Allah Made Us

Sexual Outlaws in an Islamic African City

Rudolf Pell Gaudio

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781444356625
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

A rich and engrossing account of 'sexual outlaws' in the Hausa-speaking region of northern Nigeria, where Islamic law requires strict separation of the sexes and different rules of behavior for women and men in virtually every facet of life.

• The first ethnographic study of sexual minorities in Africa, and one of very few works on sexual minorities in the Islamic world
• Engagingly written, combining innovative, ethnographic narrative with analyses of sociolinguistic transcripts, historical texts, and popular media, including video, film, newspapers, and song-poetry
• Analyzes the social experiences and expressive culture of 'yan daudu (feminine men in Nigerian Hausaland) in relation to local, national, and global debates over gender and sexuality at the turn of the twenty-first century
• Winner of the 2009 Ruth Benedict Prize in the category of "Outstanding Monograph"

1

INTRODUCING ‘YAN DAUDU

Hajiya Asabe had a feminine name and a handsome, mustached face. In the room he rented in Kano’s infamous Sabon Gari neighborhood, he received a daily stream of visitors: girlfriends stopping by to gossip, out-of-town relatives seeking financial assistance, flirtatious boyfriends, hopeful suitors. People knew they could count on finding Hajiya Asabe in his room because, as a self-described karuwa, or ‘prostitute,’ he woke up late most mornings and stayed close to home during the day. Most evenings he spent at a nearby nightclub where a modestly upscale, male clientele came to listen to live performances of Hausa and Arab music, to drink beer or a nonalcoholic alternative, and to socialize with the women and ‘yan daudu, feminine men like Hajiya Asabe, who served as the club’s unofficial hosts. (Regular customers had to pay a door fee; women and ‘yan daudu did not.) Among the ‘yan daudu who frequented the club, Hajiya Asabe stood out with his stylish dress and a graceful, self-confident demeanor that was both charming and haughty. It was this demeanor that had made me notice him during my earliest visits to the club, and that made him so alluring to the men who sought his company.

One day late in the dry season in 1994, I went to pay Hajiya Asabe a visit. As I entered the cement courtyard, I found him kneeling on a small mat outside his room. Not wanting to disturb him as he performed the late-afternoon la’asar prayer, I took a seat on a nearby bench while the compound’s other residents – most of them non-Muslims from southern Nigeria – went about their regular activities. Once he finished praying, Hajiya Asabe joined me on the bench and called for Mama Ayo, the middle-aged Yoruba woman who managed the compound, to bring me a cold beer. Hajiya Asabe did not drink alcohol, but he was unfailingly hospitable towards his guests, and in the early days of our friendship he always offered me a bottle of Gulder, the most expensive beer on the market, whenever I came by to visit. Although Hajiya Asabe and I had been casually acquainted for almost a year, we had only recently begun spending time together, so we were still getting to know one another. After the usual exchange of greetings and small talk, he complimented me on my command of Hausa, the major language of northern Nigeria, and suggested that all that remained for me to become a ‘complete Hausa’ [cikakken Bahaushe] was to embrace Islam. He even offered to slaughter a ram in my honor if I were to convert. Hajiya Asabe’s religious zeal astonished me. After all, the social milieu in which I knew him was hardly one that most people would characterize as Islamically devout.

“But how could I become a Muslim?” I asked him, clutching my bottle of Gulder. “I like this,” I reminded him, pointing to the beer. “And I like harka” – the ‘deed’ – that is, sex between men.

“Come now, Sani,” Hajiya Asabe replied, addressing me by my Hausa name. “Muslims do these things too. They do them more than anyone!”

