An outstanding ethnography of "sexual outlaws" in an Islamic African city
Written: Nov 06 '09 (Updated Nov 11 '09)
Product Rating:
Pros: engagingly and clearly written with extended examples
Cons: doubts about the extent to which "citizenship" is cognized by the people studied
The Bottom Line: An oustandingy ethnography about an interesting group of nonconformist and changing (Wahhabizing) historical situation in (long-Muslim) Kano, Nigeria.
Stephen_Murray's Full Review: Rudolf Gaudio - Allah Made Us: Sexual Outlaws in a...
Rudolf Gaudio's ethnography of Hausa 'yan daudu has a longitudinal perspective (1993-2006) that was not originally planned. Gaudio began his fieldwork in Kano, the largest city in northern, Muslim Nigeria with malami, ultra-respectable Islamic scholars/teachers. He soon became fascinated by stigmatized males who engaged in "women's work," primarily preparing and selling cooked food in stalls and restaurants. 'Yan daudu fit uneasily into the etic* (or is it northern Europe/North American?) categories "transgender" or "homosexual" or even "men who have sex with men."
'Yan daudu are biological males who have sex with males (mostly conventionally masculine ones) but mostly also marry and sire children (which culturally makes them "men" as well as male). In private they don an item marked as women's (either a headscarf or a wrapper around their waist). In in-group interactions they play with female pronouns, but in public use male pronouns in address and reference both for themselves and for other 'Yan daudu.
They also engage fairly relentlessly and with considerable verbal skill in gossip and what I'd call "catty" remarks, both of which are marked as unmasculine. With increasing age — and wives and children — their unmasculine verbal exuberance is muted, though they may still frequent gatherings of 'yan daudu and sponsor younger, flamboyant one (being "mothers" of sex-gender "outlaws" as well as social as well as biological fathers).
Both 'yan daudu and their ethnographer were circumspect in talking about sexual conduct — at least the text of the book is. Like ancient Romans and many Latin American males who have sex with males, taking a penis in the mouth seems more "perverted" and "revolting" than taking one in the rectum. (Fellatio has been considered "the American vice" in northern Europe, so this is more than a "circum-Mediterranean pattern extending to the southern reaches of dar-al-Islam.)
"Prostitution" is another dubiously etic category that comes into play. Payment for sex blurs with gifts to sexual partners and patron-client relationships with sexual "favors" being granted by the social inferiors. It seems that 'yan daudu have functioned more as liaisons (kawwala: pimps) between females and male customers than as prostitutes.
Women supporting themselves without husbands in Hausaland are called karuwai, which has the connotation of prostitution and stigmatizes financially indepenent women.
Islamic Shari'a law was officially imposed in 2000 in eleven northern Nigerian states. Kano is close to being in the center (east-west) of this group. The newly rigorous local governments (imposition of Shari'a not coincidentally following the national government being headed by a Yoruba Christianist) clamped down on karuwai much more than on 'yan daudu. Indeed, 'yan daudu profited from businesswomen being forced out of business, buying at bargain prices some restaurants and food stalls that had been female-owned.
Greater discretion in public and even in private became necessary. Some same-sex "wedding" parties became public scandals, and some much-publicized sentencings of women to death by stoning have not been carried out. Women drivers, however, have had stones thrown at their cars with shots of "Prostitute!"
Historically, 'yan daudu partied with independent women and around Bori possessions. Whether being possessed by spirits is a pre-Islamic residue is a controversial subject in Hausaland and in anthropological literature, as Gaudio sensibly discusses. Muslim rigorists have long regarded spirit possession as "infidel" and even "diabolical," and most certainly lacking in the proper dignity befitting a proper Muslim man.
Being able to recite apt Koranic passages is the kind of male speech that is highly valued. Skill at flinging apt proverbs or other cutting and innuendo-laden remarks is not. As in other West African societies, there were professional praise-singers (called maroka in Hausa), but this was a lower-class/commoner occupational niche.
Verbal artistry and the speech events in which it is displayed are not exactly immoral, but dubious. Play (wasa) is treated by proper Hausa men "as frivolous, vulgar, or morally suspect, the cultural practices of marginalized social groups: children, women, the poor and uneducated, rural folks, social deviants and infidels…. Respectable Muslim men in particular are expected to focus their attentions on serious matters and to have no time for 'play'" (p. 96).
