The promise of heteronormativity: Marriage as a strategy for respectability in South Africa

Considering marriage a primary institution through which norms are transmitted, the authors examine the ways in which entrance into heteronormative respectability is differently available to transgender-cisgender couples and lesbian couples who marry in South Africa. Through qualitative work with transgender-cisgender and lesbian couples, the authors conclude that though marriage through the Marriage Act should speak for itself, admission to heteronormativity requires a labor of doing heterosexuality, conditioned, for the couples represented here, upon a denial of the transgender person’s transgender identity. At the same time, the Civil Union Act, through which same-sex couples access marriage, has been positioned as a ‘different kind of marriage’, though it offers the same legal benefits, protections, and responsibilities available through the Marriage Act. While marriage through the Marriage Act promises entrance into heteronormativity, lesbian couples who marry through the Civil Union Act become engaged in a discursive process of consolidating respectability within the parameters of their marriages.