Interrogating the link between gendered sexualities, power and legal mechanisms: experiences from the lecture room1 Sylvia Tamale
SETTING THE STAGE: ‘ARE WE REALLY GOING TO TALK ABOUT SEX?’
create a safe environment for meaningful discussions. An approach that presents fresh, relevant and critical perspectives to sexuality is always a challenge to the lecturer. In the
In most societies talking about sex in public is taboo.
main, students at the Centre for Women’s Law come from
Therefore, when postgraduate students at the Southern
different countries in southern and eastern Africa. Each
and Eastern African Centre for Women’s Law (SEACWL)
group presents its own dynamics, diversities and experi-
of the University of Zimbabwe are confronted with the
ences. Navigating such quandaries can sometimes prove
choice of elective courses, most view the course on gender,
quite tricky.
law and sexuality with a certain amount of unease, curiosity, and even suspicion, despite the fact that it is a second
In the course we attempt to achieve two main objectives:
semester course for graduate students who have already
the first is to demonstrate how sexuality is instrumentalised
spent a semester of exposure to theories and perspectives
and deployed by culture, religion and the law, among oth-
in women’s law.
ers, as a control mechanism for maintaining unequal power relations in African societies. Here, the main focus is on
Sexuality is a relatively new area of serious scholarship in
acquiring a deeper understanding of how sex, sexuality
legal academies in and outside Africa. Thus, it is critical to
and gender are interlinked with the law, in its pluralities,
use creative teaching methods from early on in the course
and with other sites and structures of power, to regulate
to break the ice, bridge the lecturer-student divide and
sexual relations and to consolidate control.2
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