Queering Discourses of Coming Out in South Africa

The performative act of coming out' authenticates a homosexual identity and, in the South African context, the progressive gay and lesbian movement, the Lesbian and Gay Equality Project (LGEP), considers it to be the right thing to do for closeted homosexuals. However, coming out has been critiqued by post-structural and queer theorists such as Michel Foucault, Judith Butler and Karen Kopelson who argue that coming out is problematic because it forces a person into an already established identity category, strengthens the regulation of sexual categories, and is complicit in the reconstitution of these categories. Following these theorists, in this article I argue that when a person comes out as a homosexual in South Africa, they enter a fixed system which makes it difficult to question those norms that govern the binary heterosexual / homosexual. Key to my argument is that the term homosexual' is unstable; however, coming out stabilises it and, thus, forces a person into a category that undermines the fluidity of all sexual identities. The data for this exploration is drawn from three non-fiction gay and lesbian books and the findings in all three show how coming out is seen as a progressive step not only to resolve an identity crisis, but also to combat homophobia, and conservative family and social norms. At no point are those norms that govern the homosexual / heterosexual binary and which give rise to the crises of homosexuality in the first place questioned. This article argues that, as long as it is embedded in the positive discourses of progress, health and enlightenment, the coming out narrative will remain immune to critique of the role that it plays in strengthening the homosexual / heterosexual binary.