Erotic Labor within and without Work

In this interview, femi babylon elaborates a proheaux womanist theory of erotic labor as at once work and antiwork. “Sex work is work” speaks to the realities of erotic labor as a survival strategy and illuminates the connections among erotic labor and other forms of gig work. At the same time, it can operate as a bid for respectability, and one that occludes erotic labor as a strategy for refusing the work ethic. Thinking through the politics of the survival sex/sex work binary, the (dis)connections among wives and whores, and the intersections of whorephobia and misogynoir in conversations about sex worker motherhood, babylon engages key points of debate in sex worker theory today.

Surviving (Black) Together

How do Black feminism and womanism foster interconnectedness to one another and the sacred? What knowledges manifest through collective practices of wondering and wandering together? This essay provides reflections on our own engagements with creative-relational inquiry, manifested through our collective practice, Hill L. Waters, a scholar–artist collective rooted in love, Black queer resistance, and art as activism. Organized around and through three corresponding moments, this poetic essay embodies creative-relational inquiry and narrates our process of collectivity. Ultimately, this essay demonstrates how collectivity as a writing practice, political commitment, and identity translates Black feminist and womanist theory into praxis.

WOMEN, WEALTH GENERATION AND PROPERTY OWNERSHIP IN TRADITIONAL SHONA CULTURE IN ZIMBABWE

Feminist scholarship is awash with literature that strives to vindicate its position that women in general have never enjoyed status and platforms equal to those of their male counterparts in the social, economic, religious and political spheres in life. The literature bemoans the invisibility of women in matters to do with economics and property ownership. The literature further posits that women neither wielded any power nor had any platforms for the generation and accumulation of wealth or the ownership of property. Leaning on Africana Womanist theory, this paper contends that such a perception is the antithesis of what actually takes place in the Shona milieu where, traditionally, women have, not just platforms to generate and accrue personal wealth, but have also authority over the use and disposal of such wealth. Avenues for the generation and accumulation of wealth and other property by Shona women range from marriage negotiations, the institution of marriage itself as well as the family, working using one’s hands and commanding positions of leadership.