Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies in African Homosexualities

by Stephen O. Murray (Editor), Will Roscoe (Editor), Marc Epprecht (Preface)

Among the many myths created about Africa, the claim that homosexuality and gender diversity are absent or incidental is one of the oldest and most enduring. Historians, anthropologists, and many contemporary Africans alike have denied or overlooked African same-sex patterns or claimed that such patterns were introduced by Europeans or Arabs. In fact, same-sex love and nonbinary genders were and are widespread in Africa. Boy-Wives and Female Husbands documents the presence of this diversity in some fifty societies in every region of the continent south of the Sahara. Essays by scholars from a variety of disciplines explore institutionalized marriages between women, same-sex relations between men and boys in colonial work settings, mixed gender roles in east and west Africa, and the emergence of LGBTQ activism in South Africa, which became the first nation in the world to constitutionally ban discrimination based on sexual orientation. Also included are oral histories, folklore, and translations of early ethnographic reports by German and French observers. Boy-Wives and Female Husbands was the first serious study of same-sex sexuality and gender diversity in Africa, and this edition includes a new foreword by Marc Epprecht that underscores the significance of the book for a new generation of African scholars, as well as reflections on the book's genesis by the late Stephen O. Murray.

Genres: Queer, Nonfiction, History, Africa, LGBT, Gender, Race

374 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[Sumayyah · Rating 2 out of 5]

While containing a wealth of information, this book was more of a clinical, anthropological study of homosexual African behavior, as told and researched by (mainly White) people. I was disappointed by the lack of first-person African narratives.

[Shay Olivarria · Rating 5 out of 5]

loved this book. it's an anthology of sexuality and sexual practices on the African continent. i have heard the argument that Black people didn't know of homosexuality until Europeans arrived, however this book provides many stories and oral histories to contradict that.

[Meli · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an impressive semi-archival work. It reads largely like an accumulation of colonial anthropological accounts and would be unsuitable for someone looking to read on gender and sexually variant expressions from African voices. I think approaching it in this way is necessary so that its biases can be used for a useful colonial historiographic analysis. Many of the texts come from colonial era "ethnologists" and "anthropologists", and reading their writing is a fascinating look at Euro-centric constructions of race, marriage, and social status. It also provides a useful view into the ways that black bodies have been caricatured and racialized by the white boy (as brutish, seductive, monstrous, sexually loose, reproductive, etc.) in colonial and postcolonial narratives that continue to be rearticulated and feed contemporary racism around the body. The compilation, however, is not entirely comprised of colonial archives and includes some interesting studies on the different forms that gender and sexual variation can take as a product of economic and cultural histories. The authors take effort to cover various regions and societies on the African continent. Overall it provides useful accounts of how western/hegemonic constructions of gender and sexuality are rattled.

[didi · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the article, the reporter asked a member of a gay
male couple if he practiced safe sex. The man said he was ‘scared’ of condoms, because, ‘if I used them I won’t be able to have a baby. I am throwing my sperm away.’ The reporter pressed him: By sleeping with a man, wasn’t he throwing his sperm away as it was? ‘No,’ the man replied. ‘One day my “wife” and I hope to have children like any normal couple.’

[Tutankhamun18 · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a very academic collection of essays about African (homo)sexuality orginally put together in the late 90s. In the introduction the author laments the lack of African writers speaking about the topics themselves/ personally, but notes that at the time, it was almost impossible to find such African academics. Also noted is the low number of female academics included in this collection. It makes for uncomfortable reading at times, as it often feels quite clinical and objectifying tone that is created through the academic framing of „the people“. Despite this, it was an interesting read as it decenters the idea of fixed ideas of gender and seperates reproduction from gender and decolonialises the ideas of marriage, love, pleasure, reproduction and power. It is interesting to see how often it is reported that homosexuality „does not exist here“, despite clear homosexual relationships occuring, because these western ideas of what it means to be gay do not resonate with how the people perceive their cultural norms.

[Hlubi]

In other words, "The white man's ongoing quest to homosexualize his African victims so he doesn't feel guilty for having molested them." Alternatively: "The white man's ongoing quest to twist African cultures and use them to normalize paedophilia".


Leave my Ancestors alone. They are exhausted. Leave them out of your white kinks and fetishes.
Give them in death what you took from them in life: dignity!!!!

[Kamau Bamidele · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been diving more into histories and literature of gender/sex more in the past years, and this was a very insightful addition to that dive! I was not familiar with the previous writings of Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe, or indeed, any of the authors that contributed to this work. That being said, I found their writing to be easily accessible and there was no point in the entire text where I felt ill-prepared to engage the subject matter. In my opinion, this is a testament to the conciseness of the writing and absence of unnecessary jargon in the book. Consistently, each author (even those who originally wrote the translated excerpts) gets to their point and its overall relevance to the question of whether homosexuality is indigenous to Africa or not.

