scholarly journals Anusocratie? Freemasonry, sexual transgression and illicit enrichment in postcolonial Africa

Africa ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 90 (5) ◽  
pp. 831-851
Author(s):  
Peter Geschiere ◽  
Rogers Orock
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
Sexual Practices ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Sexual Diversity ◽  
Sexual Identities ◽  
Sexual Transgression ◽  
Postcolonial Africa ◽  
Anal Penetration ◽  
Sex Practices

AbstractCameroonians recently invented a new word to characterize the state of their country: anusocratie (the rule of the anus). This became central in the moral panic from 2000 onwards over a supposed proliferation of homosexuality. Anusocratie links such same-sex practices to illicit enrichment by the national elites and their involvement with secret associations of Western provenance, such as Freemasonry, Rosicrucians and the Illuminati. This article tries to unravel this conceptual knot of homosexuality, the occult (Freemasonry) and illicit enrichment: first, by historicizing it. Of interest in the Cameroonian case is the fact that a similar link is mentioned in one of the first ethnographies, Günther Tessmann's Die Pangwe. Freemasonry is clearly a colonial imposition on the country, but the link between same-sex practices and enrichment has a longer history. Second, a comparison with similar ideas elsewhere on the continent can also open up wider perspectives. The link with illicit enrichment does not figure in classical conceptions of ‘homosexuality’ as developed in Europe, yet it strongly emerges from examples from all over Africa. Both Achille Mbembe and Joseph Tonda show that this image of the anus – anal penetration – articulates popular concerns about staggering inequalities. Yet, this aspect is ignored in debates about growing ‘homophobia’ in Africa. A confrontation with classical texts from Western queer theory (Bersani, Mieli) can help us discover other layers in African discourses, notably an emphasis on sexual diversity as an answer to homophobia. It can also serve to relativize the linking of sexual practices to sexual identities, which is still seen as self-evident in much queer theory of Western provenance.

A “Vortex of Identities”: Freemasonry, Witchcraft, and Postcolonial Homophobia

2017 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Geschiere
Keyword(s):  
Queer Studies ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
African Studies ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
The West ◽  
Secret Societies ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Anal Penetration ◽  
Sex Practices

Abstract:The recent moral panic in Cameroon about a supposed proliferation of “homosexuality” is related to a special image of “the” homosexual as un Grand who submits younger persons, eager to get a job, to anal penetration, and are thus corrupting the nation. This image stems from the popular conviction that the national elite is deeply involved in secret societies like Freemasonry or Rosicrucianism. The tendency to thus relate the supposed proliferation of homosexuality in the postcolony to colonial impositions is balanced by other lines in its genealogy—for instance, the notion of “wealth medicine,” which Günther Tessmann, the German ethnographer of the Fang, linked already in 1913 to same-sex intercourse. This complex knot of ideas and practices coming from different backgrounds can help us explore the urgent challenges that same-sex practices raise to African studies in general. The Cameroonian examples confuse current Western notions about heteronormativity, GLBTQI+ identities, and the relation between gender and sex. Taking everyday assemblages emerging from African contexts as our starting point can help not only to queer African studies, but also to Africanize queer studies. It can also help to overcome unproductive tendencies to oppose Western/colonial and local/ traditional elements. Present-day notions and practices of homosexuality and homophobia are products of long and tortuous histories at the interface of Africa and the West.

Sexuality

Anthropology ◽  
2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard G. Parker ◽  
Laura R. Murray
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Reproductive Technologies ◽  
Cultural Construction ◽  
Sexual Practices ◽  
Sexuality Research ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Sexual Diversity

Research on sexuality (and related topics such as gender, reproduction, and kinship relations) has figured prominently in anthropology since the formative years of the discipline. Work carried out in the 1920s and 1930s by anthropologists such as Margaret Mead and Bronislaw Malinowski was pioneering both in developing cross-cultural comparisons of diverse sexual mores and customs and in legitimizing ethnography as a key methodological approach for the study of sexuality. Research on these issues expanded significantly beginning in the 1970s, heavily influenced by changes in social norms and values that had taken place in the 1960s, and was stimulated in important ways by the emerging feminist and lesbian and gay movements, and by scholarly work in women’s studies and gay and lesbian studies. Much of this work focused on what were described as “sexual meanings” and sought to explore the ways in which gender, sexuality, and reproductive relations vary across cultures. Anthropological research has focused on the investigation of sexual cultures and the social and cultural construction of sexual practices, playing an especially important role in documenting sexual diversity and same-sex sexual relations in different societies, including contemporary Western society. As this body of work developed during the 1980s and the 1990s, it also addressed the cultural and social dimensions of a range of important practical issues, such as the HIV epidemic, the changing shape of reproductive health and new reproductive technologies, sex work, tourism, migration, same-sex marriage, and globalization. Since the mid-1990s, growing anthropological attention has also focused on structural factors that shape sexuality in different social settings, and on political struggles that have emerged in relation to sexuality and sexual rights. As the research focus has expanded to these areas of social concern, anthropologists studying sexuality have been increasingly influenced by work in feminist theory, queer theory, history, and other social sciences, and have also emphasized the ways in which sexuality intersects with other axes of power and identities.