My first interpretation of this surprising exchange was that, for Hajiya Asabe, being a Muslim was less important than being Hausa, and had more to do with the performance of cultural rituals than it did with accepting the moral precepts of Islam. His irreverent claim that Muslims engaged in forbidden acts like drinking and homosexuality “more than anyone” was clearly facetious, yet I knew it was based on his experiences in Nigeria and Saudi Arabia, where he had performed the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, more than once. Like many other poor pilgrims, Hajiya Asabe had overstayed his visa on several occasions in order to live and work illegally in the port city of Jiddah. While most undocumented Nigerians take on menial jobs that are Islamically legal, Hajiya Asabe supported himself through what he called karuwanci [‘prostitution’], providing social and sexual companionship to men, some of whom might also enjoy the company of female prostitutes as well as marijuana, cocaine, or even alcohol. His most recent sojourn had ended over a year earlier, when he was arrested, deported and forced to leave behind most of the wealth he had accumulated. The circumstances of Hajiya Asabe’s expulsion from Saudi Arabia weighed heavily on him, yet his day-to-day practices signaled a decidedly positive attitude towards the country. He dressed in Saudi men’s fashions, listened to cassette tapes of Arab music, and peppered his speech with expressions from Arabic. Though he was unable to read in any language, he kept Arabiclanguage magazines prominently displayed in his room, along with perfume bottles and other mementos. He also performed the five daily prayers more consistently, and more visibly, than most other ‘yan daudu I knew.

Despite his apparent disregard of certain aspects of Islamic morality, I soon discovered that Hajiya Asabe’s commitment to his faith was more sincere than I had initially thought; his irreverence had definite limits. Like many ethnographers, I learned of these limits accidentally, by transgressing them in a way that left me embarrassed but enlightened. On another visit to Sabon Gari, when Hajiya Asabe and I were sitting in his room to escape the midday sun, I sought to explain my ethnographic interest in the language practices of ‘yan daudu. With my limited, graceless Hausa, I told him how I had initially come to Nigeria to learn about the speech of malamai, Islamic scholars, but that I had eventually lost interest in that topic. “Staying with them is not pleasurable,” I said, “and their talk is not interesting.” At this Hajiya Asabe’s facial expression suddenly changed from that of a sympathetic listener to one showing hurt and indignation. “Sani,” he reprimanded me quietly. “This is our religion.”

Cultural and Sexual Citizenship in Northern Nigeria

In the Hausa-speaking region of Northern Nigeria, prevailing interpretations of Shari’a, Islamic law, mandate a strict separation of the sexes and different rules of behavior for women and men in virtually every facet of life. ‘Yan daudu break those rules. As men who are said to talk and act ‘like women,’ they are widely perceived to be witty and clever, but they are also persecuted for their presumed involvement in heterosexual and homosexual prostitution. This book is about ‘yan daudu (singular:

) in and around Kano, the economic and cultural center of Hausaland, whose government joined that of eleven other northern Nigerian states in officially adopting Shari’a in 2000.¹ (See Figures 1.1 and 1.2.) An ancient Islamic emirate that grew rich from the trans-Saharan trade, Kano today is one of Nigeria’s and Africa’s largest cities. It is also the hub of a transnational network of ‘yan daudu, independent women, and other gender and sexual minorities that links cities and towns throughout northern Nigeria with Hausa-speaking communities in other regions and countries.

Fig. 1.1 Approximate extent of Hausa city-states since 1810 C.E.

‘Yan daudu are most visible in urban markets and motor-parks (taxi and bus stations) where they cook and sell food to male workers and travelers. Some ‘yan daudu live or spend time at ‘women’s houses’ where they and ‘independent women’ [mata masu zaman kansu, literally ‘women who live on their own’] entertain male visitors. The term gidan mata [‘women’s house’] is often translated as ‘brothel,’ reflecting the popular image of independent women as ‘prostitutes’ and of ‘yan daudu as their ‘pimps’ or as ‘homosexual prostitutes’ themselves. The translations are misleading. Some independent women, as they generally prefer to be called, and some ‘yan daudu, especially younger ones, do sometimes have sex with (conventionally masculine) men in exchange for money or other gifts; and the women, ‘yan daudu or other men who facilitate these interactions are often given a kind of tip.² But karuwanci is not simply commercialized sex work. Rather, like the malaya prostitutes in colonial Nairobi,³ the independent women and ‘yan daudu who live and work at women’s houses provide a number of services other than sex: they serve food and drink, play cards and board games, and engage their visitors in friendly, flirtatious conversation.⁴

Fig. 1.2 Nigeria. Shaded area indicates the twelve states that have officially adopted Shari’a since 1999.

