Butler (2006) challenges us to consider that some bodies are privileged under the same oppressive conditions because of race, location, or social class enable access to power.
Constituted as a social phenomenon in the public sphere, my body is, and is not, mine. This forms the basis of what we aim to understand through this study which is how we navigate the concept of the closet and its metaphoric use as a tool to conceal or protect; how the experience of the closet uniquely shapes queer identity, its formation, negotiation, and expression, and how, through queer liberation, we expand the freedoms available to all people.
In South Africa race, class, and culture are vital to understanding the intersectionality of how SOGIESC are considered. The influences of society are embedded in identity argues Han (2017) who sees the performance of sexual identity as dependent on the context of neighbourhood norms, so that how we see ourselves and our place in society is influenced by the mutually constitutive relations among social identities and the multiple social positions we occupy. Such multiple social identities intersect at a personal level to shape experience to make meaning of power and domination at a societal level; gay men of colour, for example, do not experience gayness in the same way that gay white men do, nor are they racialised in the same way as are heterosexual PoC, but, rather, being gay, male, and a PoC simultaneously means
that each aspect of identity intersects with the other (Han, 2017). Livermon (2012) argues that QPoC shape possibilities for belonging by deliberately destabilising heteronormative notions of black identity. According to Han (2017) race, class, gender, and sexuality are experienced differently by each individual depending on social location in the structures of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Garnets and Kimmel (2003) point out that QPoC have the burden of culturally informed perceptions so lack not only heterosexual privileges but the privileges of whiteness as well. Lewis (2003) argues that PoC disapprove of homosexuality more strongly than do white people and that PoC are less likely to be socially involved in queer communities nor to experience racism in interactions with white queer people.
It is difficult to perceive African people beyond the context of culture, spirituality, and religion, because for African people these are not separate or external aspects of identity throughout life (Sithole, 2019). Language cannot be excluded from the conversation in that culture assigns meaning to bodies and the language used in South Africa for queer people is often derogatory and harmful. The language around the articulation of identity is complex, especially in a country with diverse vernaculars, cultures, and religions. These declarations of self as gender or sexuality are meaningful in affirming queer identity because those words can have negative connotations and are rarely pronounced with pride and conviction. An example of this is Nongayindoda of which Matabeni (2021: 569-570) offers the following interpretation:
‘The term nongayindoda used to be popular among Nguni speaking people referring to masculine women or men-like women (the word ‘ndoda’ is man in isiXhosa and isiZulu and thus nongayindoda referred to people who are like men physically, socially, and culturally). In some contexts, it has been assumed to relate only to women who have
chosen not to have relations with men, women in same-sex relations, lesbian women, or women.’
Nongayindoda offers a disruption to the rigid binary that polices and legitimises who and what is deemed outside the ‘norm’ and thus is deemed further from the image of G-d (Matabeni, 2021). Matabeni (2021) also argues that queer-identifying bodies of colour are reflected in borrowed terms and western languages, erasing us from our own histories. The dominance of Western terminologies overshadows local realities and interpretations of gender and sexual identities and indigenous terms have been so extensively degraded that even those who may use them no longer grasp their original strength and significance.
Mazibuko, who argues that such terms are derogatory in communal and faith spaces, found that participants in his study lacked positive Zulu terms to refer to homosexuality and so, groping for a safe isiZulu term to use without sounding hateful, referred to homosexuality as ‘’lento’, meaning ‘this thing’ ((2021: 111). Pakade (2013) suggests that pejorative labels such as
‘isitabane’ are commonly used by self-identifying queer-identifying people: And, according to Sibisi and Van der Walt isitabane is a derogatory term to mark queer-identifying people ‘as the ‘other’ and ‘outside’ the norm prescribed by heteropatriarchy’ (2021: 67).
In an attempt to reclaim disparaging terms used to name our queer-identifying bodies, isitabane is used by scholars ‘to stabanise’ as a radical decolonising academic practise (Davids, Matyila, Sithole, and Van der Walt, 2019; Milani 2014; Sibisi and Van der Walt, 2021). This term however still bears a heavily discriminatory burden in both public and private lives (Pakade, 2013). The meanings attached to isitabane are complex as they are associated with same-sex practises as well as gender non-confirming people. According to Matabeni ‘Language is central
to understandings and interpretations of a gender system’ (2021: 567). In the same way that queer can be used as a verb, stabanisation is an invitation to unveil uncomfortable ambiguities, complicities, and ruptures that ensue from intersections of race and culture in South African contexts (Milani, 2014).
Similarly, it is argued that the Western-derived terms that make up part of the LGBTIQ acronym do not simply obliterate indigenous ways of describing gender and sexual dissidence but take on additional meanings related to local understandings of gender and sexuality (Liverman, 2012). Vernacular terms, even though considered derogatory, coexist, and are at times used interchangeably, with international terms, thus fundamentally altering the meaning of Western sexuality identity markers as they describe a variety of positionalities that do not necessary exist or are not accounted for under the Western rubric of LGBTIQ (Livermon, 2012).
According to Amadiume language in gender systems changed with the introduction of Christianity by colonialists, for example, ‘G-d’ replaced the genderless Igbo word chi, thus introducing G-d as a father figure who has a son, and the ‘masculinisation of religion’ was soon imposed (1987: 136). Despite mythical claims that homosexuality is un-African, research indicates the existence of complex scenarios circumstances of sexual behaviour in pre-colonial Africa, including evidence of same-sex marriage, cross-dressing, and role reversal (Punt 2009).
To deny this is detrimental to African culture and dismissive of a pre-colonial African heritage (Punt, 2009). Just as language is a powerful tool for the assertion of homophobia and heterosexism, so it also holds the potential to liberate. When religion negotiates sexuality, queer-identifying people are engaged through language. According to Ryan and Futterman (1998) as cited in Fankhanel (2010) identity is a complex integration of the cognitive,
emotional, and social factors that make up the sense of self, including gender, sex roles, and sexual orientation. It can be argued therefore that social expectations, created by one’s declaration of self, have an influence on queer-identity development.