Traditional Marriage, Bride Price and Sex Trade

By Felex Niwagaba

Marriage is traditionally associated with love, companionship, family, responsibility and commitment. Yet money, sex and material expectations can also influence how relationships operate.

This raises an uncomfortable question: Can intimacy within marriage become transactional?

In this article, Felex Niwagaba examines bride price, financial responsibility, sexual expectations and what he describes as “neo-prostitution” in marriage. The term is deliberately provocative. It does not suggest that marriage and prostitution are the same institution. Instead, it asks whether intimacy begins to resemble an economic exchange when sexual relations become conditional on money, material provision or the fulfilment of financial expectations.

Traditional Marriage, Bride Price and Sex Trade

Prostitution is sex trade. From a traditional setting, the argument becomes controversial when it is related to bride price. In the same sense, bride price can be viewed as people trade. People trade, however, is different from sex trade in many respects.

In the traditional setting, divorce and family conflicts were limited, and divorce was rare. This reflected the oneness of families. There was high respect for both family lineages in marriage, and history shows that intermarriage was used as a peaceful way of building relationships between groups of people.

Sex trade was also rare, and a woman’s virginity was often treated as a prerequisite for marriage.

Sex as Exchange

If prostitution is about buying sex, whether through money or barter, then trade remains trade regardless of the form of exchange.

Sex remains a source of sexual satisfaction, and where sexual pleasure is exchanged for value, the act becomes transactional.

Whether the law is clear about the boundaries of prostitution or not, the motive of the parties can still involve the exchange of sexual pleasure for value.

Young people are increasingly made to believe that sex must involve an exchange. Today, many youths, especially males, remain unmarried because of the price attached to marriage.

The price of marriage has been made higher than the price of sex, which can promote sex trade. Sex trade becomes more common when males and females do not meet the expectations attached to the exchange.

Marriage, Demand and Responsibility

The demands of each party in marriage are different.

Sex is highly valued by both men and women, but this article uses the male as the demand side and the female as the supply side. Men are often driven by sexual pleasure, while women also have demands that they expect to be met.

A woman may expect a man to meet his responsibilities as a breadwinner. A breadwinner is expected to provide the basic needs of the family.

When these responsibilities are not met, the family can move into conflict.

This becomes an exchange. It becomes transactional, even when the church and government may minimise that reality.

A long relational trade does not stop being trade simply because it lasts for a long time. As valuable as sex is, its value can become attached to money and provision.

The Market and Society

Prostitution exists because there is a market, and that market includes males who also belong to families recognised in society.

It can therefore appear unfair when society calls one player a prostitute while ignoring the other participant in the same exchange.

Religious families use terms such as adultery and fornication, but it can be difficult to understand why similar sexual acts are given different titles depending on the setting.

Prostitution is practised in a society where there is demand for its services, just as businesses exist because there is a market for what they offer.

Prostitution is the act of satisfying sexual demand at a monetary cost, while sex is the act of satisfying sexual demand.

Sex also requires putting the other party in the mood, and the development of that mood can come at a cost.

For prostitutes, sex comes after a monetary bargain. In families, it often comes after happiness, provision or satisfaction within the relationship.

In both settings, sex can therefore acquire a monetary value.

Marriage and Street Sex

It becomes clear that, in both families and on the streets, sex can become an exchange.

Marriage sex can begin to resemble street sex when conflict leads to sex being denied to the demanding party until certain expectations are met.

This can be seen in the idea of sente za kameza, or the man’s responsibilities at home.

Where a woman is not satisfied with the man’s contribution in the home, the man may be denied sex. On the street, a man is not given sex unless he agrees to payment.

Trust is also important in both settings.

The procedures may therefore appear similar. When the interested parties fail to meet the expected conditions, sex stops unless one party uses force.

Forceful sex is rape and is a crime, regardless of where it happens.

Is It Neo-Prostitution in Marriage?

People marry for sexual pleasure, among other reasons.

Prostitutes have sex for money and sometimes for pleasure, while married couples have sex for pleasure and under a prior marriage agreement. Yet this sexual practice can still acquire a monetary value.

When wives make demands similar to those made by street women as a condition for sex, the difference in strategy may become smaller.

For the respect of marriage as an institution, the term neo-prostitution can be used to describe this form of transactional behaviour in marriage today.

It will take a change in what society considers normal to eliminate neo-prostitution in families.

Couples can find it difficult to keep their marriages during financial and social challenges, and this has contributed to divorce in many families.

To address this, the community must be uneducated and re-educated about marriage and sex as both a concept and an act.

Religious leaders, academics and politicians should take the lead.

Otherwise, society must confront the contradiction of condemning prostitution while allowing similar transactional practices to become normal within relationships.

— Felex Niwagaba
Systems Architect