In her classic 1987 book Male Daughters, Female Husbands, Ifi Amadiume accused lesbian-identified women from the African diaspora of using “prejudiced interpretations of African situation to justify their choice of sexual alternatives,” taking “such practices as-woman-to-woman marriages as lesbian.” Amadiume condemned such interpretations as “totally inapplicable, shocking and offensive” to the women whose culture was being represented.1 The interpretation in question was that of Audre Lorde, who noted that woman-woman marriages were an institutionalized facet of women's independence in West Africa, sometimes erotic and sometimes aimed at building a lineage. Lorde's observation was based on Melville Herskovits's 1938 ethnography of Dahomey, which described woman-woman marriages and stated that some of them were lesbian in nature. Her purpose was to note diasporic women's profound legacy of institutionalized female intimacy.2
Neither argument has aged well. Recent forms of political homophobia overshadow Amadiume's urgent reminder of African communities' rights to...
