Tracey Lee McCormick. African Studies. Volume 74, Issue 3. December 2015.
The performative act of ‘coming out’ authenticates a homosexual identity and, in the South African context, the progressive gay and lesbian movement, the Lesbian and Gay Equality Project (LGEP), considers it to be the right thing to do for closeted homosexuals. This is evident in LGEP’s mission statement, which states that ‘[they] are committed to the self-realisation of LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and intersex) people through the building of their grassroots social, political and economic power’. This article argues that a person enters a fixed and sanctioned heterosexual / homosexual binary system when she/he comes out, which makes it difficult to question the norms which govern these binaries. Key to my argument is that the term ‘homosexual’ is unstable; however, coming out stabilises it and, thus, forces a person into a category that undermines the fluidity of all sexual identities.
The article begins by contextualising coming out in the South African context and then problematises why coming out is immune to critique. This is followed by an explanation of the methodology: qualitative content analysis informed by queer linguistics. Queer linguistics ‘deals with the linguistic construction of heteronormativity and its stabilising mechanism, normative gender binarism’ (Motschenbacher 2011:151) and is, therefore, an ideal method to interrogate the binaries activated by coming out. Finally, the article concludes by arguing that the coming narrative in the South African context should be questioned in order to develop critical practice about challenging discrimination that is not rooted in an identity politics framework.
Contextualising Coming Out in the South African Context
In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality as a diagnostic category from the highly influential ‘Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders’ (DSM). This official acknowledgement that homosexuality was neither a mental illness nor a disease was a turning point in the history of gay and lesbian liberation. No longer was it necessary for a person to hide what was perceived as an abnormal sexuality; they could publicly admit to their secret desires. In the US, the legitimation of homosexuality by the DSM encouraged research into a variety of positive aspects associated with homosexuality and, in particular, the liberating process of coming out.
In the South African context, coming out was viewed not only as an instrument of personal liberation, but as a political tool to aid the growth of the gay and lesbian movement. Research into gay and lesbian issues in South Africa flourished as a result. However, such research was only realised in the 1990s because in the 1970s and 1980s, which were the darkest days of apartheid, homosexuality remained both a sin and a crime in South Africa, and coming out was a transgressive and politically risky act. The Gay Association of South Africa (GASA), the first organisation to promote gay rights in South Africa, was established in Johannesburg in 1982. Daniel Conway argues that GASA was ‘expressly apolitical about wider issues in South African society [and ignored] any critique of apartheid or association with black South Africans’ (2009:856). In 1982, Simon Nkoli, an anti-apartheid, gay rights and AIDS activist, joined GASA. In 1984, Nkoli was arrested, together with 21 other political leaders, and convicted of furthering the aims of the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP). He was sentenced to five years imprisonment. In 1988, one year after his release from prison, Nkoli founded the non-racial and liberation struggle-aligned Gay and Lesbian Organisation of the Witwatersrand (GLOW) and, together with the Cape Town-based Organisation of Lesbian and Gay Activists (OLGA), successfully lobbied for gay and lesbian rights to be included in the draft Bill of Rights in 1990. OLGA also initiated and won support for a comprehensive charter of gay and lesbian rights which was accepted in 1993 at a national conference of gay and lesbian organisations (Croucher 2002). In December 1994, the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality (NCGLE) was formed. Initially a coalition of 36 affiliates, it was renamed the Lesbian and Gay Equality Project (LGEP) in 2002 and, between 1997 and 2006, the NCGLE and then the LGEP were responsible for having 16 homophobic laws repealed.
South Africa is a shining example of gay and lesbian freedoms when compared to the rest of Africa although Marc Epprecht (2012:226) argues that homophobia on the African continent is not a ‘uniformly continental issue’. He argues that there is evidence to suggest that there is a culture of tolerance or indifference towards same-sex sexualities in many countries in Africa, and in those countries which face homophobia there is a turn to ‘traditional closets’ or ‘closets of discretion’ (Epprecht 2012:225). South Africa remains the only country on the continent where coming out is actively sanctioned and encouraged. As a result, as I argue below, coming out seems to be immune from critique into the role it plays into re-constituting the homosexual / heterosexual binary.
What’s ‘Wrong’ with Coming Out?
Research on coming out, whether in a South African or any other context, is an area of study that never seems to be exhausted. The fascination with documenting the trials, tribulations and various stages of coming out has not been limited to academic disciplines as disparate as geography and sport science; coming out has entered popular consciousness in a significant way and there is a wealth of information in the realm of popular culture.
