Browsing by Author "Matebeni, Zethu"

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
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    Bodies over Borders and Borders over Bodies: the 'Gender Refugee' and the imagined South Africa
    (2016) Camminga, Bianca; Posel, Deborah; Matebeni, Zethu; Levine, Susan
    This thesis tracks the conceptual journeying of the term 'transgender' from the Global North - where it originated - along with the physical embodied journeying of transgender asylum seekers from countries within Africa to South Africa, and considers the interrelationships between the two. With regards to the term 'transgender', it is the contention of this thesis that it transforms as it travels, taking on meaning in relation to bodies, national homes, institutional frameworks and imaginaries. More specifically, that it has materialised in South Africa - first as a discourse and following this as a politics - due to a combination of social, political and cultural conditions peculiar to the country. In direct correlation to this movement, this thesis argues that in recent years South Africa has seen the emergence of what can be usefully termed 'gender refugees' - people who can make claims to refugee status, fleeing their countries of origin based on the persecution of their gender identity. This study centers on the experiences and narratives of these gender refugees, gathered through a series of life story interviews, highlighting the ways in which their departures, border crossings, arrivals and perceptions of South Africa have been both enabled and constrained by the contested meanings and politics of this emergence of transgender, particularly in relation to the possibilities of the South African Constitution. Through such narratives, this thesis explores the radical constitutional-legal possibilities for transgender in South Africa, the dissonances between the possibilities of constitutional law - in relation to the distinction made between sex and gender - and the pervasive politics/logic of binary 'sex/gender' within South African society. In doing so, this thesis enriches the emergent field of Transgender Studies, and challenges some of the current dominant theoretical and political perceptions of transgender, by offering complex narratives regarding sex, gender, sexuality and notions of home in relation to particular geo-politically situated bodies. This thesis speaks to contemporary international concerns and debates regarding migration and asylum, identity politics, the control of borders, human rights and protections, documentation and the ongoing bureaucratisation of sex/gender.
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    Creating personas, performing selves – gazing beyond the masks of drag and neo-burlesque performance
    (2021) Prince, Lindy-Lee; Levine, Susan; Matebeni, Zethu; Pather, Jay
    What if gender is not in the body, but happens to it through a combination of tangible and intangible means – through the coverings that mask, as well as the translations of and on the body? What if gender was malleable? If we cannot break gender, smash it to pieces, then, hopefully we might be able to bend it and fashion it into something that is more useful in the world, desirable, and something functional for an immediate need, or purpose. This thesis introduces the reader to the performance of drag and neo-burlesque, as these take place in bars and nightclubs in Cape Town. I use the concepts of the gaze and the mask in this research to unpack and understand the feminine and hyper-feminine performances by drag and neo-burlesque performers. I argue that contemporary understandings of the “male” gaze, as posited by Laura Mulvey, have become inefficient in addressing the complexities of viewing gendered performances and audience interpretation thereof. I ask the reader to consider how audiences are set up to look at a performance and performing body and what they are meant to interpret about the person, or their character, by looking at the performance. I want to look beyond the stereotypical “male” gaze. I attempt to add to the conversation on objectification in performance, by arguing that the performances that take place on drag and neo-burlesque stages, possess the ability to challenge dominant ideals and social regulations regarding the ways in which gendered bodies ought to perform in public and private space through the prescriptions of a hetero-dominant society. In this thesis I discuss gendered performance, and expression, and the ways in which these performances and expressions work alongside prescribed perceptions of femininity and feminine performance. These prescriptions inform the ways in which individuals are allowed to perform a homogenous idea of gender, and work against gender variance, which in turn, informs the manner in which individuals are allowed to perform sexuality in relation to what is socially mandated and allowed in the heterodominant society. In this thesis, I also explore the creation of the staged performance, and discuss themes of stigma and shame as it is used to discipline those who attempt to perform potentially subversive content in publicly accessible spaces. Further, I explore understandings of beauty and performance, making 7 connections to race, class, and aspirational performance by those who perform drag and neoburlesque in Cape Town. This leads to an exploration of the potential ways in which life outside of the performance might inform the life on stage, and vice versa – asking what is feminine performance, in what ways are feminine performances meant to be viewed, as well as questioning what kinds of feminine performances are socially acceptable?
