Irresponsible Boys, Promiscuous Girls: Maturity, Gender, and Rape Myths in the Criminal Tribunals of Colonial Dahomey, 1924-1940

Abstract

Dahomeans believed maturity or rather immaturity played a crucial role in defining what sex acts constituted rape in both the precolonial kingdom of Dahomey and the French colony of the same name. This belief shaped indigenous assessors’ perceptions of who could legitimately claim victimhood versus who could not and who they would consider a rapist and who they would not. This connection between maturity and rape generated two foundational rape myths that guided decision making in colonial tribunals. Prior to the 1931 reorganization of native tribunals, the French controlled tribunal sentenced youthful offenders convicted of rape to a few months jail time and sometimes a small fine. After indigenous assessors gained a deliberative voice in 1931, the colonial tribunals dismissed the charges of rape against teenage defendants. While men of all ages admitted to “messing around” with girls who accused them of sexual assault, this defense proved most convincing in instances of sexual relations occurring between male and female peers in their teen years or younger. The choice of the phrase “messing around” euphemistically framed an act of non-consensual, forced sex as a benign event. The second rape myth that affected the outcome of rape cases concerned the tribunals’ expectations about elder girls’ alleged promiscuity. The tribunal presumed that elder, teenage girls were both willing participants and dubious witnesses concerning their sexual experiences. There existed a sexual double standard where the colonial tribunals believed that fourteen and fifteen-year-old boys acted without discernment when engaging in sex play with their peers and could not be held accountable because of their supposed lack of knowledge about sex. On the hand colonial tribunals assumed that girls, who were the same age or younger than the boys, possessed knowledge that denied them access to claiming victimhood. This article examines accusations of child or adolescent sexual assault when the perpetrator and victim were peers with approximately five years or less separating their ages. Such cases represented a minority of cases in the colonial tribunal where the median ages of girl victims averaged just over ten years of age and that of the male perpetrators twenty-eight. Examining these select cases of peer sexual encounters reveals norms – and their transgressions – of youthful interactions between peers of different genders as well as colonial stereotypes about youthful, African sexuality.