African Journal of AIDS Research ISSN: 1608-5906 (Print) 1727-9445 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/raar20 “Dying to be women”: explorations and implications of narrative parameters of female youth sexuality in Zimbabwe Ngonidzashe Muwonwa To cite this article: Ngonidzashe Muwonwa (2017) “Dying to be women”: explorations and implications of narrative parameters of female youth sexuality in Zimbabwe, African Journal of AIDS Research, 16:3, 185-191, DOI: 10.2989/16085906.2017.1346693 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.2989/16085906.2017.1346693 Published online: 05 Oct 2017. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 13 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=raar20 Download by: [University of Florida] Date: 26 October 2017, At: 07:50 Copyright © NISC (Pty) Ltd African Journal of AIDS Research 2017, 16(3): 185–191 AJAR ISSN 1608-5906 EISSN 1727-9445 http://dx.doi.org/10.2989/16085906.2017.1346693 “Dying to be women”: explorations and implications of narrative parameters of female youth sexuality in Zimbabwe Ngonidzashe Muwonwa Downloaded by [University of Florida] at 07:50 26 October 2017 Theatre Arts, University of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe Email: [email protected] This article considers how socio-cultural ideologies and practices can act as social technologies that help produce specific sexual practices and identities in young women. It identifies young women’s libidinal economics as one contributing factor responsible for prescriptive gender roles in Southern Africa, and in this context, Zimbabwe. Understanding the contexts and structures of socio-sexual ideologies circulating among young women as part of their formal and informal sexual education might help address the root cause and understand the core conditions that exacerbate young women’s sexual vulnerability Therefore youth-related programming may need to develop ways of assisting young people to develop intellectual, social and psychological skills in order for them to take full advantage of their youth. In revising prerequisites of womanhood and adulthood, there is need for a critical pedagogy which incorporates “deviance” as a concept which empowers young women to question and challenge rather than reinstate and reinforce normative pressures and essentialist perspectives of entering adulthood and “doing gender”. Keywords: HIV and AIDS, libidinal economics, sexual cultures, sexual vulnerabilities Introduction This article provides some insights into the constructions of youth sexuality by employing an economic and transactional approach to the production, distribution and arrangement of young women’s desires, fantasies, fears and pleasures. The article argues that young women’s libidinal economics in Southern Africa, and in this context, Zimbabwe, is structured by a social meta-structure that operates via cultural practices, styles of living and interacting, and power distribution to promote specific ways of being. This social meta-structure is referred to as “dying to be women” which identifies womanhood as a strong influential concept among young women which prescribes one’s access to status, goods and social power. The article identifies young women’s libidinal economics as one contributing factor responsible for prescriptive gender roles in Southern Africa, and in this context, Zimbabwe. The gendered nature of this research resonates with literature that considers young women to be particularly vulnerable and to constitute most of the 11.8 million 15–25-year-olds living with HIV/AIDS throughout the world (Stoebenau, Warner, Edmeades, J., & Sexton, 2015; UNAIDS, 2015). In turn, this is primarily linked with unequal gender relations that make young women especially vulnerable to coercive sex and afford them little space to negotiate the nature of sexual relations (Kamndaya, Kazembe, Vearay, Kabin, & Thomas, 2015). Over the past decade, strong evidence has emerged on the relationship between gender inequalities and HIV and AIDS rates in Africa. This article submits that understanding the contexts and structures of socio-sexual ideologies circulating among young women as part of their formal and informal sexual education might help in addressing the root cause and understanding the core conditions that exacerbate young women’s sexual vulnerability (UNAIDS, 2015). In Zimbabwe, young women’s sexual vulnerability is highlighted through unprotected sex, intergenerational sexual relationships, concurrent sexual partnerships and sexual abuse which expose them to risk of contracting HIV and AIDS (Mabhunu, 2013; Wekwete & Manyeruke, 2012) Participatory youth media as narratives of female youth sexuality This article is extracted from a PhD study at the University of Zimbabwe entitled: “Youth participation in HIV and AIDS entertainment and educational intervention programming in Zimbabwe: a multi-media action research”. The research was granted ethical clearance by the University of Zimbabwe’s Higher Degrees Committee, which also acts as the Research Ethics Committee. Against this background, data collected for this research satisfied research ethics of confidentiality, minimising risk to participants and mutual respect. An action research design was chosen for this study to ensure the research design; methods and interpretations were congruent with young people’s world views and responsive to their needs to counter “traditional models” of research on young people (LeclercMadlala, 2005), which restrict their voice and agency. The methodology adopted was based on a hypothetical position that participatory entertainment and education youth media have the potential to excavate embedded identities of young women’s sexuality. Against