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Charmaine Pereira’s and Bibi Bakare Yusuf’s chapter is a study of a sex scandal in which nude photos of a Nigerian actress, Anita Hogan, appeared in print media in 2006. The publication of the photos transgressed normative and legal prescriptions about what constitutes legitimate exposure of the female body in the public arena. …

Sexuality, especially in African female sexual discourse, is associated with danger and fear, a paradigm that is dangerous and paralysing, especially to young women coming to sexual consciousness. Bakare-Yusuf argues for the need to provide a counter-narrative that emphasises pleasure, love and desire and transcends this discourse of sexual danger. Moving beyond this discourse allows for the exploration of the complexity and richness of women’s sexuality so that women don’t fall into a sexual paralysis. In this chapter, Bakare-Yusuf argues that the realm of ecstasy, desire, intimacy, mutuality and pleasure of the female erotic universe is often a precursor to and provides a backdrop to sexual danger and domination. …

Gender and development has tended to engage with sexuality only in relation to violence and ill-health. Although this has been hugely important in challenging violence against women, over-emphasizing these negative aspects has dovetailed with conservative ideologies that associate women’s sexualities with danger and fear. On the other hand, the media, the pharmaceutical industry, and pornography more broadly celebrate the pleasures of sex in ways that can be just as oppressive, often implying that only certain types of people - young, heterosexual, able-bodied, HIV-negative - are eligible for sexual pleasure. Women, Sexuality and the Political Power of Pleasure brings together challenges to these strictures and exclusions from both the South and North of the globe, with examples of activism, advocacy and programming which use pleasure as an entry point. …