Are you a man or a woman?
When words like lesbian, which sounds fitting for some and foreign to others, and stabane, one that is undignified as an accusation, are adamantly refused, other words and, as a result, other modes of theorizing sexuality take their place. As refusals of sexual identities among interlocutors coincided with the embrace of gendered practices, ‘gender’ was decoupled from sex in a way that queerly comes back to sexuality. To be a female-bodied man in a relationship with a woman is not easily explained by categories of trans-and cisgender being, but is rather indicative of how LGBTI people negotiate and express their sexual queerness through varying and fluid gender presentations and practices. While 21-year-old Black lesbian poet Ayanda and other interlocutors explained this through the power and possibilities of Black masculinities, a workshop on gender and sexuality run by SF at a local university captured these ideas through a poignant question.
Patience, the 26-year-old Black bisexual activist facilitating the event, began with an exercise: ingabe uyindoda noma ungumame? or, are you a man or a woman? She asked everyone to go around and say specifically whether they were a man or a woman, and why. Two people left immediately and many were laughing, looking perplexed at each other and at Patience. One person in particular was confused. They began to say they were female, but were stopped by Patience, who said they must not use the words to mean female person or male person (umuntu wesifazane and umuntu wesilisa respectively), but words for man or woman (indodalubaba and umame), which also translate to father or mother.26 The use of these words in particular echo how Thembeka and Nonjabulo were referred to, and saw themselves as - mother and father to their church congregation, mainly comprised of young lesbians, transmen, and their partners.
Patience reminded her audience: this is not about female and male, this is about man and woman. The second facilitator, Nomalanga, gave an example: “I am a man,” she said, because “I am the breadwinner.”27 Though Nomalanga identified mostly as a Black lesbian, and mostly as a woman, she would use herself in this way as a potential example of a given subjectivity, as 1 witnessed other SF staff members doing at workshops. The same person who had seemed hesitant about the exercise - not understanding the concept, or the point, of stating why they are what they are - took note of Nomalanga’s example and went first. They stood up and said, confidently, that they were a man. The (female-bodied) person next to them said the same. The next (female-bodied) person was there with their partner. The pair were wearing matching shirts that said ‘soul' and ‘mate,’ which they were playfully teased about. The first got up and said they were a man. and their partner said they were a woman. In broken isiZulu mixed with English. I too introduced myself in line with Patience’s instructions: “Sanihonani, igama land nguTaylor. Mina, ngingumame because 1 feel like a woman,” or “Hello everyone, my name is Taylor. Me. 1 am a woman because I feel like a woman.” Two others also said they were women because they were mothers, though one specified that their child was not living.
All of the masculine-presenting, assumedly female-bodied people said they were men, along with the few assumedly male-bodied people attending who said they loved women, while the feminine-presenting female-bodied and male-bodied persons (whether interested in women, men, or unstated) said they were women. Two female-bodied women emphasized, when prompted, that they were women because they are attracted to men. Nomalanga challenged several of these ideas, and in response to the latter two women, said “I am a man!” The specific woman she was addressing then said, “Let me specify.” She pointed to a masculine-identified male-bodied person in the room, but her answer was challenged again. She then reconsidered and said it had to do with the penis. One feminine-identified male-bodied person said they were a woman because of the color of their jacket - purple. Then Nomalanga, who was also wearing purple, again said, “1 am a man!” Another male-bodied person alongside said they were a woman, touching their chest, adding that they felt they were more like (typically female) breasts.
The goal of the exercise was to get people talking about gender identity, and about sexuality and sexual practices. However, what the responses to the question of whether one is a man or a woman revealed was how, when given the opportunity to de-link sex from gender, gender configurations were not merely altered or affirmed, they were created through queer temporalities. As that creation unfolded, some if not all of the perplexity over the question was settled. In addition to the workshop exercise revealing how genders and sexualities are expressed through relatedness to others, it showed how both can be understood through a process of becoming rather than simply revealed by a process of coming out. The globalization of‘coming out’ is a universalizing revealing of the gay and trans subject, and that confessional process iterates a specific history of identity politics which, as Boellstorff (1999) explains, is anything but universal. The fixedness of sexual identity, sealed by its confession. can be problematic, and also fail “to locate sexual subjectivities within and between embodiment, place, and practice” (Halberstam 1998: 5).
This also relates to the locating of gender. If the expression of gender is a process of becoming that can be subject to the variables of embodiment, place, and practice, being a man as a lesbian or, for a female-bodied person who loves women, must not necessarily be fixed by the confession of coming out as transgender. In the following excerpt from an interview conducted by Makhosazana Xaba of GALA with Zenzi Zungu, a lesbian pastor from K.ZN, one lesbian sangoma is depicted as both ‘she’ and a man.28 The pastor spoke of not being aware of other lesbians in rural Mandeni prior to leaving for Durban in 1992, with this one exception:
There was only one man, a lesbian who was a sangoma, and everyone in society feared her, she had a family and she would carry a walking stick and a smoke, she would be accompanied by her child and her wife.