this position, I worked African Journal of AIDS Research is co-published by NISC (Pty) Ltd and Informa UK Limited (trading as Taylor & Francis Group) Downloaded by [University of Florida] at 07:50 26 October 2017 186 together with 40 other young women at the University of Zimbabwe, to design, set up and facilitate a universitybased initiative called Stepping Out…Youth Project which formed the basis of the participatory methodology of this research. Of the 40 young women involved in the project 6 participated as core-researchers, 14 as full-time volunteers and 20 as project specific participants. The author was involved in selecting the first two co-researchers who were once active members of a young women’s leadership project on campus. These two became the first Creative Director and Programmes Officer of the project, helping set up and invite other young women from diverse socio-economic and religious backgrounds within the university campus. Over a period of 30 months, we held creative workshops which involved story creation, rehearsals, film shootings and public presentations of drama performances. Within these creative workshops young women shared their life experiences on campus in the process of creating storylines for different media productions. These workshops were organised and coordinated by the Creative Director of Stepping Out...Youth Project. Therefore I participated in the workshop as an observer and sometimes asked a few questions for clarification. My minimal involvement in the creative processes was based on the need to allow the voices of young women to dominate the process. Artistic “experientiality and experimentality” (Hannula, Souranta, & Vaden, 2005, p. 1) were at the core of the research design. This is defined by Hannula et al. (2005) as research framed by practice-based and practice-driven researches which have an underlying attitude to open and build mediums of expression as methods of knowledge production. Within this research framework, the artist produces art work and researches the creative processes and products, thus adding to the accumulation of knowledge. As this research was concerned with youth sexuality and identity, and associated tensions and complexities; performance ethnography offered a relevant context for questioning, critiquing and exploring social practices around young women’s sexuality. The author found processes of “collecting stories” from the young women for their performances as a dynamic, cross-sectional process of self-reflection that had the potential to shift socio-sexual attitudes, values and actions (Alexander, 2005). As part of the project, young women’s sexuality narratives and representations were packaged into an episodic theatre play, Young Desires, a short dramatic skit, Todini (What shall we do?), and a short film, Scholastica, which form the specific case studies for this article. Young Desires is about five young women who live together in a rented room outside the university campus who suspect that one of their roommates has aborted and hidden her foetus in their room. Todini explores October’s life on campus and how she tries to juggle multiple concurrent partners which lead her to contracting HIV. The third case study, Scholastica, follows the life of Scholastica, a young woman from the rural areas who comes to the city to attend university. It shows how her life changes on campus as she makes new friends and finds her sexuality. In this article, these participatory multimedia productions are analysed to reflect on the following critical issues: Muwonwa • What are the culturally prescribed versions of womanhood promoted in the texts? • What are the ideological foundations exposed by the multimedia texts? • What are the possible implications of these ideologies towards the development of positive sexual practices in young women, especially within a context of HIV and AIDS? Desirability, chastity and purity as prescribed forms of womanhood A close analysis of case studies exposes a running thread that seems to suggest the socialisation of young women demands that they “desire men” through a focalisation on marriage. Young women in the texts reproduce discourses of traditional values and responsible sexual behaviour promoted through abstinence and postponement of sex until marriage. For example, in Young Desires, Mauline, a devout Christian, opens the episode with a long and winding prayer that comically positions her “desires”: Mauline: Lord, I need you to answer me….I need someone in my life….someone you have chosen for me,.… I am a woman who loves you and is beautiful. Please give me a man who fears you but who also can provide for me…someone like John, Lord…. but not like John because he is a womaniser…. maybe someone like Joe, Agnes’ boyfriend….he is handsome but give him resources…. She stops praying loudly having sensed that someone has entered the room. It is Delilah, who has overheard her prayer and can’t hold her laughter... Delilah: I am sorry…I didn’t mean to disturb you ….. I didn’t know you are also interested in boys… Mauline (dismissively): Who doesn’t want to get married? What is evident here is a clear focus on marriage as the above scenario exposes how female sexuality is initiated through discourses of “(desire)-ability”, which is conceptualised as desire and desirability. Mauline and Delilah seem to agree that there is no problem in desiring a man. Mauline, as a Christian, cleverly avoids accepting that she desires a man by replacing “man” with “marriage” as a means to be morally correct. In analysing and evaluating desires, fantasies and fears as part of the matrix of exchange, Mauline is a key example who reveals that young women are taught and socialised to internalise