Reading bisexualities from a South African perspective

C. Stobie

This article explores the absence of dialogue about bisexuality in South Africa and in the African continent. While South Africa_s new Constitution explicitly vouchsafes protection on the grounds of "sexual orientation," leaders in a number of other African countries have called homosexuality un-African. I discuss the lack of a bisexual discourse in South Africa, and the prejudices and hostility directed towards bisexuals by lesbians and gays. I also examine a recent text, Boy-wives and female husbands: Studies of African homosexualities, edited by Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe, which debunks the myth that same-sex behavior is alien to Africa. There, bisexuality is treated dismissively despite the fact that those who have same-sex relations are frequently heterosexually married. I discuss the text as a feminist literary critic, commenting on the "techniques of neutralization" it employs. I argue that a sensitive definition of bisexuality would disrupt the impasse of binary categories while it would provide an appropriate framework to analyze sexualities in Africa and to better explore the experience of black women.[Copies are available from: Haworth Document Delivery Center. The Haworth Press, Inc., 10 Alice Street, Binghamton, NY 13904-1580, USA]