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3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting Information Beyond Gender Studies. Dated and With Some "Issues", July 13, 2009
I read the paperback edition of 1998 of the 1987 book. Apparently in the same year, 1987, Ifi Amadiume's previous
Afrikan Matriarchal Foundations: The Igbo Case was published as well. "Male Daughters, Female Husbands" is much more elaborate. With its more than 200 regular text pages, it isn't only much thicker, but it also uses a smaller than usual font size, easily doubling the page number in relative content. Other books use this font size for footnotes. If you have read her previous book, it makes sense to read this one, but absolutely not the other way around. The second is simply an elaboration of the first. The third,
Re-Inventing Africa: Matriarchy, Religion and Culture adds to the same content, with yet more repetitions. The fourth one,
Daughters of the Goddess, Daughters of Imperialism: African Women Struggle for Culture, Power and Democracy, I could have easily done without, even though some pages were interesting. "Male Daughters, Female Husbands" is based on much older field work (1980-82) and even older statistics (early 1970s). Dust is bound to have accumulated, even at the time of first publishing.
One more criticism on the form before the content. The author laments about other books which collapse the whole of Africa into one book. As much as I share her view that a compilation can't possibly be as elaborate, correct and authentic as a book on a single people, I have to say that she does the same in reverse. Most of her titles suggest books about the entirety of Africa, yet they are usually about Nigeria only. (Actually, there is sometimes more on the US or the UK than on non-Nigerian African countries.) This one says "AN African Society", but most of her other book titles aren't even that "vaguely correct". Why not say "Gender and Sex in Nigeria" or better yet: "Gender and Sex in Nigeria's Igbo society"? Probably less readers...
The content on gender concepts she describes is very interesting. "Female husbands" are married to the woman of the household who herself is usually married to a man. Her "wives" are more a sort of servants, she may have, say, 24 wives when she is rich. This book calls them "slaves", though not in the sense which easily comes to mind in the popular Western meaning. There are also male servants / wives to men, which aren't to be confused with Western gay marriages. "Male daughters" are blood-related women (sisters) in the household of the husband, which are seen as above the wive(s) of that husband.
The author's explanations are enlightening, for example that some forms of polygyny may have less downpressing effects on women than some forms of monogamy in the West. However, she goes too far, when connecting that to a supposed knowledge of the wife, who else other than herself the husband has sex with and that no STDs will be brought into the household. I neither agree with her in both, fact and concept.
We also learn about the colonial church and colonial government which allowed traditional male titles and multiple wives for men, but outlawed them for women. More is to learn about the authority of the women's council and women's collective sex and cooking strikes.
I find it baffling that Ifi Amadiume uses "races" in her vocabulary. Almost forgivable in the 1980s, she hasn't abandoned that wrong racist concept in the new millennium. Instead, she has an axe to grind with lesbians. In every book she makes remarks against them. It may be one thing to point out that Western lesbians shouldn't translate EVERY African concept of female-female marriage as lesbian. It is another to deny the existence of ANY African lesbian and to blame lesbians in the West for the ill fate of African Western women (the fourth book) or to have that tired old idea of something she calls "proselytizing lesbianism" in this book. Either you are or you aren't, period. Unfortunately, her view on that issue impairs her thoroughness and information flow for the reader. On the one hand we are supposed NOT to think, the Igbo female husbands have anything to do with lesbianism. On the other hand she informs us that those wives of wives in the serving position have the same rights as husbands. Without telling us, what exactly those rights are. Do they include "sexual rights". She also tells an anecdote of one of those wives complaining that no one will have sex with her, with another woman replying that she will help her with that. Was that a joke? A joke only? There is also a certain lack of information about sexuality. If she intended to convince the reader of no lesbian connotation, that may be true or not, in any case, she did a poor job in tackling that issue.
You may also be interested in
Daughters of Anowa: African Women and Patriarchy and
The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, both about the clash of Western and African feminism.
When Men Are Women: Manhood Among The Gabra Nomads Of East Africa has a similar non-gay gender concept, but about biological males. While the similarly titled
Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies of African Homosexualities is a compilation book about the whole of Africa and is indeed about lesbian and gay contexts or what could be translated as similar.
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