subconsciously the desire for men, whether as boyfriends in an attempt to overcome the fear of failing to attract a male companion or as a male companion with the right credentials. This pressure for companionship is referred to as “relational imperative” (Holland & Eisenhart, 1990). It is therefore arguable that a relational imperative and its associated desires, fears and phobias create a “deficit identity” in young women which pushes them to kick start the intimate transaction (Reynolds & Taylor, 2005). What is evident then is that socio-sexual and cultural discourses help to produce desires that link and incline young women to male consumption as part of self-validation. To confirm this “need” and pressure, one young woman confessed during Downloaded by [University of Florida] at 07:50 26 October 2017 African Journal of AIDS Research 2017, 16(3): 185–191 the playmaking process that her father had categorically stated to her that when she comes back home after three years of learning at the university she must bring two things: a degree and a husband. The relational imperative and deficit identity discourse structures young women as primary producers within the sexual economic matrix forcing them to become agentic towards the fulfilment of their desires. Delilah in Young Desires categorically expresses that: “And how do you expect to get a man when you close yourself indoors all day?” Delilah insinuates the existence of an equation of desire that Mauline is ignorant of or is against. Delilah seems to be suggesting that Mauline’s desire for a man or marriage must be matched by making herself desirable and available. This code of behaviour may help to explain why Amanda in Young Desires seems to be obsessed with “attention to detail” each time she goes out of their room. Amanda applies a lot of make-up and always makes an extra effort in her dressing. Amanda, like Samantha in Scholastica, justifies her emphasis on make-up and how she looks in public by saying that: “you never know whom you will meet, just be prepared always!” This shows that she and others have internalised their desire by transforming it into desirability as an everyday value. Mauline in Young Desires agrees with other girls in the play in relation to the expectation that a woman must desire male companionship in its various formats. However, she detests Delilah’s suggestion as it is inconsistent with expected traditional norms of women’s sexual behaviour. She is against depicting herself “like a whore” in public. Mauline’s means of becoming desirable is to remain pure as supported by Agnes in Young Desires when she says: “Sex is for marriage, and I will keep myself pure for my partner”. This reveals the discourse of chastity and modesty as a means of countering and satisfying the struggle between desire and desirability. Mauline and Agnes favour traditional values and responsible sexual behaviour promoted through abstinence and postponement of sex until marriage as part of the larger prestige-object economy of marriage and intimate activities (Marindo, Pearson, & Casteline, 2003). The discourse of marriage aligns itself to Zimbabwe’s traditional Shona model of sexuality which is aimed at grooming young women into becoming responsible wives. There is a clear disdain for male–female sexual relationships outside marriage. However, in response to Agnes’ categorical declaration that she will remain pure for her future husband, Debra asks her with a surprised tone: Debra: So how are you going to keep your boyfriend without ‘giving’ him some? Agnes (defiantly): If he is serious, then he must be willing to wait until marriage. Debra: If you are serious about him, you will have to give him some my girl! (Young Desires) Debra’s response defiantly articulates razor sharp politics challenging Agnes’ essentialist thinking that a particular and specific solution categorically applies to all situations. Debra’s response is constructed in relation to men and clearly demonstrates that young women’s sexual practices and decisions are implicated in larger socio-political 187 processes constituted in and through power relations. While opposing Agnes’ response, Debra’s question reveals the discourse that presents sex as something of value a woman sells to a man. For Agnes, she will give her husband sex when he marries her and in return she will get pride and honour. For Debra, it is that which she needs to sell to also keep her man and maintain her pride and honour of having a boyfriend on campus. Using the desire to marry as a site of analysis illuminates the visible and invisible precarious dialectic of attempting to live up to the social identity of “married woman”. As already highlighted, young women like Agnes and Mauline reproduce discourses of traditional values and responsible sexual behaviour promoted through abstinence and postponement of sex until marriage. There is a clear focus on marriage, which scholars have noted contributes to structuring many young women’s intimate choices. For example, in Zimbabwe females are expected to pursue marriage (Muzvidziwa, 2002) or “face stigma and discrimination” (Mbiti, 1969, p. 106): For African peoples, marriage is a duty, a requirement from corporate society. Otherwise, he who does not participate in it is a curse to the community, he is a rebel and law-breaker, he is not only abnormal but “under human”. Failure to get married means that the person has rejected society and society rejects him in return. Therefore, in a society that promotes marriage and more importantly, motherhood as central to women’s identities (Sharp & Ganong, 2011) it is not surprising for Amanda in Young Desires to offer Agnes advice on why having sex with her boyfriend is important as a way to keep