Intergenerational sex is a callous reality brought home to this writer’s mind by a comment made by a 35-year-old man. “When she is 18, I will only be 45, ke tla bo ntse ke le teng (I will still be around).”
The man in question was making reference to a barely-out of-the-diapers, eight-year-old girl.
Clearly in these times, as the increasingly clich├®d saying goes, age has become nothing but a number.
As social commentators agree, intergenerational relationships have gained social traction, with intergenerational sex becoming a fixture. The sight of a beautiful young woman draped on the arm of a man old enough to be her father (or even grandfather) no longer carries the shock factor of years past.
A United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) that is at least a decade old reports widespread sexual encounters between young women and older men in Botswana. This intergenerational sex has been driven by the exchange of sex for gifts or material support, known as transactional sex.
“In Botswana these sexual relationships have often been exploitative, whereby adult males have targeted teenage girls for sexual relations through offers of gifts and special favours to entice them. This has been referred to in Botswana and across sub-Saharan Africa, as the ‘sugar daddy syndrome’,” notes the UNDP report of 2000.
“The Sugar Daddy Syndrome,” explains child psychologist Yvonne Sibanda, “is the abuse of young girls lured into sex by money or other gifts.”
However, many of the young women or girls enticed to hop into bed with older men would hardly consider themselves abused in relationships they enter willingly. And, as social commentators again point out, intergenerational sex appears to be gaining something of a social acceptance. “There is a certain tolerance in wider society that is going on,” says Sibanda.
The often relentless pursuit of sugar daddies by the children themselves is one indicator that the traditional taboo on intergenerational sex between older men and young women (or girls) is fading.
Take the case of one Maria Matlhodi, who placed a personal on yahoo advertising that she is on the prowl for an older man. “I want a sugar daddy in Botswana. I am a 19 year old, slim, good looking girl. Anyone available?”
Indeed, increasing access to the Internet and the growth in the number of technologically savy girls are abetting a growth in the issue of intergenerational sex. Websites dedicated to this social phenomenon are rising ÔÇô with names like ‘Sugar Daddy Dating & Sugar Baby personals in Botswana’.
On the flip side, there is the rise of the cougar phenomenon, where older women prey on much younger men. As with their sugar daddy counterparts, sites on cougar dating are growing. ‘Naughty cougars in Botswana’ and ‘Free serious cougars chat in Botswana’ are but example headlines for such sites.
By definition, intergenerational sex is the non marital sexual relationships between men and women in which partners have an age difference of 10 or more years. These incidents often expose adolescents and young partners to sexually transmitted infections during their interaction with their older counterparts due to their sexual experiences and history.
Director of the Botswana Network of Ethics, Law and AIDS (BONELA), Uyapo Ndadi, is on record opposing these liaisons. “If I had my way, I would introduce a law that limits relationships age differences to at least 13 years. Imagine a 16 year old girl dating a 66 year old man, or even older. Is that morally acceptable? No! Is that legally acceptable? Yes! This calls for resolute and collective condemnation,” he said at a June 16 commemoration of the Day of the African Child.
Though there have been studies that some incidents of intergenerational sex occur when the younger party is seeking a father or mother figure in their partner due to negligence, abuse or absence of their parents earlier in life, it has became evident that the most prevalent cause is financial benefit for the younger and sexual gratification for the older ones. Some reasons stated for this behaviour is that not only are older men and women more mature and supportive, they also come emotionally and financially independent and secure with a lot of experience regarding matters of the heart.
Intergenerational relationships are extremely multifaceted and should not be regarded as a whole monolithic phenomenon and therefore should be dealt with according to the issues that arise with it. A vast array of socio-economic and cultural aspects comes into play where intergenerational sex is concerned. Cases of extreme poverty, low self esteem societal pressures that may measure manhood by the number of women one beds, deep rooted need to compensate short comings by the provision of money or just boredom. There are a few exceptions to the rule in which a couple with a shockingly large age gap may genuinely be in love.
In most cases it is older men being in relationships with younger women, although it is not as common, older women are now also increasingly hopping on to the bandwagon and dating younger men. Older men often just want to have their cake and eat it too by having a wife at home and a trophy girlfriend to flaunt about for sexual gratification in exchange for financial benefits.
In some instances these older men with more experience use the word “love” to manipulate the naive younger girls. The girls will in turn build sand castles and live with the hope that the men will leave their spouses and it almost never happens. As much as the older men have spouses the young girls also have partners and this behaviour increase each other’s sexual network ultimately leading to people having Multiple Concurrent Partners thus hindering any efforts made to curb new infections of HIV and Aids.
According to the 2009 National Campaign Plan for Multiple Concurrent Plan for the National AIDS Coordinating Agency, “Having concurrent or over lapping partnerships; or no partnerships with no breaks in between, creates highly linked sexual networks. In this context of high HIV prevalence (in Botswana); HIV is present throughout these linked networks in which very few couples are isolated.” Though not ideal, one would suggest that it would have been better if these sexual networks were age sensitive in that way the infected older generation will not make new infections in the younger newly sexually active one.┬á┬á
Findings in a journal titled “The dynamics of Intergenerational Sexual Relationships in the Experience of Schools in Botswana” by Josephine Nkosana indicated that, “Not all girls were passive and controlled by their older sexual partners. They in fact displayed a capacity to take charge of their own sexual lives by insisting on engaging in safe protected sexual behaviour. However another set of girls had little or no decision making powers and their relationships were characterised by coercion and manipulation.”
Girls in the latter group more often than not fall pregnant and are abandoned by the older men when they need them the most, the women are also vulnerable to gender based violence and other forms of abuse and can easily contract Sexually Transmitted Infections due to the inconsistent use of condoms since it will not be their prerogative. These younger girls are often saddled with the baggage of having to deal with children belonging to their older partners and spouses who are more age appropriate.
From a Christian’s perspective, Reverend Thabo Mampane stated that, “God created Adam and Eve well within each other’s generation and did not wait a large number of years to show that it is only appropriate for people to be of the same generation.” He further stated that such relationships are financially motivated and are contributing to the moral decay of society.
Emerging socio cultural sub themes like the disregard for matrimony and the fact that elders should be exclusively perceived as parents and not as potential lovers have spiralled this phenomenon of intergenerational sexual relationships out of control to a point where it is bragged about and not hidden.
