Dilemma of an African Woman Faced with Bisexuality: A Reading of Armand Meula's Coq mâle, coq femelle

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The issue of sexual orientation has become a major topic in African society and attracts the intervention of the government in some countries. The subject is so polemical that it is at the root of a great ideological division even among intellectuals. Although several writers avoid the subject in their works, Armand Meula in his play Coq mâle, coq femelle (‘Male Rooster, female rooster’) has highlighted the traits of three sexual orientations and their complications in Africa, a continent of conservative tradition and practice. In the play, he highlights the subject through three characters: a couple (Vicky and Conrad) and the homosexual partner of Conrad (Jean-Luc). Vicky, pregnant with her fourth child, discovers in a shocking manner the double sexual nature of her husband. Conrad is torn between his family on one hand and the desire to be with his ‘female cock’, Jean-Luc, on the other. They decide all three to live together so that Vicky can accept Jean- Luc as her husband's co-wife and so that the homosexual partners can legalise their union. But because of the government's declaration against homosexuality in the country, the pact is broken; Vicky returns with her children to her parents while Jean-Luc gets angry with his partner Conrad who finally confesses that he prefers a family to a homosexual relationship.

This article centres on the dilemma facing an African woman, married with children, who discovers after nine years of her marriage that her husband is bisexual or homosexual. That is the image of a woman presented in Armand Meula's Coq mâle, coq femelle. What will she do? Will she abandon her marital home to her husband's homosexual partner? Will she stay and live as a co-wife/husband of Jean-Luc under the same roof? How will she explain to her family that her husband and the father of her children is homosexual?

BISEXUALITY

According to Alfred Kinsey sexuality is a continuum, and almost all heterosexuals tend to have amorous feelings towards people of the same sex, in varying degrees. In his book The History of Sexuality (1976, 1984), the philosopher Michel Foucault argued that homosexuality is an invented concept: a few generations ago, homosexual behaviour existed but was not called or seen as a sexual orientation. Many researchers are in favour of labelling it as a sexual behaviour rather than an orientation.