The History of Same-Sex Marriage
Βy William N. Eskridge
Βy William N. Eskridge
.
NON-WESTERN CULTURES
here is strong evidence demonstrating the existence of same-sex unions, including legally recognized marriages, in Native American, African, and Asian cultures. I shall not attempt to survey all the cultures here and shall instead introduce three recurring patterns: same-sex marriages with gender-bending berdaches; same-sex unions serving social, economic, and companionate needs; and male same-sex marriages for purposes of maintaining a family lineage.
Same-Sex Marriages with Berdaches
Accounts by stunned Spanish explorers, missionaries, and bureaucrats provide early evidence of same-sex relationships and marriages in the Americas. Francisco Lopez de Gomara's History of the Indies (1552), one of many examples, reported that "the men marry other men who are impotent or castrated and go around like women, perform their duties and are used as such and who cannot carry or use the bow." Same-sex unions between women were also reported: Pedro de Magalhaes's The Histories of Brazil (1576) described Native American women in northeastern Brazil who "give up all the duties of women and imitate men, and follow men's pursuits as if they were not women.... [E]ach has a woman to serve her, to whom she says she is married, and they treat each other and speak with each other as man and wife."
What these accounts describe is the berdache tradition, which was institutionalized in the West Indies and throughout what is now the United States, as well as in the Aztec, Mayan, and Incan civilizations. The Native American berdache is a person who deviates from his or her traditional gender role, taking on some of the characteristics and perceived responsibilities of the opposite sex. The berdache does not, however, cross gender lines so much as mix them. Indeed, many Naive American cultures considered berdaches to be a third sex. Most important for the present study, berdaches (like We'wha) married individuals of the same sex, and those marriages were recognized by Native American laws and cultures.
Outsiders' depictions of the Native American berdache have often been colored by their antihomosexual attitudes. The accounts of Spanish authors such as those quoted above usually expressed shock and offered Native American same-sex unions as evidence of these cultures' barbarism, which they sought to correct. Until the twentieth century, accounts by Western anthropologists suppressed the tradition. The first detailed academic study focusing on Native American same-sex unions was George Devereux's article on the Mohave berdaches. Devereux reported that gender-crossing men (alyha) and women (hwame) had long been tolerated by the Mohave and that their samesex marriages were institutionalized and socially accepted. Thus, under tribal custom and law alyha married (and divorced) men and hwame married (and divorced) women.
Ethnographers and anthropologists studying the culture and evolution of various Native American tribes throughout this century discovered similar berdache institutions. In The Spirit and the Flesh Walter Williams draws from earlier accounts as well as his own field work and synthesizes existing scholarship probing the Native American berdache tradition. Williams concludes that berdaches have been an accepted and in fact valued part of culture and law in a large majority of Native American tribes. Most academic attention has been focused on male berdaches, like We'wha, who frequency became revered leaders in their communities. Often, a male child was consciously raised to be a berdache who would assume a special role in the community, mediating between the spiritual and physical worlds. Marriages between men and male berdaches were widespread among Native American cultures. As a general matter, same-sex marriages tended to conform to traditional Native American marriage patterns, in which labor was divided between the wife, who kept house, and the husband, who hunted and directed the household. The men who married male berdaches were usually attracted to women as well as to men and were not themselves considered berdaches. Many such men preferred berdache wives for economic reasons, as berdaches would not only do the housework but also help with hunting and other traditionally male activities. While some men believed that marrying a berdache guaranteed greater marital stability, others pursued male berdaches on the basis of simple sexual attraction.
Although they have received less academic attention, female berdaches represented an important cultural institution in most Native American communities. Like her male counterpart, the female berdache assumed many of the responsibilities traditionally performed by the opposite sex, including hunting and heading a household. And she would commonly marry another woman. Female berdaches and woman-woman marriages were integral to women's ability to achieve a higher status in most Native American cultures. Thus, a female berdache would marry a non-berdache woman and would assume a position as head of the household, accepting responsibility for hunting and other traditionally "male" jobs.
Most American scholarship about berdaches draws from Native American cultures, but the phenomenon is worldwide. According to en authoritative survq of sexual practices around the wodd in 1951:
In 49 (64 percent) of the 76 societies other than our own for which information is available, homosexual activities of one sort or another are considered normal and socially acceptable for certain members of the community....
In many cases this [same-sex] behavior occurs within the framework of courtship and marriage, the man who takes the part of the female being recognized as a berdache and treated as a woman. In other words, a genuine rnateship is involved.
Anthropological fieldwork since 1951 has not only confirmed but deeply elaborated on this observation. Particular attention has been paid to the mugawe of the Kenyan Meru, the Siberian Chuckchee, Tahitian mahus, and the Indian hijras. With the exception of the hijras, the unions of these berdaches to people of the same sex have been treated by their indigenous cultures as culturally and legally recognized marriages.
Functional Same-Sex Unions
Same-sex unions in non-Western cultures have typically served companionate, economic, or cultural functions. This section will sample several prominent examples of same-sex unions that display different kinds of functions. Often arising in homosocial situations, the following examples involve bonding between two people of the same sex. The bonding may be sexual, but its main functions transcend the partners' intimacy. The unions serve important functions for the partners:: economic, professional, or social in nature. The unions may be temporary and are not necessarily legal marriages, though they usually involve marriage-like features and even terminology.
Military "Wives. " The most common functional union in history involves pair bonding in military settings. Many societies have institutionalized same-sex relationships, akin to the Achilles-Patroclus and Gilgamesh-Enkidu relationships of ancient myth, among warriors or soldiers. The samurai warriors of feudal and Tokagawa Japan went to battle accompanied by apprentice warrior-lovers." Literary sources, such as The Great Mirror of Male Love by Ihara Saikaku, depict these relationships as highly choreographed and romantic, with strong loyalty on each side. The beginning of a relationship between an apprentice (wakashu) and a samurai involved a formal exchange of written and spoken vows, giving the relationship a marriage-like status. Each participant promised to love the other in this life and the next-one step beyond our "till death do us part." As in marriage, sex was only one element of the samurai relationship. The samurai was supposed to provide social backing, emotional support, and a model of manliness for the apprentice. In exchange, the latter was expected to be worthy of his lover by being a good student of samurai manhood.
The warrior tradition epitomized by the samurai can be illustrated in African cultures even more vividly. E. E. Evans-Pritchard documented the institution of "boy wives" for military men among the Azande in what is now Sudan. The Azande considered the relationship a marriage both legally and culturally. The warrior paid bride-price (some five spears or more) to the parents of his boy and performed services for them as he would have done had he married their daughter (if he proved to be a good son-in-law they might later replace the son by a daughter). Also, if another man had relations with his boy, he could sue him at court for adultery. The warrior addressed the boy as diare (wife), and the boy addressed the warrior as kumbami (husband). The relationship was both sexual (the warrior would have intercourse with the boy between his thighs) and functional (the boy performed traditional wifely duties such as housekeeping). Anthropologists have reported finding similar institutions in other African societies.
Companionate Unions. Marriage-like same-sex unions have been documented in China during the Yuan and Ming dynasties (12641644).5΅ Useful evidence comes from the widely read seventeenth-century stories of Li Yu. Many of his stories speak openly and approvingly of companionate love affairs between men, a practice particularly associated with Fujian and other provinces in southern China. In at least one story Li Yu relates the tragic romance of two men (Jifang and Ruiji) who become "husband and wife." In describing the couple's wedding, Li Yu goes out of his way to emphasize that the couple adhered to the formal requisites of marriage (bride-price, the various wedding rituals), giving some indication that similar same-sex marriages were common in southern China and perhaps elsewhere in the region. It has been inferred from Li Yu's work and other evidence that there were "institutionalized relationships betvveen males in some areas, and that these relationships were often expressed in terms of marriage and carried out in [the same] social forms connected with 'regular' marriage." Same-sex relationships elsewhere were celebrated as "brotherly" unions, "sworn friendships ' and even adoptions, that is, as close but platonic relationships reminiscent of those solemnized in the early Christian Church's enfraternization ceremonies. Although the Manchus of the Qing dynasty sought to discourage same-sex relationships, outlawing same-sex eroticism in 1740, these alliances continued for generations after peaking in the seventeenth century.
Less is known of female same-sex unions in China. While some historians credit accounts of woman-woman unions during the Qing dynasty as evidence of marriage-like institutions, the first well-documented unions were those associated with the "marriage resistance movement" in southern China in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The development of China's international silk industry during this period helped many women attain their economic independence from men. After acquiring this newfound freedom, thousands of women renounced marriage and became sou hei (literally, "self-combers"). Upon deciding to become sou hei, a woman took a formal ceremonial vow to remain unwed at least for a time, moved out of her parents' house, and built "spinster houses" with other sou hei. These women formed sisterhoods in which small groups of women (typically five to seven) would bond together for mutual support and affection. Andrea Sankar reports that physical as well as emotional bonds often developed between two or three of the sisters.52 Other scholars believe that sisterhood relationships shared many attributes of marriage, including a ceremony with witnesses and a division of labor within the family unit.
Initiatory Unions. Same-sex relationships have also frequently served as social or even sexual initiations prefatory to marriage. An interesting example is the "mummy-baby" games among Basotho girls in Lesotho.s4 In contrast to women in many other African societies, those in Lesotho are particularly vulnerable, both economically and socially, because they are dependent on males who tend to be employed as migrant workers. For these women, relationships outside of marriage serve as important support networks, and young girls are initiated into such relationships beginning with mummy-baby games played in their grade school years. In a mummy-baby relationship, an older girl, acting as "mummy ' develops an intimate, maternal association with a younger one, the baby. Typically, the mummy presents gifts to the baby, who reciprocates by obeying and respecting the mummy. The two share emotional and informational exchanges and are physically, and sometimes sexually, intimate. Rather than displacing marriage, these relationships help to prepare younger girls for marriage, including its rockier moments. Scholars have documented similar female-female friendships in other African societies.
The most interesting example of same-sex initiation relationship is the "ritualized homosexuality" developed by aboriginal populations of Australia and the islands of Melanesia. This is the term anthropologist Gilbert Herdt uses to describe the events whereby a boy entering manhood would engage in a short-term sexual relationship with an older man.s6 By implanting his semen within the boy, the older man is thought to empower his younger partner, helping him to complete the journey to virility and manhood. According to Herdt, about fifty Melanesian Societies practice some form of ritualized homosexuality. In some communities the ritualized man-boy relationship serves as a prelude to a traditional different-sex marriage. "A most striking aspect of social organization in societies with ritualized male homosexuality concerns the overlap between marriage and homosexual relationships." That is, by inseminating a boy the older male is believed not only to 6cilitate the boy's passage into manhood but also to prepare him for his marriage to a woman. Many of the Melanesian societies institutionalizing this ritual treat marriage not as an exchange relationship involving the payment of bride-price but as a complex method of bonding two families. In keeping with this notion, some of these cultures require a boy seeking to enter into marriage with a woman to submit sexually to the woman's brother. "Thus, life force (as semen) flows between same-sex and different partners, linking individuals and groups in complex chains of mutual dependentcy and obligation."57
Woman Marriage and Female Husbands
A form of same-sex union that may be unique to African cultures is the institution of "woman marriage." Noted as a curiosity by earlier researchers, the institution was not given serious attention until anthropologists Eileen Jensen Krige and MelviDe Herskovits publicized it in the 1930s.55 The following is an early description of woman marriage among the Nuer of Sudan:
What seems to us, but not at all to the Nuer, a somewhat strange union is that in which a woman marries another woman and counts as the peter [father] of the children born of the wife. Such marriages are by no means uncommon in Nuerland, and they must be regarded as a form of simple legal marriage, for the woman-husband marries her wife in exactly the same way as a man marries a woman.... We may perhaps refer to this kind of union as woman-marriage.
A woman who marries in this way is generally barren, and for this reason counts in some respects as a man.... [I]f she is rich she may marry several wives. She is dheir legal husband and can demand damages if they have relations with men without her consent. She is the peter [father] of their children, and on the marriages of their daughters she receives the cattle which go to the father's side in the distribution of bridewealth. Her children are called after her, as though she were a man, and I was told that they address her as "father."
Krige describes woman marriage as "the institution by which it is possible for a woman to give bridewealth for, and marry, a woman, over whom and whose offspring she has full control, delegating to a male genitor the duties of procreation." She suggests that woman marriage is "closely bound up with rights and duties arising from the social structure" of the culture, a "flexible institution that can be utilized in a number of different ways to meet a number of different situations."60 For example, in African cultures where women occupy a high position and can acquire property or other forms of wealth, woman marriage is one way that a woman may strengthen her economic position and establish her household. Ifeyinwa Olinke, whose tale was recounted in the beginning of this chapter, was a powerful and prosperous woman in the Igbo society who advanced her position by taking many wives.
Woman marriages were common in Africa. "The term female husband . . . refers to a woman who takes on the legal and social roles of husband and father by marrying another woman according to the approved rules and ceremonies of her society . . . [and] she may belong to any one of over 30 African populations ' writes Denise O'Brien. She reports that the institution is most popular in three parts of Africa: (1) West Africa, especially Nigeria and Dahomey; (2) South Africa, including the Southern Bantu, on whom O'Brien reported; and (3) East Africa and the Sudan (the Nuer).62 In contrast to Krige's view that woman marriage empowers women, O'Brien's belief is that the institution helps keep women in their subordinate place. Woman marriage, she argues, is usually a social adaptation by which a male-dominated society allows powerful wealthy women to take a leadership role only if they assume the social role of a man, acting as husband and father. This debate resonates with similar discussions in the feminist, lesbian, and gay communities today. Is same-sex marriage liberating? Or does it ape attitudes that suppress women?
Contrast African woman marriage with the Native American berdache marriage, the Azande boy wife, and the Chinese sisterhood described earlier. The aforementioned same-sex unions involved companionate emotional bonds between the partners as well as traditional divisions of labor within the household. Although a woman marriage might occur for those reasons, it more typically occurs so that a woman can have children (heirs) through a surrogate.
NON-WESTERN CULTURES
here is strong evidence demonstrating the existence of same-sex unions, including legally recognized marriages, in Native American, African, and Asian cultures. I shall not attempt to survey all the cultures here and shall instead introduce three recurring patterns: same-sex marriages with gender-bending berdaches; same-sex unions serving social, economic, and companionate needs; and male same-sex marriages for purposes of maintaining a family lineage.
Same-Sex Marriages with Berdaches
Accounts by stunned Spanish explorers, missionaries, and bureaucrats provide early evidence of same-sex relationships and marriages in the Americas. Francisco Lopez de Gomara's History of the Indies (1552), one of many examples, reported that "the men marry other men who are impotent or castrated and go around like women, perform their duties and are used as such and who cannot carry or use the bow." Same-sex unions between women were also reported: Pedro de Magalhaes's The Histories of Brazil (1576) described Native American women in northeastern Brazil who "give up all the duties of women and imitate men, and follow men's pursuits as if they were not women.... [E]ach has a woman to serve her, to whom she says she is married, and they treat each other and speak with each other as man and wife."
What these accounts describe is the berdache tradition, which was institutionalized in the West Indies and throughout what is now the United States, as well as in the Aztec, Mayan, and Incan civilizations. The Native American berdache is a person who deviates from his or her traditional gender role, taking on some of the characteristics and perceived responsibilities of the opposite sex. The berdache does not, however, cross gender lines so much as mix them. Indeed, many Naive American cultures considered berdaches to be a third sex. Most important for the present study, berdaches (like We'wha) married individuals of the same sex, and those marriages were recognized by Native American laws and cultures.
Outsiders' depictions of the Native American berdache have often been colored by their antihomosexual attitudes. The accounts of Spanish authors such as those quoted above usually expressed shock and offered Native American same-sex unions as evidence of these cultures' barbarism, which they sought to correct. Until the twentieth century, accounts by Western anthropologists suppressed the tradition. The first detailed academic study focusing on Native American same-sex unions was George Devereux's article on the Mohave berdaches. Devereux reported that gender-crossing men (alyha) and women (hwame) had long been tolerated by the Mohave and that their samesex marriages were institutionalized and socially accepted. Thus, under tribal custom and law alyha married (and divorced) men and hwame married (and divorced) women.
Ethnographers and anthropologists studying the culture and evolution of various Native American tribes throughout this century discovered similar berdache institutions. In The Spirit and the Flesh Walter Williams draws from earlier accounts as well as his own field work and synthesizes existing scholarship probing the Native American berdache tradition. Williams concludes that berdaches have been an accepted and in fact valued part of culture and law in a large majority of Native American tribes. Most academic attention has been focused on male berdaches, like We'wha, who frequency became revered leaders in their communities. Often, a male child was consciously raised to be a berdache who would assume a special role in the community, mediating between the spiritual and physical worlds. Marriages between men and male berdaches were widespread among Native American cultures. As a general matter, same-sex marriages tended to conform to traditional Native American marriage patterns, in which labor was divided between the wife, who kept house, and the husband, who hunted and directed the household. The men who married male berdaches were usually attracted to women as well as to men and were not themselves considered berdaches. Many such men preferred berdache wives for economic reasons, as berdaches would not only do the housework but also help with hunting and other traditionally male activities. While some men believed that marrying a berdache guaranteed greater marital stability, others pursued male berdaches on the basis of simple sexual attraction.
Although they have received less academic attention, female berdaches represented an important cultural institution in most Native American communities. Like her male counterpart, the female berdache assumed many of the responsibilities traditionally performed by the opposite sex, including hunting and heading a household. And she would commonly marry another woman. Female berdaches and woman-woman marriages were integral to women's ability to achieve a higher status in most Native American cultures. Thus, a female berdache would marry a non-berdache woman and would assume a position as head of the household, accepting responsibility for hunting and other traditionally "male" jobs.
Most American scholarship about berdaches draws from Native American cultures, but the phenomenon is worldwide. According to en authoritative survq of sexual practices around the wodd in 1951:
In 49 (64 percent) of the 76 societies other than our own for which information is available, homosexual activities of one sort or another are considered normal and socially acceptable for certain members of the community....
In many cases this [same-sex] behavior occurs within the framework of courtship and marriage, the man who takes the part of the female being recognized as a berdache and treated as a woman. In other words, a genuine rnateship is involved.
Anthropological fieldwork since 1951 has not only confirmed but deeply elaborated on this observation. Particular attention has been paid to the mugawe of the Kenyan Meru, the Siberian Chuckchee, Tahitian mahus, and the Indian hijras. With the exception of the hijras, the unions of these berdaches to people of the same sex have been treated by their indigenous cultures as culturally and legally recognized marriages.
Functional Same-Sex Unions
Same-sex unions in non-Western cultures have typically served companionate, economic, or cultural functions. This section will sample several prominent examples of same-sex unions that display different kinds of functions. Often arising in homosocial situations, the following examples involve bonding between two people of the same sex. The bonding may be sexual, but its main functions transcend the partners' intimacy. The unions serve important functions for the partners:: economic, professional, or social in nature. The unions may be temporary and are not necessarily legal marriages, though they usually involve marriage-like features and even terminology.
Military "Wives. " The most common functional union in history involves pair bonding in military settings. Many societies have institutionalized same-sex relationships, akin to the Achilles-Patroclus and Gilgamesh-Enkidu relationships of ancient myth, among warriors or soldiers. The samurai warriors of feudal and Tokagawa Japan went to battle accompanied by apprentice warrior-lovers." Literary sources, such as The Great Mirror of Male Love by Ihara Saikaku, depict these relationships as highly choreographed and romantic, with strong loyalty on each side. The beginning of a relationship between an apprentice (wakashu) and a samurai involved a formal exchange of written and spoken vows, giving the relationship a marriage-like status. Each participant promised to love the other in this life and the next-one step beyond our "till death do us part." As in marriage, sex was only one element of the samurai relationship. The samurai was supposed to provide social backing, emotional support, and a model of manliness for the apprentice. In exchange, the latter was expected to be worthy of his lover by being a good student of samurai manhood.
The warrior tradition epitomized by the samurai can be illustrated in African cultures even more vividly. E. E. Evans-Pritchard documented the institution of "boy wives" for military men among the Azande in what is now Sudan. The Azande considered the relationship a marriage both legally and culturally. The warrior paid bride-price (some five spears or more) to the parents of his boy and performed services for them as he would have done had he married their daughter (if he proved to be a good son-in-law they might later replace the son by a daughter). Also, if another man had relations with his boy, he could sue him at court for adultery. The warrior addressed the boy as diare (wife), and the boy addressed the warrior as kumbami (husband). The relationship was both sexual (the warrior would have intercourse with the boy between his thighs) and functional (the boy performed traditional wifely duties such as housekeeping). Anthropologists have reported finding similar institutions in other African societies.
Companionate Unions. Marriage-like same-sex unions have been documented in China during the Yuan and Ming dynasties (12641644).5΅ Useful evidence comes from the widely read seventeenth-century stories of Li Yu. Many of his stories speak openly and approvingly of companionate love affairs between men, a practice particularly associated with Fujian and other provinces in southern China. In at least one story Li Yu relates the tragic romance of two men (Jifang and Ruiji) who become "husband and wife." In describing the couple's wedding, Li Yu goes out of his way to emphasize that the couple adhered to the formal requisites of marriage (bride-price, the various wedding rituals), giving some indication that similar same-sex marriages were common in southern China and perhaps elsewhere in the region. It has been inferred from Li Yu's work and other evidence that there were "institutionalized relationships betvveen males in some areas, and that these relationships were often expressed in terms of marriage and carried out in [the same] social forms connected with 'regular' marriage." Same-sex relationships elsewhere were celebrated as "brotherly" unions, "sworn friendships ' and even adoptions, that is, as close but platonic relationships reminiscent of those solemnized in the early Christian Church's enfraternization ceremonies. Although the Manchus of the Qing dynasty sought to discourage same-sex relationships, outlawing same-sex eroticism in 1740, these alliances continued for generations after peaking in the seventeenth century.
Less is known of female same-sex unions in China. While some historians credit accounts of woman-woman unions during the Qing dynasty as evidence of marriage-like institutions, the first well-documented unions were those associated with the "marriage resistance movement" in southern China in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The development of China's international silk industry during this period helped many women attain their economic independence from men. After acquiring this newfound freedom, thousands of women renounced marriage and became sou hei (literally, "self-combers"). Upon deciding to become sou hei, a woman took a formal ceremonial vow to remain unwed at least for a time, moved out of her parents' house, and built "spinster houses" with other sou hei. These women formed sisterhoods in which small groups of women (typically five to seven) would bond together for mutual support and affection. Andrea Sankar reports that physical as well as emotional bonds often developed between two or three of the sisters.52 Other scholars believe that sisterhood relationships shared many attributes of marriage, including a ceremony with witnesses and a division of labor within the family unit.
Initiatory Unions. Same-sex relationships have also frequently served as social or even sexual initiations prefatory to marriage. An interesting example is the "mummy-baby" games among Basotho girls in Lesotho.s4 In contrast to women in many other African societies, those in Lesotho are particularly vulnerable, both economically and socially, because they are dependent on males who tend to be employed as migrant workers. For these women, relationships outside of marriage serve as important support networks, and young girls are initiated into such relationships beginning with mummy-baby games played in their grade school years. In a mummy-baby relationship, an older girl, acting as "mummy ' develops an intimate, maternal association with a younger one, the baby. Typically, the mummy presents gifts to the baby, who reciprocates by obeying and respecting the mummy. The two share emotional and informational exchanges and are physically, and sometimes sexually, intimate. Rather than displacing marriage, these relationships help to prepare younger girls for marriage, including its rockier moments. Scholars have documented similar female-female friendships in other African societies.
The most interesting example of same-sex initiation relationship is the "ritualized homosexuality" developed by aboriginal populations of Australia and the islands of Melanesia. This is the term anthropologist Gilbert Herdt uses to describe the events whereby a boy entering manhood would engage in a short-term sexual relationship with an older man.s6 By implanting his semen within the boy, the older man is thought to empower his younger partner, helping him to complete the journey to virility and manhood. According to Herdt, about fifty Melanesian Societies practice some form of ritualized homosexuality. In some communities the ritualized man-boy relationship serves as a prelude to a traditional different-sex marriage. "A most striking aspect of social organization in societies with ritualized male homosexuality concerns the overlap between marriage and homosexual relationships." That is, by inseminating a boy the older male is believed not only to 6cilitate the boy's passage into manhood but also to prepare him for his marriage to a woman. Many of the Melanesian societies institutionalizing this ritual treat marriage not as an exchange relationship involving the payment of bride-price but as a complex method of bonding two families. In keeping with this notion, some of these cultures require a boy seeking to enter into marriage with a woman to submit sexually to the woman's brother. "Thus, life force (as semen) flows between same-sex and different partners, linking individuals and groups in complex chains of mutual dependentcy and obligation."57
Woman Marriage and Female Husbands
A form of same-sex union that may be unique to African cultures is the institution of "woman marriage." Noted as a curiosity by earlier researchers, the institution was not given serious attention until anthropologists Eileen Jensen Krige and MelviDe Herskovits publicized it in the 1930s.55 The following is an early description of woman marriage among the Nuer of Sudan:
What seems to us, but not at all to the Nuer, a somewhat strange union is that in which a woman marries another woman and counts as the peter [father] of the children born of the wife. Such marriages are by no means uncommon in Nuerland, and they must be regarded as a form of simple legal marriage, for the woman-husband marries her wife in exactly the same way as a man marries a woman.... We may perhaps refer to this kind of union as woman-marriage.
A woman who marries in this way is generally barren, and for this reason counts in some respects as a man.... [I]f she is rich she may marry several wives. She is dheir legal husband and can demand damages if they have relations with men without her consent. She is the peter [father] of their children, and on the marriages of their daughters she receives the cattle which go to the father's side in the distribution of bridewealth. Her children are called after her, as though she were a man, and I was told that they address her as "father."
Krige describes woman marriage as "the institution by which it is possible for a woman to give bridewealth for, and marry, a woman, over whom and whose offspring she has full control, delegating to a male genitor the duties of procreation." She suggests that woman marriage is "closely bound up with rights and duties arising from the social structure" of the culture, a "flexible institution that can be utilized in a number of different ways to meet a number of different situations."60 For example, in African cultures where women occupy a high position and can acquire property or other forms of wealth, woman marriage is one way that a woman may strengthen her economic position and establish her household. Ifeyinwa Olinke, whose tale was recounted in the beginning of this chapter, was a powerful and prosperous woman in the Igbo society who advanced her position by taking many wives.
Woman marriages were common in Africa. "The term female husband . . . refers to a woman who takes on the legal and social roles of husband and father by marrying another woman according to the approved rules and ceremonies of her society . . . [and] she may belong to any one of over 30 African populations ' writes Denise O'Brien. She reports that the institution is most popular in three parts of Africa: (1) West Africa, especially Nigeria and Dahomey; (2) South Africa, including the Southern Bantu, on whom O'Brien reported; and (3) East Africa and the Sudan (the Nuer).62 In contrast to Krige's view that woman marriage empowers women, O'Brien's belief is that the institution helps keep women in their subordinate place. Woman marriage, she argues, is usually a social adaptation by which a male-dominated society allows powerful wealthy women to take a leadership role only if they assume the social role of a man, acting as husband and father. This debate resonates with similar discussions in the feminist, lesbian, and gay communities today. Is same-sex marriage liberating? Or does it ape attitudes that suppress women?
Contrast African woman marriage with the Native American berdache marriage, the Azande boy wife, and the Chinese sisterhood described earlier. The aforementioned same-sex unions involved companionate emotional bonds between the partners as well as traditional divisions of labor within the household. Although a woman marriage might occur for those reasons, it more typically occurs so that a woman can have children (heirs) through a surrogate.
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