(Xaba 2015)
The factor of the English language could mean the use of ‘she’ is more incidental than significant. There are no gender pronouns in isiZulu (De Dreu and Buell 2012), and several interlocutors and other isiZulu speakers 1 met would use ‘he’ and ‘she’ interchangeably.
In addition to the notable fact that these slips are rarely policed, lending itself to queer speculations, the excerpt reveals creative and strategic adaptations and uses of understanding someone as female, a lesbian, and a man. The slippage here between the designation of ‘man’ and the consistent use of female gender pronouns shows that this use of language need not warrant correction or clarification. In any case, just as with sexual practices and identities, the embodying or practicing of masculinity, or identifying as a man, while being female-bodied does not follow a typology that is already general, or generalizable. As theorists, interlocutors I interviewed and spent time with highlight those possibilities rather than defining any authentic means of doing gender or, for that matter, sexualities.
Like understandings of sexualities and personal sexual subjectivities, understandings of gender (what it means to be a woman or man, and who can be a woman or man) varied between several of the female-bodied individuals who engage in same-sex practices 1 met and spent time with. Most identified as women, though what that meant would vary from person to person. Leko, for instance, only reluctantly identified as a woman. Though her expression of gender throughout her life has been fluidly masculine, with Leko knowing she was born with a male spirit, she said: “I’m a lesbian ... 1 wouldn’t want to be a transgender.” The fact that Leko was comfortable in her lesbian identity, using it rather than her status as a woman to affirm her gender, suggests that, for Leko, being a woman was not an essential characteristic of being a lesbian, even though her identity as a lesbian meant she was not transgender.
Here, to understand Leko through a cis/trans binary would be problematic. It is all the more important for some, who do not see themselves fixedly as women, to affirm their identity as lesbians. This can, at least in part, be because ‘lesbian’ and, furthermore, ‘Black lesbian’ are important political identities in South Africa, both of which embrace masculinities. This is not to imply that said identities primarily or only serve to give female-bodied individuals license to engage in masculinities, but that they sediment queer personhood through an acknowledgement of agency and access to public life.
Other words and ideas gain traction in place of terms that attempt to capture a kind of sexual being. When those terms are inaccurate, affirming gender identities can be all the more important. At a 2016 SF workshop in Edendale, sangoma Khwela talked about the relationship between tradition, particularly the ancestors and their will, and issues of gender and sexuality. 1 had seen Khwela give similar workshops before, but this time Khwela started off by stating that he was not a lesbian, but a man. It got me thinking about that rainy morning - the ride with Khwela and Patience to Edendale, the many detours we made, conversations in the bakkie about our mothers and grandmothers; and also about the last time 1 had seen Khwela, the year before, when he identified himself not as a transgender man but as a lesbian, though perhaps at the same time as either, or neither, a woman or a man.
Khwela’s statement at the workshop drew a clear line, in lieu of the somewhat ambiguous categories of lesbian or female men. In saying that he was not a lesbian, in terms of the sentence itself - to use the negation of one category, that of ‘lesbian,’ to then affirm another, that of ‘man’ - Khwela emphasizes his masculine gender as a signifier of who he is. This is in contrast to individuals like Leko, who embody lesbian masculinity, even sometimes as men. but who, unlike Khwela, would not identify as transgender. While Khwela’s subjectivity as a transgender man is formalized by the declaration, 1 wondered how much that marked difference between Khwela as a transman and the butch lesbians I met who identified as female men came down to Khwela’s access to trans terminologies through his close affiliation with SF. 1 also often thought of how Khwela’s gender related, or not, to his identity as a sangoma. Respected lesbian and trans-masculine izangoma can be read and regarded as men in society. Leko, who is also a sangoma, told me she once spoke to the chief of a village near Newcastle in KZN, who told her that, there, she would be respected, and seen as a man.
Khwela’s declaration, like the questions that it spurred for me, may signal the futility of sexual identity, just as it may show the falsehood of gender itself. When it comes to individuals who, unlike Khwela, do identify as lesbian men, affirming a different gender expression from one’s sex does not necessarily negate one’s sense of lesbian identity. Just as certain identities are
Theorizing uni dignified sounds postapartheid 61 not necessarily fixed, neither are they necessarily fluid. In addition, in trying to either provoke or reveal (trans)gender identity or, in turn, un-provoke or downplay (trans)gender identity, sexuality can be privileged over gender; gender identity can be trivialized; and there is a risk of gerrymandering sex, sexual practices, and gender identities in order to find the ‘real’ transmen and/or the ‘real’ lesbians, who, because of these analytical biases, ultimately remain imaginary. This mislabeling is part of why identity terms themselves can be problematic and descriptive terms, like same-sex or gender-Zqueer practices, though not perfect, can ease the tension between identity categories, their origins, and their intended and decoded meanings. David Valentine’s (2004) convincing argument to link gender and sexuality through the concept of disenfranchised queerness becomes especially relevant here.
