Queering Discourses of Coming Out in South Africa

Abstract

The performative act of ‘coming out’ authenticates a homosexual identity and, in the South African context, the progressive gay and lesbian movement, the Lesbian and Gay Equality Project (LGEP), considers it to be the right thing to do for closeted homosexuals. However, coming out has been critiqued by post-structural and queer theorists such as Michel Foucault, Judith Butler and Karen Kopelson who argue that coming out is problematic because it forces a person into an already established identity category, strengthens the regulation of sexual categories, and is complicit in the reconstitution of these categories. Following these theorists, in this article I argue that when a person comes out as a homosexual in South Africa, they enter a fixed system which makes it difficult to question those norms that govern the binary heterosexual / homosexual. Key to my argument is that the term ‘homosexual’ is unstable; however, coming out stabilises it and, thus, forces a person into a category that undermines the fluidity of all sexual identities. The data for this exploration is drawn from three non-fiction gay and lesbian books and the findings in all three show how coming out is seen as a progressive step not only to resolve an identity crisis, but also to combat homophobia, and conservative family and social norms. At no point are those norms that govern the homosexual / heterosexual binary and which give rise to the crises of homosexuality in the first place questioned. This article argues that, as long as it is embedded in the positive discourses of progress, health and enlightenment, the coming out narrative will remain immune to critique of the role that it plays in strengthening the homosexual / heterosexual binary.

Key words:

• coming out
• queer linguistics
• South Africa
• binary homosexual / heterosexual

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the University of Johannesburg for their continued support of my queer research. Thanks also to Cathy Burton for editing. I would also like to thank the supervisors of my PhD, Carolyn McKinney and Ann Smith for their insights into the chapter of my thesis that eventually became this article. A previous version of this article was published in Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics PLUS 42 (2013), a South African working paper series.

Note on Contributor

Tracey Lee McCormick is a Senior Lecturer in the Applied Communicative Skills Department at the University of Johannesburg.

Notes

1. See Lesbian Gay Equality Project (LGEP) website <http://www.equality.org.za/index.php/About> (accessed 6 May 2011).

2. Compare Plummer (1975); Cass (1979); Coleman (1982); Cain (1991); Rust (1993); Elliot (1996); and Gagné, Tewksbury & McGaughey (1997).

3. Compare, for example, Botha & Cameron (1993); De Vos (1994, 1996); Elder (1995); Lind (1995); Stychin (1996): Cameron (1997): Holmes (1997): Kwesi & Webster (1997); Donham (1998); Hoad (1998, 1999); Jara & Lapinsky (1998); Kraak (1998); and Louw (1998).

4. Compare Gorman-Murray (2008); and Stoetling (2011).

5. Compare Kraak (1998); Leatt & Hendricks (2005); Judge, Manion & De Waal (2008); Smuts (2011).

6. Compare Chirrey (2003, 2011); Hubbard & De Welde (2003); Rasmussen (2004); Ward & Winstanley (2005); Cuomo (2007); Gorman-Murray (2008); Vaughan & Waehler (2010); Smuts (2011); and Xhonneux (2012).

7. For example, the South African gay and lesbian lifestyle website <http://www.queerlife.co.za/> has an entire section devoted to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender stories of coming out.

8. Qualitative and quantitative content analysis can also be used to make sense of large amounts of data downloaded from the Internet (compare the developing field of cyberethnography, Murthy 2008; Robinson & Schulz 2009).

9. Refer to the overviews of queer theory provided by McCormick (2009); Motschenbacher (2011); and Milani (2012, 2013b). Butler summarises queer theory as: ‘queer theory opposes those who would regulate identities or establish epistemological claims of priority for those who make claims to certain kinds of identities’ (2004:7).

10. This article is based on a chapter from my 2012 PhD thesis titled ‘Discourse and politics in the production of homosexual subjectivities in South Africa: a Queer Theory analysis of selected English non-fiction texts (1992–2008)’. Ten non-fiction gay and lesbian books were written between 1992 and 2008 in South Africa. In my thesis, six of them were analysed: Male Homosexuality in South Africa: Identity Formation, Culture and Crises by Gordon Isaacs & Brian McKendrick (1992); Defiant Desire: Gay and Lesbian Lives in South Africa by Mark Gevisser & Edwin Cameron (1994); Gayle: The Language of Kinks and Queens: A History and Dictionary of Gay Language in South Africa by Ken Cage (2003); Tommy Boys, Lesbian Men and Ancestral Wives: Female Same-Sex Practices in Africa edited by Ruth Morgan & Saskia Wieringa (2005); Performing Queer: Shaping Sexualities 1994–2004 – Volume 1 edited by Mikki van Zyl & Melissa Steyn (2005); and To Have and to Hold: The Making of Same-Sex Marriage in South Africa edited by Melanie Judge, Anthony Manion & Shaun de Waal (2008). From an identity politics perspective, coming out is viewed as a milestone in the gay experience and is associated with empowerment and the combating of prejudice, discrimination and violence against sexual minorities. From a queer perspective, coming out is interrogated for being linked to the liberation of the true but repressed self. Coming out also forces a person into the established identity category of ‘homosexual’ and, thus, works to reinforce and control sexual categories. Male Homosexuality (1992), Tommy Boys (2005) and Performing Queer (2005) provide significant support for this conceptualisation of coming out.

11. Hereafter Male Homosexuality.

12. Hereafter Tommy Boys.

13. Hereafter Performing Queer.

14. Isaacs & McKendrick state that their research population is small, mainly white and middle-class, and is not ‘typical of all gays’ which ‘introduces a distinct bias into the study’ (1992:169, 172).

15. ‘Male Homosexuality was written to provide information and training to providers of social services to gay men, and has become a foundational text used in social work classes in at least one major university’ (Leatt & Hendricks in Van Zyl & Steyn 2005:304).

16. The Lovedu rain queen is the matrilineal queen of the Balobedu people of the Limpopo province in South Africa (Krige & Krige 1981).

17. Morgan & Wieringa choose to use the term ‘women marriages’ because ‘it involves the legalised union between two women’ (2005:299).

18. These participants are lesbians in western, eastern and southern Africa whose testaments were collected by women activists.

19. The queer research by Ella Kotze (2012) into coming out in South Africa focuses on the distinction between coming out as an act of liberation and coming out as an incitement to discourse.