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Claims concerning the presence and status of homosexuality in historic African cultures have become central points of contention in debates among contemporary African Americans. Some of those involved in the debate have even asserted that the original languages of Africa contained no words for gay or lesbian, therefore concluding that they did not exist. As the first work of its kind on the subject, Boy-Wives and Female-Husbands answers an urgent need for accurate, well-researched, and balanced work on African sexuality. It offers perspectives from the fields of anthropology and history, along with extensive evidence from ethnographic and literary sources. The essays explore such topics as woman-woman marriages, early reports of Malagasy "berdaches," male homosexuality in contemporary West Africa, alternative gender identities among the Swahili, the regulation of sexuality in colonial Zimbabwe, and the portrayals of homosexuality in modern African literature. Bound to be an invaluable resource for discussions of traditional and contemporary African cultures, Boy-Wives and Female-Husbands is a book whose time has clearly come.

Studies in African Homosexualities

Boy-Wives and Female-Husbands

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Among the many myths Europeans have created about Africa, the myth that homosexuality is absent or incidental in African societies is one of the oldest and most enduring. For Europeans, black Africans– of all the native peoples of the world – most epitomized "primitive man." Since primitive man was supposed to be close to nature, ruled by instinct, and culturally unsophisticated, he had to be heterosexual, his sexual energies and outlets devoted exclusively to their "natural" purpose: biological reproduction. If black Africans were the most primitive people in all humanity—if they were, indeed, human, which some debated-then they had to be the most heterosexual.'

Today, especially where Western influences (notably Christianity and Marxism) have been strong, the belief that homosexuality is a decadent, bourgeois, Western import has become common. In the late 1970s, when the mother of South African Simon Nkoli discovered that he was gay, she said, "I knew I should not have sent you to that white school" (Bull 1990: 45)? Sensitized by missionaries and Western education, defensive in the face of stereotypes of black hypersexuality, and resentful of sexual exploitation in colonial institutions, the first generation of postcolonial Africans was extremely reluctant to discuss the subject of homosexuality.® For most, the negotiation of African identity remained tied to European standards of morality. In seeking to replace a "genuinely perverse" with a "genuinely normal" Other, they drew on the same retoric employed in colonial discourse on native sexuality (Bleys 1995: 4-9; see also Dunton 1989). As the medical model of homosexuality was being abandoned in the West, it was widely adopted in the developing world.

The colonialists did not introduce homosexuality to Africa but rather intolerance of it-and systems of surveillance and regulation for suppressing it.lº As the chapter by Marc Epprecht shows, however, these systems were not successful as long as the reaction of the colonized was simply to hide or deny such practices. Only when native people began to forget that same-sex patterns were ever a part of their culture did homosexuality become truly stigmatized.

According to her later account, "Lesbians dress entirely as women. Their wealth enables them to dress in a rich and feminine way, and though dominant lesbians are more assertive in manner and conversation than most other women, they make no attempt to look like men. When they go out they wear the veil (buibui) like all other coastal women. . . . Dependent lesbian women are expected to behave like ordinary women. Dominant lesbian women display energetic personalities very similar to those of active, intelligent non-lesbian women" (1987: 259-60). However, Shepherd also claimed, "Women who are dominant lesbians do not obey strict seclusion rules. As household heads they welcome male visitors to the house and sit with them in the reception room, and they frequently go out of the house"

Somé also reports that among the related Dogon of Mali, “a tribe that knows astrology like no other tribe that I have encountered, the great astrologers . . . are gay,” and he argues that, with the exception of Christendom, “Everywhere else in the world gay people are a blessing” (1993: 8).4

The assumptions behind modern Western forms of voluntary or “choice” marriage, in which the partners freely choose each other based on personal desires and criteria, have led many to imagine that marriage everywhere “naturally” flows from heterosexual desire. But in societies in which marriage is required and viewed as a fundamental obligation of kinship and citizenship, whether or not the partners are attracted to each other—or to each other’s sex in general—is irrelevant. Arranged or mandatory marriage does not require heterosexual orientatoo  or desire, and consequently, heterosexuality is not fetishized in traditional societies as “normal” or “natural” or even a necessary (or recognized) state of being. Traditional societies do not need “heterosexuality”—the idea, the word, the symbol, the ideology—to ensure the union of men and women and the production of new generations. Familial intervention and kinship obligations guarantee that marriage will happen. Consequently, such societies do not need to suppress homosexuality, as long as it does not threaten the directive to marry and reproduce

Meyer owitz, who observed the Ashanti and other Akan peoples from the 1920s to the 1940s, recalled that “at that time men who dressed as women and engaged in homosexual relations with other men were not stigmatized, but accepted.” She believed that there were good reasons for men to become women, since among the matrilineal Akan, the status of women was particularly high (a situation that she believes has changed due to missionary activity)

She locates “real” gender identity not simply in the material body but in what she calls the “historical gravity of the sexed body”—the history of cultural discourses that constructs the body as intrinsically sexed—which informs her pessimism regarding human beings’ capacity ever to transcend these discourses. In particular, she asserts that no man can ever deny the patriarchal privileges with which all males are born and raised, regardless of his social position relative to other men or his effort to reject or disown those privileges: “What agency we have in this culture to move beyond these assigned categories, to become ‘unstuck’ from our constructed bodies, to travel transgendering and transsexing journeys of relocation, or to deconstruct sex binarism altogether are questions left uncomfortably unanswered in my thoughts. Perhaps all is ‘drag’ made up of cells, soma and style marked redundantly in memory and public readings”

In fact, in many discos across Africa, one sees people of the same sex dancing, which is not condemned nor interpreted as having any homosexual implication at all. It is seen as just an expression of brotherly warmth. Anyone who has a problem with that invariably has been influenced by Western stigmas. Because people do not want to be labeled by their sexual preferences or practices, categorically naming a club, newspaper, church, and so forth as “gay” has negative repercussions. Sexual behavior is considered private and not characteristic of one’s personality and identity; it does not influence people’s behavior in general or lead to a lifestyle. People are seen as people, and their sexual expression is considered their private choice. Provided they apply discretion in their sexual behavior, whether homoerotic or otherwise, there is really no issue.

Holding eye contact with strangers, for instance, isn’t necessarily a signal. It is not interpreted as having sexual overtones at all. Loitering in or near certain parks is not likely to yield the same results as it would in the West. Aside from the extremely effeminate men, who are most often assumed to be homosexuals (even though they might well not be), it is difficult to tell who is and who is not available for same-sex activities from external appearances. Two men holding hands or with arms around each other does not necessarily evidence a homosexual connection to the average Ghanaian, for instance; it indicates only good friendship. Other countries in West Africa and throughout the continent similarly interpret displays of same-sex fondness.

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