By Enyichukwu Enemanna
Women rights activists in Zimbabwe have filed a suit challenging the law criminalising the distribution and purchasing of sex toys across the country.
The law is tagged “censorship and entertainments control” law.
It makes the importation or possession of sex toys illegal as they are deemed “indecent” or “obscene” and harmful to public morals.
Women can be arrested and put in prison for owning sex toys. The law is being implemented at the moment.
Two women were last year arrested for being in possession of sex toys.
One of them was running an online business selling sex aids to women and offering advice on their use. She spent two weeks in detention and was sentenced to six years in jail or 640 hours of unpaid community work.
This has not however gone down well with some activists who say the law oppresses women and infringes on their rights in the socially conservative country.
According to Sitabile Dewa, divorced women and single mothers are most affected by the implementation of the law.
Dewa, a 35-year-old divorcee said she found erotic pleasure in her vibrators, calling the law repressive and archaic, insisting that it infringes in her freedom.
“I should not be deprived of self-exploration and indulgence in self-gratification,” she stated.
She filed court papers in March suing the Zimbabwe government and seeking to have parts of the law repealed. The court is considering her case.
She has been joined by other women’s rights campaigners, who believe the nation’s patriarchal outlook, does not favour them, especially where women’s choices on a range of other issues, their bodies — including contraception, marriage and what they wear are scrutinized and often limited.
“These laws would have been repealed a long time ago if the majority of users were men,” Dewa said.
However, for Debra Mwase, a programs manager with Katswe Sistahood, a Zimbabwean group lobbying for women’s rights, sidelining men in sexual affairs does not go down well.
Sexually liberated women frighten the men who dominate Zimbabwe’s political, social and cultural spaces, she said.
“Sex is not really seen as a thing for women,” Mwase said. “Sex is for men to enjoy. For women, it is still framed as essential only for childbearing.”
“Sex without a man becomes a threat,” she added.
