A Sociologist at the University of Ghana, Prof Akosua K. Darkwah, has called out Ghanaians on what she sees as hypocritical behaviour concerning issues of sexuality, among others that are deemed embarrassing.
According to her, denying the existence of these issues and their involvement in them prevents the country from addressing and dealing with the issues appropriately.
Her comments follow Ghana’s ranking in a 2019 Pornhub report which says Ghana was the second highest country with the most searches of BBW on the pornography site.
Speaking on Newsfile, Saturday, she said: “One that really caught my attention was somebody who said basically if anybody is in Ghana and they just search the site it gets counted as Ghanaian, and it’s all the foreigners in Ghana who are busy watching the porno and we end up bearing the brunt.
“But for me what that says is we don’t want to confront the reality. We are embarrassed by the statistics. We’re so embarrassed that we would rather deny the possibility that exists here. And for me, that’s part of our problem.
“There are many aspects of our life in Ghana that we feel too embarrassed about and are unwilling to confront and address… But if there are that many of us watching, what does that tell us about our sexuality and sex lives? And how does that match up with the conversation we have in public about what we do, who we are, in terms of Ghanaian conceptions of appropriate sexual behaviours and so on and so forth?”
According to her, by sticking our heads in sands like ostriches, behaving as if the issues do not exist, the issues fester and sometimes have negative impacts on society.
“We think the more we stick our heads in the sand like ostriches the better off we are. Or if we deny it long enough it will disappear. That’s not how the world works, it does exist, we have to recognise that it does exist and think about what it means for our context, how do we accommodate, address and deal with not just issues of pornography but many other issues that we find in our country as Ghanaians,” she said.