So what’s ‘wrong’ with coming out? Michel Foucault (1976) argues that the liberation of a ‘true’ self through some form of confession should be viewed as a form of resistance rather than a once-off act of liberation. He writes ‘my work has nothing to do with gay liberation’ because ‘there can be discrimination against homosexuals even if discriminations are prohibited by law’ (Foucault cited in Miller 1993:254). Tracing the practice of the confession to the Roman Catholic Church in 1215, Foucault argues that the compulsion to confess is so prevalent that it is no longer viewed as the result of some controlling power; rather, it is viewed as an act of liberation. To come out as a homosexual, for Foucault, means that the category ‘homosexual’ is named, confessed to and, as a result, can be monitored and controlled. This is part of his greater argument in ‘The History of Sexuality Volume 1’ (1976) in which he also shows how the categories ‘heterosexual’ and ‘homosexual’ (and all other deviant sexualities) were constructed as a result of the shift in the control of sexuality from the Church to the secular discourses of medicine, education and psychology in the 17th and 18th centuries in western Europe. For Foucault then, coming out is problematic because it does not end discrimination and is part of the cultural machinery that controls institutionalised sexualities. Foucault’s conception of sex and gender as discursive constructions rather than products of biology or socialisation has challenged the structuralist approach to gender and sex, where gender is seen to be socially constructed and sex is seen to be biological.
Similarly, Judith Butler describes the structuralist paradigm with regard to sex and gender as ‘heterosexualised genders’ (1990:127) where ‘natural’ opposite genders attract in a heterosexual relationship which is given credibility by heteronormativity. In the 1960s and 1970s the supposed naturalness of heterosexualised genders was challenged by gay and lesbian liberation movements in the West and later in various countries in Africa, Asia and South America. The organising principle of these early gay and lesbian liberation movements was an injured homosexual identity that was in need of protection by the law. In an identity politics approach, although the idea of heterosexualised genders is challenged, the idea that there is a stable and knowable gay or lesbian identity is not.
A range of theorists from the post-structural to the queer such as Butler (1997a), Kopelson (2002), Watson (2005), Quinn and Sinfield (2006), Kemp (2009) and Milani (2012) have critiqued the gay and lesbian identity politics approach to liberation for being unable to give voice to a radical re-structuring of society or even being able to disturb institutional inequalities. These theorists would argue that resisting coming out disturbs the very core of so-called normal ideas about sexuality: there is endless speculation and unease when someone does not perform their gender of sexuality appropriately. Karen Kopelson argues:
[s]peaking the ‘truth’ of one’s sexuality, although pervasively viewed as an act of liberation from repressive cultural constraints, more often simply obeys societal mandates to name and confess one’s self/sins, and, in so doing, inducts our sexuality into the cultural machinery that can then further constrain and manage it. (2002:21)
Butler refers to coming out as exhausting because whatever one says or does is ‘seen as a subtle manifestation of [one’s] essential homosexuality’ (1997b:93). She also argues that ‘sexuality may be said to exceed any definitive narrativisation’ (Butler 1990:131) and that the impossibility of living up to real identity categories, coupled with the ease with which these categories can be imitated, reveals the problem with viewing gender and sexuality as fixed categories. Judith Halberstam concurs when she explains that ‘the stability of the terms “male” and “female” depends on the stability of the homosexual-heterosexual binary’ (1998:82). Furthermore, being defined as homosexual means that heterosexuality, as well as the chance to disassemble heterosexual supremacy, is discarded. Butler suggests risking ‘the incoherence of identity’ (1997b:149 original emphasis) in order to work on ‘the weakness in heterosexual subjectivation and to refute the logic of mutual exclusion by which heterosexism proceeds’ (1997b:148). Tommaso Milani adds that ‘too much focus on sexual identities can, in the best of cases, only lead to a temporary re-calibration of power inequalities – something that however leaves the homo/heterosexual binary intact’ (2012:71). So, for theorists such as Butler (1997a), Kopelson (2002) and Milani (2012), the problem with coming out is that it relies on identity as an organising principle and they argue that the focus should rather be on trying to disorganise the norms that govern what is good and bad sexuality.
In South Africa, LGBTI theorists have had to challenge the specifics of our context, but the challenge does not extend to any critique of the limitations of identity politics. South African LGBTI theorists are aware of the contradiction between human rights and the continuation of homophobia. This contradiction is usually resolved in favour of two key liberal ideas. First, a right is considered to be the first line of defence against prejudice as Judge et al. make clear when they write that the ‘progress of strategic litigation for the formal rights of lesbian and gay people has opened a space that marks a clear distinction from a prejudicial past’ (2008:12). Second, it is believed that the contradiction between rights and the social real can be resolved by a common humanity, the ‘so-called’ rainbow nation: ‘sexuality, pleasure and the erotic are part of our common humanity’, Epprecht argues (2012:225).
