subordinated and
thus unable to negotiate sexual rights. Men who
are constructed as aggressive, tough and breadwinners
often make decisions, expect subservience and use
harsh means to assert their status. Power relations
between men and women take multiple forms within
marriage and are commonly manifested through sexual
and physical violence. The problem around marriage
and violence is that it disables women’s ability
to negotiate sexual activities and increases vulnerability
to HIV/AIDS. Within the context of extreme poverty,
unemployment and social distress, violence is often
a readily available ‘resource’ to ensure
power over women. Men use violence to subordinate
and control women in marriage.
He forced me to sleep with him in his home, he
beat me, made me take off my clothes, then made
me lie on the bed and forced himself on top of
me [5: p.42].
Violence as Strategy
Instances of intimate partner violence have reached
epidemic proportions. Kaye et al (2005) show that
changing gender relations in Uganda related to urban
migration, changing cultural values and men’s
unemployment increase women’s vulnerability
to domestic violence. While there are legal resources
to assist women, the reporting of violence is low.
In a study of intimate partner violence, Jewkes
[4] argues that violence is often used as a strategy
in conflict. This study shows that violence occurs
in conflicts about finances, jealously and when
women assert themselves or transgress the normative
constructions of gender identities, then violence
is often used.
Alcohol abuse is also related to violence in marriages.
It is incorrect to assume that women who are economically
empowered will end abusive marriages. In fact, there
is no linear relationship between marriage, violence
and poverty. Why do women stay in abusive relationships?
It is important to note that particular understanding
of femininity and the ways in which the roles of
wife/mother/caregiver are locked into these meanings
impact on women’s ability to end marriages.
Economic dependence is cited as a chief reason why
women stay. Changing sexual rights in marriage is
thus linked to broader social and economic change
in African countries.
This does not mean necessarily that women who are
more empowered educationally, economically and socially
are most protected. Research shows that even women
in these categories remain in violent relationships.
[4]. Emotional and social investment in the institution
of marriage remains an important reason why women
stay. While the institution of marriage is failing,
the more it fails the more it has become necessary.
In other words marriage is still regarded as an
important social institution sanctioned by religion,
the state and other institutions. Stigma, exclusion
and loneliness are also important in reasons why
women choose to live in unhappy and violent marriages.
The idea of regular sex has not featured much in
discussions about why women choose to stay but the
idea of sex, intimacy and love (even violent love)
remains attractive to women whose femininity is
constructed in ways that prohibit more than one
sexual partner. Moreover, multiple sexual partners
is against the idea of an honorable femininity and
these notions of what it means to be married and
stay married (despite its violence and its failings)
continue to frame the way many women think and act.
So male violence becomes endemic and flourishes.
Jewkes adds that violence is frequently used as
a means to resolve a male crisis. This crisis is
not simply a crisis in identity but located within
the social and economic context which frames masculinity
and femininity. The broader social and economic
context are important in understanding the use of
violence. While it is important to stress again
that violence in marriage is not simplistically
a problem with lower social status and/or unemployment
but that the crisis in masculinity is engendered
through unemployment, and a context where men feel
threatened and emasculated. In the South African
literature, it is argued that the emasculation of
black men in particular is the effect of colonization
and a racist landscape which positioned white men
in superior positions. While the context of democracy
has changed these gender relations, the remnants
of colonialism, apartheid and the increasing unemployment
and poverty that many men find themselves in, increases
the crisis in masculinity and the use of violence.
However, the broader social context of war, conflict
and a situation which is tolerant of violence allows
violence to flourish.
Realising Rights in Marriage
The political/personal debates around sexuality
and sexual rights have been important in opening
up discussion around the realization of rights within
the institution of marriage. In the context of substantial
evidence of violence in heterosexual marriage and
relations [5, 4, 6], is it possible for marriage
as an institution to produce equitable and harmonious
gender and sexual relations and pleasure? Gender
violence is an intractable problem within (hetero)-sexual
marriages and reduces the ability of women in particular
to negotiate sexuality.
If sexual rights in heterosexual marriage are to
become more effective, it requires necessarily addressing
issues of gender, class and violence; and for attention
to focus on men too. Sexuality and sexual rights
in marriage is a key component of gender relations.
Gender relations is key to understanding the ways
in which race and class are developed. Marriage
is thus located within the complexities of social,
political and economic contexts. The ways in which
men and women negotiate marital relations is impacted
by the social context within which marriage is framed.
The question of sexual wellbeing and sexual rights
within marriage are thus difficult to explore without
its relationship with gender and within the broader
social and economic context. Changing sexual relations
in marriage is thus linked to changing social and
economic contexts. It is important to realize that
there is need to make men and women aware of rights
and how sexual rights are rights within marriage
too. This demands a massive education ensuring that
both men and women are aware of how sexuality can
be negotiated and adjusted within the broad parameters
of human rights approach. This involves addressing
issues around gender inequalities within marriage.
It will require a complete overhaul of systems of
power which continue to marginalize women and construct
women as sexual objects. Men need to be incorporated
into these programmes.
Involving Men
Without men’s involvement there can be little
change as gender relations are socially constructed
with both men and women highly invested in particular
ways of being husband and wife. These programmes
of course are not easy. Why will men for example
want to give up on the notion of entitlement, power
and privilege that marriage offers to them? The
commitment towards sexual and gender justice and
the realizations of rights in marriage are important.
In the light of high rates of divorce it remains
to be seen if sexual rights can be realized within
the context of heterosexual marriages which are
unequal and unfair particularly to women.
References
1. UNAIDS. (2005) UNAIDS in South Africa,
Available at: http://www.unaids.org,
accessed 31 March 2006.
2. United Nations Department of Public Information
(2001) Beijing declaration and platform for action
with the Beijing +5 political declaration and outcome
document. New York: United Nations.
3. Arnfred, S. (forthcoming) Sex, Food and Female
Power. Discussion of data material from northern
Mozambique Special Issue of Sexualities,
Sexualities in Southern Africa
4. Jewkes, R. (2002) Intimate partner violence:
causes and prevention. Lancet. 20;359(9315):1423-9.
5. Wood, K and Jewkes, R (1997) Violence, rape and
sexual coercion: everyday love in a South African
township, 5(2): 41-46.
6. Kaye DK, Mirembe F, Mia Ekstrom A, Bantebya G,
Johansson A. (2005) The social construction and
context of domestic violence in Wakiso district,
Uganda. Culture Health and Sexuality 7(6):625-35.
* Deevia Bhana is Associate Professor
of education at the University of KwaZulu Natal,
South Africa.
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