Africa | 2021
Serena Owusua Dankwa, Knowing Women: same-sex intimacy, gender, and identity in postcolonial Ghana. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (hb £75 – 978 1 108 49590 5; Open Access at ). 2021, 318 pp.
Abstract
of her working-class participants engaged in same-sex relations, they hesitated about being identified as lesbians. Some therefore were involved in heterosexual practices to cover up their same-sex relations, while others enacted ‘joking relations’ to distance themselves from such relationships. This resonates with the challenge of labelling that has framed most same-sex relations in many parts of Africa. It confirms Murray and Roscoe’s work in Boy-Wives and Female-Husbands: studies in African homosexualities,1 where they argued that such practices existed among Lesotho women but that they never labelled it in the same way as in the West. What is Dankwa’s position on the labelling of same-sex relations in Ghana? And how does the author reconcile ‘supi’ as used among Asafo groups in the coastal areas of Ghana with supi in reference to same-sex relations among women in Ghana? The findings from Dankwa’s exploratory ethnographic work, which uncovers challenging experiences encountered by lesbians in Ghana, have the potential to influence Ghanaians with regard to redefining the labelling of lesbians and appreciating the sexualities of other minority groups. The first chapter of the book, for example, reveals some indirectness in the Ghanaian language, religion, politics and laws relating to the subject of homosexuality. Policy engagement with Dankwa’s conceptualization of the terminologies of sexuality in this book could provide precise definitions for hazy legal terms in the Criminal Code. This would also help clarify matters relating to criminality within the context of social justice and a person’s sexuality as a social construct. Overall, I found this book very timely and relevant to sexuality research design techniques and policy formulation. It contributes immensely to global discourses on sexual identities. Knowing Women is a must-read for scholars of African sexuality, social scientists, researchers, cultural studies scholars, sexuality and gender policy formulators and implementers and all those who have a stake in advancing and protecting the identities of African women.