Boy-Wives and Female Husbands

Description

Among the many myths created about Africa, the claim that homosexuality and gender diversity are absent or incidental is one of the oldest and most enduring. Historians, anthropologists, and many contemporary Africans alike have denied or overlooked African same-sex patterns or claimed that such patterns were introduced by Europeans or Arabs. In fact, same-sex love and nonbinary genders were and are widespread in Africa. Boy-Wives and Female Husbands documents the presence of this diversity in some fifty societies in every region of the continent south of the Sahara. Essays by scholars from a variety of disciplines explore institutionalized marriages between women, same-sex relations between men and boys in colonial work settings, mixed gender roles in east and west Africa, and the emergence of LGBTQ activism in South Africa, which became the first nation in the world to constitutionally ban discrimination based on sexual orientation. Also included are oral histories, folklore, and translations of early ethnographic reports by German and French observers. Boy-Wives and Female Husbands was the first serious study of same-sex sexuality and gender diversity in Africa, and this edition includes a new foreword by Marc Epprecht that underscores the significance of the book for a new generation of African scholars, as well as reflections on the book's genesis by the late Stephen O. Murray.

This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to the generous support of the Murray Hong Family Trust. Access the book online at the SUNY Open Access Repository at http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12648/1714.
Figures and Tables

New Foreword
Marc Epprecht

The Genesis of Boy-Wives and Female Husbands
Stephen O. Murray

Preface: "All Very Confusing"

Africa and African Homosexualities: An Introduction

Part I: Horn of Africa, Sudan, and East Africa

Overview

"A Feeling within Me": Kamau, a 25-Year-Old Kikuyu
Stephen O. Murray

Occurrences of Contrary-Sex among the Negro Population of Zanzibar (1899)
M. Haberlandt, translated by Bradley Rose

Mashoga, Mabasha, and Magei: "Homosexuality" on the East African Coast
Deborah P. Amory

Part II: West Africa

Overview

A 1958 Visit to a Dakar Boy Brothel
Michael Davidson

Male Lesbians and Other Queer Notions in Hausa
Rudolf P. Gaudio

West African Homoeroticism: West African Men Who Have Sex with Men
Nii Ajen

Part III: Central Africa

Overview

Homosexuality among the Negroes of Cameroon and a Pangwe Tale (1921, 1911)
Günther Tessmann, translated by Bradley Rose

Ganga-Ya-Chibanda (1687)
Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi, translated by Will Roscoe

Same-Sex Life among a Few Negro Tribes of Angola (1923)
Kurt Falk, translated by Bradley Rose

Part IV: Southern Africa

Overview

Homosexuality among the Natives of Southwest Africa (1925–1926)
Kurt Falk, translated by Bradley Rose and Will Roscoe

"Good God Almighty, What's This!": Homosexual "Crime" in Early Colonial Zimbabwe
Marc Epprecht

"When a Woman Loves a Woman" in Lesotho: Love, Sex, and the (Western) Construction of Homophobia
Kendall

Sexual Politics in Contemporary Southern Africa
Stephen O. Murray

Part V: Conclusions

Woman-Woman Marriage in Africa
Joseph M. Carrier and Stephen O. Murray

Diversity and Identity: The Challenge of African Homosexualities

Appendix 1: African Groups with Same-Sex Patterns

Appendix 2: Organizations of Homosexuality and Other

Social Structures in Sub-Saharan Africa
Stephen O. Murray

Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Africa
• History of Africa
• Gay Studies