So for the South African LGBTI writers mentioned above there is nothing wrong with coming out as a homosexual; it is seen as a progressive and empowering process that confronts conservative norms. In this article I critique this coherent and influential view of coming out. Neville Hoad argues that ‘national discourses on sex in polyglot, now putatively democratic “liberal” settler colonies like South Africa … are incoherent and fragmentary’ (2010:122). The view that sexuality is ‘incoherent and fragmentary’ and that coming out is an attempt to ‘smooth out’ the ragged edges contrasts with those theorists who argue against a closeted homosexual identity.
For theorists including Plummer (1975), Cass (1979), Coleman (1982), Cain (1991), Isaacs and McKendrick (1992), Rust (1993), Gevisser and Cameron (1994), Elliot (1996), Gagne´ et al. (1997), the binary tropes of secrecy (the closet) and disclosure (telling the truth or coming out) delimit the debate. On the one hand, to be in the closet refers to not acknowledging one’s homosexuality and is associated with cowardice and denial. On the other hand, coming out is aligned with discovering one’s real identity and public persona as it refers to acknowledging that one is homosexual and then disclosing this to others. From this perspective, a homosexual identity has a true essence, a point of view encapsulated by Paula Rust who writes: ‘coming out is a process of discovery in which the individual sheds a false heterosexual identity and comes to correctly identify and label her own true essence, which is homosexual’ (1993:53).
These researchers conceptualise coming out within a model of identity formation. In the 1970s, the identity formation model was a linear model, and coming out was viewed as a single event. However, subsequent models developed in the 1980s and 1990s incorporate the view that coming out is a process that usually follows specific psychological and social stages, or involves elements which do not necessarily occur in the same order or at the same pace. According to these models, the coming out process usually starts with a person suspecting that she or he is gay. This person then finds a gay or lesbian community and the process ends when he or she has an intimate homosexual relationship (Isaacs & McKendrick 1992).
Contemporary research into the coming out narrative emphasises that coming out differs according to a person’s social, political and economic context, and the ambit of coming out has been widened to include bisexual and transgendered people. The coming out dilemma is also presented in a more nuanced and complex way. For example, Deborah Chirrey challenged the linguistic understanding of coming out as a speech act which, she claimed, was limiting because ‘other, non-linguistic ways of coming out … cannot [fit into this] analysis’ (2003:35). She proposed, instead, that coming out should be viewed as a performative act. Performative acts are linked to the authority of speech; when they are uttered they perform an action that persists. So, to pronounce ‘I am gay’ or ‘I am lesbian’ not only performs the action of identifying the person coming out as a homosexual, but also reinforces the heterosexual / homosexual binary, something that Chirrey does not consider in her article. In a later article she argues that coming out transforms individuals and society and is ‘what any reasonable person would do’ (Chirrey 2011:296).
James Ward and Diana Winstanley argue that coming out as a homosexual exposes the ‘lack of congruence between the subjectivity of the individual and the subject position that is available for the individual to take up’ (2005:450). However, despite the move away from simplistic linear models of coming out to more multi-layered and complex approaches that include subjectivity studies, coming out remains framed by identity. Andrew Gorman-Murray encapsulates this approach when he writes that ‘coming out … is the term given to the process of defining oneself as gay/lesbian or bisexual, marking a shift in self-defined sexual identity’ (2008:32). David Halperin (1995) argues that the terms ‘bisexual’, ‘transgendered’ and ‘intersex’ in the BTI part of the LGBTI acronym are often just tacked on. There is, he stresses, little engagement by gay and lesbian movements with the issues that affect people who are bisexual, transgendered or intersex. Kirsten McLean concurs when she states that, because bisexuality is so misunderstood, ‘non-disclosure is often seen as the better alternative’ (2007:164).
This article investigates the shortcomings of linking coming out to a ‘selfdefined sexual identity’ (Gorman-Murray 2008:32) and how not questioning the coming out narrative strengthens the homosexual / heterosexual binary and stifles the fluidity of identities. I now move onto explaining my methodology.
Methodology: Qualitative Content Analysis Informed by Queer Linguistics
Qualitative content analysis, which has been described as a ‘flexible methodology’ (White & Marsh 2006:22), has its roots in mass communication studies (compare Neuendorff 2002; Krippendorf 2004) and is used in a range of disciplines including linguistics (Van Dijk 1985; Titscher et al. 2000; Schreier 2012). It allows a researcher to interpret subjectively the ‘content of text data through … identifying themes or patterns’ (Hsieh & Shannon 2005:1278).
