Boy-Wives and Female Husbands Item Type Book Authors Murray, Stephen O.; Roscoe, Will DOI 10.1353/book.83859 Publisher SUNY Press Rights Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Download date 24/09/2021 02:52:38 Item License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Link to Item http://www.sunypress.edu/p-7129-boy-wives-and-female- husbands.aspx 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 xi New Foreword xiii Marc Epprecht The Genesis of Boy-Wives and Female Husbands xix Stephen O. Murray Preface: “All Very Confusing” xxv Africa and African Homosexualities: An Introduction 1 Part I. Horn of Africa, Sudan, and East Africa Overview 19 “A Feeling within Me”: Kamau, a 25-Year-Old Kikuyu 41 Stephen O. Murray Occurrences of Contrary-Sex among the Negro Population of Zanzibar (1899) 61 M. Haberlandt, translated by Bradley Rose Mashoga, Mabasha, and Magei: “Homosexuality” on the East African Coast 65 Deborah P. Amory viii Contents Part II. West Africa Overview 87 A 1958 Visit to a Dakar Boy Brothel 107 Michael Davidson Male Lesbians and Other Queer Notions in Hausa 111 Rudolf P. Gaudio West African Homoeroticism: West African Men Who Have Sex with Men 125 Nii Ajen Part III. Central Africa Overview 137 Homosexuality among the Negroes of Cameroon and a Pangwe Tale (1921, 1911) 145 Günther Tessmann, translated by Bradley Rose Ganga-Ya-Chibanda (1687) 159 Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi, translated by Will Roscoe Same-Sex Life among a Few Negro Tribes of Angola (1923) 163 Kurt Falk, translated by Bradley Rose Part IV. Southern Africa Overview 169 Homosexuality among the Natives of Southwest Africa (1925–1926) 183 Kurt Falk, translated by Bradley Rose and Will Roscoe “Good God Almighty, What’s This!”: Homosexual “Crime” in Early Colonial Zimbabwe 193 Marc Epprecht Contents ix “When a Woman Loves a Woman” in Lesotho: Love, Sex, and the (Western) Construction of Homophobia 221 Kendall Sexual Politics in Contemporary Southern Africa 239 Stephen O. Murray Part V. Conclusions Woman-Woman Marriage in Africa 253 Joseph M. Carrier and Stephen O. Murray Diversity and Identity: The Challenge of African Homosexualities 265 Appendix 1: African Groups with Same-Sex Patterns 277 Appendix 2: Organizations of Homosexuality and Other Social Structures in Sub-Saharan Africa 281 Stephen O. Murray Bibliography 297 Index 331 Figures and Tables Figures P.1 Key groups and places discussed. xxxiii I.1 Distribution of African languages ca. 1900. 3 Tables A1.1 African Groups with Same-Sex Patterns 277 A2.1 Organizations of Male Homosexual Relationships in African Societies 282 A2.2 Same-Sex Patterns and Language Macro-Family 285 A2.3 Inheritance Pattern by Same-Sex Pattern: Observed Value (Expected Value) and Odds of Patrilineal:Matrilineal Inheritance 285 A2.4 Same-Sex Pattern and Involvement in Subsistence by Sex 286 A2.5 Same-Sex Pattern and Permissiveness for Female Premarital Intercourse 287 A2.6 Same-Sex Pattern and Length of Postpartum Sexual Taboos 288 A2.7 Same-Sex Patterns, Male Genital Mutilation, and Isolation of Adolescent Males 289 A2.8 Settlement Size and Same-Sex Pattern 290 A2.9 Same-Sex Pattern and Socioeconomic Stratification 291 xi 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, Califor- nia, 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 xiii xiv Foreword to the Second Edition 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 aca- demic 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 Foreword to the Second Edition xv 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 this is now happening is a tribute to Will, Steve’s partner, and executor Keelung Hong, Tim Stookesberry, and the team at SUNY Press, as well as another dear colleague from the early days (and yet another contributor to the original edition) Deb Amory.