The Business of Survival? Transactional Sex and Pimping

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Chapter Two ‘Active Lust Seekers’: Female Students and Sexual Pleasure

‘…Girls should stop acting as if they don’t like sex…From what I have seen from girls pano pa [here on] campus, they look forward to that [sic] more than guys do’.
This statement caught me off-guard, not only because of the contempt with which it was uttered, but also because it was made by a first year female student, in the presence of her best friend and was addressed to me, a virtual stranger. This was my second meeting with Neria, a first year female law student and her friend, Saru, a first year female student studying for a Bachelor of Arts degree, and already, both had stunned me with their frankness around sexual issues and especially around their own sexual experiences. I had only met the two for the first time the previous day—they were part of a formal group discussion that I had convened with eight first year female students.
In the group discussion both had been quite vocal on the issue of sex and again, Neria had quite cheekily declared that she never had reason to turn down her boyfriend’s sexual advances: ‘If he asks [for sex], I give him. Why not? It’s not like girls don’t enjoy sex. They do!’ I found this openness by a young Zimbabwean woman both intriguing and refreshing. It is not often that one comes across or reads about young African women’s positive pre-marital sexual experiences. Usually, such experiences are couched within the framework of coercion and abuse, particularly if monetary exchanges are involved or if there are power differentials in the relationship. Alternatively, women are simply presented as uninterested in sex. When they are shown to have any interest in sex, it is often within the context of lesbian relationships. As Vance (1989) notes, female sexual desire is often viewed with suspicion ‘from its first tingle’ and is thus relegated to the realm of the immoral. Very rarely, as Anfred (2004) observes, are studies of female sexuality in Africa written from the perspective of women themselves. Neria’s comments, and indeed the experiences of the six female students that I discuss in this chapter, challenge these stereotypical portrayals of female sexuality, especially their negation of sexual pleasure for young, unmarried heterosexual African women. As I will show, sex is not always something that is ‘done’ to young women; neither are young women always passive and reluctant participants in sexual encounters. This is true even in contexts where women’s perceived passivity is coded in local languages, as it is in all Zimbabwean vernaculars. For instance, in the Shona vernacular, a man marries while a woman is married (ndakamuroora vs akaroorwa); a man ‘does’ sex while a woman is ‘done sex to’ (ndakamuita [lit. I did her] versus akaitwa [lit. she was done].
In this chapter, I draw attention to the centrality of the sexual pleasure narrative for a specific group of female students in order to show how some female students use their time at university to actively construct sexual identities that subvert and challenge broader societal gender roles. The liminal character of the UZ campus, I further argue, allows these particular female students to transgress personal and social boundaries (Thomas 2005) as well as get a temporary reprieve from the strictures of everyday life (Shields 1991), especially with regards to their sexuality. The concept of liminality allows me to foreground the sexual agency of young African women and to understand the various contexts and circumstances in which young heterosexual women sometimes are ‘active lust seekers’, rather than sexually disinterested actors.
The first part of my discussion will focus on how female sexuality (particularly that of young African women) has typically been portrayed in scholarly literature, especially in public health and social science studies on HIV and AIDS which have informed the global response to HIV prevention in Sub-Saharan Africa. I will also discuss the main ways that female sexuality is generally imagined and constructed in Zimbabwe. The second part of my discussion will hone in more specifically on the issue of female sexuality at the University of Zimbabwe and the ways in which the six female students’ sexual experiences both transgress and conform to university-specific and societal-wide expectations of ideal female sexuality.

