I want sex too … What is so wrong with that?

abstract

This focus piece works on a micro-level and is based on a qualitative study with four differently-abled young Black African women living at a university hostel in South Africa. The piece proceeds through their stories, taking as a starting point that ‘ethnographies of the particular’ offer a critical and intimate window into how these young women self-interpret and attempt to (re)claim their sexuality. The young women's excavated narratives testify to how both ‘sexuality’ and ‘disability’ have been co-constructed within the able-bodied community, which in a sense works to ‘erase’ their sexuality and render them both asexual and sexually invisible. The recovered narratives also reveal that disability is deeply imbricated within gender and gendered regimes of aesthetics. The narratives further expose fissures in their reclamation stories, as they also show up instances of ‘internalised oppression’ alongside other life-affirming aspirations and ideas of romance, love, sexual liaisons and motherhood.

Keywords:

• differently-abled corporeality
• body
• sexuality
• able-bodied

Acknowledgements

The author acknowledges the valuable comments and insights of two anonymous reviewers in creating the space to rethink some vital aspects of this piece.

Notes

1. This is true in policy construction as well. For details of policy in the South African context see the Disability Policy Guideline, which discusses the physical environment in terms of universal design for meeting the needs of the differently-abled: http://www.publicworks.gov.za/PDFs/documents/WhitePapers/Disability_Policy_Guideline.pdf.See also Policy on Disability, which focuses on provisioning for the needs of the differently-abled as consumers of public services: http://www.westerncape.gov.za/assets/departments/social-development/national_disability_policy.pdf.Thus, while there is discussion of the differently-abled as citizens and consumers, there is scant discussion of their sexuality, fertility and reproductive rights.

2. Given the realities of word count and the fact that the women were afforded the prerogative to say as much or as little as they wished around the questions posed, parts of their narratives are necessarily omitted. The narratives offered, however, are offered verbatim and not edited as such.

3. I take the (grammatical) liberty here of harnessing the word ‘hierarchy’ to act as a verb.

4. In this piece I have used the terms ‘disabled’ and ‘differently-abled’, although they emerged from different discourses. This is partly because the women themselves have appropriated these terms as synonyms and used both to mean the same thing. Where the word ‘disabled’ is in the narrative of the women themselves, I retained it.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maheshvari Naidu

MAHESHVARI NAIDU is an NRF-rated scientist and senior lecturer in Anthropology in the School of Social Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal. She is a feminist anthropologist and her recent research focus is women’s health issues, within and against her landscape of work in feminist anthropologies and female body construction. Maheshvari has presented papers at several international conferences and delivered keynote addresses and research seminars locally, as well as internationally (Turkey, Malaysia and Mauritius). She is widely published, both in regional and international journals and has acted as Guest Editor for national and international journals. She has been in the Top 30 Researcher rankings of UKZN thrice. In 2013 she was one of the National Winners of the Department of Science and Technology ‘Women in Science’ Award for research excellence. In 2014 Maheshvari was announced the Top Published Female Researcher at UKZN and featured third overall in the UKZN Top 30 rankings. She is a recipient of an African Gender Institute Grant and part of a collaborative project with the University of Cape Town. The project, funded by the Ford Foundation, is inter-institutional across Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Mozambique, focusing on issues of sexual health and rights. Email: [email protected]