ABSTRACT
This chapter embarks on a contextual queering of the performativity intrinsic to world-making through not only acting straight, in this case heterosexual, but also through how straight sensibilities are fluidly performed in everyday KwaZulu-Natal. That endeavor begins with the queering of same-sex marriage in a context where rights come with benefits but also costs. Through the specific narratives of Thandazo, a bisexual woman in her 20s who would perform as ‘straight’ for self-protection, and Thembeka, a ‘straight’ woman in her 40s with a female spouse, the chapter challenges the heterosexuality of ‘straight,’ and highlights the ways in which female-bodied individuals who engage in same-sex relationships perform the respectability, fidelity, and incorruptibility of straightness through their ‘good’ and dignified queerness. This line of theorizing further challenges assumptions about lesbian masculinities and problematic, imitative heteronorms.
