Family matters: same-sex relations and kinship practices in Kenya

Guided by social justice and sexual health concerns, scholars of same-sex sexualities in Africa have mainly examined related conflicts and inequities, generating an unbalanced emphasis on homophobia. Following Stella Nyanzi's plea for a broader exploration of queer sexuality in Africa, we move beyond the strictly sexual sphere to study the kinship arrangements of same-sex couples in Kenya. These couples rely on the different possibilities afforded by kinship – in both its inclusive and exclusive capacities – to create accommodation and acceptance. Capturing the complexities and paradoxes of social life, the ethnographic study of kinship practices in everyday life shows how homophobia and accommodation can co-exist. Furthermore, the embeddedness of same-sex relationships in kinship structures and the subscription of same-sex couples to the same norms held by cross-sex couples clearly indicates the difficulty of construing these forms of relatedness as essentially different from other kinship formations. Thus ‘queering queer Africa’ requires not only taking a broader perspective and looking beyond what is usually classified as ‘queer’ but also un-queering what at first appears as queer and thus ‘queerying’ the barriers and the range of possibilities that characterize the lives and subjectivities of people with same-sex desires.