Public Imaginations of Female Sexuality in Africa

A number of scholars have pointed to the ‘problematic nature’ of female sexuality, both as an academic subject and as a practice. Arnfred (2001), for instance, notes that graduate students are often discouraged from writing about female sexual desire and pleasure as it is tantamount to committing career suicide. The topic is simply seen as being too frivolous in many academic circles, and thus exists as a privileged site of investigation for senior scholars who have already established themselves. Female sexuality is portrayed as positive only if it is in the context of heterosexual marital unions (see Rubin, 1989). Oftentimes, though, the positive aspects of female sexuality are muted and/or actively negated—both in practice and in academia. Literature on female sexuality can be classified into two main groups: that which portrays women as sexual objects and that which portrays them as sexual subjects. The view of women as sexual objects is a strong and conspicuous theme in many feminist writings (e.g. McKinnon 1989) as well as in the HIV and AIDS literature. According to this perspective, women are viewed as ‘acted upon’, ‘vulnerable’ and ‘powerless’ where their sexuality is concerned.
Kitzinger’s (1994) take on female sexual pleasure offers a fitting example. Kitzinger insists that even seemingly personal and intimate aspects of women’s lives, such as their sexuality, are the products of relationships of power and are rooted in the broader institution of hetero-patriarchy. The problem, she explains, is that sex and sexual desire are both constructed as the ‘eroticization of subordination’ (p 206). For instance, she asserts that what women describe as sexual enjoyment is really an enjoyment of subordination and powerlessness because the sexual act essentially entails the eroticization of power differences. For Kitzinger, the sexual act is no more than a ‘re-enactment’ of subordination and she treats female sexual pleasure as a form of false consciousness. This is my point of departure: her complete rejection of the possibility that women can truly desire and enjoy sex in a patriarchal society. Such a stance, unfortunately, perpetuates the stereotype that women are always victims in the sexual act and that subtle processes of manipulation and control are always at play when women engage in and enjoy the sexual act. Furthermore, this kind of analysis ignores the basic fact that power is not always exercised from the centre but from ‘innumerable points’ as Foucault (1978:94) pointed out.
The public health literature on HIV and AIDS in Africa is also replete with images which portray women as reluctantly sexual and passionless. This is particularly common in those studies that focus on ‘transactional sex’ and ‘survival sex’ (e.g. Iversen 2005; Dunkle et al 2004; Larry et al 2004) and those that focus on women’s disproportionate vulnerability to HIV infection (see any UNAIDS Global Report; Heise and Elias 1995). In most of these studies, women are presented as ‘acted upon’ by philandering husbands or boyfriends and what is often highlighted is the fact that many women are usually ‘faithful’ or ‘virgins’ until they are placed in positions of vulnerability, and infected with sexually transmitted infections, including HIV, by their male partners. These accounts also locate women’s vulnerability to sexual exploitation in their material conditions: it is typically young women from poor backgrounds who are said to be at greatest risk of infection. I do not intend to dismiss or trivialize these observations, which are grounded in years of thorough empirical research. Rather, I seek to show that they focus on just one of many aspects of female sexuality. Surely, vulnerability and powerlessness are not the end-all and be-all of female sexuality, neither do these characteristics define it. Furthermore, in highlighting these issues, I seek to draw attention to the fact that it is not only within the context of powerlessness that young women are vulnerable to HIV infection.
The second dominant discourse regarding female sexuality in Africa is one that acknowledges that women are sexual subjects, with the ability to ‘act’ as much as they are also ‘acted upon’. The literature that falls into this second category takes two forms: one that is ‘tinged with undertones of moral condemnation’, to borrow Arnfred’s (2004) phrase, and the other that embraces and celebrates female sexuality in all its many facets. The literature that falls into the first variant views female sexuality, especially as it relates to sexual desire and pleasure, as unnatural, undesirable and outright dangerous. Again, this is especially common in many of the public health studies on HIV and AIDS and in the colonial literature on African women (cf. Schapera 1933; Little 1973). Besides resulting in the stigmatization of HIV positive women who are seen as embodying an ‘unruly’ and ‘out-of-control’ female sexuality, such a discourse also results in one-sided HIV prevention strategies (e.g. girls saying no to sex) that are aimed at containing active female sexuality. For instance, many HIV and AIDS interventions that focus on ‘prostitution’ do just that: they tend to view women who engage in prostitution variously as sexually aggressive, hyper-sexed, foolish, naïve and misguided. ‘Prostitutes’ come to be viewed as those women who have failed to contain their sexuality. The presence of elaborate systems aimed at regulating unruly female sexuality, which range from the seclusion of women in some Muslim societies (see Mernissi’s book Beyond the Veil, 1987) to accusations of witchcraft (see Badoe’s discussion of ‘witches’ camps in Ghana,
2005) to surveillance by women’s church groups (see Mate’s discussion of discourses of femininity in Pentecostal churches in Zimbabwe, 2002) illustrates the far reaching effects of this particular type of discourse. It also reinforces Gagnon and Smith’s (1967) apt observation that ‘the very idea of female sexual freedom is itself an intolerable idea in most societies’.
The second variant, which informs this chapter, celebrates active female sexuality. This variant is epitomized by the writings of a number of scholars (e.g. Mead 1973; Vance 1989; Parker 1991; Bolton 1995; Paiva 2000, Spronk 2005; Bernstein 2007) and some African feminists (e.g. McFadden 2003; Tamale 2005; Machera 2004). These scholars are dedicated to the study of female sexuality, particularly women’s experiences of sexual pleasure and sexual desire, the conditions under which these experiences occur and the meanings that these experiences have for women. The significance of these scholars’ work is that it has expanded the body of knowledge regarding female sexuality, especially as they show that danger and pleasure are ever-present realities in all women’s lives. As Vance (1989) asserts, it is all too easy to cast women’s sexual experiences as either wholly pleasurable or dangerous and yet, women’s actual sexual experiences are more complicated, more difficult to grasp and more unsettling (p 5). Here I deliberately focus only on young women’s narratives and experiences of sexual pleasure and positive sexuality. I realize the limitations of taking such a one-sided approach but feel justified given the paucity of studies on the subject. Furthermore, adopting this particular approach will afford me greater scope to explore the repertoire of practices and actions that constitute sexual pleasure for some female students at the UZ.