him: You are in your final year, if you don’t keep him, who is going to marry you? Where are you going to get a graduate when you are in the back of the beyond, teaching….the only men you will meet are herd-boys and maybe married teachers! Furthermore, this reveals how young women are under pressure to find a suitable husband before leaving campus. Such expressions of domesticity, referred to as “third year syndrome” (Gaidzanwa, 2001), see female students under pressure to “catch” and “keep” a husband before graduation. The idealisation of marriage is evidently very strong in both statements, but a proclaimed desire to marry does not always lead to the outcome of actually getting married. As worldwide marriage rates have decreased and ages at first marriage have increased substantially over the past 40 years (Johnson, 2012), researchers have to be interested in the possible variables and consequences associated with the desire to marry, especially when many factors prevent young women from finding suitable partners to start a family. Examining young women’s pressure and desire to marry within a context of HIV and AIDS may help shed light on some aspects of young women’s environmental behaviours such as multiple concurrent partnerships, as elaborated in the next section. Brazenly heterosexual competitive imperative and the control of young women’s sexualities The focus in this section is on the consequences of participating in libidinal economics based on dying to be Downloaded by [University of Florida] at 07:50 26 October 2017 188 women as exposed in the case studies. For example, in the short film, Scholastica, which explores issues of “becoming a woman”, Scholastica is shown as developing a heightened sexuality which she deploys competitively against men and her fellow students. Scholastica, who comes to the big city for her university education having stayed in rural areas all her life envies her room-mates’ life and lifestyle, clothes and make-up. Out of her envy for the modern trappings of make-up and nice looking clothes, Scholastica accepts Samantha’s invitation to go out to a night club where she is unwittingly initiated into prostitution. Scholastica is not poor but her desire for modern things attracts her to Samantha’s lifestyle. Her desire to be desirable is completed when she goes out with Samantha, because older men are attracted to her. Unfortunately, she is drugged by one of the patrons and wakes up only after she has been raped. After such a grave incident, Scholastica surprisingly goes full throttle prostituting, surpassing even Samantha who seems to have fallen on hard times because she has contracted a sexually transmitted infection (STI), and is unwilling to go to the university clinic to have treated. Scholastica has “found” her sexuality and seems to be enjoying a sense of sexual empowerment, She even seduces one of her male lecturers to change her failing coursework marks. In one of their room-mate talks, Samantha advises Scholastica to concentrate on her academic work rather than having multiple sexual relationships. She agrees and both young women appear worried and stressed about how they are going to get married as they have destroyed their future prospects. Samantha has already “caught” her boyfriend who seems unaware of her history and is pinning her hopes on him. As the film ends, Scholastica is seen hugging and kissing a fellow male student, which leaves the viewer concluding that she has also found a student boyfriend on campus. This short film clearly shows that the dynamic struggle between desire and desirability has the potential to expose young women to sexual objectification, a form of gender oppression, which enables a host of other oppressions to be imposed on women (Fredickson & Roberts, 1997). From Scholastica’s case, female sexuality is forged out of the untenable positions of innate private desire and public desirability. The conflict between desire and desirability has tension-bearing possibilities on young women. Cohen (2012) points out that such conflict produces a double bind which forces young women to fall victim to very narrow definitions of sexual desirability. Within this disempowered framework, helplessness is imposed on young women, which helps account for some of the negative relationships they engage in. The politics of desire and desirability also has the potential of producing female competition, especially in the presence of male approval. Such a phenomenon is exemplified in Scholastica which depicts young women with different class backgrounds. For example, Scholastica, who shares the same room with Samantha, always feels a sense of inferiority which feeds Samantha’s sense of superiority. Samantha looks down upon Scholastica because of her lack of “sophistication” as she does not know how to use make-up or have trendy clothing. Scholastica does not think twice when she is invited for a night out by Samantha and Muwonwa her other friends, as she has always been envious of them. When Scholastica is now fully engaged in prostitution she accuses Samantha of jealousy as she is attracting more men and has more money. They seems to be a competitive spirit among the girls. Masvaure (2010) confirms the existence of this competitive spirit at the University of Zimbabwe specifically, which forces female students to engage in transactional sex to attain or maintain a modern lifestyle. She argues that apart from subsistence and survival, young women on campus entered into transactional relationships as a means of prestige-making as exemplified from this interview excerpt (Masvaure 2010, p. 862). I don’t even know what drove me to be in that relationship, coz my mother’s sister has got a salon. She always says if you