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438484112
• Langue: English

Extrait

Boy-Wives and Female Husbands
Boy-Wives and Female Husbands

STUDIES IN AFRICAN HOMOSEXUALITIES
Edited by
Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe
With a New Foreword by
Mark Epprecht
Cover image: The Shaman , photographed by Yannis Davy Guibinga.
© Yannis Davy Guibinga. Subject: Toshiro Kam. Styling: Tinashe Musara.
Makeup: Jess Cohen.
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Murray Hong Family Trust.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 1998 Stephen O. Murray, Will Roscoe
Printed in the United States of America
The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution—Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-ND 4.0), available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0 .
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Roscoe, Will, editor. | Murray, Stephen O., editor. | Epprecht, Marc, editor.
Title: Boy-wives and female husbands : studies in African homosexualities / [edited by] Will Roscoe, Stephen O. Murray, Marc Epprecht.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020034064 | ISBN 9781438484099 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438484112 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Homosexuality—Africa—History. | Homosexuality—Africa—Public opinion. | Gay men—Africa—Identity. | Lesbians—Africa—Identity. | Homosexuality in literature. | Homophobia in literature. | Homophobia in anthropology. | Public opinion—Africa.
Classification: LCC HQ76.3.A6 B69 2021 | DDC 306.76/6096—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020034064
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For GALZ and African people everywhere whose lives and struggles are testimony to the vital presence of same-sex love on the African continent.
Contents
Figures and Tables
New Foreword
Marc Epprecht
The Genesis of Boy-Wives and Female Husbands
Stephen O. Murray
Preface: “All Very Confusing”
Africa and African Homosexualities: An Introduction
Part I. Horn of Africa, Sudan, and East Africa
Overview
“A Feeling within Me”: Kamau, a 25-Year-Old Kikuyu
Stephen O. Murray
Occurrences of Contrary-Sex among the Negro Population of Zanzibar (1899)
M. Haberlandt, translated by Bradley Rose
Mashoga , Mabasha , and Magei : “Homosexuality” on the East African Coast
Deborah P. Amory
Part II. West Africa
Overview
A 1958 Visit to a Dakar Boy Brothel
Michael Davidson
Male Lesbians and Other Queer Notions in Hausa
Rudolf P. Gaudio
West African Homoeroticism: West African Men Who Have Sex with Men
Nii Ajen
Part III. Central Africa
Overview
Homosexuality among the Negroes of Cameroon and a Pangwe Tale (1921, 1911)
Günther Tessmann, translated by Bradley Rose
Ganga-Ya-Chibanda (1687)
Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi, translated by Will Roscoe
Same-Sex Life among a Few Negro Tribes of Angola (1923)
Kurt Falk, translated by Bradley Rose
Part IV. Southern Africa
Overview
Homosexuality among the Natives of Southwest Africa (1925–1926)
Kurt Falk, translated by Bradley Rose and Will Roscoe
“Good God Almighty, What’s This!”: Homosexual “Crime” in Early Colonial Zimbabwe
Marc Epprecht
“When a Woman Loves a Woman” in Lesotho: Love, Sex, and the (Western) Construction of Homophobia
Kendall
Sexual Politics in Contemporary Southern Africa
Stephen O. Murray
Part V. Conclusions
Woman-Woman Marriage in Africa
Joseph M. Carrier and Stephen O. Murray
Diversity and Identity: The Challenge of African Homosexualities
Appendix 1: African Groups with Same-Sex Patterns
Appendix 2: Organizations of Homosexuality and Other Social Structures in Sub-Saharan Africa
Stephen O. Murray
Bibliography
Index
Figures and Tables
Figures P.1 Key groups and places discussed. I.1 Distribution of African languages ca. 1900.
Tables A1.1 African Groups with Same-Sex Patterns A2.1 Organizations of Male Homosexual Relationships in African Societies A2.2 Same-Sex Patterns and Language Macro-Family A2.3 Inheritance Pattern by Same-Sex Pattern: Observed Value (Expected Value) and Odds of Patrilineal:Matrilineal Inheritance A2.4 Same-Sex Pattern and Involvement in Subsistence by Sex A2.5 Same-Sex Pattern and Permissiveness for Female Premarital Intercourse A2.6 Same-Sex Pattern and Length of Postpartum Sexual Taboos A2.7 Same-Sex Patterns, Male Genital Mutilation, and Isolation of Adolescent Males A2.8 Settlement Size and Same-Sex Pattern A2.9 Same-Sex Pattern and Socioeconomic Stratification
New Foreword
MARC EPPRECHT
