Subjective Experiences and Practices of Sexual Performance Concerns Among Young Men in Mwanza City, ...

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" Subjective Experiences and Practices of Sexual Performance Concerns Among Young Men in Mwanza City, Tanzania "
Mutebi, Simon Dilger, Hansjörg

Document Type	:	Latin Dissertation
Language of Document	:	English
Record Number	:	1057592
Doc. No	:	TL56709
Main Entry	:	Mutebi, Simon
Title & Author	:	Subjective Experiences and Practices of Sexual Performance Concerns Among Young Men in Mwanza City, Tanzania\ Mutebi, SimonDilger, Hansjörg
College	:	Freie Universitaet Berlin (Germany)
Date	:	2020
Degree	:	Ph.D.
student score	:	2020
Note	:	351 p.
Abstract	:	This dissertation explores the subjective experiences and practices of young men in the context of their perceived inability (or shortcomings) to perform well sexually in urban Tanzania. It focuses on broader understandings on how young men make sense of their perceived sexual performance concerns from their own point of view. My study explores the social and cultural context of sexual performance concerns, as well as the experiences and meanings young men attribute to their sexual performance and their coping up strategies. This study asks seven key research questions: what is the young men’s understanding of sexual performance concerns? Under what socio-economic conditions, constructions of masculinity, and the young men’s relations with their partners and families do sexual performance concerns occur? What is the lived experience of young men living with sexual performance concerns? How do sexual performance concerns affect young men’s sense of manhood? How do young men renegotiate their masculinities and sexual practices in the context of sexual performance concerns? What is the nature of the healing market around male sexual performance concerns in Mwanza? And finally, how do young men navigate the healing market for better sexual performance? In understanding men’s sexual performances within the young men’s own lived experiences, my dissertation draws on a social constructionist perspective on the body, which emphasizes the importance of looking at the body within a particular social and cultural context. Based on a total of 13 months of fieldwork in urban Mwanza, Tanzania (between 2016 and 2018), I employed ethnographic approaches with the aim of understanding young men’s sexual performance (and health) problems from their lived experiences. More than 90 people from various groups, including young men (15-37 years) experiencing sexual performance concerns and those who were not experiencing any form of sexual performance concerns took part in this study. Other groups and foci included female partners, traditional healers, health care providers, nutritionists and Christian as well as Muslim leaders and their understandings of sexual performance concerns. Among these various groups, the data collection methods were: participant observation, in-depth interviews, focus group discussion and informal conversations. Moreover, I conducted extended case studies with young men in order to get a more in-depth understanding about their experiences, feelings and practices related to sexual performance concerns. Furthermore, my exploration of blogs, forums and newspapers where people discuss the phenomenon in question enabled me to supplement this more personal information with contextualizing data on the topic. Tape recorded interviews in Mwanza City were transcribed verbatim and analysed thematically. During my fieldwork, I constantly reflected upon my own positionality as a male researcher, and particularly in term of my dressing code, speech, educational background, and being self-reflexive about my preconceptions and beliefs with regard to gender and sexuality. My research found how cultural discourses on the male body, young men’s socio-economic status, the nature of jobs, the nature of sexual relationships, peer networks, partners as well as family members and relatives directly and indirectly shaped the perception and experience of sexual performance concerns among young men in urban Mwanza. The ongoing socio-economic transformations in urban Tanzania increasingly lead to unemployment, low income and poverty. Thus, for the young men who are unable to earn money in order to fulfil their material roles in their (exclusively hetero-sexual) relationships, and whose bodies did not live up to the phallocentric and ‘goal-oriented’ male sexuality, was a source of feelings of rejection, dissatisfaction, distress, and the attribution of shaming words like dume suluari (literally translated as “a man who wears a pair of trouser but has no economic status of being a man”). These stressful situations, in turn, manifested themselves in the discourse on sexual deficits, weakness or loss of sexual power among young men themselves. Young men’s bodies which did not live up to the normative ‘ideal’ standards of being ‘real men’ in hetero-sexual relationships, emerged as problematic, undesirable and an ‘enemy’ for masculine identity formation. This was because of disrupting their intentions of performing masculinities through sexual intercourse and limiting their interactions with peers, potential sexual partners as well as family members. As such, young men’s bodies in the context of their perceived inability to perform sexual intercourse with satisfaction ‘dys-appeared’ and largely, they felt frail, weak, old and betrayed. However, young men in urban Mwanza were not just passive victims of the situation. They developed various coping mechanisms and tactics, which included renegotiating ambivalent masculine behaviours and sexual practices as well as creatively navigating the available healing market around sexual performance concerns. Hence, the findings of this dissertation offers more insights on the subjective experiences and practices of sexual performance concerns among young men in urban Tanzania. They also enrich and extend the government’s understanding on the perceived causes of upungufu wa nguvu za kiume (literally translated as “male sexual power deficit”). The findings of this dissertation also build upon anthropological debates about embodiment as well as social constructionist approaches, and emphasize explicitly or implicitly that (embodied) subjective experiences and practices of sexual performance concerns are shaped largely by social and cultural contexts in which young men find themselves.
Descriptor	:	Behavioral psychology
	:	Gender studies
	:	Sexuality
Added Entry	:	Dilger, Hansjörg
Added Entry	:	Freie Universitaet Berlin (Germany)