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Allah Made Us: Sexual Outlaws in an Islamic African City
A rich and engrossing account of 'sexual outlaws' in the Hausa-speaking region of northern Nigeria, where Islamic law requires strict separation of the sexes and different rules of behavior for women and men in virtually every facet of life.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
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December 2, 2015
It took me a while to understand how significant this book is. I was initially intrigued by the exciting nature of the case study - Rudolf Gaudio goes to Nigeria with the intention of studying the local muslim leaders' discourses, but loses interest and instead studies a subset of the population called the 'Yan Daudu. The Yan Daudu are Hausa speaking "men who behave like women." They are something like gay men, something like transsexuals, something like prostitutes, something like pimps, but Gaudio makes an explicit point to avoid equating the 'Yan Daudu with any of those terms, though they are used in giving an idea of who they are.
Reading the book, one may lose interest because, after all, this is an ethnography, and a lot of it focuses on the way that these folks use the Hausa language and proverbs to verbally sass one another. It is tough to get through at times, and certainly challenging to keep track of, as the author describes many scenes involving discrete actors and lots of discourse. Keeping track of the characters can be intimidating. Despite its difficulty and occasionally dull semblance, however, this is a monumentally important work for many reasons. What comes to mind first is that the author, Rudolf Pell Gaudio, is a gay male anthropologist. Moreover, he is interested in Islam and fluent in Hausa. That alone could be a story of its own. Add to the story that he actually journeys to Northern Nigeria and spends all of this time intimately getting to know this part of the Nigerian populace that does so much to stay out of the limelight, and we have a truly unprecedented accomplishment. He relates, along with plenty of historical analysis and discussions of colonialism, the challenges that the 'Yan Daudu face in northern Nigeria under shari'a law, and how their presence challenges the hegemonic narrative which tries to spread the untruth that homosexuality is foreign to Africa. He argues instead that the intolerance to homosexuality and the 'Yan Daudu which is so strong today is a product of imported colonial attitudes, not even indigenous to islam, but a reaction to conservative western ideas from the last century. The stories related here are unlike any other, and grow increasingly significant now in this time when persecution against homosexuals in Nigeria is rampant and increasing.
Reading the book, one may lose interest because, after all, this is an ethnography, and a lot of it focuses on the way that these folks use the Hausa language and proverbs to verbally sass one another. It is tough to get through at times, and certainly challenging to keep track of, as the author describes many scenes involving discrete actors and lots of discourse. Keeping track of the characters can be intimidating. Despite its difficulty and occasionally dull semblance, however, this is a monumentally important work for many reasons. What comes to mind first is that the author, Rudolf Pell Gaudio, is a gay male anthropologist. Moreover, he is interested in Islam and fluent in Hausa. That alone could be a story of its own. Add to the story that he actually journeys to Northern Nigeria and spends all of this time intimately getting to know this part of the Nigerian populace that does so much to stay out of the limelight, and we have a truly unprecedented accomplishment. He relates, along with plenty of historical analysis and discussions of colonialism, the challenges that the 'Yan Daudu face in northern Nigeria under shari'a law, and how their presence challenges the hegemonic narrative which tries to spread the untruth that homosexuality is foreign to Africa. He argues instead that the intolerance to homosexuality and the 'Yan Daudu which is so strong today is a product of imported colonial attitudes, not even indigenous to islam, but a reaction to conservative western ideas from the last century. The stories related here are unlike any other, and grow increasingly significant now in this time when persecution against homosexuals in Nigeria is rampant and increasing.
April 28, 2024
The summary:
Shari’a, Islamic law, mandates a strict separation of the sexes and different rules of behavior for women and men in every facet of life. ‘Yan daudu break those rules. As men who are said to talk and act ‘like women,’ they are widely perceived to be witty and clever, but they are also persecuted for their presumed involvement in hetero/homosexual prostitution. ‘Yan daudu who live and work at women’s houses provide several services other than sex: they serve food and drink, play cards and board games, and engage their visitors in friendly, flirtatious conversation.
