What's in a name? Exploring the sexual identity of Black Women-Loving-Women in Soweto

Pakade, Nomancotsho

doi:10.1080/10130950.2013.809928

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 7 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…These have brought forth a biased geopolitics of queer academic knowledge, which consistently privileges scholarship developed in Europe and North America, while 'African material and African intellectuals tend to be overlooked, seemingly token, or relegated to the margins in ostensibly global queer literature' (Epprecht, 2008: 14). The lack of purchase of queer as an emic category in South Africa has also been demonstrated in a study of identity labels among non-heterosexual women in Soweto (Pakade, 2013; see also Sigamoney and Epprecht, 2013 for similar results). There, queer was the least used identity category vis-a-vis other labels such as lesbian and isitabane (see also Swarr, 2012 for an incisive analysis of isitabane).…”

Section: Queer Counterpointssupporting

confidence: 56%

Queer counterpoints: Making ‘mistakes’ in loveLife’s ‘Make Your Move’

Milani

Burnett

2020

Sexualities

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Drawing upon queer theory and Said’s notion of the counterpoint, the article analyses the launch episode of a reality television series produced by the South African NGO loveLife, which focused on a young, self-identified lesbian woman in Soweto. We offer a counter example to discourses of the powerless victimhood of Black, gender and sexually non-normative individuals in South African townships. We unveil contrapuntally the pushes and pulls between the voice of the authoritative facilitator, aligned with loveLife’s HIV-prevention and youth leadership development methodology, and that of the young woman herself, who volunteered for the intervention, focusing on their disagreement on how best to ‘accommodate’ the prevailing social norms of contemporary South Africa. We also discuss the counterpoint between us – a discourse analyst observing the effects of particular articulations on South African society related to loveLife’s social aims, and the producer of the episode, charged with the protection of the NGO’s brand identity. We conclude that norms governing gender and sexuality in a rapidly evolving society such as South Africa’s are best understood as presenting analysis with dilemmas and contradictions, and that contrapuntal reading is a valuable tool for bringing these tensions under scrutiny without succumbing to the urge to resolve them.

show abstract

Section: Queer Counterpointssupporting

confidence: 56%