Similarly to other sociolinguistic methods such as conversation analysis, corpus linguistics and linguistic landscaping, qualitative content analysis has been critiqued for omitting gender and sexuality as critical tools in the analysis of the relationship between text and context (Motschenbacher 2011: Milani 2013a, 2013b). More specifically, sociolinguistic researchers using these (and other) linguistic methods have overlooked or refused to use critical tools drawn from post-structuralist approaches to language, gender and sexuality, which has had significant consequences for the field of sociolinguistics generally (Motschenbacher 2011; Hall 2013; Leap 2013).
Queer linguists are trying to address this omission. Queer linguistics is a ‘young approach’ (Motschenbacher 2011:149) that uses post-structuralist theories (drawn predominantly from, but not limited to, queer theory) to analyse the relationship between language and sexuality. Queer linguistics is a reaction to the trend by sociolinguistic researchers in the 1980s and 1990s to frame the relationship between language and sexuality in essential notions of identity. Heiko Motschenbacher explains that queer linguistics ‘deals with the linguistic construction of heteronormativity and its stabilizing mechanism, normative gender binarism’ (2011:151) and is, therefore, an ideal method to interrogate the binaries activated by coming out. Queer linguistics use existing linguistic methodologies in a pluralistic way and combines qualitative and quantitative methods, as well as micro perspectives (for example ethnomethodology) and macro perspectives (for example discourse analysis), in order to develop a ‘multidimensional analysis’ (Motschenbacher 2011:161). Motschenbacher argues ‘it is now time to move beyond foundational debates and to ensure its further consolidation as a veritable field of study’ (2011:173).
In the South African context, research by Milani (2012, 2013a, 2013b) contributes to the growing field of queer linguistics. The unique contribution of this article to queer linguistics is that it provides a qualitative content analysis of three gay and lesbian non-fiction texts in the South African context which, to the author’s knowledge, has not been done before.
Data Analysis
In the following sections, I trace how coming out is presented in the data. I argue that the role coming out plays in reinforcing the homosexual / heterosexual binary is not questioned by the authors or editors of the three books. Central to my argument is that this binary needs to be questioned for the role it plays in constituting institutional sexualities. The reason the homosexual / heterosexual binary needs to be questioned is because it is based on identity categories and, as Foucault suggests, ‘people are neither this nor that, gay nor straight. There is an infinite range of what we call sexual behaviour’ (Foucault cited in Miller 1993:254).
The data used to highlight my argument is drawn from three South African nonfiction gay and lesbian books. These three books were chosen because they reflect specific gay and lesbian concerns in particular historical contexts. For example, Male Homosexuality in South Africa: Identity Formation, Culture and Crises (1992) explains the lack of political interest of white middle-class gay males during the early 1990s, a time when the gay and lesbian movement in South Africa was developing into a non-racial movement. Tommy Boys, Lesbian Men and Ancestral Wives: Female Same-sex Practices in Africa (2005) agitates for black lesbian rights in Africa and an end to black lesbian-specific violence in South Africa in the early 2000s when there was a political revival of the idea that homosexuality was a colonial import. Finally, Performing Queer: Shaping Sexualities 1994–2004 – Volume 1 (2005) contains a selection of 14 articles by both established and emerging, black and white, gay and lesbian scholars that explore an array of topics ten years after the first democratic election in South Africa and the inclusion of the Equality Clause in the Constitution. Although the analysis of the data in this article is of the ‘verbal’, I think it is important to provide a short analysis of the ‘visual’ aspect of these three books, the covers.
How do These Books ‘Come Out’ on their Covers?
The cover of Performing Queer depicts a black man in a safari suit with a comb tucked into his knee-length sock, a style reminiscent of the way white Afrikaner men dressed in South Africa in the 1970s, and a white woman wearing a bonnet or ‘kappie’, which evokes the attire of white Afrikaner women during the Great Trek in the mid-19th century. These depictions provocatively parody the conservativeness associated with Afrikaner nationalism and apartheid. However, the playfulness and risqueness depicted on the lurid pink cover, and the promise in the blurb of an exploration of ‘queer people’s identifications’, are not found in any of the 14 articles. Instead, these articles are concerned with researching gay and lesbian topics from an identity politics perspective.
The covers of Male Homosexuality and Tommy Boys are not as potentially transgressive as the cover of Performing Queer. The cover of Male Homosexuality features a painted reproduction of half the face of a well-groomed white man (presumably gay) whose gaze is fixed to the left. As the narrative of the book is about white gay men, and the book was written when homosexuality was still illegal in South Africa (hence a painting rather than an actual picture of a man), the cover is consistent with the themes that are developed in the book of internalised homophobia and the impact that repressive apartheid legislation had on gay culture at the time.