Nomalanga also made this link in the workshop she and Patience held. In response to a question, Nomalanga went into ‘types’ of lesbians, like ‘butch,’ ‘femme,’ and ‘futch,’ which she described as a ‘soft butch.' As with the previous exercise, Nomalanga used herself as an example. She said that if she is not butch or femme, then she is gender non-conforming. Unlike Patience’s typical descriptions of ‘butch,’ ‘femme,’ and the elusive ‘versatile’ lesbian - a term assumed to be borrowed from the gay male ‘top’ and ‘bottom’ vernacular - Nomalanga forged a clear connection between gender and sexuality, since butch and femme are ‘types’ of lesbians and gender non-conforming refers, by name, to gender and denotes varied forms of non-conformity to the relationship between gender and sex. Nomalanga also said that you are a ‘lipstick’ lesbian, for example, if your girlfriend is a man. Both examples suggest an intimate relationship between gender and sexuality, and thus perhaps disrupt the fixedness of masculine gender identity for female or lesbian men. Here, while the word ‘transgender’ suits individuals like Khwela, it may or may not fit some of those female-bodied men who attended Patience and Nomalanga’s workshop: either succeeding or failing to capture the element of sexuality invoked in butchness.
Despite the centrality that female masculinity can have in Black lesbian identity, the notion of gender roles in female same-sex relationships is critiqued. In their discussion of 1PV in the Western Cape, Lynch and Sanger note “power disparities within relationships that are informed by normative, taken-for-granted understandings of gender roles ... often cohering around masculine ‘butch’ and feminine ‘femme’ lesbian identities” (2016: 12). The critique of gender roles in lesbian relationships reflects tensions in feminist movements, including those that are racialized, and in particular the strain between women’s liberation and lesbian/female masculinities that may seem counterintuitive, or even paradoxical, as emphasized by Matebeni (2012). In elaborating on the performance and embodiment of masculinities and femininities among female-bodied individuals who engage in same-sex relationships in K.ZN, I seek to challenge rather than reinforce the idea that these performances and embodiments are wholesale imitations of heterosexism. Like ‘dishing up’ food, which is usually done by the partner in a morefeminine role to the partner in a more masculine role, practices of care are gendered. However, assumptions can be misleading, and gender becomes an inconsistent variable.
As a soft butch in a relationship with a ‘straight’ woman. Ayanda showed her love for her partner, Lihle, in certain ways. We spoke about this one rainy afternoon. I hung my wet jeans up to dry on the laundry line in Ayanda’s small, free-standing room in the hilly greenery of Inanda township, a half-hour ride inland from where we had arranged to meet in the center of Durban. Ayanda did the same. She put on a pair of boxer shorts, and 1 retrieved the pajama bottoms 1 had in my damp backpack from staying at Leko’s place in the city the night before. As the rain came in through holes in the metal roof and began to fill buckets, Ayanda gave me a tub of water so I could wash my muddy feet. She dried them for me with a towel, which 1 laughed about. “1 do this,” she said, telling me that she was being hospitable and that she liked to do the same for Lihle.29 Whenever Lihle came to see her, Ayanda would always take off Lihle’s shoes and socks for her, and put them back on before she left. Later, Ayanda would tell me: “As a butch lesbian, the meaning of me loving a woman is ... taking care of them.” This includes practices that are inaccurately gendered through heteronormative projections, those that would imply Ayanda would want to be taken care of through domestic tasks and gestures rather than the other way around.
These gendered narratives of the self, and care for one another in a same-sex relationship, are also united by ideas about bodies, including care for one’s sexed body. For instance, menstruation was highlighted by Ayanda and Nomalanga as something transmen, female men, and butch women alike can be uncomfortable with. This is tied physically to the female body, and therefore socially to women; as a result, it is a particularly difficult nuisance for trans- and other men in particular. Hence why, as Nomalanga and Ayanda explained, some drink vinegar to try and rid themselves of the bleeding.
Lindoh, a woman in her 20s in a same-sex relationship 1 met along with Ayanda at Nonjabulo and Thembeka’s church, recalled how difficult it was for her partner to admit over the phone to menstruating; but, once they did, it was actually nice to talk about it and relate to one another in that way. Lindoh said it is a good thing about female same-sex relationships because it is something they share and can speak about. Their bodies in this way emphasized their bond with one another, even though their gendered subjectivities resulted in contrasting experiences of living with menstruation. Butch lesbians and transmen also challenge discourses of femininity as they criticize the gendering of menstruation and menstrual products, emphasizing that periods are also masculine and manly as a fact of their bodies.