There are a few aspects of the text that I feel best acquit the arguments of the authors best, prove the text's contemporary significance in the 21st century as an empirical refutation of pre/post-colonial mythologies about Afrikan sexuality, and offer perspectives on the implications of "queer studies" in Africa. First, the sociological/ethnological evidence produced is extensive and clearly problematizes the idea of a foreign tendency to homosexuality that has been imposed via European colonialism or extensive cultural contact with Arab/Muslim groups. The authors were clearly well-researched and offer several early modern perspectives/observations of ostensibly homosexual interactions between Afrikans. Not only does this support their overall argument better than any secondary-source analysis, but it also exposes the tensions between the observer (European missionaries/occupiers) and the subject of observation, that requires the inferences, assumptions, and biases of these primary sources to be problematized as well. In other texts I've read previously, such as those concerning indigenous Afrikan healing practices and the transnational exchange of therapeutic methods and epistemologies of health, a common theme was that --- from the standpoint of historical narrative--- the primary and often secondary sources that provide accounts of certain historical actors can themselves be constrained/limited by the specific cultural and legal mores of a colonial regime.

In the case of Afrikan descended healers (many of who were enslaved elsewhere), they were often considered to be practitioners of devil-craft or "magic" because they did not embrace the ontological/epistemological contours of infant western biomedicine over their own ancestral models of health and wellness. It was fascinating to see such a contradiction appear in these sociological reports from European priests as well. While this reveals the need to apply a more critical lens to "objective observers", as Kendall points out in the essay "When a Woman Loves a Woman" in Lesotho: Love, Sex, and the (Western) Construction of Homophobia", the specific contexts under which those educated in western disciplines may approach the question of the presence of "alternate sexualities" is itself another western imposition. Because many scholars of these disciplines emerge from homophobic societies that treat the object of one's sexual attention with moral/cultural/legal significance, they presume that this is the standard relation to sexuality worldwide. However, a close review of Afrikan society reveals not so much an indigenous aversion to homosexuality but rather a social compulsion to produce children that can sometimes come into conflict with relationships based solely on the concept of sexual desire that offer no possibility for child-bearing. I thought that such an admission offers insight into the ways post-colonial constructions of nationalist Afrikan governements as "homophobic" can often not be based on an indigenous view. There were many such cases in this text where western assumptions of society (i.e. patriarchal rule, homophobia, etc.) were proven to be only assumptions after being scrutinized in the context of an extremely complex history of Afrikan sexualities.

Bottomline, I thought this book was great. It proves the need for more research in this area, since a prevailing feature of the text was that the authors left a dearth of information off the table (particularly as a concern female homosexualities) because of the newness of this scholarly research. Excited to see what else comes of this research!

[Between2books_ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Happy Pride Month! 🏳️‍🌈 And happy #nonfictionfriday. I don’t know about everyone else but I have heard the false and dangerous narrative that ‘homosexuality is un-African’ quite a few times in my life. Such a phrase and mentality is harmful and loaded with dangerous as well as frustratingly contradictory ideas. I’ve begun to read more about the origins of this idea and harm it breeds. What is painfully ironic is that leaders and others who push this idea are they themselves upholding ‘un-African’ ideas such as a monolithic Africa or the ‘noble savage’ who acts only on primal instinct. They claim to be preventing a ‘social neo-colonialism’ whilst holding on to dear life to a colonial idea and ignoring the fact that what we now know as the Queer community are and have been part of the history of many tribes and nations. Strangely enough, when we are told that homosexuality or transgenderism are ‘threats’ to our societies we are not being told a lie. The history and narrative of the Queer community both on and off the continent has been and continues to be suppressed and erased because it challenges our current ideas of who holds power and what roles we ought to occupy in society. All liberation struggles threaten our societies as we know them. We cannot ignore that throughout the world it is still life-threateningly dangerous to exist outside of the boundaries heteronormativity and gender. There are lots of causes to support and I will put some in our story and then they’ll be added to a ‘resources’ highlight on the profile page. If anyone has any further reading on these topics I’d really appreciate or any ideas to share.

[Obinna Tony-Francis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am kinda annoyed it wasn’t what I expected. I was expecting first-person narrations on African culture, and rather it heavily leaned towards academic-researched writing, deep into referencing, and would have been a fit if it was marketed on ResearchGate rather than as a creative non-fiction. I thought this would explain the culture I love.

By the way, there are first-person accounts, but sparingly. It’s about 10% of the book. Throughout the book, I was bored but was able to extract key points. Though a key book for well-written research but not a best bet as creative non-fiction catered to everyone to understand African culture regardless of who you are. I really wish we could write more first-person accounts or interview actual people and tell their tales on queerness in Africa, rather than academic style language, structure and content.

I think the writing style and content did little to what it was meant to do. It was supposed to market to people who were not keen on academic writing seeing as it was actually published as hard copies, to appeal to everyone, and it did nothing. Better off being on Researchgate rather than in bookstores.

[York · Rating 4 out of 5]

Appreciate the authors include women while also saying that they don't have enough on women vs saying its a book about homosexualites and only mentioning men, or thinking that a token mention of Amadiume's book on female husbands is sufficient when it comes to the experiences of women's homosexuality.

[Nathanael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very insightful, yet also very euro-centric

[Dingo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really engaging and accessible read, I sped through it and found it kinda thrilling in how it presented so many different insightful facts/stories on African homosexuality

[Zaynab]

mixed

[Adam King · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is so well researched. I recommend it to anyone interested in the subject of the history of queerness in Africa!

[Mya Matteo · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of critiques here with how it deals with certain types of sex but also a foundational, necessary text as well.