The cover of Tommy Boys features a picture of two black women (presumably lesbian) from the waist up. The first woman is wearing boxing training gloves and a white vest, and her hands are tucked under her biceps (accentuating them). Her gaze is averted to the left and she looks very stern and strong (‘butch’ is the best way to describe her). The second woman is leaning lovingly over the first woman, gently clasping her head. She is looking down and she is much smaller and more feminine than the first woman. The picture is a clear depiction of a butch/femme performance by an African black lesbian couple and, as Tommy Boys is concerned with the experience of black lesbians in Africa and dedicates a significant part of the book to exploring butch/femme lesbian performances, the cover is consistent with the major themes that are developed in the book. The only point of rupture vis-a`-vis the covers of Male Homosexuality and Tommy Boys is that the subjects depicted have averted gazes, perhaps indicating an approach to homosexuality in the content of the books that is not ‘in your face’ and does not make the reader feel uncomfortable. I now move onto an analysis of the coming out narrative in each book.
In Isaacs and McKendrick’s (1992) book coming out stabilises a homosexual identity. Coming out is presented as a positive and life-changing act that has real repercussions for the life of a homosexual man. Thus, coming out is collocated with words or phrases such as ‘successful’ (188), ‘vital’ (188), ‘achieving’ (188), ‘whole sense of self’ (188), ‘ownership’ (159) and ‘gay liberation’ (209). To be in the closet means that a person does not have a recognisable identity, such a person remains unknown and, therefore, closet behaviour is collocated with words or phrases such as ‘denial’ (17), ‘marginal’ (55), ‘internalized homophobia’ (108), ‘loss’ (108), ‘incompleteness’ (108), ‘emotional fraudulence’ (178) and ‘bisexuality’ (216).
For Isaacs and McKendrick, male homosexuals in South Africa in the late 1980s (when the research was carried out) inhabit a world of clubs and bars, where having or procuring sex is the focus of their existence. Such promiscuity is a result, the authors argue, of the persecution of homosexuals by the apartheid state that has instilled fear and self-loathing in homosexual men. The authors explain that ‘the repetitive return to sex-searching behaviour that confronts most gay people during their phases of identity consolidation is driven by an anticipated fear’ (1992:83) which is the ‘context within which much homosexual existence occurs’ (1992:38). It is argued here that Isaacs and McKendrick are corrective in their approach to homosexuality because their remedy for the crisis of promiscuity hinges on the positive discourses associated with coming out. They are embarrassed by the ‘sex-searching behaviour’ (1992:83) of homosexual men and want to distance themselves (and normal homosexual men) from such excesses. Before they chart how a positive, healthy and resolved homosexual psyche can be achieved by coming out, they explain in great detail the negative discourses of crisis which, it is argued here, are necessary to illustrate the correctness of their intervention.
Isaacs and McKendrick make a direct link between being in the closet and negativity. For them, the closet is a form of ‘emotional fraudulence [which] perpetuates a sense of prolonged or incipient crisis’ (1992:178). A further link is made between such fraudulence and the ‘self-destructive behaviour’ associated with ‘discotheques, steam baths, bars, and camping locations’ (1992:212). The ‘selfdestructive behaviour’ that Isaacs and McKendrick refer to here is cruising, which they define as ‘courting, or hustling behaviour to attract attention, specifically to attract a person with the intention of becoming sexually involved’ (1992:247). The authors also link camp behaviour with being in the closet when they write that ‘camping is linked to “closet” behaviour and private fantasy experiences, and is often the precursor to gaining access to direct sexual experience with others’ (1992:108).
Coming out, in contrast, is presented as the primary way in which to activate a stable and holistic identity in Male Homosexuality. ‘Coming out implies admitting that one is homosexual’ (1992:182 original emphasis); an exhilarating act of liberation that includes being truthful by coming out to friends, family and work colleagues, and by becoming politically active and leading an openly gay life, which leads to a ‘breaking down of social isolation’ (1992:178). Isaacs and McKendrick, unlike Foucault, do see coming out as a once-off act of liberation a ‘rebirthing experience’ that is ‘vital for the integration of homosexual identity into broader personal identity’ (1992:88, 202). Remaining in the closet for Isaacs and McKendrick is associated with the unknown and means that a person is in denial about the ‘truth’ of their sexuality which leads to ‘internalized homophobia’ (1992:108). The closet is an unknown state and is associated in a negative way with promiscuity and cruising where ‘sexuality and erotica become the healing components’ that ultimately leads to ‘defilement’ (1992:108, 109).
In Male Homosexuality a homosexual identity is stabilised when a person comes out. At no point do Isaacs and McKendrick show how such an identity becomes operationalised by being something opposite to a heterosexual identity. In fact, the uncertainty of identity (being in the closet) is presented as a most unfavourable state in which confusion and unstableness rule.
