Exploring Black Lesbian Sexualities and Identities In Johannesburg (original) (raw)
Related papers
Black Lesbian Identities in South Africa: Confronting a History of Denial
Journal of Gender and Religion in Africa, 2018
Much of the existing literature on South African black lesbian identities has focussed on the prejudice and victimisation that they endure as subjects of homophobia in the form of hate speech and hate crimes, most notably brutal murders and corrective rape. However, not much has been written about the creative ways that black lesbians are fighting against these injustices that are built upon the historical erasure and denial of their very existence in Africa. By outlining three 'denials' of African female same-sex intimacy namely: the imperial denial and subsequent apartheid policing of same-sex intimacy, the denial of female same-sex intimacy through proclaiming it as un-African, and the conceptual denial through the lens of Euro-American feminist lesbian discourse; this article aims to show how black lesbians in South Africa are finding ways to confront these denials. In particular, some aspects of lives and work of self-identified lesbian activist photographer Zanele Muholi and lesbian sangoma Nkunzi Zandile Nkabinde will be analysed. Muholi and Nkabinde work hard to locate themselves within the public sphere, and engage in projects that aim to educate and build black lesbian communities, in an effort to encourage open dialogue of what it means to be an African lesbian. It can be argued that the voices of South African black lesbians are not only becoming more audible but also more nuanced, where imported notions of sexual identity are being questioned and adapted to their lived realities. Ultimately, this article aims to show how Muholi and Nkabinde provide examples of how reimaginings and negotiations of lesbian identities in (South) Africa are at once complex and essential, and this echoes Msibi's (2014) call for "greater voices from Africa in theorising sexuality-a terrain long ignored in African scholarship."
Representing Gender and Sexual Dissidence in Southern Africa
Qualitative Sociology, 2011
In this article, I discuss the contours of representational ethics in qualitative research. “Representational ethics” refers to a set of principles governing how qualitative researchers portray research participants and the social, cultural, and political contexts research participants inhabit. Using African and postcolonial feminist theorizing, I explore the representational-ethical principles guiding my ethnographic investigation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender organizing in Namibia and South Africa.
African Sexual Politics: A Pan-African Lesbian Perspective
Sex Politics: Trends & Tensions In the 21st Century – Contextual Undercurrents, 2019
"This chapter in Volume 2 of Sex Politics is written by Varyanne Sika and Awino Okech, on behalf of the Coalition of African Lesbians (CAL). The chapter begins with a re-capturing of an African Queer Manifesto, written in 2011 that develops a sharp critique of neo-colonial categories of identity and power, and ends by making explicit the position on sexual politics articulated by CAL. This standpoint squarely places struggles for sexuality rights within a Pan Africanist frame of self-determination in sexual, social, economic and political terms. This chapter also offers a concise and rich overview of African feminist writing on sexuality and identity that goes beyond social science bibliography to also give visibility to literature (poetry as well as fiction). This shows how contemporary African feminisms, while investing in theory and ground-level politics, are also engaged in exploring and valuing joy and pleasure as expressions of queer livelihoods and resistance. The chapter pushes further the critique of global LGBTI politics framed on the basis of identity and the biases that it implies. The chapter also scrutinizes how the insistent Western gaze on what is described as African homophobia provides North American and European LGBT subjects with an ideational platform to praise “their own emancipation against the foil of the subaltern other”. Analyses in this chapter also shows how the obsessive attention to violations of the human rights of LGBTI persons in Africa – in the Western media, but also in the discourse of international organizations –contributes to erase positive legal and policy gains achieved in recent years and, most principally, undercuts the agency of African queers in resisting various forms of oppression. In respect to organizing, the authors address the always difficult question of how funding can be de-politicizing and call for an intersectional politics on gender and sexuality that does not leave aside the economic and social dimensions of queer livelihoods." - Editors' note by Sonia Corrêa & Richard Parker
Black Lesbian Bodies: Reflections on a Queer South African Archive
Homosexuality is unAfrican' has become a common response to the presence of gay and lesbian groups in South Africa. Contrary to the fact that homosexuality can be traced back to the sixteenth century in Africa, widespread beliefs abound that homosexuality is a Western import. Black South African lesbians are recognised as a vulnerable minority and are victims of 'corrective rape' and other forms of homophobic discrimination. South Africa's transition to democracy has been fraught with sexual identity struggles and violence performed on the black lesbian body is exercised to uphold a patriarchal gender order. This article will explore violence performed on the black lesbian body and the expression of black lesbian sexualities in the work of South African photographer and gay rights activist, Zanele Muholi.
The Cultural Politics of Female Sexuality in South Africa
Sexual identity has emerged into the national discourse of post-apartheid South Africa, bringing the subject of rights and the question of gender relations and cultural authenticity into the focus of the nation state’s politics. This book is a fascinating reflection on the effects of these discourses on non-normative modes of sexuality and intimacy and on the country more generally. While in 1996, South Africa became the first country in the world that explicitly incorporated lesbian and gay rights within a Bill of Rights, much of the country has continued to see homosexuality as un-African. Henriette Gunkel examines how colonialism and apartheid have historically shaped constructions of gender and sexuality and how these concepts have not only been re-introduced and shaped by understandings of homosexuality as un-African but also by the post-apartheid constitution and continued discourse within the nation.
Over the last several decades, the ‘coming out’ story has become entrenched as the central narrative with which lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) people can narrate their experiences of claiming a sexual identity and storying their lives in general (Bacon, 1998; Blackburn, 2009). It has developed into a “canonical narrative” (Bruner, 1987, p. 15), or a culturally recognisable story for LGB people, in that it involves the recounting of a series of familiar events in moving from a place of shame to one of self-acceptance about one’s sexual identity (Cohler & Hammack, 2007; Plummer, 1995). The ‘coming out’ canonical narrative additionally operates as a counter-narrative, which has enabled LGB people to voice their sexuality within heterosexist and heteronormative confines (Blackburn, 2009). Nevertheless, there are limitations (and limiting effects) to this narrative, and further refinement of how we understand sexual identity narratives is required. To illustrate this argument, we draw on a narrative-discursive study of eight lesbians’ stories of sexual identity in post-apartheid South Africa.
There's no such thing as gay': Black lesbians and nationhood in post-apartheid South Africa
2019
By submitting this thesis/dissertation electronically, I declare that the entirety of the work contained therein is my own, original work, that I am the sole author thereof (save to the extent explicitly otherwise stated), that reproduction and publication thereof by Stellenbosch University will not infringe any third party rights and that I have not previously in its entirety or in part submitted it for obtaining any qualification.