Ebooks for the Classroom+Faculty

When Sex Threatened the State
ISBN: 9780252096846
Platform/Publisher: Project MUSE / University of Illinois Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Chapters; Download: Chapters
Subjects: Sexually transmitted diseases; Sexually transmitted diseases; Prostitution; Child prostitution; Prostitution; Sex; Sex;

Breaking new ground in the understanding of sexuality's complex relationship to colonialism, When Sex Threatened the State illuminates the attempts at regulating prostitution in colonial Nigeria.
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As Saheed Aderinto shows, British colonizers saw prostitution as an African form of sexual primitivity and a problem to be solved as part of imperialism's "civilizing mission". He details the Nigerian response to imported sexuality laws and the contradictory ways both African and British reformers advocated for prohibition or regulation of prostitution. Tracing the tensions within diverse groups of colonizers and the colonized, he reveals how wrangling over prostitution camouflaged the negotiating of separate issues that threatened the social, political, and sexual ideologies of Africans and Europeans alike.
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The first book-length project on sexuality in early twentieth century Nigeria, When Sex Threatened the State combines the study of a colonial demimonde with an urban history of Lagos and a look at government policy to reappraise the history of Nigerian public life.