Public Property: Young Women’s Sexuality in Zimbabwe

Two incidents illustrate how female sexuality, especially that of young unmarried women, is publicly imagined in contemporary Zimbabwe. The first incident occurred some five years ago, in 2003, and concerned condom adverts by the Population Services International (PSI) that were being aired on the national broadcaster, the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC). One of the adverts showed two obviously middle-class, college-type young women having a meal at a fast food outlet. In it, one of girls leans forward towards her friend, confidentially, and excitedly shares, between girly giggles, that she has met a new guy who is ‘smart, handsome but above all he uses PP! [PP, which stands for Protector Plus, is the brand name for the PSI condoms]’. The girls burst out into naughty giggles and the advert closes with a strong male voice urging the viewer to ‘always use Protector Plus: Your Friend for Life’. In the second advert, a young, unmarried couple is preparing for a weekend getaway. As they make their way to the door, with their bags in tow, the woman turns to her boyfriend and gently asks: ‘Honey, haven’t you forgotten something?’ He smiles at her, pulls out a pack of condoms from his pocket and quips ‘Do you mean these?’ The woman then directs her gaze to the viewer and announces that she and ‘the man I am going to marry always use PP’. Again, as in the first advert, the same male voice comes on and urges the viewer to ‘always use Protector Plus: Your Friend for Life’.
These particular adverts were targeted at young women between the ages of 16 and 25, as they had been identified in various national studies as being both sexually active and having extremely high rates of HIV infection (see the Young Adult Survey, 2002). Furthermore, young women had also been shown to have the lowest condom use rates in the country. A particularly gloomy prognosis given by many of these studies, and which helped usher in various national attempts at creative programming, was that a fifteen-year-old Zimbabwean had only a fifty-percent chance of reaching the age of fifty, given current HIV infection trends. With generous funding from USAID and the Centres for Disease Control (CDC) and strategic support from the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare (MoHCW), PSI thus became something of a fad between 2002 and 2004. For instance, PSI adverts played incessantly during prime time viewing on television and during important events, such as the World Cup Soccer games. There were also countless PSI posters and stickers printed on glossy paper and in full colour advertising the PP condoms everywhere—in the shops, on public buses and taxis and in hair salons.

Acknowledgements 
Chapter One Introduction
Chapter Two Active Lust Seekers: Female Students and
Chapter Three The Business of Survival? Transactional Sex and Pimping
Chapter Four A Pressured Manhood? The Macho Antic of Male Students
Chapter Five Chi-UBA Sexuality, Undesirability and Violence
Chapter Six Christianity, Sex and Disciplined Bodies on Campus
Chapter Seven The University’s Response to HIV on Campus
Chapter Eight Conclusion
Bibliography
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