A little while ago I was sitting at my workstation at home minding my own business, as one does. The radio, which I wasn’t really paying attention to, was tuned into uMhlobo Wenene FM - the midmorning weekday show, Khanya Gqiyazana, was on. The show normally deals with issues around gender, “with a bias towards women issues”. I sat down at my work station to begin the day’s work when just then the host announced what the following segment on the show would be about.
There’s something about being other that makes you acutely aware of when the temperature in the room changes and you sense that what will follow will leave you feeling naked and exposed. The host began by explaining how as Xhosa people we practice our customs with a certain pageantry that relies heavily on the gender binary as an anchor. Suddenly the room got cold. Her question to her listeners that morning was how did those she described as “amadoda athandana namanye amadoda” (men who love other men) handle those situations.
Ever since the very public traditional wedding in KwaDukuza between two men in 2013 that went viral across the world (ending in a zealously instagrammed divorce two years later), the topic of marrying tradition to constitutional freedoms has been a recurring one, mostly on social media networks. I consider myself a traditionalist, because that’s just how I was raised. In the same way that someone thinks themselves to be Jewish or Muslim, I consider myself to be umXhosa. I also just happen to be indoda ethandana namanye amadoda.
The radio show host invited calls exclusively from men who self-identified as such. Knowing they were likely to attract trolls, they spared no effort in screening the calls. When the first caller eventually got through he took the host completely by surprise. He spoke with a bass in his voice that sounded like it had the power to shake the foundation of a heteronormative home. His Xhosa was uninflected, radiating a mixture of Model C twang lying just under the surface of his down home country boy charm. “Bhuti uthandana namanye amadoda phofu?”, she asked a little suspiciously, like he’d slipped through her carefully constructed firewall. “Ewe, ndithandana namanye amadoda”, he boomed proudly out of the radio speakers.
The call ended at that point and the signature music came on. You could almost sense the host’s disappointment at so uneventful and far from titillating conversation. A little while later, the host returned to announce that she had just been informed that there are what are termed “butch” men who love other men. God bless her producer for trying to educate her but it was all such a mess. The show was not going as she had hoped and she was starting to fray at the edges. A few other callers came on and in the end she found one caller who managed fit her narrow fetishism of queer men who don’t “pass”.
As someone who easily switches between masculine and feminine expression, I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve had to “pass” when around family, especially extended family. It’s just easier for me - it may not be for someone else. When you’re black, being a family is a lot of work. Even the word for the things that bring us together as family and friends “imisebenzi” - literally “works”. For me, passing is the path of least resistance.
I’ve seen others pass too. I’ve also seen others who don’t. I’ve also encountered feminine men who self-identify as straight. It’s really not that linear.
I remember once my mother asked me how I was going to have children. Her concern was how I was going to carry on the family name. A fair question, now that I look back - I wasn’t so magnanimous when it was asked though. That’s the advantage people who enjoy the company of the opposite sex have over people like me - this sort of built-in feature to make more people. I do envy that. Being a “thoroughbred” homo, as it were, I feel I’m far too long in the tooth to experiment with the most widely practiced method to procreate. I’m too broke for a surrogate (also, ethical questions and such). So things aren’t looking up for me in the making my own people department and preserving the family line. Which I’ve learned not to mind really, particularly now. Especially now. For all my life, I’ve only had sisters up until two weeks ago when I discovered that my late father had made a spare. So we may yet save this branch of the family tree.
[This is an unedited version of a piece that appeared in the 1 April 2016 edition of Mail & Guardian's Friday under the title "On code switching and men who love other men". I had hoped the edited version would be available online so I can link it here. In the absence of the link, I have taken a pic of the article as it appeared in the paper and pasted it below. I hope it's readable.]
