Offspring’s experiences and paternity crisis: creative writers and same-sex marriage in Igbo culture

ABSTRACT

Same-sex marriage among women is used to bridge the gap created by the challenges of the socially and culturally constructed gender roles in Igbo culture. ‘Male daughters’ and ‘female husbands’ become sons and husbands to wives to solve the problems of procreation and continuity of the family’s lineage. ‘Male daughters and ‘female husbands’ are as old as Igbo culture and the culture is still in practice today. This study aims to unearth supposedly ‘hidden’ facts about the private nature of sexual relations in Igboland and reveal that it is different from the common western practice of same-sex marriages. Using Feminism and Psychoanalytical approaches to literary criticism, it exposes the ‘female husbands’ and ‘male daughters’ offspring’s paternity issues in relation to Igbo worldviews and ideologies as represented in literature.

KEYWORDS:

• Same-sex marriage
• ‘female men or ‘male daughters’
• ‘female husbands’
• paternity crisis and Igbo worldviews

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Charles C. Korie, ‘The “Male Woman” and the “Female Husband” in Akachi Ezeigbo’s Trilogy’ (2017) asserts that the genealogy of families run along father to son lines in Igboland.

2 Nnanna Oranika, A Short History of Akokwa (1985) asserts that the Igbo world is the world of men.

3 Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis Part 1 & 2 (1963) addresses men’s inherent social and societal power because they have penis.

4 Aloysius Ikechukwu Orjinta, Liberation literature and Liberation Feminism for Sub-Saharan Africa (2013) addresses the role of levirate and points out that it is a form of cultural violence.

5 Ifi Amadiume, Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society (1987) addresses same-sex marriage among women and male daughters practiced in Igboland.

6 Duane P. Schultz, Sydney Ellen Schultz, Theories of Personality (2001) opines that Freud’s original conception divides personality into three levels: the conscious, the preconscious and unconscious.

7 Victor Uchendu, ‘The Igbo of Southeast Nigeria’ (1965) addresses the relationship between the female husband and her bride in Igboland asserting that both the ‘female husband’ and her wife will be having sexual intercourse with the husband of the female husband if he is alive and female husbands adopt the children of their brides.

8 Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mother’s garden: Womanist Prose (1983) states that a womanist is a woman who loves another woman sexually and/or non-sexually.

9 Mary E.M. Kolawole, Womanism and African Consciousness (1997) and Chikwenye O. Ogunyemi, Africa Wo/Man Palava: The Nigerian Novel by Women (1996) present womanist ideology that argues that womanism is rooted in African tradition and assert that lesbianism is a non-existent issue to majority of ordinary Africans because it is a mode of self-expression that is completely strange to their world-view.

10 Orjinta (2013) also describes ghost marriage as a form of cultural violence.

11 Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Bill, 2011 (www.lawnigeria.com) addresses the criminalisation of queer relationships in Nigeria.

12 Henri Tajfel and John Turner, ‘An integrative theory of intergroup conflict: The Social Psychology of intergroup relation’ (1979) defines social identity.

13 Erik Erikson, Identity: Youth and Crisis (1968) defines personal identity.

14 Ikenna Dieke, The Primordial Image (1993) opines that children that are denied the knowledge of their natural fathers because of culture and tradition who have to neglect the truth about their paternity because of their involvement in culture and tradition are aware that they are alienated from the deep significance of their beings.

15 Dieke (1993) also asserts that such children have to go in search of drives and subliminal vestiges; the products of the unconscious that tend toward the archetypes of myth of their meaningful life.

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by American Council of Learned Societies [grant number AHP 2018 Postdoctoral Fellowship Award].

Notes on contributors

Evelyn Nwachukwu Urama

Evelyn Nwachukwu Urama is a lecturer at the Federal University Ndufu-Alike, Ebonyi State Nigeria where she teaches English Language and Literature courses. She obtained her Ph.D in Comparative Literature from University of Nigeria. Her area of Specialization is African, African American and Caribbean Literature. She is a fellow of American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS)/African Humanities Program (AHP).