want to have a new hairstyle, come to me. If you have got something you need, come to me. My brother works for some NGOs [and he too says] ‘I’ll give you anything that you need’. My mother is a teacher, of course, but she’s [also] a florist. She always sends me money. Of course, I just need to be flashy on campus. That’s what I wanted (Tendai, 20 years old). Even though money and material resources are a key feature in transactional relationships, the findings indicate they hold other attractions or are being driven by other underlying discourses. The competitive notion of being “flashy on campus” must also be held in high regard which Masvaure (2010, p. 861) defines as the “desire to be seen and to be visible on campus through the conspicuous consumption of particular luxury goods”. Masvaure acknowledges how being flashy is about competing with one’s peers, asserting one’s superiority over one’s rivals and carving out a niche for oneself as a high status individual. This article further argues that competition among young women is an ideological consequence of responding to the politics of desire and desirability engrained in socio-cultural sexuality discourses imbibed by young women as they enter adulthood. However, within the short film, young women seem to be exposed to a double bind while attempting to balance the politics of desire and desirability. After Scholastica finds her sexuality, she suffers humiliation from male students on campus when she goes for lectures wearing a short dress. There is male backlash at females deploying their bodies in public in sexually assertive ways. This backlash has the possibility of producing a double bind. This is defined as a contradictory or ambiguous situation as young women’s expectations are met with unexpected reactions from males as they disapprove instead of approve their attempts of being desirable through “body display”. One post-performance discussion held on 21 October 2014 at the University of Zimbabwe’s Beit Hall focusing on the dynamics of space and female sexuality confirms Cohen’s (2012) claims that women in general are victims of narrow definitions of sexual desirability. In this discussion, female students complained that there were specific spaces on campus they avoided to escape the “male gaze” (see Gaidzanwa, 2001) on young women and sports at University of Zimbabwe). Caputi (2002) has conceptualised this male gaze at women’s bodies as “everyday pornography”, defining it as a kind of pornographic impulse that has crept into society, Downloaded by [University of Florida] at 07:50 26 October 2017 African Journal of AIDS Research 2017, 16(3): 185–191 generating a new cultural lexicon surrounding women’s bodies, desires and needs. The powerful male gaze which young women avoid on campus shows that aspects of male student culture attempt to force gender conformity on female students, to trap them in traditional discourses of female respectability which serve patriarchal agendas (Hungwe, 2006). The physical, psychological and emotional violence through sexual objectification that young female students experience on campus has the potential to lead to habitual body monitoring, which in turn can increase women’s opportunities for shame and anxiety (Wilson, 2013). In reflecting on the short stage play, Todini, a direct consequence of female competition is highlighted by October who has multiple concurrent partners which represent a form of sexual conquest as a marker of “successful” womanhood. October believes that having more sexual conquests is of value and is surprised by Zvaramba’s claim that she has one boyfriend when she points out that her boyfriend is not able to financially support her: October: How many panties do you have? Zvaramba (surprised): What has that got to do with what we are discussing? (Debra looks at her demanding an answer still) I have three good ones October: So why do you put all your eggs in one basket…why do you depend on one man like that… what if he plays you…what are you going to do? Zvaramba: Ah, you are crazy, I don’t cheat October: It’s not called cheating…its protecting yourself! October seems to be confirming findings from other studies which highlight how young women often attempt to maximise the number of sexual partners as a means of increasing economic and social security (Cage & Bledsoe, 1994; Luke, 2005; Meeker & Calves, 1997;). These examples endorse the accepted notions of femininity which remain based on women having a connection with a man to protect and care for her (Reynolds & Wetherell, 2003). In contextualising multiple concurrent partnerships, the Bay-Cheng (2003) theorisation of youth sexuality as a socially-situated, sexualised power system might be useful. Multiple concurrency among young women might be a by-product of high levels of competition and aggression among females “which enable female students to fashion themselves as more sophisticated, more successful and even as more sexually appealing than their peers” connecting sexuality with social power (Masvaure, 2010, p. 857). Multiple concurrencies among young women reflect a “brazenly heterosexually competitive imperative that seems to have been assimilated into the culture of young women” (Duncan, 2004, p. 174). This competitive culture as an ethos of young women’s transition to adulthood distorts and complicates their interpersonal relationships, exposing them to vulnerable behaviours. Stockley and Campbell (2013) argue that an endemic competitive nature in young women, especially in poverty stricken communities, may conspire to escalate levels of competition for well-resourced men even for short-lived relationships. Unfortunately, Tanenbaum (2002) points out that competition between women serves only the status quo, keeping women from gaining more power over their lives, work, and relationships. 