Criminalising adolescent sexuality — murky waters
I went to a thrilling dialogue at the Commission for Gender Equality last week. The topic was the ages of consent for sex, in terms of our legislation, and the complications that the current...
View ArticleZuma’s privates and the black male sexual potency myth
Tom Sharpe’s comic novel Indecent Exposure mercilessly lampooning white racism in South Africa was predictably banned under the apartheid government. I managed to get my copy during a visit to Sun...
View ArticleDon’t kiss me, I’m 16
The recent fiasco with the Sexual Offences Act should serve as an alert about continuing problems dating from before the act’s adoption in 2007 and that have still not received parliament’s attention....
View ArticleUganda and the science on homosexuality
The Speaker of Uganda’s parliament insists the Anti-Homosexuality Bill from 2009 be passed before 2013 arrives. With the apparent goal of protecting society from sexual deviance, the ill-informed...
View ArticleO is for Orgasm
Since it is the holiday season and because so many people have assured me that I am “shrill”, “aggressive”, “in need of a good fuck”, et al &ndash none of which I accept, by the way – I thought I...
View ArticleOn sexuality and freedom
“It is not enough to inquire into how women might become more fully represented in language and politics. Feminist critique ought also to understand how the category of ‘women’, the subject of...
View ArticleTeenage pregnancy a crime?
Ever heard of the “30cm rule”? This unwritten rule is popular in many co-ed high schools and it stipulates that a boy and a girl should not be closer than 30cm of each other. That means no hugging,...
View ArticleHow not to write about African women and sex
By Gcobani Qambela This weekend I read a New York Times (NYT) article that is guilty of all traditional, white, western feminist mishaps when it comes to writing about African women and their...
View ArticleVagina politics
I found my daughter fiddling with her vagina in the bathtub. The said vagina will here forth be referred to as a pony, it is far too cute to be burdened with the responsibilities that come with having...
View ArticleWhat is a lesbian?
By Kagure Mugo “What is lesbian now?” I begin explaining “queer theory” to my grandmother and the diffusion of human rights and international instruments that hold states accountable. These terms and...
View ArticleNow for the 21st century round of South African sex panic
Twenty years into democracy and the battles to capture and define South African identities are at fever pitch. Race seems to have a new lease on life and, unexpectedly, so does sexuality. Some say that...
View ArticleHow to challenge your whiteness…
I am a white South African man, and when I wrote about the problems of white masculinity I faced a barrage of abusive tweets, threats and even a phone call to one of my work colleagues to complain...
View ArticleThe ancient Greeks’ wisdom regarding sexual orientation
As history unfolds, people tend to regard earlier eras as being surpassed in practically all areas of cultural activity, the most obvious one being technology — “progress” regarding which,...
View Article‘I am penis, hear me roar’: The threat of lesbianism
Men seem to labour under the misapprehension that sex is about them. This is not a hastily made statement, there is some evidence behind it. Exhibit A: The idea that men think they’re “putting the D”...
View ArticleOf birth rights and gay rights
By Steven Hussey “Nobody is born gay” reads the headline of a billboard by a so-called “pro-ex-gay” non-profit in the United States. The ad shows identical twin brothers with the revelation, “One gay....
View ArticleRacism, sexism and homophobia: Which prejudice is worse?
By Matthew Beetar Racism is more of a problem than sexism. But sexism is more of a problem than xenophobia, which is less of a problem — occasionally — than homophobia. Transphobia we deal with...
View ArticleEven good girls need sex
I kind of stumbled onto it. Born into multiple consecutive generations of Scottish missionaries and ministers, growing up in the front pews of the church pastored by my dad, achieving two theology...
View ArticleSex is complex: Gender, HIV and Charlie Sheen’s disclosure
By Pierre Brouard So Charlie Sheen is in trouble again — this time because he has been forced to disclose his HIV status to be one step ahead of the tabloids, and to cut off the money supply to...
View ArticleWe’re all born naked, everything else is (a) drag
By Pierre Brouard When Caitlyn Jenner recently visited the Academy for Young Writers, an LGBTI-friendly school in a working-class New York neighbourhood, she was expecting some flak. In particular,...
View ArticleWhen do intimate relationships work?
I raise this question more as a kind of self-reflection than a hard-and-fast recipe of sorts. The latter cannot be supplied by anyone, for the “simple” reason that human beings are very complex...
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