JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Sexuality discourse in Ghana has become more divided, especially around gender and LGBTQ+ rights, leading to new anti-gay laws criminalizing LGBTQ+ activities and other forms of sexual practices. One of the most controversial pieces of legislation, titled The Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill, proposed in 2021, sought to criminalize the use of sex toys, sparking opposition from leading political figures. The then Minister of Communication, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, a staunch women’s rights advocate, publicly opposed the clause of criminalizing sex toys, stating that such initiatives infringed on women’s sexual autonomy. Her stance sparked heated debates on several social media platforms, reflecting the broader tensions surrounding conversations about sexuality in Ghana. To better understand the public’s reactions to the minister’s counterproposal, we analyzed comments from various social media platforms.

Objective:

Specifically, we (i) investigated public perceptions and sentiments regarding the criminalization of sex toys as expressed on social media, and (ii) identified if across the various social media platforms, there were differences in sentiments expressed (e.g., are comments on X more negative compared to Instagram or Facebook?)

Methods:

Using Python as a web scraping tool, we extracted public comments from Instagram, X, Facebook, and YouTube. Comments were analyzed using natural language processing to categorize sentiments (positive, negative, and neutral), and text network analysis was used to identify keywords and their relationships to central themes. We used conditional probability analyses to determine the likelihood that a given comment was classified as negative, positive, or neutral, depending on its source (Instagram, X, Facebook, or YouTube).

Results:

A total of 951 comments were retrieved: 62.7% from Instagram, 28.2% from X, 6.2% from Facebook, and 2.9% from YouTube. Negative sentiments dominated (66.35%), with only 13.25% positive and 20.4% neutral sentiments. Strongly disapproving language—some directed towards the minister—was common. This included terms such as “lesbian,” “disgrace,” and “disgusting.” X showed the highest proportion of negative sentiment (70.9%), followed by Facebook (69.5%), YouTube (64.3%), and Instagram (64.1%). Text network analysis revealed recurring themes of morality, politics, stigma, and gender.

Conclusions:

To our knowledge, this is the first and only study to analyze social media comments on sex toy legislation in Ghana and to use natural language processing as the analytical tool. Our findings highlight deep-rooted cultural resistance to non-heteronormative sexual behaviors in Ghana and also suggest that women’s advocacy for sexual autonomy may elicit patriarchal backlash. However, emerging positive voices suggest gradual shifts toward recognizing sexual pleasure as a right, pointing to the need for comprehensive sexuality education that emphasizes positive sexuality and the multifaceted nature of the human sexual experience