Steve Murray first approached me in early 1996 to invite me to participate in the second-ever panel devoted to queer topics at the African Studies Association (Amory 1997, 2017 provide succinct accounts of those early days of organizing). I was a junior lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe at the time, just embarking on this line of research. San Francisco, California, where the panel was being held, seemed like an awfully long way to go, but Steve convinced me. It proved to be a worthwhile investment, to say the least, to establish connections with people at the very beginning of what was to become a vibrant and critically important field of study. It was there that Steve mooted his idea to me for a book that spoke directly to my intentions in the paper I presented—that is, to provide a base of empirical evidence that confounded the emerging political homophobia in Zimbabwe and, subsequently, more widely on the continent; to balance the prevailing dominance of South Africa with material from other regions of Africa; and to challenge the silences and rhetorical claims about female-female sexuality. My eventual chapter in that book Boy-Wives and Female Husbands ( BWFH ) was my first substantive publication on the topic and helped set me on a most rewarding career path.
Steve and I had several small and enjoyable collaborations over the years that followed. I greatly admired his boldness and was thankful that I was never at the receiving end of his critical gaze. In 2017, when I heard that his health was failing, I contacted colleagues and friends to organize some reflection on Steve’s and his co-editor Will Roscoe’s contributions to the development of sexuality studies in Africa. This became a lively roundtable discussion at the Canadian Association of African Studies annual conference held at Queen’s University, Kingston, in May 2018, coinciding with the 20th anniversary of BWFH ’s publication. This, in turn, became a forum in the Canadian Journal of African Studies ( CJAS ), which brought Steve together with two of the other original contributors to the book and several young African and Africanist scholars (Epprecht et al. 2018).
Authors to the forum acknowledged weaknesses (more on this below), but they generally saw the book as having had a powerful kick-start effect on research into same-sex sexuality and gender diversity in Africa. Among other outcomes, it led in an almost direct line through Deborah Amory to the creation of the International Resources Network (IRN)–Africa based at the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at City University of New York. IRN-Africa was an attempt to bridge the gaps between conventional academic research and activist or journalistic advocacy. Two further conferences aiming to mentor a new generation of African scholar-activists followed in Saly, Senegal (2005; the first time the topic was broached in a conference setting outside of South Africa) and Syracuse, New York (2009). Although IRN-Africa proved not to be sustainable, authors from those conferences went on to be published in Marc Epprecht (2004, 2008), Rudolf Gaudio (2009), Sylvia Tamale (2011), S. N. Nyeck and Epprecht (2013), Sokari Ekine and Hakima Abbas (2013), Zethu Matebeni (2014), Melissa Hackman (2018), and elsewhere. Most of the contributors to the Global Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) History (Chiang 2019; discussed below) acknowledge their indebtedness to BWFH either directly or through reference to these “spin-offs.”
Will, whose work on Native North American sexual and gender diversity is well known (see Roscoe 1991, 1998), also contributed to the forum by alerting me to another spin-off from the book in the form of a powerful short play by award-winning British playwright Caryl Churchill. Pigs and Dogs was performed in 2016 to considerable acclaim at London’s Royal Court Theatre (see Chapman 2016, Gardner 2016, Trueman 2016, for examples). It is surely rare that academic texts get interpreted for popular culture, although the spirit may be permeating a new generation of film and literature from Africa that explores the themes that Steve and Will intuited two decades ago (Coly 2019, Mathuray 2019, Osinubi 2019, Tcheuyap 2019, as entry points into that work).
Steve lived to see the CJAS forum published and was particularly moved by the expressions of appreciation if not epiphany by the new generation of scholars. Sadly, he died soon after. I was honored when Will reached out to me seeking help to fulfill one of Steve’s enduring desires—to publish a second edition of the book and make it freely available online through an open licensing agreement. That