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In her groundbreaking text, Male Daughters, Female Husbands, Ifi Amadiume offers an ethnographic account which depicts, among others, gender in the making in Nnobi society in Nigeria. This paper, d...

Sexually transmitted infections (STI) in lesbian and bisexual women is a relatively unexplored topic, particularly for women from low and middle-income countries. Despite perceptions that women who have sex with women (WSW) are at negligible risk for contracting STI, existing research demonstrates that WSW do become infected with STI. Given the opposition between assumptions of invulnerability and the observed risks, we explored how WSW would respond to symptoms of STI (i.e., wait until symptoms passed, see a medical doctor, and inform sexual partners). We used data collected as part of a collaboration between academic researchers and community-based LGBTQ organizations in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. Chi-square tests were used to test whether participants’ responses to hypothetical STI symptoms varied in relation to several intrapersonal, interpersonal, and structural factors. Multivariable logistic regression (backward) was used to assess whether these variables were independently associated with women’s responses. Most women would be proactive in response to potential STI symptoms and would see a medical doctor. However, most women would not inform their sexual partner of symptoms of STI. Findings demonstrate several intrapersonal, interpersonal, and structural factors that influence WSW’s health agency, and show a clustering of high-risk factors among women who would not be proactive about their health. Our findings suggest the need for improved health and health care of WSW in Southern Africa.

This chapter addresses LGBTQI+ experiences in Africa as a contribution to Pan African Studies. African countries vary very considerably in the ways that gender and sexuality are constructed, with postcolonial and neo-colonial relations, anti-racist struggles, local subjectivities, traditionalist patriarchies, and nationalist homophobias intertwining with human rights frameworks and activist interventions. The chapter focuses on the African continent, whilst acknowledging the importance of scholarship about LGBTQI+ identities in the African diaspora. It then addresses the many ways in which LGBTQI+ Africans are subjected and persecuted, with a specific small section on intersex, as intersex people are often overlooked in discussions about LGBTQI+ in African contexts. Pan-African understandings of sexual and gender diversity can be enriched by attention to spirituality, in its wide range of manifestations across the continent and in the diaspora. Active hostility towards gender-diverse and non-heterosexual people in Africa is still pervasive, and deliberate, sustained stigmatising and prejudiced expressions are evident realities for the majority of African LGBTQI+ people.

Pride parades can be understood as the stage where identity politics is performed [De Waal, S., and A. Manion, eds. 2006. PRIDE: Protest and Celebration. University of the Witwatersrand, GALA]. [Jo...

In an interview with Nadia Davids, Zethu Matabeni discusses contemporary queer politics in South Africa and Cape Town in particular. Matebeni contextualizes current queer activism in a broader hist...

Women who have sex with women in Southern Africa, where HIV prevalence is high, are often presumed to have minimal risk for sexually transmitted infections (STI) and HIV despite research documenting female-to-female transmission. This study examined the demographic and social factors contributing to female-to-female STI/HIV transmission knowledge among Southern African women who have sex with women using an integrated model of health literacy. In collaboration with community-based organisations in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe, data were collected through anonymous surveys (N = 591). Multivariable stepwise forward logistic regression assessed independent associations between participant characteristics and high vs. low knowledge using five items. Overall, 64.4% (n = 362) of women had high; 35.6% (n = 200) had low knowledge. Higher education (adjusted odds ratio [aOR]: 2.24, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.48, 3.40), regular income (aOR: 2.14, 95% CI: 1.43, 3.21), residence in Botswana (aOR: 3.12, 95% CI: 1.15, 8.48) and having ever received tailored STI/HIV information (aOR: 2.17, 95% CI: 1.41, 3.32) predicted significantly higher odds of high knowledge in the final multivariable model. Results suggest opportunities for peer-led sexual health programming and expanded HIV prevention campaigns addressing women who have sex with women.

“The problem with English is this: You usually can't open your mouth and it comes out just like that – first you have to think what you want to say. Then you have to find the words. Then you have t...