Gaudio contends that 'yan daudu's cultivated proficiency in the use of stigmatized ways of speaking "reflects a defiant response to their own marginalization and stigmatization" (p. 99). Anthropologists' tend to see much as "resistance" and Gaudio goes even farther in interpreting the fatalistic "Allah made me this way" as a bid for cultural citizenship (a concept developed by Kaplan 1997). It seems to me that the Hausa 'yan daudu do not fully accept the negative social judgments about what they do (verbally, occupationally, sexually) but do not reject these fully, even in the company of fellow sex-gender "deviants" while railing at the hypocrisy of the self-righteous.
The 'yan daudu sociolect draws heavily on deploying proverbs that are not unique to 'yan daudu. Gaudio does not suggest phonological or syntactic differences (unless playing with the gender of pronouns is considered "syntactic"). Differences are pragmatic (what is done with language, playful use in particular) and lexical (an in-group code).
I found particularly interesting that some conventionally masculine males doing appropriately masculine work who "do the deed" (have sex with other males) have enough sense of identity as "homos" (a term in Hausa discourse along with masu harka—"men who do the deed") and socialize together. This contravenes my expectations based on my own experiences and that of other researchers in Latin America and material about earlier epochs in North America that "queens" hang out together, and their "boyfriends" (sexual partners) are skittish about being associated with homosexuality and/or obviously unmasculine males and far more difficult to interview than the blatantly unmasculine are (see Leznoff 1956, Kulick 1997).
Gaudio did not immediately find circles of "homos," but eventually did. I was disappointed that he did not examine how their interactions with each other (in what they call majalisai—"parliaments") differed (or not) from 'yan daudu socializing together.
He found it difficult to get even his 'yan daudu friends to permit taping their naturally occurring interactions. The "homos" in the know (able to see) were even more concerned with discretion about their secret deviances/involvement in stigmatized behavior (sexual and in some instances gender-variant). Even if they were unwilling to be recorded, I wish that Gaudio had written more of his impressions of how they use language.
Trying to elicit views about of 'yan daudu from the wives and children of 'yan daudu is literally unthinkable. They do not want to think about the compromised masculinity of their husband/father, having what I call a "will not to know," not to cognize deviance(s) of family members—let alone to talk about these with an alien researcher. As in other Muslim societies, introspection and any identity politics other than as Muslims are discouraged, and as long as duty (siring children) is done, a large zone of what is "nobody's business" (but an adult male's) exists.
Gaudio's very engagingly written, reflexive ethnography of disvalued verbal dexterity among 'yan daudu is nonetheless a work filled with insights into the complexities of gendered language use and how sex-gender nonconformists fared in a Muslim city notorious among Nigerian Christians of the south for sodomy before and after the imposition of Shari'a (with concomitant repression not only of Bori "cults" but of Sufi orders). A chapter on "playing with their faith" (that is, Islam to which 'yan daudu adhere, in some cases even in its Wahabbist rigorism) is particularly insightful. The attribution of agency for most everything to Allah provides scope for self-defense by 'yan daudu. If everything that is, everything that happens, is dependent on Allah's will, so must being a 'yan daudu— and even the hypocrisy of those who proclaim their piety, slander 'yan daudu, but also seek sex with them in the large zone of non-public homosociality in a Muslim society.
The book has a very good index, a glossary of 'yan daudu terms, some maps, and photos in which 'yan daudu faces are (discreetly) blurred.
References cited
Kaplan, Morris. 1997. Sexual Justice: Democratic Citizenship and the Politics of Desire. New York: Routledge.
Kulick, Don. 1998. Travesti: Sex, Gender and Culture among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Leznoff, Maurice. 1956. "Interviewing homosexuals." American Journal of Sociology 62:202-04
*"Etic" is a category applying cross-culturally that does not correspond with local "emic" categories used by the partiuclar people studied. 'Yan Dauda is an emic label in Gaudio's study and my review; "sexual outlaw", "homosexual," "transgendered," and "citizen" all etic labels that differ in some ways from native self-understandings and labeling.
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