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    Feeling difference: history, encounter and the affective life of a postcolonial neighbourhood
    (2019) Meer,Talia; Pande, Amrita; Matebeni, Zethu
    In this dissertation I develop an account of Observatory, a neighbourhood of Cape Town, South Africa, and its fem (cis- and transwomen, feminine men and gender non-conforming) residents, to show how place history, personal identity and everyday encounters come to be co-constituted through affect. I argue that structures of feeling - overarching historical affects - and the feeling of structures - embodied experiences of historical affects and structures of difference, including race, class and gender - shape life over the long durée and in the immediacy of encounters. As different but connected affective scales they elucidate how fems, usually cast as subjugated in urban life, are implicated in the unfolding of history, how they accomplish specific trajectories, and unexpectedly summon the past or future through embodied encounters. Through intimate, visceral, but deeply social and historical ways of knowing their own bodies and others, fems feel out, enact and make differences daily. These differences are constructed relationally, not just hierarchically, as identities and histories are reconstituted and power geometries shift from encounter to encounter. This dissertation is purposefully transdisciplinary and seeks an intersectional sociological understanding of embodied affect through an expansive view of the gender-based violence literature, urban and diversity studies, and critical race and queer theory. It combines exploratory archival work, in-depth interviews with twenty fems, and ethnographic observation to produce a historically grounded and empirically rich take on the relationship between urban space, postcolonial time, and everyday forms of difference, embodiment and encounter. In doing so, it straddles a concern for how fems make liveable lives in contexts of gendered insecurity, but also for how their strategies may in turn operationalise other historically entrenched forms of difference, particularly race, thus constructing and endangering others. In this dissertation, I re-illuminate a familiar, although underexplored, race-gender-space encounter. I denaturalise not only the white, global north ciswoman as the focus of inquiry into gendered city life, but also her presumed position of oppression. By addressing a range of fem positionalities in Observatory, I argue instead that fems can and do access histories of power, shaped by colonialism and apartheid. This highlights fem capacity to effect and affect urban space and those within. In addition, I develop an empirical ground for the study of affect that attends to life as lived and emplaced, and that provides an analysis of postcolonial affects from the global south. In this way I push beyond narrow developmentalist approaches to global south cities to bring their rich affective life into focus.
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    Forced sexual experiences as risk factor for self-reported HIV infection among southern African lesbian and bisexual women
    (Public Library of Science, 2013) Sandfort, Theo G M; Baumann, Linda R M; Matebeni, Zethu; Reddy, Vasu; Southey-Swartz, Ian
    Even though women who have sex with women are usually understood to be at no or very low risk for HIV infection, we explored whether lesbian and bisexual women in a geographical area with high HIV prevalence (Southern Africa) get tested for HIV and whether, among those women who get tested, there are women who live with HIV/AIDS. The study was conducted in collaboration with community-based organizations in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Data were collected via written surveys of women who in the preceding year had had sex with a woman (18 years and older; N = 591). Most participating women identified as lesbian and black. Almost half of the women (47.2%) reported ever having had consensual heterosexual sex. Engagement in transactional sex (lifetime) was reported by 18.6% of all women. Forced sex by men or women was reported by 31.1% of all women. A large proportion of the women reported to ever have been tested for HIV (78.3%); number of lifetime female and male partners was independently associated with having been tested; women who had engaged in transactional sex with women only or with women and men were less likely to have been tested. Self-reported HIV prevalence among tested women who knew their serostatus was 9.6%. Besides age, the sole independent predictor of a positive serostatus was having experienced forced sex by men, by women, or by both men and women. Study findings indicate that despite the image of invulnerability, HIV/AIDS is a reality for lesbian and bisexual women in Southern Africa. Surprisingly, it is not sex with men per se, but rather forced sex that is the important risk factor for self-reported HIV infection among the participating women. HIV/AIDS policy should also address the needs of lesbian, bisexual and other women who have sex with women.
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    Histories of forced sex and health outcomes among Southern African lesbian and bisexual women: a cross-sectional study
    (BioMed Central Ltd, 2015) Sandfort, Theo; Frazer, M; Matebeni, Zethu; Reddy, Vasu; Southey-Swartz, Ian; Southern African Lesbian and Bisexual Women Research Team
    BACKGROUND: Experiences of forced sex have been shown to be prevalent in Southern Africa. Negative outcomes of forced sex have been documented in general populations of women and men and include alcohol abuse, drug use, mental health problems, mental distress, sexual health problems and poor overall health. This study is the first to examine experiences of forced sex and associated health problems among lesbian and bisexual women in Southern Africa. METHODS: This study is based on data collected as part of a collaborative endeavor involving various Southern African community-based organizations. Lesbian and bisexual women in four Southern African countries participated in a cross-sectional survey, for a total study sample of 591. RESULTS: Nearly one-third of participants had been forced to have sex at some time in their lives. Thirty-one percent of all women reported to have experienced forced sex at least once in their life: 14.9% reported forced sex by men only; 6.6% reported forced sex by women only; 9.6% had had forced sexual experiences with both men and women. Participants experienced forced sex by men as more serious than forced sex by women; forced sex by women was more likely to involve intimate partners compared to forced sex by men. Participants who experienced forced sex by men were more likely to report drug problems, mental distress and lower sense of belonging. Forced sex by women was associated with drinking problems and mental distress. Having experienced forced sex by both men and women was associated with lower sense of belonging to the LGBT community, drug use problem and mental distress. CONCLUSIONS: The findings indicate that forced sex among Southern African women is a serious issue that needs further exploration. Clinicians should be made aware of the prevalence and possible consequences of forced sex among lesbian and bisexual women. Policies and community interventions should be designed to address this problem.
