...
written by aeichener , December 05, 2006

Very good posting.

I doubt that your friend is adequately equipped to deal with the difficult and thorny subject of sexuality in this context.

I am afraid that it'll just become another display of smarminess and political correctness; which is really but the other, "Western" side of the common Kenyan coin of moral hypocrisy.

So, it might just prove to be another lost opportunity. Which would be a pity... :cry:

Alexander

Complexity of Sex as Trade
written by Nekessa , December 06, 2006

My correspondent as u say is working with a western partner... all the same, when one's hope is lost, and all they have left is their body to give, isn't that something? Refugee women have been used as barter for goods... . I cannot put my thoughts together on this one... too emotional...

Alex, perhaps you care to air your views on this.

"Will love for food?"
written by aeichener , December 06, 2006

You have already put your finger on one of the central aspects: the transactional element. I shall not write "transactional character", because human sexuality is often much deeper and more complex, but transactions in an abstract sense are invested in most of human emotional and sexual exchange (there is certainly sex without love, even good sex, but hardly sex without emotions). Especially in a society with deep power imbalances, especially in situations where women are economically exploited and their decision-making capability is much curtailed, the transactional viewpoint is very important. That is true for ostentatious sugardaddy/mommy - sugargirl/boy relationships as well as for many ordinary marriages (!).

I have read two very insightful on-the-ground articles (possibly in the Kenya Times) about occasional but very regular transactional sex with monetary recompensation in Nairobean slums. Same true for the lakeshore ("fish for sex": many articles on that, even in BBC). None of these women and girls would consider themselves a "prostitute". And what is really to be blamed in these contexts are not so much the men using the chance to avail such service, but the economic conditions forcing women to abase themselves in this and in many other respects.

Also, what all these well-meaning do-gooders reject, is to recognize and analyze the women's choice (very limited and curtailed as it may be); they always opt to depict them as victims-only, in a preconceived hemeneutic cage, instead of trying to watch and soberly depict their "agency", which often is deliberate, and to understand their tactics and strategies. If you are a girl in a refugee camp befriending a Peace Corps volunteer, you are an *actor*, not just an immobile object pushed around. Never lose sight of this truth.
Modern feminist German research has employed such an actor-centered approach with regard to professional sex workers. It is not a panacea (especially since it tends to over-accept self-justifications and delusions at face value, forgoing deeper critical analysis), but is a most necessary step forward. And it is much more respectful and honest than your writer's righteous hand-wringing.

Lastly, the letter-writer makes the same mistake as so many other Africans (not that Europeans and Americans would have been any better, through most of their history): he subliminally feels sex as something problematic and bad. Shades of Christianity, sigh. Susie Jolly has written an absolutely brilliant in-ya-face paper dismantling and demolishing this widespread viewpoint in the development industry (and on high theoretical level, too). You must read it, Nekessa.

As to poor people, they have little else to enjoy than sex. This formulation now is extremely blunt, in contrast to the more abstract transaction and power imbalance speculations above, but equally valid. The movie maker could much benefit from some acquaintance with Gilberto Freire's seminal works (notably "Case Grande e Senzala" / Manor House and Slave Hut) which show the interlink between one and the other.

Alexander

alex please post a link to Sus
written by emmo opoti , December 06, 2006

Hmmm, what's in a name.

Alex's theory on poor people and sex is advanced in the famous Russian proverb,' Love can make a castle out of a tent.' More seriosuly it was once advanced as the reason behind the decline in population growh that followed Rural Electrification programmes in Kenya.

On the feminists and the 'actor' approach. This seems very dangerous to me, especially in a society as violent and paternalistic as Kenya. True, there are many, especially in the cities, of both sexes who use sex to get ahead, but this is hardly universal.

We must also be wary of translating the cultural acquiescence by vulnerable women as evidence of their actor role. The fish-monger may play the actor role, purely because that is what the fishermen expect. Not that she has any choice in the matter.

PMS
written by emmo opoti , December 06, 2006

Please note that you have available to you a private messaging facility.

Great thread
written by Stephen Wanyama , December 06, 2006

Great response Alex.

