He looks so cute: The discourse of heterosexual relationship initiation by female youth in Nigeria

Abstract

In many cultural traditions in Africa and beyond, it is taboo for women to initiate sexual offers to men. However, with the new wave of gender fluidity, exposure to media, and affiliation with modernity, some young women in Nigeria initiate heterosexual relationships with their choice of partners. This article explores the nuanced narratives, motivations and experiences of young women in such relationships from a qualitative ethnographic approach using participant observations, focus group and semi-structured interviews. The study is rooted in gender performativity, a postmodern feminist approach to gender and sexuality which allows an individual to express his or her sexual identity and roles based on preference, freedom and responsibility. The results, based on linguistic evidence, show that through initiating sexual relationships, young women find a source of empowerment and agency that challenges their stereotyped passive roles, breaks down gender barriers in normative heterosexual relationships, and thus expand the boundary of their femininity.

Husband is a Priority: Gender Roles, Patriarchy and the Naming of Female Children in Nigeria

“…This is however not to say that women in precolonial and postcolonial Nigeria were consigned to entirely passive roles in the gender hierarchy. In some cultures in Nigeria, women were neither powerless nor subordinated, rather, they assert themselves as agents in deconstructing gender norms and sexuality [37,26]. Asserting themselves as agents is usually understood against the backdrop of woman-marriage or female husband phenomenon [1,5,24], where a woman legally marries another woman to exhibit social and political power and to access status, right and authority within the society.…”