Yan daudu’s ‘womanlike’ talk: Examples of ‘yan daudu using feminine names, pronouns, and shewa are easy to find, and proverbs could be easily elicited. Through a public exchange of innuendo, ‘yan daudu who use habaici do so as a way of proclaiming their rejection of behavioral norms. Habaici is a relatively undefined and stigmatized speech genre and is more context-dependent. Consisting of: (1) a vocative (‘hey!’ or ‘you!’); (2) one or more abusive epithets; (3) a mild put-down in the form of a short rhetorical question or command, and (4) a series of clauses that constitutes the core of the habaici. It is strongly associated with an archetypal notion of habaici as a speech genre through which co-wives and other women articulate their rivalries and mutual hostilities.
Until the 1980s, ‘yan daudu throughout Northern Nigeria lived relatively peaceably with their neighbors; it was not uncommon for people to invite ‘yan daudu (along with musicians, praise-shouters, and Bori practitioners) to dance and entertain at parties celebrating weddings and naming ceremonies. With the rise of Islamic reform movements, these activities and the people associated with them became increasingly unwelcome in respectable society. Although ‘yan daudu’s legal and social circumstances have worsened in the wake of Nigeria adopting Sharia laws in the early 2000s, they faced ostracism and persecution long before the adoption of Shari’a. For example, a song-poem by Aailu Aliyu, a well-known poet active years before and after independence. A poem entitled “can Daudu,” published in a 1976 booklet ‘Aailu’s Art’, has been reprinted numerous times and continues to be sold. Aailu Aliyu in the poem declares, albeit hesitantly, that he would rather see his son die than become a dan daudu.
One of the most important historical developments of the last decade, for ‘yan daudu and for all Nigerians, has been the explosion of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Unlike eastern, central, and southern Africa, where HIV/AIDS began decimating communities in the 1980s. In the early 1990s, the Nigerian government was only beginning to address the epidemic, and the topic was rarely discussed in the press. Because the waaa genre is traditionally used to make public comments about important social issues, it is appropriate to read the poet’s hostile sentiments as pertaining not just to his household, but to Hausa Muslim society at large. Egypt’s secular authorities in the early 2000s staged a series of police raids on homosexual establishments in which scores of men were arrested and jailed. Joseph Massad traces the Islamist anti-gay discourses that helped trigger these raids to the human-rights rhetoric of the ‘Gay International,’ a term he coined to refer to the loose alliance of gay-rights organizations such as IGLHRC and ILGA (the International Lesbian and Gay Association) and their supposed allies in academia, journalism, and commerce. Although the Islamists’ stated goal is the restoration of an Islamic state along the lines of the earliest Muslim community, their obsession with sexuality is a contemporary innovation that draws on both liberal and conservative movements in the West. On one hand, the Islamist movement has adopted the basic premise of modern psychology that sexual practices can be categorized as either hetero or ‘homo’. Akinola and other Nigerian Christians view the acceptance of homosexuality by liberal Western churches as a betrayal of the values taught by the missionaries. This sense of betrayal is heightened by Nigerian Christians’ sensitivity to accusations from cultural nationalists, including practitioners of indigenous religions, that they have forsaken authentically African traditions in order to ‘imitate’ the West.
The hypocrisy which many yan daudu perceive in the treatment they endure at the hands of the dominant Hausa Muslim society. As Hausa Muslims are accused of deviance and ‘unbelief ’ – often by the very ‘big men’ who seek them out sexually, in whose soros ‘yan daudu sleep – ‘yan daudu’s relationship to dominant cultural and religious ideals is characterized by a fundamental ambivalence.
Besmer’s study is frequently cited as evidence of a cultural association between homosexuality and spirituality not just in Hausaland, but in the ‘traditional’ religions of Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific Islands. A common theme in these works is that in many (if not all) ‘traditional’ societies, male homosexuals and/or feminine men - as the two concepts are often combined - enjoyed respect and authority because they were seen to have privileged knowledge of the supernatural realm. With the arrival of scriptural religions, especially Christianity or Islam, homosexuals supposedly lost these positions and were condemned as immoral.