189 The brazen heterosexual drive also places a high premium on partner choice, burdening young women to try and “marry up” (Gaidzanwa, 2001) which consequently places women in a subservient position. For example, Zvanyadza is forced to enter into a relationship with Mukoma, the caretaker at their rented room, as October persuades her that he is of her class. October vehemently refuses to sleep with Mukoma, arguing that she only dates well to do men. It is therefore evident that the conflation of gender and class powerfully disempowers young women, as they seek satisfying relationships with men. In an attempt to marry up, young women may be forced to enter into inter-generational relationships, as these are the men who are likely to offer the suitable “class”. Such a conceptual position helps us understand, for example, October’s defence of her age-disparate relationship with a married man when she categorically declares: “She (referring to his wife) can’t satisfy him, so I will do it for her…for a fee of course!” October’s response is in alignment with to anthropological literature which presents young women as active social agents who recognise their sexuality as a key resource useful to gain financial resources from older men in exchange for sexual services (Hawkins, Price, & Mussa, 2009; Leclerc-Madlala, 2005; Masvaure, 2010; Stoebenau et al., 2011). On another note, as A relationship with a well to do man is a “much sought-after but elusive goal” (Cherlin, 2004, p. 846), sexual relationships between young women and older men involving economic transactions have been offered as a likely explanation for gender differences in HIV prevalence in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa (Hawkins et al., 2009). Hawkins et al. (2009) have theorised that age and economic asymmetries within sexual relationships are not simply the outcome of individual behaviour or the individual attributes of those involved. Luke (2003) also confirms that sexual behaviour is negotiated within a wider social, cultural and economic context reinforced by factors such as family and peer pressure, social and economic institutions and gender-based inequalities and power choices. Implications of study: unmasking normative pressure The emotional and sexual narratives of young women presented in this article are politically relevant as they provide an important avenue into understanding young women’s sexual cultures as avenues of how they express and perform their sexuality within a gendered framework. Compared with past generations for whom marriage and parenthood were virtually a prerequisite for becoming an adult, young people today may need to be influenced to view these as life choices, not requirements. Therefore youth-related programming may need to develop ways of assisting young people to develop intellectual, social and psychological skills for them to take full advantage of their youth. In revising prerequisites of womanhood and adulthood, there is need for a critical pedagogy which incorporates “deviance” as a concept which empowers young women to question and challenge rather than reinstate and reinforce normative pressures and essentialist perspectives of entering adulthood and “doing gender”. In line with the above conceptualisations of a critical pedagogy that challenges rather than endorses essentialist 190 and normative ideologies, there is need for intervention programming to explore how young women may cross ideologically constructed boundaries, divisions and positions to add to the complexity and intersecting ways in which gender and sexuality are constructed, reinforced, and repeatedly performed. Downloaded by [University of Florida] at 07:50 26 October 2017 Conclusion This article considers how socio-cultural ideologies and practices act as social technologies that help to produce specific sexual practices and identities in young women. This article allowed some useful insights into the constructions of youth sexuality by employing an economic and transactional approach to the production, distribution and arrangement of young women’s desires, fantasies, fears and pleasures. The article argues that young women’s libidinal economics in Southern Africa, and in this context, Zimbabwe, is structured by a social meta-structure that operates via cultural practices, styles of living and interacting, and power distribution to promote specific ways of being. This social meta-structure is referred to as “dying to be women” which identifies womanhood as a strong influential concept among young women which prescribes one’s access to status, goods and social power. Although one cannot and should not generalise from this quantity and type of data, some recurring themes emerged from the youth media texts. The analysis of youth media texts attempted to make links between discourse and behaviour in young women through rendering visible socio-sexual discourses and their possible linkages to external behaviours. As a result, sexuality education and current behaviour change HIV prevention messages may need to expose socio-sexual ideologies that young women unwittingly subscribe. Such a process might challenge and expose the oppression embedded within discourses which inform some sexual cultures which, unfortunately, collude with patriarchy. Failure to do so may result in HIV and AIDS prevention programmes targeted at young women having little meaning and impact against their perceived goals, especially within a Zimbabwean context in which structural conditions offer few opportunities and limited hope for a secure socio-economic future. 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