HIV prevention and service programmes have long either ignored or overlooked lesbians. The experiences of lesbians with HIV have similarly been unrecognised and unreported. This erasure has contributed to the invisibility of lesbians in relation to HIV and related health risks. This community participatory study, based on in-depth interviews with twenty-four self-identifying African lesbians living with HIV in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia, focuses on their personal experiences and circumstances. Women's experiences shed light and challenge popular notions around lesbian risk. In particular among this group are lesbians who self-report exclusive sexual relationships with women. For these women, experiences of living with HIV are challenging as they struggle to understand the possibility of female-to-female transmission. While battling with their own perceptions of invulnerability and accepting their HIV positive status, they have to deal also with wide-ranging misconceptions about risk. The paper argues that within the context of HIV lesbians cannot be regarded as a `no-risk' group. Health services and health providers are encouraged to respond to the health needs of lesbians living with HIV.

‘What do we see when we look at ourselves?’ asked South African visual activist/artist Zanele Muholi in her 2006 photographic collection Only Half the Picture. The question, a deeply challenging introspection, required black women in particular to reflect on the ways in which history has made us not look at ourselves, but be looked at. The images Muholi presented were viewed as both troubling and liberating. This article, using a queer framework, is concerned with recoding the ways in which black women's bodies and female sexuality have been represented in post-colonial contexts. Using Zanele Muholi's photography, the article opens possibilities for claiming an erotic position for the black female's ‘queer’ body. This is further complicated by racial dynamics. The article argues that such representations work against painful colonial histories of black female torture while also desexualizing the black female.

In this conversation I engage with Jabu Pereira,1 a Johannesburg-based black queer person who curates interventions on subjects related to gender, queerness and the body, and Ignacio Rivera, black ...

In South Africa, and especially in Johannesburg, apartheid’s “racial” paradigms are being transformed. Fifteen years after the end of apartheid and the elimination of all forms of inequity based on notion of “race,” including the abolition of the Immorality Act of 1949 that prohibited mixed marriages, the discourses of youth challenge preestablished boundaries. Today, the South African Constitution gives people the right to proclaim their sexual orientation and to shape their own identities. Through ethnographic observations carried out in Johannesburg and in-depth interviews with young people, this paper explores transforming notions of identity based on “race/color/ethnicity,” gender, class, and sexuality. The dynamics and challenges faced by young people with regards to mixed interactions in post-apartheid Johannesburg are analyzed and the paper looks at how “race,” gender, and sexuality interact in the various spaces in Johannesburg and how they affect young people’s lives, particularly their perceptions of risk, violence, and HIV/AIDS vulnerability.

This essay looks at the recent lesbian feminist leadership institute held in February 2008 in Mozambique, aimed at developing African lesbian feminist thinkers and leaders. More than sixty participants from many African countries attended the weeklong institute. Many of the attendees identified as lesbian, others as not lesbian in same-sex relationships; there were a few transgender men as well as heterosexual women. The diversity of the participants allowed for a platform to interrogate African feminism and at the same time highlight issues around sexuality, particularly same-sex sexuality as well as the contentious issues on gender. A reading of such an institute allows for an analysis of feminist models applicable to the diversity of African and Black activists, scholars, and researchers. Reflecting on this institute foregrounds many of the contentions around a model of African feminism used to negotiate sexual orientation, race, class, and gender. Furthermore, this reflection aims to generate increasi...