There are scholarly arguments that gender, sexuality, and other ‘identities’ should be seen as practices rather than essences, as things people do rather than things people are. The idea that identity is practiced, or ‘performed,’ encourages us to think about identities as fluid and variable, not static and fixed. It also encourages us to think about how the various identity categories we use – female, male, married, gay, karuwa, dan daudu – have come to be, and how their meanings might change or be subject to debate at different times and in different social settings.
Shari’a, Islamic law, mandates a strict separation of the sexes and different rules of behavior for women and men in every facet of life. ‘Yan daudu break those rules. As men who are said to talk and act ‘like women,’ they are widely perceived to be witty and clever, but they are also persecuted for their presumed involvement in hetero/homosexual prostitution. ‘Yan daudu who live and work at women’s houses provide several services other than sex: they serve food and drink, play cards and board games, and engage their visitors in friendly, flirtatious conversation.
Yan daudu’s ‘womanlike’ talk: Examples of ‘yan daudu using feminine names, pronouns, and shewa are easy to find, and proverbs could be easily elicited. Through a public exchange of innuendo, ‘yan daudu who use habaici do so as a way of proclaiming their rejection of behavioral norms. Habaici is a relatively undefined and stigmatized speech genre and is more context-dependent. Consisting of: (1) a vocative (‘hey!’ or ‘you!’); (2) one or more abusive epithets; (3) a mild put-down in the form of a short rhetorical question or command, and (4) a series of clauses that constitutes the core of the habaici. It is strongly associated with an archetypal notion of habaici as a speech genre through which co-wives and other women articulate their rivalries and mutual hostilities.
Until the 1980s, ‘yan daudu throughout Northern Nigeria lived relatively peaceably with their neighbors; it was not uncommon for people to invite ‘yan daudu (along with musicians, praise-shouters, and Bori practitioners) to dance and entertain at parties celebrating weddings and naming ceremonies. With the rise of Islamic reform movements, these activities and the people associated with them became increasingly unwelcome in respectable society. Although ‘yan daudu’s legal and social circumstances have worsened in the wake of Nigeria adopting Sharia laws in the early 2000s, they faced ostracism and persecution long before the adoption of Shari’a. For example, a song-poem by Aailu Aliyu, a well-known poet active years before and after independence. A poem entitled “can Daudu,” published in a 1976 booklet ‘Aailu’s Art’, has been reprinted numerous times and continues to be sold. Aailu Aliyu in the poem declares, albeit hesitantly, that he would rather see his son die than become a dan daudu.
One of the most important historical developments of the last decade, for ‘yan daudu and for all Nigerians, has been the explosion of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Unlike eastern, central, and southern Africa, where HIV/AIDS began decimating communities in the 1980s. In the early 1990s, the Nigerian government was only beginning to address the epidemic, and the topic was rarely discussed in the press. Because the waaa genre is traditionally used to make public comments about important social issues, it is appropriate to read the poet’s hostile sentiments as pertaining not just to his household, but to Hausa Muslim society at large. Egypt’s secular authorities in the early 2000s staged a series of police raids on homosexual establishments in which scores of men were arrested and jailed. Joseph Massad traces the Islamist anti-gay discourses that helped trigger these raids to the human-rights rhetoric of the ‘Gay International,’ a term he coined to refer to the loose alliance of gay-rights organizations such as IGLHRC and ILGA (the International Lesbian and Gay Association) and their supposed allies in academia, journalism, and commerce. Although the Islamists’ stated goal is the restoration of an Islamic state along the lines of the earliest Muslim community, their obsession with sexuality is a contemporary innovation that draws on both liberal and conservative movements in the West. On one hand, the Islamist movement has adopted the basic premise of modern psychology that sexual practices can be categorized as either hetero or ‘homo’. Akinola and other Nigerian Christians view the acceptance of homosexuality by liberal Western churches as a betrayal of the values taught by the missionaries. This sense of betrayal is heightened by Nigerian Christians’ sensitivity to accusations from cultural nationalists, including practitioners of indigenous religions, that they have forsaken authentically African traditions in order to ‘imitate’ the West.
