Event Details

PRESERVING HETERONORMATIVITY: LESBIAN SEX AND CORRECTIVE RAPE AT A NIGERIAN UNIVERSITY 

A talk by Nwando Achebe, Jack and Margaret Sweet Endowed Professor of History at Michigan State University 

On July 3, 2011, University of Benin, Nigeria, female students recorded themselves performing a striptease. A few hours later, their video clip had gone viral. In her talk Professor Achebe will explore these events as an entrée into a consideration of the rights of Nigerian sexual minorities to sexual citizenship, personhood, humanity, and being. She will also use the events as a lens through which to view the perpetuation of hate crimes and violence against lesbian women by Nigerian men. Her talk considers the attitudes of an anonymous spectator audience, and calls into question the role of the Internet in providing, on one hand, a safe haven for sexual minorities; but on the other, easy access for unscrupulous men to exercise violent control over Nigerian women’s bodies.