scholarly journals Invisible Desires in Ghana and Kenya: Same-Sex Erotic Experiences in Cross-Sex Oriented Lives

Sexualities ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 883-898 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Spronk
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Significant Proportion ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Sexual Practices ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Sexual Diversity ◽  
The People ◽  
Theoretical Investigations ◽  
Binary Oppositions ◽  
The One

This article explores the tension between same-sex sexual practices and eroticism, on the one hand, and theoretical investigations on sexual diversity, on the other. The author’s analysis is based on research in Ghana and Kenya over the last two decades. A significant proportion of the people she met have (had) experience with same-sex sexual practices at some point in their life. Their choice to start and continue with it and in what form differed considerably per person and over their life course. These diverse possibilities throw an interesting light on the question of sexual diversity, which tends to be locked in a Western paradigm based on binary oppositions of female vs male, homosexual vs heterosexual and non-Western vs Western. While this paradigm has been criticized, theory on sexual diversity nevertheless inclines towards focusing on difference from the norm as its standpoint and therefore always implies non-heterosexuality. The author argues that African contemporary realities suggest innovative analytical directions of global heuristic value. Rather than focusing on self-realization based on notions of individualization, she explores the notion of well-being as put forward by Michael Jackson in Life within Limits: Well-Being in a World of Want (2011). She explores how realizing gendered and sexual well-being is a constant struggle rather than a linear path, and how diversity comes into being as erotic practices that are generated through phases in life course.

Prison same-sex sexualities in the context of politicized homophobia in Malawi

Sexualities ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 29-45
Author(s):  
Ashley Currier
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Sexual Practices ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Gender Variance ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Sexual Diversity ◽  
African Nation ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Newspaper Articles

Prison same-sex sexualities have largely gone unnoticed in Malawi, an African nation associated with politicized homophobia. The term ‘politicized homophobia’ refers to political elites’ public hostility toward same-sex sexualities, gender variance, and gender and sexual diversity activism. In a context typified by scrutiny of same-sex sexualities, it is surprising that certain same-sex sexual practices, specifically prison same-sex sexualities, escaped rebuke and attention in news media, which play an important role in circulating discourses of politicized homophobia in contemporary African nations. Using the case of prison sex in Malawi, this article asserts that politicized homophobia has verifiable limits because not all negative discourses about same-sex sexualities agglomerate into politicized homophobia. The essay draws on an analysis of 109 Malawian newspaper articles published between 1995 and 2016 that mention prison sex.

Decolonizing Indigenous Sexualities

2019 ◽  
pp. 167-184
Author(s):  
Manuela L. Picq
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Sexual Practices ◽  
Sexual Rights ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Sexual Diversity ◽  
Binary Fluid ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Sexual Control

Indigenous societies were never straight. Hundreds of languages across the Americas had words referring to same-sex practices and non-binary, fluid understandings of gender long before the emergence of international LGBT rights. The muxes in Juchitán are neither men nor women but a Zapotec gender hybridity. Across the Pacific in Hawaii, the māhū embrace both the feminine and masculine. Global sexual rights frameworks did not introduce referents to recognize alternative sexualities; Indigenous languages already had them, as their terminologies indicate. Indigenous sexualities both predate and defy contemporary LGBT and queer frameworks. It is not the idioms that are untranslatable but the cultural and political fabric they represent. This chapter shows the plurality of gender roles and sexual practices in Indigenous societies not to contribute sexual repertoires but to expand the imagination with new epistemologies. The analysis suggests that codes of heteronormativity were central tenets of the colonial project. Sexuality was a terrain to frame the Native as pervert and validate European violence against the non-Christian other, labeled as savage, heretic, and sodomite. The repression of sexual diversity shows how sexual control followed colonial logics of dispossession like the doctrine of discovery and why resisting heteronormative codification is a decolonial practice. This chapter recognizes the significance of the existence and resistance of Indigenous sexualities. It analyzes colonial processes of heterosexualization and approaches Native sexualities as sites of resurgence and self-determination to resist ongoing forms of dispossession.

Bud-sex, Dude-sex, and Heteroflexible Men: The Relationship between Straight Identification and Social Attitudes in a Nationally Representative Sample of Men with Same-sex Attractions or Sexual Practices

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 426-443 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony J. Silva ◽  
Rachel Bridges Whaley
Keyword(s):  
Representative Sample ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
White Men ◽  
Sexual Practices ◽  
Child Rearing ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Sexual Diversity ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
Male Sexual Partners ◽  
The Relationship