The hypocrisy which many yan daudu perceive in the treatment they endure at the hands of the dominant Hausa Muslim society. As Hausa Muslims are accused of deviance and ‘unbelief ’ – often by the very ‘big men’ who seek them out sexually, in whose soros ‘yan daudu sleep – ‘yan daudu’s relationship to dominant cultural and religious ideals is characterized by a fundamental ambivalence.
Besmer’s study is frequently cited as evidence of a cultural association between homosexuality and spirituality not just in Hausaland, but in the ‘traditional’ religions of Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific Islands. A common theme in these works is that in many (if not all) ‘traditional’ societies, male homosexuals and/or feminine men - as the two concepts are often combined - enjoyed respect and authority because they were seen to have privileged knowledge of the supernatural realm. With the arrival of scriptural religions, especially Christianity or Islam, homosexuals supposedly lost these positions and were condemned as immoral.
There are scholarly arguments that gender, sexuality, and other ‘identities’ should be seen as practices rather than essences, as things people do rather than things people are. The idea that identity is practiced, or ‘performed,’ encourages us to think about identities as fluid and variable, not static and fixed. It also encourages us to think about how the various identity categories we use – female, male, married, gay, karuwa, dan daudu – have come to be, and how their meanings might change or be subject to debate at different times and in different social settings.
November 10, 2012
This book is a linguistic ethnography of the 'Yan daudu of Nigeria. The book was well written but I would not have read it if I didn't need to for my Linguistics class. That said it wasn't bad. I found the concept of language use to define a subculture very interesting.
February 2, 2013
This ethnography explores the social practices of Nigeria's Hausa-speaking ‘yan daudu or "feminine men". By describing the social practices, social experiences, and expressive culture of the ‘yan daudu in the Islamic city-state of Kano, Rudolf Gaudio situates a broader analysis of local, national, and global gender and sexuality debates using “feminine men’s” claims to and performances of cultural citizenship that challenge the idea that Islamic and African cultures fundamentally reject or do not support gender and sexual minorities. Because shari’a or Islamic law requires strict separation of the sexes and different rules of behavior for women and men, this book (pg. 3) focuses on men who challenge the cultural and religious rules of gender through their use of language, through their bodies and clothing, and through popular media. Using a nuanced view of gender dynamics, Gaudio suggests that the “sexual minorities” of this work are ultimately asking what it means to be male and what it means to be female.
'Yan daudu are defined as biological males who have sex with males (typically referring to conventionally masculine men) but they also marry and father children, which culturally defines them as "men". In public they use male pronouns both for themselves and for other 'yan daudu. However, in private they wear clothing that is marked as female, such as a headscarf or skirt wrap, and begin using female pronouns and stereotypically female forms of gossip among in-group members. Language plays a large role in this work, as Gaudio, a cultural anthropologist and linguist, points out the 'yan daudu’s heavy use of proverbs, syntactic pronoun switches, playful use of language, and the use of an in-group code. Actual discussions of sexual practice were notably circumspect, likely having to do with the stigma attached to various sexual acts in Islamic culture and to the assignment of the “prostitution” label to any kind of gift-giving to sexual partners, payments for sex acts, and to the financial independence of single women. Gaudio also uses this as an opportunity to discuss the 'yan daudu’s historical association with independent women and with Bori spirit possessions, including the controversial subject of spirit possession as a pre-Islamic cultural residue.