Tommy Boys, Lesbian Men, and Ancestral Wives: Female Same-sex Practices in Africa
The authors of Tommy Boys (2005) view coming out as a complex but necessary process in the African context. Morgan and Wieringa challenge western approaches to identity in the African context because of the ‘tendency to essentialise and universalise human experiences by assuming the relevance of “Western” categories to the lives of people elsewhere’ (2005:310). They also challenge western understandings of homosexuality which are ‘far removed from the life of the Lovedu rain queen with her hundreds of wives’ (2005:281). However, at no point do Morgan and Wieringa question coming out as an act that could lead to greater control, rather than the liberation of, sexual identities in Africa. For them, the focus is on the lack of recognition of homosexualities in Africa (both contemporary and historical) as a result of colonial governments, postcolonial governments, Christianity and patriarchy. Such lack of recognition is a result of the widely held myth in Africa that homosexuality is a western import and a product of colonialism. The origin of this myth most probably lies with Richard Burton, who excluded Africa from his map of the Stotadic Zones in which homosexuality is practised. According to Bill Stanford Pincheon, this ‘denial, promulgated by [Burton], has contributed to lingering ideas that same-sex sexual activity, and now a homosexual identification, were not present on the continent’ (2000:50–1).
The coming out narrative is central in Tommy Boys and Morgan and Wieringa develop three arguments in favour of not hiding in the closet. In their first argument, Morgan and Wieringa explore the direct homophobic link between colonialism and postcolonialism which aligns homosexuality with the taboo. Their second argument shows how, prior to colonialism, there was a tradition and wide variety of female same-sex practices and even institutionalised marriage between women. In their final argument, Morgan and Wieringa directly contrast the favourable African past (in which female same-sex practices and women marriages were traditional and institutionalised) to the unfavourable contemporary situation of lesbians in Africa.
In their first argument, Morgan and Wieringa seek to counter the claim that homosexuality in Africa is a ‘western import’ (13). They argue that this claim is based on postcolonial leaders in Africa who are ‘ignorant of the fact that a range of same-sex practices in Africa have existed for a long time’ (17). They emphasise that homophobia links colonialism to postcolonialism. This is made clear when they note that ‘[in] fact homophobia is an idea introduced by missionaries and colonial administrators and copied by post-colonial leaders’ (281) and that ‘post-colonial governments perpetuated colonial policies in denouncing same-sex relations’ (13). According to the authors, homophobia did not exist prior to colonialism and, thus, the phenomenon is ‘not based on African culture and history’ (281) and is, actually, they argue, ‘a perverse distortion of African history’ (13). Morgan and Wieringa assert that it is primarily ‘women’s physical expression of their affection for each other’ that ‘strangers’ to Africa, such as ‘missionaries, colonial administrators and anthropologists’ as well as postcolonial leaders, ‘disapprove of’ (282). They respond to the negativity of contemporary homophobia by evoking an African past in which ‘relations between women [were] perfectly acceptable’ but are now aligned with the ‘abject’ (320).
The evocation of a perfect African past by Morgan and Wieringa, Stanford Pincheon argues, is an example of an approach to the study of homosexualities in Africa which resorts to a ‘circular cluster of arguments’ in which Africa is referred to as a ‘cultural, social, and political unity’ (2000:40, 41). Different periods in African history, such as the precolonial, slave trade, colonial and independence movement periods, are referred to in a brief and generalised way. The argument about the precolonial existence of homosexuality in Africa, Stanford Pincheon argues, may never be ‘proved or disproved’ (2000:41), yet such arguments constantly arise and will never be exhausted if they remain circular. Yet, it is exactly this circular argument that Morgan and Wieringa use: they draw on the timelessness of tolerance towards homosexuality in Africa in order to remind ‘present-day post-colonial leaders that Christianity and post-colonial laws with their homophobia are relatively recent western inventions’ (2005:320).