A saúde sexual de mulheres lésbicas não é um tema frequentemente discutido em nossas sociedades. As questões de saúde da mulher são classificadas sob uma única categoria abrangente e excluem algumas das preocupações específicas de mulheres lésbicas, que, em geral, não têm o mesmo comportamento em relação à saúde que as mulheres heterossexuais. Esta tendência se deve a uma série de razões, entre as quais: falta de conhecimento sobre saúde e risco sexuais lésbicos, medo de estigmatização pelos prestadores de serviço e o processo de "se assumir" (coming out) para esses profissionais, que além de desconhecido, é, algumas vezes, hostil. Além disso, a pouca pesquisa sobre lésbicas e saúde lésbica na África do Sul torna difícil para as mulheres que assim se autoclassificam saberem que questões de saúde sexual as afetam especificamente, bem como onde e de que forma lidar com certos problemas. Existe uma percepção equivocada e generalizada de que questões de sexo seguro não afetam mulheres lésbicas tanto quanto mulheres heterossexuais. O artigo apresenta as visões de um grupo de mulheres de 18 a 35 anos que se autoidentificam como lésbicas na África de Sul. Por meio de questionários autoaplicados e discussões, essas mulheres partilham suas experiências e pensamentos sobre sexo lésbico (seguro) e como elas têm-se relacionado e continuam a se relacionar sexualmente com outras mulheres no momento de HIV e Aids.Lesbian women's health and sexual health is a theme not generally discussed in our societies. Women's' health issues are generally classified under one umbrella, and exclude some of the concerns specific to lesbian women. Lesbian women in general do not have the same health-seeking behaviours as heterosexual women. This is due to a number of reasons including: lack of knowledge about lesbian sexual health and sexual risk, fear of stigmatization by service providers, and the "coming out" process to unfamiliar and sometimes unsympathetic health-related service providers. Furthermore, limited research on lesbians and lesbian health in South Africa makes it difficult for lesbian women to know what sexual health issues affect them specifically, where and how to address these issues. There is a general misconception that safe sex issues do not affect lesbian women as much as they affect heterosexual women. The paper presents views of a group of young self-identified lesbian women in South Africa between the ages of 18 and 35. Through self-administered questionnaires and discussions these women share their experiences and thoughts of lesbian (safe) sex and how they have related and continue to relate sexually with other women in the time of HIV and Aids.

Since the demise of apartheid, gay and lesbian people in South Africa have enjoyed equal rights and access to legal reform on many levels. Same-sex partnerships, adoption rights, immigration rights, and other social benefits for same-sex partners have become a norm in South Africa. Though the postapartheid South African constitution grants rights to sexual minorities, the extent of racial and class inequalities within gay politics indicates the need for a revamped movement or politics that will challenge structural injustices and lack of redistribution. Looking at South Africa through the commonly used gay lens is not only limited but also problematic. This lens follows the same forms of exclusion that gay history has revealed. Gender, class, and racial tensions within postapartheid gay politics, as in South Africa as a whole, are easily overlooked when the focus is primarily on freedom and equality.

Even though women who have sex with women are usually understood to be at no or very low risk for HIV infection, we explored whether lesbian and bisexual women in a geographical area with high HIV prevalence (Southern Africa) get tested for HIV and whether, among those women who get tested, there are women who live with HIV/AIDS. The study was conducted in collaboration with community-based organizations in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Data were collected via written surveys of women who in the preceding year had had sex with a woman (18 years and older; N = 591). Most participating women identified as lesbian and black. Almost half of the women (47.2%) reported ever having had consensual heterosexual sex. Engagement in transactional sex (lifetime) was reported by 18.6% of all women. Forced sex by men or women was reported by 31.1% of all women. A large proportion of the women reported to ever have been tested for HIV (78.3%); number of lifetime female and male partners was independently associated with having been tested; women who had engaged in transactional sex with women only or with women and men were less likely to have been tested. Self-reported HIV prevalence among tested women who knew their serostatus was 9.6%. Besides age, the sole independent predictor of a positive serostatus was having experienced forced sex by men, by women, or by both men and women. Study findings indicate that despite the image of invulnerability, HIV/AIDS is a reality for lesbian and bisexual women in Southern Africa. Surprisingly, it is not sex with men per se, but rather forced sex that is the important risk factor for self-reported HIV infection among the participating women. HIV/AIDS policy should also address the needs of lesbian, bisexual and other women who have sex with women.