In the end, “Allah made us this way” becomes, not really cultural resistance, but a bid for cultural citizenship, particularly in the ways that the 'yan daudu neither fully accept nor fully reject the negative social judgments made against them. This also appears to have led to difficulties on the ethnographer’s part in gathering data, mostly because many 'yan daudu would not permit him to tape their interactions and addressing the topic with wives and children was socially forbidden. But Gaudio's descriptions of the ‘yan daudu’s disvalued verbal aptitudes are nonetheless filled with valuable insights into the complexities of gendered language as well as how sex-gender nonconforming individuals navigate their lives in a Muslim city with a reputation for sodomy as well as before and after the imposition of shari'a law. I found Chapter 5, "Playing with Faith" to be particularly useful. The ‘yan daudu primarily practice Islam, some even within the strict Wahabbist tradition. Through this tradition, agency for almost everything that happens in the world is attributed to Allah which provides the foundation for the sociolinguistic self-defenses of the 'yan daudu. If everything that happens is dependent on Allah's will, then so must being 'yan daudu, and so must it be for the hypocrites they criticize for self-righteously proclaiming their piety by slandering the 'yan daudu all the while seeking sex with them in the context of a Muslim society’s non-public homosocial spaces.
'Yan daudu are defined as biological males who have sex with males (typically referring to conventionally masculine men) but they also marry and father children, which culturally defines them as "men". In public they use male pronouns both for themselves and for other 'yan daudu. However, in private they wear clothing that is marked as female, such as a headscarf or skirt wrap, and begin using female pronouns and stereotypically female forms of gossip among in-group members. Language plays a large role in this work, as Gaudio, a cultural anthropologist and linguist, points out the 'yan daudu’s heavy use of proverbs, syntactic pronoun switches, playful use of language, and the use of an in-group code. Actual discussions of sexual practice were notably circumspect, likely having to do with the stigma attached to various sexual acts in Islamic culture and to the assignment of the “prostitution” label to any kind of gift-giving to sexual partners, payments for sex acts, and to the financial independence of single women. Gaudio also uses this as an opportunity to discuss the 'yan daudu’s historical association with independent women and with Bori spirit possessions, including the controversial subject of spirit possession as a pre-Islamic cultural residue.
In the end, “Allah made us this way” becomes, not really cultural resistance, but a bid for cultural citizenship, particularly in the ways that the 'yan daudu neither fully accept nor fully reject the negative social judgments made against them. This also appears to have led to difficulties on the ethnographer’s part in gathering data, mostly because many 'yan daudu would not permit him to tape their interactions and addressing the topic with wives and children was socially forbidden. But Gaudio's descriptions of the ‘yan daudu’s disvalued verbal aptitudes are nonetheless filled with valuable insights into the complexities of gendered language as well as how sex-gender nonconforming individuals navigate their lives in a Muslim city with a reputation for sodomy as well as before and after the imposition of shari'a law. I found Chapter 5, "Playing with Faith" to be particularly useful. The ‘yan daudu primarily practice Islam, some even within the strict Wahabbist tradition. Through this tradition, agency for almost everything that happens in the world is attributed to Allah which provides the foundation for the sociolinguistic self-defenses of the 'yan daudu. If everything that happens is dependent on Allah's will, then so must being 'yan daudu, and so must it be for the hypocrites they criticize for self-righteously proclaiming their piety by slandering the 'yan daudu all the while seeking sex with them in the context of a Muslim society’s non-public homosocial spaces.
October 18, 2009
Recently someone shared that she is working to eliminate use of the word effeminate because it is a negative way to describe femininity and its used in a negative tone/context across cultures; after consideration, I had to agree w/her. I was impressed that this came up while reading this book profiles feminine men in Kano, Nigeria; I don't think the word effeminate is used once in this book. I really appreciated this nuanced look at gender dynamics in a Muslim community that is largely unfamiliar to me.
November 23, 2013
In his linguistic and cultural study of 'yan daudu (feminine men) in Islamic Northern Nigeria, Gaudio demonstrates how this group transgresses the bounds of a society strictly separated along gender lines. At the same time, this ethnography critiques how Western conceptions of gender sexuality may not only misrepresent local meanings in a global context, but can also do harm, as the international gay agenda does not necessarily align with understandings of the self and ways of being among 'yan daudu.
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October 4, 2013306.76088 G267 2009
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