I have seen the paper you talk about, there's a wealth of papers on the subject too at the same wesbite.

african sexuality,why so dark

However this detached transactional look at sex is difficult for women to achieve, especially in an androgenic society such as ours.

...
written by aeichener , December 07, 2006

I liked both Stephen's and Emmo's comments, and am thanking both of them.

a) A detached look need not preclude empathy and emotion, not at all; but it is a necessary prerequisite for dealing with the issues responsibly. In fact, Raul Hilberg could be taken as a great and masterful example for the importance of such a "detached look". His life work on the Shoah would not have a fraction of its importance without this stance.

Thank you also for adding the important link to the conference website where the cited article is published among others. And you meant "androcentric", didn' you?

b) Emmo's animadversion is very valid and necessary. I have to thank him for his critique, which does not in the least rebut, but does necessarily complement and add to my points. The actor-centered approach would be short-sighted and misleading without keeping his cautionings in mind, and without duly dealing with these in a second step. In fact, other reviewers have stated exactly the same as Emmo, and right they were.

I intend to comment on these issues in more detail later, either via edit mode or in a separate comment. Merci encore!

hmmmm
written by Dave Nyambati , December 07, 2006

I think it is important to highlight both the actor-centered and the victim approach but clearly place them in the proper context especially in a society such as the one in Kenya. All roads invariably lead to the conclusion that given better options sexploitation would be a lesser problem in the developing world.

Great article Nekessa

...
written by aeichener , December 07, 2006

I am reading Susie Jolly's article (see Stephen's link !) again, and I am so, sooo stunned and smitten with it. Incredibly good and brilliantly done, both theoretical and down to earth, and really out of the box. You won't be the same after you have read it, and have thought and felt about it. And yes, you'll change for the better.

Alexander

Will love for food
written by Nekessa , December 07, 2006

Great argument Alex! :idea:

Hold the thought on Stephen's link, will read it presently.

Onto Alex's comment, really the part about choice. While I am sure there are men and women who use sex as trade in the essential economic sense, I would argue that a refugee woman offering her sexual services to a peace corp is forced into it. It is not a second step as you say, but a first.

"poor people, they have little else to enjoy than sex"-- If we are culturally inclined to feel/know that sex is bad, I wonder the perception of the poor on sex? their perception on it as they barter? I wonder too what link this has to the prevalence of AIDS in Africa.

...
written by aeichener , December 07, 2006

Nekessa: Yes, that is promising to become an interesting discussion and argument.

Firstly, I have very purposely used the young US Peace Corps volunteer as an example, and not the kitchen toto of the camp eatery, or the pharmacy dispensing paramedic.

Secondly, sexual graces as goods of barter are of course not limited to the poor. It's just more visible there.

I disagree with your conclusion too. Many of these permanent Kenyan "camps" - though not necessarily the one where your corespondent was - are little towns, nay cities. People are living there for years and years; old people die, new earthlings are born, refugee children grow into puberty. There are shops, tailors, fundis, various hotelis / restaurants (unlike e.g. in a bleak Darfur camp), there are cinemas (!) where videos can be watched for a few shillings, there is "normal" prostitution at drinking dens and music clubs, and apart from that OF COURSE there is the usual and expectable amount of transactional sex that would be found in any poorer city estate as well.

One could easily make up a different example citing a temporary makeshift camp in a God-forlorn bleaker spot, where the guards distribute foods or medication only to their minions. There, we are plainly at sexploitation.

And then, even in less dire situations, there is always the option or temptation of getting an additional bowl of rice, or some pieces of meat for the only barter good which one has left - oneself.

I am not negating exploitation and I concede a rather limited scope of "choice" (as if one had a choice between eating rotten food and starving to death, or between giving money to a robber or not). I see your point.

Normal prostitution?
written by Nekessa , December 09, 2006

What is it? On poor people, such as the ones in the refugee camps you describe, I find it hard to argue on normal prostitution.

Tell me, are there many male prostitutes? Why not? In the case of choosing between rotten food and starving to death, do women then use sex, and men rob for trade?

