Teaching Danger and Silencing Desire: Gender, Culture and Sexuality Education in Zimbabwe

Abstract

In sub-Saharan Africa, the effective implementation of Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) remains challenging especially for teachers who fail to meet young people’s sexual health needs. In this study, we examine rural Zimbabwean teachers’ perspectives on, and their approach to sexuality education provided through Guidance and Counseling (G&C). Employing a new feminist materialist framework and by drawing from in-depth semi-structured interviews, we illustrate the assemblage of human and more-than-human elements that come together to reinforce sexual silencing and danger by elucidating three prevailing material forces that shape teachers’ approach to G&C. First, teachers place sexuality within the domain of danger and emphasize sexual risk to create healthy sexualities. Second, religious and cultural norms aggregate to place sexual pleasures under erasure while reinforcing female sexual purity. Third, in the context of sexual regulation, discussions about safe sex practices are difficult. While teachers’ capacity to engage with young sexuality is constrained by the entanglement of socio-material, religious, cultural and gender norms, the paper concludes with some reflection on possibilities for working with teachers to expand their capacities to effect change and improve sexual health outcomes for young people.