In their second argument, Morgan and Wieringa aim to undo the negative discourses associated with homophobia by constructing an African past in which female same-sex practices were accepted and women marriages were institutionalised. The authors note that ‘women marriages had full rights as citizens of their communities before colonial powers intervened and introduced their own Victorian norms and legal apparatus’ (2005:18). They use the work of ethnographers such as Karsch-Haack (1911), Falk (1925), Schapera (1930), Herskovits (1937) and Evans-Pritchard (1951) to provide evidence of female same-sex practices and marriages between women in precolonial Africa. Morgan and Wieringa describe a range of female same-sex practices such as homo-erotic play, bond friendships and mummy-baby relations which, they maintain, were ‘mutual and long lasting and were fully socially accepted’ (2005:293). The positive descriptions ‘mutual’, ‘long lasting’ and ‘acceptance’ that are associated with these friendships contrast directly with how the missionaries saw such friendships. The authors stress that missionaries perceived these friendships to constitute ‘vice’ and, as a result, ‘set about abolishing them’ (2005:293). The authors argue further that women marriages were fully accepted by different African societies and that they ‘occurred between powerful women such as rain queens and traditional healers (sangomas)’ (2005:17). Morgan and Wieringa suggest that such ‘traditional women marriages [were] fully institutionalised in their societies and thus can be seen as normative, non-disruptive same-sex patterns’ (2005:319). The authors’ emphasis that same-sex couples lived harmoniously side-by-side with heterosexual couples shows how much more open-minded precolonial Africa was. They reveal how two women living together was normal and not disruptive at all, since female husbands were real women; they were not, Morgan and Wieringa contend, ‘acting out a drag scene’ (2005:320). In other words, the partners in a women marriage did not adopt specific masculine and feminine roles as required by the heteronormative approach to marriage. At no point are Morgan and Wieringa critical of how such women marriages were complicit in upholding the status quo at the time. Elsje Bonthuys, a customary law expert, argues that the historical tolerance of these women marriages is ‘limited by the implicit understanding that such relationships should not question or undermine patriarchal gender roles and heterosexual family structures’ (2008:178).
In their final argument, Morgan and Wieringa directly contrast the favourable African past (in which female same-sex practices and women marriages were traditional and institutionalised) to the unfavourable contemporary situation of lesbians in Africa. Here they argue that, although homophobia is rife, the participants in their project are in ‘loving, caring and enduring same-sex relationships’ (2005:313) and that ‘many of [them] expressed the wish to be able to marry their lovers’ (2005:18), as was once allowed before the advent of colonialism. As highlighted above, the authors describe precolonial same-sex practices and women marriages in Africa as ‘loving’, ‘mutual’ and ‘long lasting’. Similar qualities are evident for them in postcolonial female same-sex relationships. This is made clear when Morgan and Wieringa declare that the aims of their book are ‘to proclai[m] the right of African women engaged in same-sex relations and practices’ and to portray the ‘joys of having found love’ (2005:22). Not being able to express love, Morgan and Wieringa assert, results in these women ‘feeling alienated from the project of nation-building in their countries’ (2005:17) because ‘all of them would like to become full sexual citizens of their countries’ (2005:18). The authors urge postcolonial leaders to ‘reflect’ on their homophobia and lack of openness that prevent same-sex identified couples from ‘expressing the love that they feel’, because ‘many of the women dream about marrying their partners and legalising their co-parenting arrangements’ (Morgan & Wieringa 2005:323).
As I illustrate above, at no point are Morgan and Wieringa concerned with the role that coming out plays in reinforcing the homosexual / heterosexual binary in Africa. They also do not question the institution of marriage as the preferred arrangement for queer sexual lives in Africa (which surely undermines the diverse array of lesbian-like practices that they reveal in their book). Rather, their focus is on showing how many lesbians cannot come out with the result that ‘[t]he silence in which most African women in same-sex relations live their lives causes their marginalisation from society’ (Morgan & Wieringa 2005:19). One can only wonder if the resistance to being named a lesbian; what Epprecht refers to as a ‘closet[s] of discretion’ (2012:225) is doing more to challenge the regulation of sexual categories in Africa than the purported benefits of coming out.
Performing Queer: Shaping Sexualities 1994-2004 – Volume 1
With a title like Performing Queer, one would expect this book to reflect the theoretical shifts that have occurred in gender and sexuality studies since the early 1990s. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The title, the cover and the three direct references to queer theory by Van Zyl, one of the editors of the book, are the most provocative elements in an anthology dedicated to researching gay and lesbian issues in a maturing democracy from an identity politics perspective, which includes urging closeted homosexuals to find their true selves by coming out.
In the introduction, Van Zyl makes the aims of the text clear when she says that it investigates sexualities ‘that do not perform straight’ (2005:19) and also shows how identities ‘can become fixed by processes such as mainstreaming discrete categories which foreclose other possibilities for performing diverse sexual values’ (2005:31). However, despite this theoretical roominess, the inconsistency between legal protection and continued homophobia is resolved in favour of coming out. The coming out narrative remains central to this text and contributors who write on coming out agree that it is the right thing to do. At no point in the book is ‘coming out’ interrogated for the role that it plays in constructing the homosexual / heterosexual divide. Rather, coming out is viewed as an imperative in fully grasping gay and lesbian people’s democratic rights – ‘Come out and identify as lesbian or gay [and] fight for [your] rights under the constitution’ (2005:31), Van Zyl urges. This is a different approach compared to Male Homosexuality, where coming out is promoted as a means of opposing homophobic apartheid laws, and Tommy Boys where coming out is promoted as a way of combating postcolonial homophobia.
