An article by Nana Nyarko Boateng

Our sex culture is in a "blockbuster series". Though roles are largely inexact; women, men and children get on it like it's nobody's production. In the absence of a well meaning director, nobody says cut, no one says lights; all there is, is action. The Ghanaian culture is diverse, and yet there are some common characteristics and fundamental concepts across the nation. Sex is one theme that has a common consensus on how it should be handled. Many Ghanaians are comfortable with keeping sex in the throne room of taboos. Our sexual psychology and manners protrudes on an inattentively expanded stage where audiences pretend not to see the human blood that drips from their complimentary tickets.

Is it not odd to see older European men (or women) chaperoning younger Ghanaian boys and girls around like toys? Our beautiful beaches are famous spots for sex tourist activities... but who wants to be the one to raise the taboo topic? Our veritable instincts cannot be for this maniacal sex craving that does not stop to examine the juvenile hands on an adult organ playing tunes of enslaved innocence and beauty.

Each one of us must understand the unit and knotted cost of our simplistic or devious tactics in dealing with our sexual creations. We are born with equal 'shares' in the sex 'industry' and like in any other productiveness there is the need for ethics and anti-oppressive practices. It is not enough to screen our sex management incompetency in the name of taboos of yesteryears and cold individualism of our today. We need a sexually just culture that will make us feel liberated and entitled to happiness. We deserve a healthy continuity of our sexual evolution without damaging or limiting the natural consequences of a sexual encounter; pure unforced priceless ecstasy for consenting adults. Our fidelity to sanity, justice and protecting the vulnerable in our society is the only worthy question.

Our spinelessness to changing taboos and metaphors for sex and sexuality is damaging to our very existence. The power of the past hitches in connective application to the present when past believes, metaphors and symbols do not hold on through.  For instance, amongst the Anlo of the Volta region in Ghana, it is/was a taboo to have sex on bare earth. I wonder about how many Anlos know this. Sexual prohibitions, symbols and metaphors for sex and our general sexual psychology have changed dramatically. Communication on sex should also change. Regulating sexual behavior in the guise of taboos does not work in our today. People do not still believe that some super natural being is going to penalize them for their sexual conducts or do they?

Our sex shore is endowed with dangerous matters that are absolute regress for our emotional, spiritual, physical, intellectual, cultural and financial wellbeing. Stakeholders of this 'industry' who are the adults of our reality, ought to be more prudent in managing their operations. Working structures that will protect the juvenile, the vulnerable and the deprived must be erected in every corner of our sexual landscape. Artistic handling of some erotic representation is desired; yet there is an apparent limitedness in the courage to gather the arrant facts of our current sex/sexual reality. Our children are no more innocent because our adults are no more sensible. Focus must rest on those sexual conducts that undeniably trouble our human progress.

What constitutes healthy expressions of sexuality is extensively disregarded. Themes of male sexual dominance and female subjugation are however enhanced in our music, film, theater, literature, fine arts and in every make of our creative grain. Women and children are the subjugated labourers of the sex 'industry'. Women also are the grand products for market segments. Some women unfortunately fall to this alluded labourer/product role; thus their ambition is set to become the most notable loyal sex item on the market. They dress, talk and walk for the sex runway.

Our culture of silence on sex demeans our country and her people. Many Ghanaian writers and artists clearly avoid such topics as incest, forced sex (rape, molestation... etc) and homosexuality in their artistic expressions. This, in my opinion, is hypocrisy and cowardice. If writers and artists remain selective of which part of our society their works reflect, our stifled realities will pick up on eating into the entire fabric of our society. ''Whereas it may be a difficult task to identify that which is artless and destructive in our sexual evolution, versus that which is artful and uplifting; we must be committed to working around these issues so that our revolutionary constructions of liberation are not compromised'' --Kamaria Muntu.

Our partial comments or regrets on how things have turned out are not solutions. We have only become fluent cowards who stretch to blame the next person and the circumstances. Our thoughts must be asylums for all children, women and men who suffer sexual injustice and this must reflect in our dance, songs photography, fashion... talk.  Our every sexual deed must be pro health, freedom and happiness and must be lethal to any form of injustice and abuse. Our hope must be incessant in the call for sexual freedom and justice; it is just insufficient to mind "your own business". The Asantes say, Eba a, eka oni*

*Trouble which affects one person affects the whole family.

An article by Nana Nyarko Boateng