We examine the relationship between straight identification and nonsexual social factors among men who are attracted to men and/or have had two or more male sexual partners. All data come from the 2011–2013 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), a nationally representative sample of Americans aged 15 to 44. We estimate that 7.4 percent of men, aged 15 to 44, are in this population, and that 52.4 percent identify as straight, demonstrating sexual diversity within heterosexuality and identity diversity among men with same-sex practices and/or attractions. Weighted logistic regression indicates that conservative attitudes about child rearing and gays/lesbians are associated with increased likelihood of straight identification. Latino and black men are not significantly more likely to identify as straight than white men. While impossible to determine causality, when put in dialogue with related qualitative studies, the results suggest that for men with same-sex sexuality, attitudes about sexuality and child rearing may affect the meaning-making processes that influence heterosexual identification.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Colm Hogan
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Social Constructionism ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sexual Identities ◽  
The Third ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Sexual Part ◽  
The One ◽  
And Behavior

The introduction first sets out some preliminary definitions of sex, sexuality, and gender. It then turns from the sexual part of Sexual Identities to the identity part. A great deal of confusion results from failing to distinguish between identity in the sense of a category with which one identifies (categorial identity) and identity in the sense of a set of patterns that characterize one’s cognition, emotion, and behavior (practical identity). The second section gives a brief summary of this difference. The third and fourth sections sketch the relation of the book to social constructionism and queer theory, on the one hand, and evolutionary-cognitive approaches to sex, sexuality, and gender, on the other. The fifth section outlines the value of literature in not only illustrating, but advancing a research program in sex, sexuality, and gender identity. Finally, the introduction provides an overview of the chapters in this volume.

scholarly journals Google, Tell Me. Is He Gay? Masculinity, Heterosexuality, and Gendered Anxieties in Google Search Queries about Sexuality

2021 ◽  
pp. 073112142110019
Author(s):  
Emma Mishel ◽  
Tristan Bridges ◽  
Mónica L. Caudillo
Keyword(s):  
Social Desirability ◽  
Google Trends ◽  
Social Desirability Bias ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Search Queries ◽  
Sexual Identities ◽  
Google Search

It is difficult to gauge people’s acceptance about same-sex sexualities, as responses to questionnaires are prone to social desirability bias. We offer a new proxy for understanding popular concern surrounding same-sex sexualities: prevalence of Google searches demonstrating concern over gay/lesbian sexual identities. Using Google Trends data, we find that Google searches about whether a specific person is gay or lesbian show patterned bias toward masculine searches, in that such searches are much more frequently conducted about boys and men compared with girls and women. We put these findings into context by comparing search frequencies with other popular Google searches about sexuality and otherwise. We put forth that the patterned bias toward masculine searches illustrates support for the enduring relationship between masculinity and heterosexuality and that it does so on a larger scale than previous research has been able to establish.

Gendered Sexuality

Sociology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shelly Ronen
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Behaviors ◽  
Social Study ◽  
Sexual Practices ◽  
Theoretical Development ◽  
Feminist Philosophy ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Gay Liberation ◽  
Sociological Study ◽  
Sexual Identities ◽  
Normative Force

Sexuality encompasses diverse sexual practices including sexual behaviors, their sequencing, meanings, effects, pleasures, and risks, sexual identities, preferences or orientations, and the social construction of sexual acts and communities over history. Sexuality is undeniably shaped by gender as an individual, interpersonal, and institutional force. It is also shaped by intersecting axes of difference including class, race, ethnicity, age, and body morphology or disability status. These are in turn also affected by sexuality. The study of gendered sexuality has been an interdisciplinary undertaking. The sociological field incorporates insights from anthropology, feminist philosophy, gender and women’s studies, history, LGBTQIA+ studies, cultural studies, media studies, psychology, and queer studies. Early sociology failed to recognize sexuality as a domain of social study, so the subject only gained relevance in sociology in the second half of the 20th century. Touchstone texts from the subfield’s formation often draw on non-sociological works as well as biological, medical, and psychoanalytic approaches. Newer advances in the study of sexuality were initially spurred by feminisms and activist-scholars from the lesbian, bisexual, and gay liberation movement. As such, alongside theoretical development and empirical study, some work in the discipline retains a normative approach, seeking to clarify and advance varying definitions of sexual liberation. Contemporary sociological research on sexuality focuses on resultant inequalities: whether between genders (mostly still conceived of as either men and women) between sexual orientations (mostly still understood as either straight or gay) or between different races or ethnicities. As such, sociological study on sexualities focuses on the collective consequences of sexuality as a varied and changing institutional and normative force.

Queer Theory and Heteronormativity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Page Valentine Regan ◽  
Elizabeth J. Meyer
Keyword(s):  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Sexual Diversity ◽  
Lgbtq Youth ◽  
Gender And Sexuality Studies ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Queer Pedagogy

The concepts of queer theory and heteronormativity have been taken up in educational research due to the influence of disciplines including gender and sexuality studies, feminist theory, and critical race theory. Queer theory seeks to disrupt dominant and normalizing binaries that structure our understandings of gender and sexuality. Heteronormativity describes the belief that heterosexuality is and should be the preferred system of sexuality and informs the related male or female, binary understanding of gender identity and expression. Taken together, queer theory and heteronormativity offer frames to interrogate and challenge systems of sex and gender in educational institutions and research to better support and understand the experiences of LGBTQ youth. They also inform the development of queer pedagogy that includes classroom and instructional practices designed to expand and affirm gender and sexual diversity in schools.

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