In February 2008, the Coalition of African Lesbians (CAL) hosted the third Leadership Institute on Building Lesbian Feminist Thinkers and Leaders for the 21st Century: Feminist Response to Patriarchy and Homophobia in Africa. LAMBDA, the Mozambiquan Association for Sexual Minority Rights, and member of CAL, the Coalition of African Lesbians, facilitated the logistics for hosting the institute in Maputo, Mozambique. The institute attracted more than sixty delegates from all regions in the African continent, with the majority from South Africa. CAL, a network of organizations, is the first African body that seeks to be “the voice and face” of African lesbian, bisexual, and transgender women. The leadership institute is one of the ways in which CAL aims to “build the capacity of African lesbians and organisations.” CAL does this through utilizing “African radical feminist analysis in all spheres of life” (Coalition of African Lesbians 2006).

A saúde sexual de mulheres lésbicas não é um tema frequentemente discutido em nossas sociedades. As questões de saúde da mulher são classificadas sob uma única categoria abrangente e excluem algumas das preocupações específicas de mulheres lésbicas, que, em geral, não têm o mesmo comportamento em relação à saúde que as mulheres heterossexuais. Esta tendência se deve a uma série de razões, entre as quais: falta de conhecimento sobre saúde e risco sexuais lésbicos, medo de estigmatização pelos prestadores de serviço e o processo de "se assumir" (coming out) para esses profissionais, que além de desconhecido, é, algumas vezes, hostil. Além disso, a pouca pesquisa sobre lésbicas e saúde lésbica na África do Sul torna difícil para as mulheres que assim se autoclassificam saberem que questões de saúde sexual as afetam especificamente, bem como onde e de que forma lidar com certos problemas. Existe uma percepção equivocada e generalizada de que questões de sexo seguro não afetam mulheres lésbicas tanto quanto mulheres heterossexuais. O artigo apresenta as visões de um grupo de mulheres de 18 a 35 anos que se autoidentificam como lésbicas na África de Sul. Por meio de questionários autoaplicados e discussões, essas mulheres partilham suas experiências e pensamentos sobre sexo lésbico (seguro) e como elas têm-se relacionado e continuam a se relacionar sexualmente com outras mulheres no momento de HIV e Aids. Lesbian women's health and sexual health is a theme not generally discussed in our societies. Women's' health issues are generally classified under one umbrella, and exclude some of the concerns specific to lesbian women. Lesbian women in general do not have the same health-seeking behaviours as heterosexual women. This is due to a number of reasons including: lack of knowledge about lesbian sexual health and sexual risk, fear of stigmatization by service providers, and the "coming out" process to unfamiliar and sometimes unsympathetic health-related service providers. Furthermore, limited research on lesbians and lesbian health in South Africa makes it difficult for lesbian women to know what sexual health issues affect them specifically, where and how to address these issues. There is a general misconception that safe sex issues do not affect lesbian women as much as they affect heterosexual women. The paper presents views of a group of young self-identified lesbian women in South Africa between the ages of 18 and 35. Through self-administered questionnaires and discussions these women share their experiences and thoughts of lesbian (safe) sex and how they have related and continue to relate sexually with other women in the time of HIV and Aids.

In this paper, we present the evaluation results of an AIDS non-governmental organization (NGO) capacity building 20-month pilot initiative in five countries in southern Africa called the NGO Institute. A five-person international team conducted a 2 week evaluation of the pilot in 2004 to assess the strength of the model, designed and funded by Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation. The NGO Institute functioned through a separate consortium in each country. Results of the pilot indicate variations in adaptation and implementation of the model in each of the five countries. Each consortium took considerable time to develop its own governance and management systems. There were examples of strengthened NGO capacity in each country although it was too soon to establish overall impact. The strengths and weaknesses of this NGO capacity building model are presented along with the implications for other funding agencies and NGOs.