He looks so cute: The discourse of heterosexual relationship initiation by female youth in Nigeria

Abstract

In many cultural traditions in Africa and beyond, it is taboo for women to initiate sexual offers to men. However, with the new wave of gender fluidity, exposure to media, and affiliation with modernity, some young women in Nigeria initiate heterosexual relationships with their choice of partners. This article explores the nuanced narratives, motivations and experiences of young women in such relationships from a qualitative ethnographic approach using participant observations, focus group and semi-structured interviews. The study is rooted in gender performativity, a postmodern feminist approach to gender and sexuality which allows an individual to express his or her sexual identity and roles based on preference, freedom and responsibility. The results, based on linguistic evidence, show that through initiating sexual relationships, young women find a source of empowerment and agency that challenges their stereotyped passive roles, breaks down gender barriers in normative heterosexual relationships, and thus expand the boundary of their femininity.

Keywords

Heterosexuality gender performativity gendered youth sexual stereotype sexual habitus sexual actors gender roles Nigeria

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Achebe

(2003) And she became a man: King Ahebe Ugbade in the history of Enugu-Ezike, Northern Igboland, 1880–1948. In: Lindsay

Miescher

(eds) Men and Masculinities in Modern Africa. Portsmouth: Heinemann, pp.52–68.

Amadiume

(1987) Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society. London: Karnak House

Attwood

(2016) Sexed up: Theorizing the sexualisation of culture. Sexualities 9(1): 77–95.

Butler

(1988). Performative acts and gender constitution: An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory. Theatre Journal 40(4): 519–531.

Butler

(1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.

Butler

(1993) Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. London: Routledge.

Butler

(1997). Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge.

Butler

(2004) Undoing Gender. London: Routledge.

Butler

(2009) Performativity, precarity and sexual politics. Revista de Anthropologia Iberoamericana 4(3): 1–13.

10.

Connell

(1987) Gender and Power: Society, the Person. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

11.

Connell

(1995) Masculinities. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press.

12.

Connell

(2000) The Men and the Boys. St. Leonards, NSW: Allen and Unwin.

13.

Dean

(2011) The cultural construction of heterosexual identities. Sociological Compass 5(8): 679–687.

14.

Diabah

(2019) The representation of women in Ghanaian radio commercials: Sustaining or challenging gender stereotypes. Language in Society 48: 261–283.

15.

Diabah

Amfo

(2015). Caring supporters or daring usurpers: The representation of women in Akan proverbs. Discourse and Society 26(1): 3–28.

16.

Dunaway

(1997) Rethinking Cherokee acculturation: Agranian capitalism to the cult of domesticity, 1800-1838. American Indian Culture and Research Journal 21(1): 155–192.

17.

Eboiyehi

Bankole

Eromonsele

(2006). Work, women employment and feminization of poverty in Nigeria. Gender and Behaviour 4(1): 642–658.

18.

Eckert

McConnell-Ginet

(2013) Language and Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

19.

Edwards

(2015) It’s a man’s world: The effect of traditional masculinity on gender equality. Available at: www.e-ir.info/2015/03/29/its-a-mans-world-the-effect-of-traditional-masculinity-on-gender-equality/ (accessed 4 October 2019).

20.

Emanatian

(1996) Metaphors of lust and sex in Chigga. Ethos 24(2): 195–236.

21.

Ferguson

(2017) The invention of heterosexual culture by Louis-Georges Tin. Journal of Homosexuality 65(1): 117–143.

22.

Fiaveh

(2017) Daddy, today we have a match!: Women’s agentic strategies in initiating sexual intercourse in an urban Ghanaian community. In: Bennett J and Tamale S (eds) Research on Gender and Sexualities in Africa. Dakar: CODESRIA, pp.89–103.

23.

Fiaveh

(2019) Phallocentricism, female penile choices, and the use of sex toys in Ghana. Sexualities 22(7--8): 1127–1144.

24.

Fiaveh

Okyerefo

MPK

Fayorsey

(2015) Women’s experiences of sexual pleasure in Ghana. Sexuality and Culture 19(4): 697–714.

25.

Fiaveh

Okyerefo

MPK

(2017) Femininity, sexual positions and choice. Sexualities 22(1–2): 131–147.

26.

Fingerson

(2006) Girls in Power: Gender, Body and Menstruation in Adolescents. Allbany, NY: State University of New York Press.

27.

Frazier

Esterly

(1990). Correlates of relationship beliefs: Gender, relationship experience and relationship satisfaction. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 7(3): 331–352.

28.

Galinsky

McClintock

Waite

(2014) Sexuality and physical contact in national social life, health, aging and project waves 2. The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and social Sciences 69(2): 83–98.

29.

Gill R Henwood

McLean

(2000) The tyranny of the six-pack? Understanding men’s responses to representations of the male body in popular culture. In: Squire

(ed) Culture in psychology. London: Routledge, pp.101–117.

30.

Helgeson

(2005) Psychology of Gender. London: Pearson Education.

