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from Part IX - Ghana
Of all the “variations” of sexual behaviour, homosexuality has had the most vivid social pressure, and has evoked the most lively (if usually grossly misleading) historical accounts. It is, as many sexologists … have noted, the form closest to the heterosexual norm in our culture, and partly because of that it has often been the target of sustained social oppression. It has also, as an inevitable effect of the hostility it has evoked, produced the most substantial forms of resistance to hostile categorization and has, consequently, a long cultural and subcultural history. A study of homosexuality is therefore essential, both because of its own intrinsic interest and because of the light it throws on the wider regulation of sexuality, the development of sexual categorization, and the range of possible sexual identities.
Introduction
Contemporary discourses on sex and sexuality have revealed the need for critical investigations into these two concepts within traditional African societies. The view that conventional ideas on the subject matter are no longer tenable underlies this quest. It is also increasingly evident from cross-cultural studies that, despite the hegemony of heterosexuality, the question of normality in sex and sexuality discourses is culturally relative and, generally, ambiguous. Nonetheless, the fact that sex and sexuality remains a sensitive domain poses a great challenge to both researchers and the researched alike. As R. W. Connell and G. W. Dowsett rightly observed, “The scientific gaze could not be neutral because sexuality is inherently a domain of power relations (between women and men, between heterosexual and homosexual, between races …), inherently a political arena”.
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