Oh, and I do get your point :roll:

...
written by aeichener , December 15, 2006

Dear Nekessa, I assume your question about what constitutes feminism to be at least a bit rhetorical. :wink:

As to boys (or men) or hire, several educators these days prefer expression like "male-male-sex" to Western notions like "homosexuality", because the latter trail behind them such a baggage of assumptions and concepts, many of which are temporally and culturally dependent, and do not really match the manifold African realities (plural!) of male-male and female-female emotion, affection and sexuality.

As to normality, the adjective is poisonous, because there are commonly connotations like "norm" and "nomos" going with it. For the members of an Eastlands youth gang, it may be normal to force their girls to have sex with any of them whenever they want, and the girls may have come to expect such aggression and subservience as the normal way of life if they want to belong to that circle. But is this subcultural expectance and acceptance of violence "normal" in the sense of wider society?

Normal
written by Nekessa , December 15, 2006

Not rhetorical.... I question a western perception on what feminism is, and feminism as that an African woman prescribes to. And then there is the in-between, we have become kichwa ngumu, by coming to the West.

Spot on--- normal. :roll:

New entry
written by Nekessa , December 20, 2006

Perhaps a new blog entry on this issue would suffice... I mean once you are done throwing up

Am still retching, but have made it a new and separate topic now. AE

Moral panics
written by aeichener , December 20, 2006

Kenyans love moral panics. And the pre-Christmas time is the ideal season for that. Hearts are mellow, blood moralin level is high.

Thus, Unicef Kenya very purposely launched their report on "Child Prostitution at the Kenyan Coastline" right now. And of course, there was the - inevitable - politician clinging his hands, shedding crocodile tears and clamouring for harsher laws and sterner sentences (even though the very report shows that exactly this was largely useless and even counterproductive); this role was played by Uncle Moody Awori.
There also was the - evitable - knowledgeable commentator who warned against criminalizing juveniles who find themselves victims of the circumstances; this role was filled by the Finnish Unicef representative Heimo Laakkonen.

The next act of the tragicomedy will involve a police sweep of 20 coast hotels, the arrest of 429 prostitution suspects (equally distributed among sex workers, beach souvenir sellers, truant school children, and offspring of hotel employees naturally living on the premises and therefore suspect), the rape of 76 % of the female and 24 % of the male juvenile suspects by our courageous police who feel that life this time finally has been good to them, the suicide of one elderly Swedish pastor and the subsequent divorces of 17 foreign couples, and the trial of one 68-year old Austrian pensioner, living modestly on his Austrian railways disability pension in a leased small coast house, and whom the Exalted Court will find guilty of having slept with his now 19-years old sugargirl at least once when she was still seventeen years of age. Our bedazzled pensioner will be convicted to 30 years of prison with hard labour, the young woman with one child (from a local beachboy, not from the mzungu mzee) loses her job and livelihood, and Njoki Ndung'u will present a new draft bill (hotter, with more chili) before flashing media cameras.

Stay tuned for the forthcoming sequel of "Morality TV", your favourite Kenyan channel. I'll just excuse myself for a moment, have to vomit now...

...
written by aeichener , December 21, 2006

And as you see, someone else already joined me there in puking...

Seriously now, let's head back to the overall topic. What unites the refugee situation and the Coast sex work scene in my eyes, is the background of poverty, although of rather different degrees of poverty. The Unicef report showed that there was little to none direct coercion, and hardly any "trafficking" in the clichéd sense of some children's rights advocates. But we may justly conclude that a lot of desperation (joint with the occasional love for fast money) plays a role there. The client takes advantage of the situation; he has the choice and he has the power of decision. And mostly he is black; if the girl is lucky, he is white (not necessarily because of skin colour preferences, but because wazungu clients pay a lot more - that's the main point. There is another point too, but it's less politically correct).

Excellent field work on juvenile sex and sex work has been done in Nairobi by a great Ghanaian scientist, one of the brightest minds of entire Africa (!). And an ex-olympic athlete too, this professor: Francis Nii-Amo Dodoo.

...
written by emmo , December 22, 2006

Kiddi and Alex,
these last two posts are contiguous to the discussion on the 'Morality TV' thread. Don't you think?

