My nationality, race, gender, class, and sexuality affected my research in different ways. As a white woman, some black and coloured Namibian and South African LGBT activists regarded me suspiciously until I spoke; then they realized that I was American. Whiteness has a long troubled history in both countries, and potential research participants interpreted my race and nationality through a lens affected by apartheid laws and policies (Steyn 2001). In Namibia, on a couple of occasions, staff or members who did not know I was observing interactions at Sister Namibia or The Rainbow Project greeted me in Afrikaans, as was customary among individuals speaking with those they perceived to be white Namibians. After I sheepishly confessed that my Afrikaans was nonexistent, staff and members initially regarded me as an oddity, but soon adjusted to my presence.
Most staff and members of LGBT SMOs welcomed and accommodated my presence after I explained my research to them. After I introduced myself to staff and members, several inquired, “Why are you doing research here?” I interpreted their question to mean, “Why did you leave the United States to come to Namibia/South Africa to conduct your research?” I explained my interest in comparing how SMOs make decisions under differing political circumstances, but the question of whether I was there to study otherness and to exoticize political organizing around sexual and gender minority issues remained. Ethnographers historically had unsavory connections to colonialism in Africa (Bleys 1995; McClintock 1995). This did not exempt the type of research in which I engaged; answering the difficult question about why I was doing research in Namibia and South Africa with a response such as “to learn about [social movement] processes, I had to go somewhere” would have been disingenuous (Zabusky 2002:121). I explained the motivation for my selection of Johannesburg and Windhoek as comparative case study sites in terms of my interest in showing social movement scholars who tend to study movements in the global North that some theories and concepts may have little bearing in the global South. Staff and members seemed to understand this explanation, but they also wanted to know how this research would benefit the movement and their organizations (Steady 2004). I explained that it would take some time to analyze my data and to formulate conclusions. A way I hope to be able to give back to these organizations is to deposit my findings with them and at the Gay and Lesbian Archives in Johannesburg.
Being a woman facilitated my entry into two organizations, the Forum for the Empowerment of Women (FEW) and Sister Namibia, probably because both organizations define women as part of their targeted constituency (see Chapter Four). My dress and appearance also provoked interesting questions from staff and members about whether I identified as “butch” or “femme.” I typically dressed very casually in keeping with the attire of staff and members at both organizations, and I confined my wardrobe largely to black outfits. I wore no makeup and almost always wore running shoes to ease my walking in Johannesburg and Windhoek. At Behind the Mask, FEW, and The Rainbow Project, staff and members speculated about my gender identity. Interestingly, such conversations demonstrated how I became a subject of inquiry, much in the way that organizations held my interest as a subject of research. I asked probing questions about what “butch” and “femme” meant for LGBT SMO staff and members. Some believed that I would identify as butch because I dressed so sportily and was tall and large in comparison to some Namibian and South African women, while others interpreted my customary silence and helpfulness, such as when I offered to get others coffee or tea while I prepared my own, as “femme” behavior. Such conversations demonstrated that some gender categories and behavior (dress and physical bearing) might fit into a typology of “butch” and “femme,” but not all gender categories were translatable as I explicate in Chapter 6.
My sexuality became a topic of conversation for staff and members at a couple of SMOs (Swarr 2003). After the director of FEW granted me access to the organization, she asked me how I identified in terms of sexuality and stated, “You can tell me that it’s none of my business.” Fearful that she might revoke her decision, I answered her, which seemed to satisfy her. She asserted, “At least you’re one of us. There’s nothing I can stand more than straight people studying us.” She reclassified me as less “other” than before I answered her question. Staff and members also inquired about my sexuality in more circumspect ways, as an attempt to gauge my interest in LGBT politics generally and a way to get to know me as a person. Some LGBT activists and antigay opponents assumed that those who supported sexual and gender minority organizing were lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. Understanding this dimension of their query, I answered their questions as best I could, though I instituted boundaries whenever possible to ensure that I did not disclose information that would restrict my access to the organization or potential interview participants.
Designing a comparative research project that involves multiple qualitative methods takes a great deal of thought and refinement. The project that I imagined doing before I entered the field is not the research I ended up conducting. For instance, I discarded a part of my project involving the observation of LGBT public and commercial spaces in Johannesburg and Windhoek because social movement organizations did not use them to recruit members or supporters or to advertise their work. I continued to modify the observational and interview templates I routinely used to reflect how my understanding of organizations’ strategic choices had changed. I did not want to lose or miss any data, a fear that I share with many qualitative researchers. Employing multiple methods allowed me to increase my confidence that I am telling the story about Namibian and South African LGBT SMOs’ strategic choices about the visibility and invisibility as accurately as possible.
4.0 HOW NAMIBIAN AND SOUTH AFRICAN LGBT SOCIAL MOVEMENT