Masculinities without Tradition

Abstract

The fear of being perceived as gay, as not a real man, keeps men exaggerating all the traditional rules of masculinity, including sexual predation with women’. This view on men’s sexual (Following feminists such as Tamale [2011. African Sexualities: A Reader. Nairobi: Pambazuka Press] that thinking on ‘sexuality without looking at gender is like cooking pepper soup with pepper’, meaning that they are mutually imbricated with and shape one another, unless I wish to stress a point or indicate otherwise, whenever sexuality and associated concepts are used here it is meant gendered sexuality) and gender practices in relation to ‘the traditional’ expressed by Kimmel is shared with other leading scholars on masculinities. Yet, in situating queer sexualities against ‘the traditional’ or outside tradition, studies on masculinities have engendered a paradox which needs untangling in any serious attempt to unsettle traditionalist positions that clash with claims for the recognition of sexual equality. The main purpose of this article is to offer a different reading of the relation between masculinities and ‘the traditional’. Arguing that it is at the moment that the word ‘critical’ or its equivalents is uttered that a tradition leaks through, the article offers a critique of anti-‘traditional masculinity’ critiques which reinforce the homogenisation and retribalisation of African (While acknowledging the complexity accompanying the use of the terms in South Africa, as well as recognising their ideology-ladenness, in this article African and black are used interchangeably and refer to those historically defined as Bantu.) tradition and culture. At the same time, the article examines and seeks to undo some of the arguments of patriarchal hetero-masculinist traditionalism resistant to the recognition of desires and rights of women and men who are attracted to others of the same sex through foregrounding claims for equality for queer attraction and recognition.