The Sex Lives of African Women: Self-Discovery, Freedom, and Healing

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For example, Amose shared: “ I have participated in a study, and what I didn’t like is that we were never given feedback and we were worried the information was going somewhere. Her short fiction was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2012 and she was named as one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists in 2013.

p>Sign up to the Dialogue Books newsletter for news of upcoming publications, competitions and updates from our authors. For many, socializing with family or community members who were gay, or encountering media depictions of same-sex relationships, helped them to identify what they were experiencing. These may reflect established sexual behaviors and preferences; which was reported in a study among older Black SMM in the US [ 59].This isn’t one to be missed out on, whether to find yourself in pieces of the pages or learn about perspectives you had never even considered. Six years in the making, it shatters the taboos that have until now surrounded many of the issues and experiences of African women, who have unfurled the most private area of their lives in its pages. When asked how they identify in terms of their sexuality, participants used several different terms, including gay, bisexual, bottom, and a man who has sex with men. They say that Mahmood would be nothing without his sister, ruthless bookkeeper; that it was she who built his business. When asked about where they experienced discrimination, many men shared discriminatory experiences in non-LGBTQ+ focused healthcare settings.

To almost precisely the same beat someone leaned on a horn – HONK, HONK, HONK – at the front gates outside. For generations of African women who are expected to pretend sex doesn’t exist- or that they don’t like it. These are likely not the types of relationships that would be conducive to the forms of recruitment that RDS studies rely on. The skin on her collarbones and shoulders, in particular, is impossibly smooth, with a specific effect: that calm kind of loveliness unique to flat landscapes, to uninterrupted stretches of uniform terrain.

Caterers swarmed the garden, unfolding round wooden tables, festooning lights along the walls, ignoring Comfort by the pool. We had a clash … to think that my family told me I’m going to burn in hell, I know my God still loves me. And, set back in shadow behind the tangle of branches, ominous and concrete, never touched by the sun: those three huddled structures with their one concrete courtyard where the houseboys sit on beer crates and eat after dark.

She closed the windowed door and looked, scowling, at the buttons, unsure which to press, too proud to say so. As you stare at her now through the wide picture window, looking down at the garden and your cousin in her lace, you think to yourself, as you thought at the table this morning, it’s a very pretty face. I like OUT because it is based in town and with someone like me who is very secretive, it works well. A fear of rejection was often cited as a reason why some men had not disclosed their same-sex sexuality to their families.

Ntsumi, a gay identifying man in his early 30’s, told us about his friends “ [leaving] the friendship circle” after Ntsumi came out to them: “ Some supported me where others chose to discriminate. She has the same dramatic features as her daughter and brother, her skin a dark bronze from the decades in Ghana. You’ve been tripping and falling around the garden all evening, with night-damp earth sucking at the heels of the shoes, the excess folds of the buba sort of draped around your body, making you look like a black Statue of Liberty. When probed further, Danisa stated explicitly that he considered this experience to be consensual and not sexual coercion or assault. These were followed by qualitative items on a variety of topics including sexual identity and attraction, disclosure of orientation, sexual behavior, concerns regarding HIV and general safety, community connectedness, changes over time in acceptance of same-sex sexuality, and healthcare experiences (see Table 1 for the complete qualitative interview guide).