Subjects, not objects
written by aeichener , December 22, 2006

Well, the discussion (comments section) in the "Morality TV" thread has taken another course, and now is about alms, charities and development aid. So, we may as well go on here. Nekessa has elegantly challenged my initial thought-provocation about agency and choice. I shall however uphold it.

What we may never leave out of sight, is that poor and oppressed people still are *subjects*. We must not degrade them to objects, not even out of a compassionate perspective, Nekessa. They are not just bounced around by circumstances like billiard balls, they are not only the punching bags of life. A popular (white) gaze from abroad views "The Africans" (always to be capitalized, see more about it in Binyawanga Wainaina's famous, bitingly sarcastic piece) as the perpetual victims of ever-lasting, never ending catastrophes, (civil) wars and slaughter (which the Common African just supports patiently and impassionately), and epidemies, who are stoically bearing the lot of fortune. This afropessimism has been compelling refuted by Mark Epstein, a young scholar whose research and writing is remarkable in many other aspects too.

But people have agency (= capacitas ad agendum), in larger or lesser degrees. Even children have it. Of 25 poor Ogiek girls in a ramshackle camp village near Mau forest, maybe only 2 or 4 will prostitute themselves, though all of them are equally poor.

This important observation of factual agency - beyond the facts' level, it is also idealistically rooted in the assertion of human dignity, nothing less - must NOT be equated to trite moralism, as many Kenyans would, deducing from the fact of choice that any decision is fully imputable to sin or vice or whatever. It's the callous manner of blaming poor people for their poverty (occasionally found in the Nation's online forum), unmarried mothers for their pregancy and abortion etc. But you know that this is not my line, do you?

Are we saying the same thing?
written by Nekessa , December 23, 2006

Not phyisical coercion.... Sex for trade is an "easy" trade to learn, as one needs not spend any resources in training, and like u say fast money here. Herein lies the difference, when young girls (10-14) have to trade themselves to support their families, there is no room for choice... "Also, what all these well-meaning do-gooders reject, is to recognize and analyze the women's choice (very limited and curtailed as it may be); they always opt to depict them as victims-only, in a preconceived hemeneutic cage, instead of trying to watch and soberly depict their "agency", which often is deliberate, and to understand their tactics and strategies. If you are a girl in a refugee camp befriending a Peace Corps volunteer, you are an *actor*, not just an immobile object pushed around. Never lose sight of this truth," said Alex.

"Normality" of imparit
written by aeichener , January 08, 2007

Your poignant question whether one may at all designate prostitution as "normal", cuts straight through, to a core point of gender dispute and feminism. It is quite visible - because I have implied so in my wording - that I indeed see prostitution as something normal. However, it is very worthy that a counterview be also advanced. Such an adverse position could be a religious one, or - as probably in your case - a feminist one. (Incurse: I see this adjective as appreciative and positive, and not as an insult, as probably most Kenyans of either gender feel it, for whatever strange reason)

a) Easy it is to concede to you that on the factual level, prostitution as exercised by most people in most parts of the world and in most situations reflects but the "normal" (indeed, now...) legacy of misogyny and gender imbalance. We do not even need the bogeyman of a brutal abusive pimp in the European tradition, or of the nigga pimp in the US tradition (wide hat, fur coat, bling-bling... the type who will send every European pimp into a heart attack); no, a short insight into societal attitudes, into the derisive and demeaning mindset of many of their clients, and into the abuse which sex workers are made to bear and suffer from police and authorities - with the exception of such enlightened jurisdictions as Germany e.g. - would suffice to demonstrate this point.

b) My personal view of sex work and sex workers is very much opposed, and almost entirely positive, though I could be forced to admit that like in every profession, there is probably the usual number of assholes, deceptive tricksters and crooks, even more considering the environment in which they work. But nevertheless, "personal view" means here my emotional plane rather than the outcome of a sober analysis, and on this plane, I easily prefer any sex worker to our steadfast moral pillars of society. Maybe this is just a function of my own proud sexual socialization, which has been queer and out-of-the-box in many aspects... but enough of such personalizations.

