Negotiated silence: the management of the self as a moral subject in young Ethiopian women's discourse about sexuality

Abstract

In Ethiopia, as in many other countries, moral discourses about female sexuality in general, and pre- and extramarital sexual experience in particular, create an environment that discourages women from engaging in open dialogue about their sexuality and their past or future sexual experience. In the study of induced abortion among unmarried women in Addis Ababa on which this paper rests, women describe a situation in which they are both surrounded by silence about sexual issues and forced to remain silent themselves. This paper investigates the nature of, and conditions for, this silence and the ways in which it is socially brought about and negotiated. In particular, it explores the ways through which young, unmarried women who have undergone abortion seek to reconcile seemingly contradictory, condemning discourses about premarital sex and more general codes addressing social, as well as moral, propriety and integrity. The discussion highlights that, while issues of sexuality are silenced, neither the silence nor the silencing power of dominant, gendered moral discourses is absolute. Moreover, silence may also be jointly produced and negotiated in social discourse fraught with moral objectives and ends.

Keywords::

• Ethiopia
• premarital sex
• female sexuality
• moral discourse
• negotiated silence

Acknowledgements

We want to thank all who participated in and contributed to this study, and especially the young women in the core study group.

Notes

^1.Iddirs are indigenous, voluntary associations established primarily to provide mutual aid in burial matters, but they are also involved in many other social activities.

^2. While the term is originally a religious term taken from Ge'ez, it is in general use beyond religious contexts in individual speech and public health teachings to denote ‘sexual intercourse’.

^3. Ge'ez is an ancient South Semitic language. Historically, it is the official language of the Kingdom of Aksum and the Ethiopian imperial court. Today, Ge'ez remains the main liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the Ethiopian Catholic Church and the Beta Israel Jewish community.

^4. The phenomenon of female sexual desire is not rejected, as evident in the rationale for female circumcision or genital mutilation. See for example Hirut (2000) and Rye (2002).

^5. Recent studies in urban Ethiopia report a double standard in which male premarital sexual experience is described as necessary for sexual competence whilst female virginity remains highly valued (Lucas 2001; Tadele 2006).

^6. Going out is not defined only in terms of sexual activity; however, more often than not, sexual activity is involved.

^7. Coerced sexual debut is also common (see Erulkar and Ferede 2009).

^8. It is interesting to note the existence of traditions that seem to contradict any suggestion that discourse has become less inhibited, including indirect and playful references to sex in traditional poems and songs. Semna-work, ‘an intricate system of tropes, verses and conceits with deliberate ambiguities and artfully obscure meanings’ (Levine 1965, 5), provides particularly vivid examples of indirect consideration.

^9. In the Ethiopian Orthodox church, confession involves a father confessor. Followers of the church choose a father confessor who knows them personally and describe their sins, including sexual sins, to the father confessor in face-to-face encounters.

^10. It should also be noted that the split invoked by the term siga may or may not be used in a way that carries religious evaluations, such as that expressed by the qualifier ‘sinful’ in the English expression, ‘sinful flesh’. It always, however, evokes the separation of spirit from flesh.

^11. The long and cumbersome route women consequently have to travel in order to access reproductive health information and services, including abortion, is considered in a separate forthcoming paper.

Additional information

Funding

The research was funded by the University of Oslo, Norway.