When You Open Your Legs, You Eat: The Discourse of Transactional Sex Among Female Youth in Nigeria

Abstract

Among female youth in Nigeria, especially those living in Abuja, Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory and its environs, transactional sex is a pervasive sexual culture which is deployed to access modern lifestyles, consumer needs and social power. The practice is fuelled by the society’s stereotyped gender expectations and norms where the man provides and the woman is subordinated and compensated. This article interrogates, from a qualitative ethnographic account, the motivations, ideologies and perceptions towards the phenomenon of transactional sex by two categories of its practitioners: the economically less privileged class and the privileged class. The study is rooted in postmodern perspectives on sex and gender which allow an individual to express his or her sexuality based on taste, preference and experience. The results indicate that the practice of transactional sex revolves around discourses of gratification, consumerism, choice and autonomy. For the less privileged class, it is mainly propelled by relative poverty, peer influence, and specified by the zeal to conform to stereotyped gender expectations in heterosexual relationships, and for the privileged class, it is motivated by the prospect of marriage, and characterised by resistant identity and alternative interpretation of subjective meaning in reemphasising their feminity. I consider the implications of the study for healthy sexual behaviour, gender balance and economic empowerment of women.