What Performing Queer does have in common with Male Homosexuality and Tommy Boys, is the association of the closet life with negativity. In fact, Charl Hattingh argues that remaining in the closet leads to ‘neurosis, such as increased loneliness and isolation’ (2005:232). Coming out has quite the opposite effect, Van Zyl argues, because it allows gay people to ‘identify with others whom we perceive to be “like us”’ (2005:22). Identification as a gay or lesbian person is central to the arguments put forward by the various contributors to Performing Queer in relation to coming out. This, they argue, is because the South African Constitution makes it safe for out gay and lesbian people to identify with other gay and lesbian people. Hattingh even argues that the opportunities offered by constitutional protection ‘represent[s] a call to authenticity’ (2005:229). This call for a bona fide homosexual identity is perhaps why Performing Queer does not interrogate the concept ‘to come out’; rather, it is presented as a logical and correct step in ‘fixing’ the uncertainty of identity. Coming out is viewed as an exhilarating act that is associated with words such as ‘empower’ (Nel 2005:295), ‘opportunities’, ‘responsibility’, ‘courageously’ (Hattingh 2005:229) and ‘ownership’ (Hattingh 2005:212).
This article argues that the presentation of coming out as a democratic necessity for a responsible gay or lesbian South African citizen in Performing Queer completes the project to distance homosexuality from promiscuity that Isaacs and McKendrick began with the publication of Male Homosexuality in 1992. Writing 13 years later, when gay and lesbian rights have been enshrined in the Constitution, Van Zyl makes it clear that gay men’s ‘pursuit of the self in sex’ has been addressed by the safe-sex campaigns prompted by the initial HIV crisis. Van Zyl believes that such campaigns have shifted the pursuit of sex by gay men to ‘relationships, and the development of sexuality as a social concept relevant to democratisation through egalitarian intimate relationships’ (2005:28). The distancing of homosexuality from promiscuity by Isaacs and McKendrick, and Van Zyl can be interpreted as an attempt to rid homosexuality of negative practices and the uncertainty associated with anonymous sex and multiple partners. A more respectable ‘out’ type of homosexual is more likely to be worthy of constitutional protection but there is no questioning of how being a truthful homosexual inducts ‘[our] sexuality into the cultural machinery that can then further constrain and manage it’ (Kopelson 2002:21).
Conclusion
This article is concerned with questioning the coming out narrative in the South African context through an exploration of data drawn from three non-fiction gay and lesbian books, namely Male Homosexuality in South Africa: Identity Formation, Culture and Crises by Isaacs and McKendrick (1992), Tommy Boys, Lesbian Men and Ancestral Wives: Female Same-Sex Practices in Africa (2005) by Morgan and Wieringa, and Performing Queer: Shaping Sexualities 1994-2004 – Volume 1 (2005) edited by van Zyl and Steyn. The motivation for this article is that there is no research in South Africa (to the author’s knowledge) that problematises the role that coming out plays in upholding the binary heterosexual / homosexual. Rather, academics, the gay and lesbian movement, health practitioners and even the progressive public at large understand coming out as a natural step in healthy identity formation for homosexual people. Therefore, the task of this article was to interrogate the naturalness associated with coming out. Through an investigation of the coming out narrative in these three books, I have exposed the positive discourses that buttress the naturalness associated with coming out, namely identity politics, normality and progress.
Prior to the removal of homosexuality as a diagnostic category from the DSM in 1973, homosexuality was associated with pathology, deviance and abnormality. A definite pattern is discernible in research into homosexuality from the early 1970s in the US, where there was a concerted effort by researchers to distance homosexuality from what are perceived by some as negative practices (for example cruising and promiscuity) and negative performances (for example camp behaviour and lesbian butch/femme behaviour) associated with homosexuality. Although research into homosexual issues only really gained momentum in South Africa in the early 1990s, a similar research pattern is evident. This has been explicated in the analysis of the data as, in all three of the selected books, coming out is aligned with politicisation, re-birth, stability, success, wholeness, marriage, sexual citizenship, love, normality, democracy, rights, authenticity, empowerment, community and equality. In contrast, being in the closet is associated with fraudulent behaviour, promiscuity, crisis, cruising, camping, abjection, neurosis, filth, denial, internalised homophobia and the homophobia enacted by colonial and postcolonial governments in Africa. At no point is the role coming out plays in reinforcing the homosexual / heterosexual binary questioned by the authors or editors of the three books. Additionally, coming out is never questioned as an act of fixing or making coherent the incoherent and fragmentary national discourses on sex in South Africa (Hoad 2010). Whilst being cognisant of homophobia in South Africa, where coming out is viewed as a political tool to combat hatred and prejudice, the work of this article has been to interrogate the act of coming out, which is seen to be beyond critique.