Female Masculinities in South Africa

Abstract

The South African constitution and subsequent liberal rights are steeped in modernity as informed by the colonial cultural archive on gender and sexuality, which is inherently hierarchical, and mostly privileges heterosexuality and a rigid gender binary—and hence informs the norm and which bodies are permitted to produce masculinities and femininities where the language of violence sanctions those who do not conform. This then becomes the stage upon which masculinities and femininities are performed—narratives that this chapter centres and disentangles. Given that the concept of gender is not simply reducible to biological sex, how then are the female masculinities discussed here produced? Through what practices, technologies, and ideologies does a masculine subject become intelligible? This chapter explores how black butch lesbians in South African townships produce female masculinities as well as how they navigate and negotiate these in heavily heterosexist contexts to create their own spaces of belonging beyond the language and limitations of human rights. I argue that South African female masculinities offer decolonial glimpses or new knowledge on a flexible gender system rather than a rigid gender binary, challenging the modern/colonial gender system. This chapter presents narratives of South African female masculinities making intelligible a complex matrix of gender(s) as an expression of decolonial joy.