Source: Courtesy of User:Morwen according to GNU Free Documentation License http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.xhtml

While cooking and serving food is considered women’s work, ‘yan daudu often describe their other feminine social practices – songs, dances, gestures, clothing and language – as ‘play’ [wasa]. ‘Play’ accurately reflects the pleasure these practices bring to ‘yan daudu and others, but it belies their serious, material consequences. ‘Women’s talk’ [maganar mata], for example, is useful for those ‘yan daudu who work as intermediaries [kawalai] between male patrons and independent women, for by engaging men in flirtatious banter ‘yan daudu are often able to make more satisfying, and potentially lucrative, matches. On a more covert basis, moving and talking ‘like women’ helps some ‘yan daudu attract their own friends, sex partners and patrons. These benefits are mitigated, however, by the material ways ‘yan daudu are made to suffer: they are regularly harassed and ostracized for their alleged immorality, and subject to abuse at the hands of police and young male hooligans, who can assault, rape, steal or extort money from them with impunity.

Nigeria – a member of OPEC – is rich with oil and other resources, but ‘yan daudu, like other Nigerians, are overwhelmingly poor and illiterate, and they suffer from the economic deterioration wrought by years of corruption and mismanagement by politicians, military dictators, businessmen, multinational corporations and international lenders.⁵ In addition to the impoverishment caused by this corruption, ‘yan daudu and karuwai are often scapegoated for it – accused of conspiring with corrupt ‘big men’ [manyan mutane] who use their ill-gotten wealth to satisfy their legendary appetites for sex and other pleasures. From a cosmological standpoint, many Hausa Muslims believe their collective suffering is God’s punishment for disobeying Him, and Muslim leaders commonly blame karuwai and ‘yan daudu for promoting such disobedience. In the last half of the twentieth century, if not earlier, Northern Nigerian states, emirates and municipalities periodically enacted morality campaigns similar to the ones that accompanied the recent adoption of Shari’a; most of my ‘yan daudu acquaintances had been arrested or worse at some time or other.⁶ What was different in 2000 was that these campaigns were not confined to a particular territory or jurisdiction, and they did not quickly dissipate; rather, they constituted a broad, and seemingly more durable, movement to construct a Northern Nigerian public – a kind of nation, often termed simply Arewa [‘the North’] – supposedly unified by its adherence to orthodox Islam.

While ‘yan daudu have been subject to both official and unofficial persecution for at least several decades, with the adoption of Shari’a they became even more vulnerable. Why have ‘yan daudu been targeted? How, in the face of these and other challenges (including poverty and HIV/AIDS) have ‘yan daudu’s social networks managed to survive? What do ‘yan daudu’s experiences tell us about gender and sexuality, culture and nationalism, religion and power in Northern Nigeria, in other postcolonial societies, and in the contemporary world at large? As this book will show, the answers to these questions lie to a great extent in the ways ‘yan daudu use language, their bodies, and other media to ‘play,’ as they put it, with the boundaries of what it means to be male and female. For better and for worse, ‘yan daudu attract the attention of many Hausa Muslims because, in the time since Nigeria received its independence from Great Britain in 1960, Islamic norms of gender and sexuality have come to be seen as symbols of Northern Nigerian culture – a culture that some people imagine is threatened by, and in competition with, other parts of Nigeria and the Judeo-Christian West.⁷ Islamic reformists’ ideas about how ‘good’ Muslim women and men should talk, dress and act are a central element of these norms, and it is to these ideologies that many people refer when they condemn ‘yan daudu as ‘bad’ Muslims and ‘worthless people’ [mutanen banza].⁸

This book describes ‘yan daudu’s social practices as claims to and performances of cultural citizenship. The concept is similar to what is often called ‘identity,’ but I use it here to emphasize certain things. First, as defined in political theory, the concept of ‘citizen’ is defined in opposition to other social actors who do not enjoy full citizenship rights because of their age, gender, caste, race, disability, or other forms of embodied social difference. ‘Citizenship’ thus emphasizes the hierarchical nature of social constructions of identity, and the negotiations and conflicts that inevitably take place over who can do what, where, when, with whom and with what resources. Second, while legal citizenship is defined with respect to political units (states), ‘cultural citizenship’ calls attention to the fact that identities are embedded within particular social fields and institutions, including religion, commerce, work and leisure. Collectively, these (non-state) social fields are known in political theory as ‘civil society’ and in communication theory as the ‘public sphere.’⁹ Third, the term ‘cultural’ reminds us that participation in social life is not solely a matter of power relations, but also needs to be understood in terms of aesthetics, emotions and beliefs.¹⁰