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    In conversation: the politics of sex/the sex of politics
    (2014-06-19) Van der Westhuizen, Christi; Matebeni, Zethu
    How is space in South Africa’s democracy being carved by and for women and men who do not conform to gender ideas inherited from apartheid? Dr Christi van der Westhuizen, feminist, author, award-winning political columnist and research associate with the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice, University of the Free State, engages with Dr Zethu Matebeni, activist, author, filmmaker, curator and researcher on black female sexualities and genders at The Institute for Humanities in Africa, University of Cape Town. They talk about current upheavals in South Africa’s sexual and gender relations, as especially lesbians, but also young heterosexual women present alternatives and challenges to patriarchal norms. These alternatives and challenges have provoked a backlash against women who refuse to be bound by conventional and restrictive gender norms, whether through their dress code or conduct. The speakers also consider the implications of the current wave of moralism and the use and abuse of gender in the national political debate.
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    Negotiating normativities: Counter narratives of lesbian queer world making in Cape Town
    (2018) Holland-Muter, Susan; Moore, Elena; Matebeni, Zethu
    This thesis explores the different modes and meanings of queer world making (QWM) of lesbians in Cape Town. Through an analysis of in depth interviews and focus groups it reveals lesbians' constructions of their intersectional and permeable QWM through a series of counter narratives enacted in three interconnected socialities. Generational narratives reveal psycho-social processes of recognition of lesbian desire and coming into a lesbian subjectivity in a range of modes of QWM. Lesbian erotic world making centres their entitlement to enact sexual autonomy and sexual pleasure. Their counter narratives reveal how they simultaneously inhabit and extend normative gender regimes. Their productions of desire reveal a lesbian centred frame of sexual pleasure that extends the erotogenic body beyond the genitalia, innovates and transforms hegemonic libidinal zones, and extends phallocentric culture. Lesbian motherhood as a site of QWM reveals the participants' negotiations, conflict, stress and agency in relation to the 'good mother' discourse that undergirds mothering practices in South Africa. Their counter narratives reveal how they simultaneously resist and re-inscribe heteronormativity in their motherhood practice. Ironically, it is through publicly assuming their sexuality that they are they able to perform 'good motherhood'. They perform private resistance and public complicity with good mother ideologies; and simultaneously centre and destabilize the role of the father. They manage their 'difference' to the heterosexual norm by providing their children with tools to navigate heteronormativity, while simultaneously claiming being an unexceptional family. Their queer place making strategies in everyday spaces in Cape Town demonstrate how they rework racialised notions of belonging to incorporate the queer body (at times ephemerally) to make Cape Town home. Their creation of lesbian social networks and communities, embodied in lesbian social scenes and within their private homes, reveals how Cape Town is experienced as a hybrid space, their contrasting and competing narratives of the city revealing narratives of fractured belonging. QWM reveals how lesbians resist and (re)shape hegemonic identities, discourses and practices, revealing 'a mode of being in the world that is also inventing the world' (Muñoz, 1999: 121). QWM is about borderlands (Anzaldúa, 1987), where one lives within the possibility of multiple plotlines (Clandinin & Rosiek, 2006). Their queer life worlds are permeable to racialised heteronormativities. But their agency reveals multi-vocal and multivalent queer life worlds, enmeshed in the web of racialised, gendered, sexualised, aged and class-based hierarchies in Cape Town. There is no singular way of doing a lesbian subjectivity, no singular utopian notion of a lesbian community. Their differences are located in their varying political perspectives and their social positionalities of privilege and penalty, in short, how they position themselves within the 'politics of belonging' (Yuval Davis, 2006).
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    "The more you stretch them, the more they grow": same-sex marriage and the wrestle with heteronormativity
    (2019) Scott, Lwando; Moore, Elena; Matebeni, Zethu; Posel, Deborah
    With the understanding that marriage is a historically heteronormative institution that was (and in many respects continues to be) underpinned by heteronormativity, in this doctoral thesis I engage the ways that same-sex couples wrestle with heteronormativity in marriage. I move beyond the assimilationist vs. radicalisation debate that was central in same-sex marriage conversations characterised by the disagreement between Sullivan (1996) and Warner (2000). The assimilationist vs. radicalisation debate is too neat and relies on a binary logic of either or, whereas the experiences of same-sex couples in Cape Town, South Africa demonstrate a much more complicated picture. I argue that while same-sex marriage does not radically change the institution of marriage, it does provide a challenge to systems of dominance such a heteronormativity and has a transformational impact on the interpersonal relationships of same-sex couples. It is an interpersonal transformation, that with time, could possibly change the institution. Through marriage, same-sex couples provide alternative ways of reading samesex intimacy, readings that challenge the prejudice and stereotypes built on homonegativity. In wrestling with the norm, in challenging dominant gender and sexuality systems through marriage, same-sex couples are engaged in a process of stretching. They stretch themselves as they become more assertive in making claims about their sexuality, they also stretch those around them to become more open to the possibilities of same-sex intimacy. Ultimately samesex marriage provides alternative ways of reading familiar categories like “husband” and “wife” and reminds us that only our imagination is the limit in the infinite possibilities of relationship construction.