c) The religious - thus the moral(ist] - viewpoint commonly condemns prostitution, as still does the latest world catechism of the (Roman) Catholic Church (in its no. 2355, arguing also with human dignity). But already the venerable bishop of Hippo, the great churchfather and master-thinker of Christianity including the Reformation, argued against this, citing the doctrine of the lesser of evils, among others. So there, now I have even cited an old African argument. :idea:

d) Male prostitution of cause exists in Kenya, in some amplitude. These boys and men not only serve men, but frequently female tourists, as you know. Most of them would not consider themselves "homosexual", irrespective of the kind of service they provide. On the other hand, the amount of male transactional sex is even larger. That includes not only sugarboys and elder sugarmommies (why not?), but also many situations where male pride and self-image negate the transactional character; like the case of the European tourist lady and her Kenyan companion, whom my friend guided (when she still worked as a nature and safari guide), and whose quarrels she witnessed.

e) You previously wrote, addressing the plight of refugee women and girls: "and all they have left is their body to give".
It is indeed true that there is little choice in such situation, as much as there is little choice between accepting a badly-paid exploitative or dangerous job, and not getting any work at all. But the difference between the (apparent) stances is maybe the following: I accept such situations as normal, which is why I have drawn the parallel to transactional sex in many other situations of distress and poverty (my Kibera examples, though Kibera is one of the decidedly "better off" estates in today Nairobi). But acknowledging the present normality does not mean to shrug shoulders and/or accepting the underlying powerlessness and structural oppression as the way things are and should remain.
You also asked: "In the case of choosing between rotten food and starving to death, do women then use sex, and men rob for trade?"
I believe that the answer is a spontaneous and sad "yes". Which is why prostitution (in the wide sense, now; for none of the women who might occasionally offer their punáni at the end of the month if they see no other legal way to make ends meeet, would consider themselves, nor allow themselves to called "prostitutes" stabilizes (or tends to stabilize) existing conditions. (Incurse: that is what already St. Augustine acknowledged, as I inferred above). And therefore, feminist and progressive analysis can easily come to a (premature) conclusion that prostitution is just one more of the tools of oppression. Which can be right in a certain sense, but is even more wrong.


PS:
So you _really_ got my point, oh venerable Priestess ? Which one ? :wink:

Small choices...
written by aeichener , January 08, 2007

To remind us of a simple truism: "agency" does not mean to have a wide freedom of choice, like a splendid hotel buffet. It can also mean to *use* the only choice one has, or may mean even the choice between two evils.

As to the economic aspects (since few people choose sex work merely for the like of it...), I might just repeat myself in stating - as above - that it serves to keep in mind that many of these refugee camps, especially the quick makeshift camps such as in Darfur (the permanent large Kenyan camp cities such as Dadaab, with over 160,000 inhabitants since many years, are a different affair altogether, as I mentioned earlier in my comment from 7th December), offer very little or none economic choice, as for earning or bartering anything (a bit of money, extra food, an extra blanket, construction material for bettering one's hut). Often, offering one's own body is then the only "choice" existant if one at all wants to improve one's situation beyond the bare and tenuous survival.

Of feminism etc
written by Nekessa , January 11, 2007

Alex-- now you go off and write a five-point essay, so I cannot say I get u?

I am working on a piece on African feminism, and what it means. Do tell me though, who is a feminist? Most who have a negative view on feminism, I am afraid do not understand what it is all about. It certainly, isn't a battle of the sexes!!

I do agree that prostituition is universal, what drives it in different socioeconomic circles is what is different.

About male prostitutes and "homosexual sex, if the need for commercial sex is plainly for monetary reasons, then their sexual orientation is irrelevant. What do you think?

"But acknowledging the present normality does not mean to shrug shoulders and/or accepting the underlying powerlessness and structural oppression as the way things are and should remain."Then it cannot be normal!! Normal in whose context? the residents of Kibera? Perhaps so, but not normal.

Feminists and Africa
written by aeichener , January 11, 2007

Nekessa:
As to African feminism, I will address one of the underlying issues in my forthcoming essay on FGM (the definitory power of white women over the perception of what brown and black women do with their body; is also a frequent bone of contention when it comes to queer issues).

Alexander