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Periodical article Periodical article
Title:'It's a Silent Trade': Female Same-Sex Intimacies in Post-Colonial Ghana
Author:Dankwa, Serena OwusuaISNI
Year:2009
Periodical:NORA: Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research (ISSN 0803-8740)
Volume:17
Issue:3
Pages:192-205
Language:English
Geographic term:Ghana
Subjects:homosexuality
lesbianism
External link:https://doi.org/10.1080/08038740903117208
Abstract:While in many places same-sex cultures revolve around politically charged subcultural understandings, this paper explores conceptualizations of female same-sex desire beyond constructions of lesbian identity. It looks at a set of practices forged by women who are involved in intimate same-sex relationships in southern Ghana and examines how their self-understandings resist and intersect with the derogatory media representations that frame them. A key term to these representations is the term supi. It implies a close friendship between two adolescent girls, whether or not their relationship has a sexual dimension. In spite of rising tides of homophobia that impact such female intimacies, two factors still allow for the creation of niches for same-sex intimacy: first, southern Ghanaian cultures draw on norms of verbal indirection and discretion, which allow for the concealment of non-normative sexual conduct. Secondly, homosocial spaces of intimacy provide an environment in which female same-sex bonds are expressed through a language of allusion rather than a specialist, subcultural vocabulary. Erotic context is formed through practice and performance and is not discursively named or understood as a social identity. Rather, these understandings of female same-sex passions revolve around the notion of secrecy and are based on tacit but vibrant forms of knowledge.
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