‘Cultural citizenship’ thus refers to the things different people do in their day-to-day lives (as well as the things they don’t or can’t do), and the effects their actions have for them and for others.¹¹ These effects can be understood at various scales of social and spatial organization, from small-scale ‘communities of practice’ such as households, workplaces and neighborhoods, where social interactions are often face-to-face,¹² to large-scale ‘imagined communities’ such as nations, religions, political movements, classes, genders and races.¹³ As an intermediate level of social-geographical organization, cities provide a focal point for empirical research and theorizing that link these smaller and larger scales.¹⁴ Insofar as participation in the public sphere is constrained by and reproduces differences of gender or sexuality, we can speak of sexual citizenship as an integral aspect of cultural citizenship.¹⁵

As a linguistic anthropologist, I am especially attentive to the importance of language as both a medium of social participation and an object of criticism and control. At the same time, I am mindful that language is one of many media that human beings use to fashion and transform the relationships, communities and institutions that are meaningful to them. With respect to ‘yan daudu, this book explores linguistic and bodily performances – ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine,’ playful and serious – that challenge the arguments of Islamic reformists, African nationalists and others who insist that ‘Islam’ or ‘African culture’ is inherently hostile to, or devoid of, gender and sexual minorities. I also aim to show how ‘yan daudu’s citizenship claims challenge the arguments of Western-educated scholars and activists who assume that ‘modern’ and ‘global’ constructions of gender and sexuality are inevitably based on Euro-American models.

Who are ‘Yan Daudu?

When I describe ‘yan daudu as ‘feminine men’ to people from the USA and other Western societies, I am often asked, “Are they gay?” The answer is not straightforward. In the earliest days of my research, when all I knew about ‘yan daudu was what other people had written or said about them, I imagined I might, as a gay man, be able to become involved in their largely hidden social world. I was intrigued the first few times that I saw ‘yan daudu strolling and dancing at nightclubs and outdoor parties, and could not help but compare these images to gay life at home. Although subsequent events forced me to reconsider, but not to reject outright, the naive idea that ‘yan daudu were men with whom I could communicate on the basis of a shared sexuality, my interactions with them introduced me to a thriving social world of men who acknowledged and acted upon their sexual attraction to other men. These men comprise what could arguably be called a Hausa homosexual community, though their social life differs in important ways from gay life in the West.

One comparison that seemed apt in the 1990s was that, as drag queens and ‘fairies’ did for straight-acting gays in mid-twentieth-century New York City,¹⁶ ‘yan daudu’s visibility and social proximity to karuwai attracted conventionally masculine ‘men who seek men’ [maza masu neman maza] and permitted them to meet without blowing their cover. ‘Yan daudu often call these men ‘civilians’ [fararen-hula], ‘yan aras (an in-group term with no independent meaning), or simply ‘men’ [maza]. The men typically identify themselves as masu harka [‘people who do the deed’], a ‘secret’ code term that embraces both ‘yan daudu and ‘civilians’ and is preferred over the standard Hausa term,

[‘sodomite,’ literally ‘people of Lot’]. Many masu harka, including those who speak little English, also descri...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• LIST OF FIGURES
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• NOTES ON ORTHOGRAPHY, TRANSLATION AND TRANSCRIPTION
• 1: INTRODUCING ‘YAN DAUDU
• 2: PEOPLE OF THE BARIKI
• 3: OUT IN THE OPEN
• 4: WOMEN’S TALK, MEN’S SECRETS
• 5: PLAYING WITH FAITH
• 6: MEN ON FILM
• 7: LOST AND FOUND IN TRANSLATION
• EPILOGUE: MAY GOD KEEP A SECRET
• GLOSSARY OF HAUSA TERMS
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX