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9 It couldn’t be anything innocent: Negotiating gender in patriarchal-racial spaces ANE M. ØRBØ KIRKEGAARD The Rhodesian settler project depended on the co-operation with black men, and on the Othering of them. Masculinity was a vital part of this double movement of practical proximity and narrative distance; cross-racial cooperation between men concerning the control of women, and the sexualisation of the ‘African’. The racialised discourse on ‘African’ masculinity contributes to the preservation of distance between the African Other and the European Self. The latter generally evades being objectified and studied , as it is itself the master of objectification of others. Consequently, scientific curiosity has mostly been directed towards those who are constructed as different and exotic (McFadden, 2000), rather than towards those who construe themselves as Norm. Research on white Zimbabweans is lacking. In this chapter we examine the performance, reproduction and contestation of masculinity among white Zimbabweans. Those white Zimbabweans whose voices are represented below belong to a rapidly shrinking category of Zimbabweans. They are Eurasian second generation commercial farmers . The voices are Peter, Beatrice, John, Louisa and Patricia’s. The interviews were conducted in September and October 2000, on what were then their farms in eastern and northern Zimbabwe.1 C Co on nt te es st te ed d t te er rr ra ai in ns s Colonial masculinity developed both in the drawing rooms and scientific and explorers clubs in European capital cities. It also developed at the various colonial frontiers in the Americas, Africa and Asia. In other words it was constructed in the reflexivity between the scientific work by ‘softies’ and armchair anthropologists, who never left their comfortable European upper- and middle class homes, and by the tough men’s men. According to colonial myths, the latter discovered new territories, peoples and natural phenomena, which fed European fantasies, wallets, corporations and civil society. Even though there are no frontiers left in Southern Africa, the ideal of frontier manliness – colonial masculinity – lives on in private as well as public relations. It manifests itself in the continually successful claim to power and authority by men. 115 A gendered continuum links Zimbabwe under black majority rule to colonial Rhodesia. Most significant about this continuum is the patriarchal grip on power, despite the inherent contradictions in the androcentric social structures. Ian Smith’s expressed passion for the traditional patriarchal married family, signified by male dominance and female subordination, was contradicted by high divorce rates, illegal abortions and domestic violence (Smith 1997; Godwin and Hancock, 1995). This split between ideal and reality still exists and is expressed in different ways by all the interviewees . Peter, middle-aged son of a dominant white patriarch legitimates the patriarchal system he grew up with, while also downplaying its significance , when he claims that ‘we tend to be chauvinists. We try to keep our maleness although we fail. I mean we fail. We try and pretend that we are sort of a rough bunch, we are all male and we are the boys, but really, when you get home it’s a different story.’ He goes on to explain that the jokes men tell about women are ‘chauvinist jokes, male slanted jokes’ but that these jokes do not ‘draw a comparison on what it’s really like’. His argument is that ‘most men are respectable towards women and are decent. In Zimbabwe anyway.’ Respect and decency is however conditional, and dependent on women’s conformity with social norms of decency – heterosexual and monogamist house wife-ing and mothering. Having personal experience of non-conformity Patricia explains that ‘if a woman is strong and capable and questioning and has an opinion, she would definitely be threatening their male ego. So they are not comfortable with women in that way’. At one point she exclaims that ‘the men are the greatest problem’ in marriages. Her experiences of being at odds with the ideals unmask the reality behind the rough bunch mentality repudiated by Peter. Her marriage nearly broke down because she insisted on working full-time outside the home, something her husband found very difficult to accept. His argument was that his income was more than enough to support the family. To her, working outside the home was however not a matter of economics, but of pursuing her own interests. She explains the opposition towards women’s pursuit of non-marital and non-mothering interests with Zimbabwean men’s inability to: cope with a wife being independent, having an opinion...

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