31.

Holland

(2016) Understanding the sexual lives of young people. In: Furlong

(ed) Routledge Handbook of Youth and Young Adulthood. New York: Routledge, pp.400–408.

32.

Janson

(2016) Male wives and female husbands: Reconfiguring gendering the Tablighi Jama’at in the Gambia. Journal of Religion in Africa 46(2–3): 187–218.

33.

Kimmel

(1987) Rethinking masculinity: New direction in research. In: Kimmel

(ed) Changing Men: New Directions in Research on Men and Masculinities. Thousand Oaks: SAGE, pp.9–24.

34.

Kitzinger

Wilkinson

(1994) Virgins and queers: Rehabilitating homosexuality. Gender and Society 8(3): 444–462.

35.

Lakoff

(1973) Language and women’s place. Language in Society 2(1): 45–80.

36.

Lehmann

(2016) Nine signs you and your partner are compactible. Available at: www.huffpost.com/entry/signs-you-and-your-partner-are-compatible_n (accessed 24 September 2019).

37.

Ligtvoet

(2018) Made in Nigeria: Duress and upward mobile youth in the biography of a young entrepreneur in Enugu. Conflict and Society: Advances in Research 4: 275–287.

38.

McFerson

(2010) Poverty among women in Sub-Sahara Africa: A review of selected issues. Journal of International Women Studies 11(4): 50–72.

39.

McIntosh

(2009) Yoruba Women: Work and Social Change. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

40.

Marcoux

(1998) The feminization of poverty; claims, facts and data needs. Population and Development Review 24(1): 131–147.

41.

Mensah

(2016) Female nicknames in Nigeria: The case of Calabar metropolis. Language Matters 47(2): 184–202.

42.

Mensah

(2020) When you open your legs, you eat: The discourse of transactional sex among female youth in Nigeria. Sexuality and Culture 24(3): 543–560.

43.

Mensah

Inyabri

(2016) The ideological significance of metaphors in sexualized discursive practices among Nigerian youth. Critical Multilingualism Studies 4(2): 10–34.

44.

Mensah

Nkamigbo

(2016) All I want is your waist: Sexual metaphors as youth slanguage in Nigeria. Sociolinguistic Studies 10(1–2): 177–198.

45.

Mensah

Inyabri

Mensah

(2018) The discourse of tattoo consumption among female youth in Nigeria. Communicatio: South African Journal for Communication Theory and Research 44(3): 56–73.

46.

Miller

(2016). The mis-education of Lady Gaga: Confronting essentialist claims in the sex and gender classroom. In: Haltinner

Pilgeram

(eds) Teaching Gender and Sex in Contemporary America. Switzerland: Springer, pp.15–25.

47.

Moore

Rosenthal

(2006) Sexuality in Adolescents: Current Trends. New York: Routledge.

48.

Moran

(2017) Re-positioning female heterosexuality with postfeminist and neoliberal culture. Sexualities 20(1–2): 121–139.

49.

Morris

(1995) All made up: Performance theory and the new anthropology of sex and gender. Annual Review of Anthropology 24: 567–592.

50.

Nwoko

(2012) Female husbands in Igboland, South-east Nigeria. Journal of Pan African Studies 5(1): 69–82.

51.

Oyewumi

(1997) The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press.

52.

Oyewumi

(2011) Gender Epistemologies in Africa: Gendering Traditions, Spaces, Social Institutions and Identities. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

53.

Philaretou

(2001) An analysis of masculine socialization and sexual anxiety. PhD Thesis, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia.

54.

Sanders

(2007) Living a charmed life: The magic of postfeminist sisterhood. In: Tasker

Negra

(eds) Interrogating Post-Feminism. Durham, UK: Duke University Press, pp.73–99.

55.

Sheerin

Linehan

(2018) Gender performativity and hegemonic masculinity in investment management. Gender in Management 33(7): 561–576.

56.

Siegel

Meunier

(2019) Traditional sex and gender stereotypes in the relationships of non-disclosing behaviorally bisexual men. Archives of Sexual Behaviour 48(1): 333–345.

57.

Simpson

(1994) Male Impersonators: Men Performing Masculinities. London: Cassell.

58.

Slaughter

(1989) Cultural reconstruction in the post-modern world. Journal of Curriculum Studies 3: 255–270.

59.

Ssetuba

(2002) The hold of patriarchy: An appraisal of modern Ganda proverbs in the light of modern relations. Paper presented at Cairo Gender Symposium, 7--10 April 2002, Cairo, Egypt.

60.

Unger

(1990) Imperfect reflections on reality: Psychology constructs gender. In: Mare-Mustin

Marecek

(eds) Making a Difference: Psychology and the Construction of Gender. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, pp.102–149.

61.

Ward

(1999) A World Full of Women. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

62.

Wight

(2011) Facing gender performativity: How transgender performances and performativity trouble facework research. Kaleidoscope: A Graduate Journal of Qualitative Communication Research 10(1): 73–90.