Communicating Sexuality and Reporting Reproductive Health Issues Among the Akan: Questions of Morality, Profanity, and Culture

Sexuality Defined

The concept “sexuality” is also perhaps one of the sociological terms that have received various definitions. To some, sexuality simply refers to erotic attractions, identity and practices (Shaw & Lee, 2018), while others situate it in the domain of health and development and therefore suggest that sexuality is part of human life and human development (Macleod & McCabe, 2020; NASW, 2001). But sociologists, (Lindsey & Beach, 2002, p. 161) provide a much broader understanding of the concept; they note, “sexuality is a type of social interaction where we perceive, experience, and express ourselves as sexual beings.” The perspective of Lindsey and Beach therefore does not restrict the concept to romanticism and pleasurable life but suggests an all-encompassing phenomenon that denotes everything relating to how humans structure their sexual relationships. In their paper on …Influences on Responsible Sexual Decision-Making, NASW (2001) emphasises the importance of the knowledge of good sexual health in particular and reproductive health in general. The paper explains that good sexual health implies not only the absence of disease, but the ability to understand and weigh the risks, responsibilities, outcomes, and impacts of sexual actions, to be knowledgeable of and comfortable with one's body, and to be free from exploitation and coercion. Given the foregoing background on the importance of human sexuality therefore, it becomes a bit intriguing why and how the Akan in Ghana structure their communication relationships with regard to their sexuality in that particular way, especially with regard to how they refer to the human sex organs and related phenomena by various metaphors. Their pattern might not be a case in isolation any way, as Lindsey and Beach (2002), writing from the perspective of the American (US) society, have noted that until fairly recently, beliefs about human sexuality had been shrouded in myth and superstition. Similarly, various reasons appear to be given to this way of life among the Akan too. The interest and motivation of this current paper is, therefore, to find out the underlying reason(s) for such a communicative pattern among the Akan in general and the Fante in particular; it investigates how such communicative pattern affect how the people report issues relating to their reproductive health and how doctors and nurses (also referred to as clinicians or health workers in this paper) especially deal with this issue, inasmuch as doctor-patient interaction thrives on mutual frankness and trust (Anane, 2015).