Browsing by Author "Westman, Claire Stephanie"
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- Item'There's no such thing as gay': Black lesbians and nationhood in post-apartheid South Africa(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2019) Westman, Claire Stephanie; Du Toit, Louise; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Philosophy.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Within post-apartheid South Africa, matters around lesbo-phobic rape, or what is more commonly referred to as corrective rape, have come into sharp focus. Lesbo-phobic rape may be understood as the rape of lesbian women with the intention of ‘curing’ them of their homosexuality or making them into ‘real’ women. The progressive, yet contentious, South African Constitution expressly protects the rights of everybody to freely express their sexual identity, when it forbids discrimination on the basis of sex, gender or sexual orientation. The prevalence of lesbo-phobic rape appears to go against the developing nation’s values of inclusion and equality. However, when examining lesbo-phobic rape through a critical lens, as this study does, it becomes clear that lesbo-phobic rape is at once both an affront to the nation’s values, while also playing an integral role in shaping the nation’s identity. This study draws on and contributes to the rich body of literature around lesbo-phobic rape, by showing that within contemporary South Africa, lesbian women are construed as a symbolic threat to the national identity which is under construction. By incorporating visual activism and the narratives of the victims of lesbo-phobic rape, this study builds on the ideas of feminist standpoint theory in order to develop a Black lesbian standpoint framework. This framework allows for the social and historical conditions which lead to lesbo-phobic rape to be explored more thoroughly and meaningfully. Consequently, this study explores the ways in which liberal and traditional ideologies simultaneously clash and coincide, the latter often within the realm of female sexuality, with the resultant effect of entrenching women’s subordination. It is within this heteronormative patriarchal social order, that lesbian women are constituted as abject. This abjection leads to lesbian women’s lives being rendered unintelligible and unreal, while at the same time it works to reconstitute and reinforce the borders which uphold patriarchal domination. This abjection is further compounded for Black lesbian women due to the lingering effects of racist and sexist colonial ideologies. Within this socio-symbolic narrative, Black lesbian women are constituted as the ultimate threat to the nation’s patriarchal identity, thus rendering them more vulnerable to rape, even as they are portrayed as ‘unrapable’. Based on this reading of Black lesbian women, this study will develop the claim that lesbo-phobic rape can be understood as an attempt to subvert the supposed threat that Black lesbian women pose to national development. As such, it is a means through which hegemonic male control is reasserted on an individual and collective level. By drawing on the understanding of lesbo-phobic rape yielded by the critical analysis afforded by a Black lesbian standpoint, this study will finally assert that lesbo-phobic rape is a power-political strategy, similar to war rape. This analogous interpretation of war and lesbo-phobic rapes helps to highlight the strategic underpinnings of rape that arise as a result of the specific symbolic meanings attached to women within a patriarchal social order. Keywords Lesbo-phobic rape, Black lesbians, homophobia, sexual violence, abject, feminist standpoint, war rape