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By Lilly Adjorkor ADJEI
Tema – 17 April, 2019
There are groups of people I have found are especially misunderstood, labelled and teased for what they are not: people who practice sexual abstinence and wait until marriage and Tom boys or Tom girls.
A voluntary decision to abstain from engaging in any sexual activity, usually for religious reasons is what is defined as chastity. It has been with mankind for thousands of years.
But these days such persons are labelled “Holier than Thou”, or classified together with those who identify as lesbian or gay.
In Ghana, this brings untold pressure on women in their 20s and 30s to get married.
Just yesterday, news headlines around the world were trending with new laws passed in Brunei that prescribe death by stoning for lesbians and gays.
I pray that such ignorance and backwardness does not rear its head in Ghana to add to the pressure such labelled women face.
In China, the authorities coined the derogatory term ‘leftover women’ to shame or scare urban professionals into marriage, with the ultimate aim of creating ‘high-quality’ babies as reported by Leta Hong Fincher (November 3, 2015), in an article China’s ‘Leftover Women’ fighting pressure to marry, citing a 2007 China State Council plan to improve the population ‘quality’.
Julianne Hough an American celebrity was vocal from the beginning of her career about her decision to postpone sex until marriage. Explaining her reasoning to CosmoGIRL! Magazine in 2008, she said:
‘I want to be with that special person…….. I think [the choice] to have sex before marriage is an individual one, but if you’re just with one person, it’s only for one good reason, and [waiting to have sex] will strengthen that relationship. I’m not trying to preach consequences here, but I think when you say no, down the line it will be a better decision.”
Another category of people labelled and stereotyped in Ghana are the so-called Tom boys or Tom girls.
Who is a Tom boy or Tom girl?
They are labelled due to behaviour usually associated with boys or girls including wearing clothing and engaging in games and activities that are usually associated with the opposite gender.
A Russian tennis official once referred to Serena and her sister Venus as ‘The Williams brothers’.
A sports columnist also wrote a scathing editorial about Serena Williams’ body, likening her derriere to food and complained that she was not attractive enough to him because of her size, reported Erika Nicole Kendall for the Guardian in 2015.
Rich C Saving Williams in an article published on 13 November, 2016, explained that there are relatively few people who discriminate between homoerotic girls (girls who have sexual interest in other girls) and heteroerotic girls(girls with a sexual interest in the opposite sex) because people cannot tell what is happening at that age.
For those who insist on identifying cues, Williams says cross dressing, that is, males wearing female clothes and vice versa, maybe an easier cue they can use to predict seal preferences, but even then, clothes are becoming more and more unisex so it is difficult to tell and label people based on that.
Our sensitivity and knowledge is decaying so fast that we are quick to call and encourage people into sexual promiscuity or to pronounce them as gays or lesbians when they are not. Do you think the lesbian and gay community will accept straights just to shore up their numbers?
Have we not heard of the dangers associated with sexual promiscuity, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, unplanned pregnancies and shattered dreams?
Our mislabelled person’s faith, friends and lay counselling training session are all helping her understand who she is better as well as the phenomenon, perception and expectations related to her personality.
‘There are lots of truths, but there is only one truth. My truth: I am straight,’ she says.
So please before you begin to publicly label someone, consider the effects. Not all who are tomboys and chaste are lesbians. It’s a life choice!
Feedback; [email protected] or contact Lilly on (+233) 057 867 3383; Instagram, @lil_lillyaa; LinkedIn, Lilly Adjei; WhatsApp, 0578673383.
Writers and Shakespeares Ghana Limited exist to be a moral and intellectual guide to the best practice of PR and integrated communications around the world, beginning with Ghana.