Butch Women Football Players: Discipline and Punish the “Sexual Others”

Historically, football has always been fraught with ambivalence throughout the formerly colonized societies of West and Central Africa. As Patrick Hutchison has argued about the politicization of football under British colonial rule, this once male-dominated sport was used by the British colonizers as a means of fostering a “sense of discipline and hard work,” and especially of reinforcing control over the dominated male populations (Hutchison Reference Hutchison2009). At the same time, football played a crucial role in the nationalist project to forge a collective national identity (Bancel & Combeau-Mari Reference Bancel and Combeau-Mari2014; Darby Reference Darby2002).

Cameroon provides an interesting example. Though football was introduced into the country by western colonial settlers in the early 1920s, the creation in the late 1940s of the first local football teams by some native Duala elites was inspired by the nationalist movement led by the Union des Populations du Cameroon (UPC), a nationalist party which was fiercely opposed to the French colonial administration (Deville-Danthu Reference Deville-Danthu1997; Ebanga-Mballa Reference Ebanga-Mballa2009). This means that in Cameroon, football was initially represented both as a symbol of colonial domination and as an expression of nationalist resistance against the French colonial power (Clignet & Stark Reference Clignet and Stark1974).

It is against this historical backdrop that one can understand why the engagement of masculine women in football is generally contentious. In Cameroon, as in a number of other African countries, women’s football is often promoted because it falls within the framework of the “empowerment of women” and “gender equity” policies endorsed since the late 1980s by the governments of Cameroon and other African states. At the same time, women’s football often elicits disquiet from football officials as well as the general public because it intensifies the precariousness of masculinity (Adjepong Reference Adjepong and Nyeck2019; Saavedra Reference Saavedra, Hong and Mangan2004:225–53). This anxiety is compounded by the fact that some women players are purported or self-identified butch lesbians, who are often suspected of using their participation in football to compete with men, not only within a moral economy of lusty machismo but also by seducing other players, including (assumed) heterosexuals.

It is because of the disturbing presence of open or perceived lesbian players within the women’s football milieu that football officials in Cameroon have always been concerned with disciplining the sexual behavior of the young women who play football. As a matter of fact, women’s football is one of the few, if not the only, sports where the sexual conduct of the players is constantly monitored or controlled by the governing body or is regularly entangled into a general policy of surveillance and discipline. This challenges the phallocratic and masculinist vision of football as an arena for tough, audacious, and aggressive men. Women’s football may not be the only sport in Cameroon where female players often spend much of their time together, share a certain intimacy, or are even involved in amitiés érotiques or erotic friendships (Blackwood & Wieringa Reference Blackwood and Weringa1999; Rupp Reference Rupp2009; Faderman Reference Faderman1998 [1981]). Yet it is certainly one of the few sports activities which displays all sorts of prejudices about players, notably those who embody ascribed masculine characters.

Indeed, a nativist imagination of women’s football as a game that is mainly practiced by masculine women with homosexual proclivities has increased the negative perception of women football players, who are often labelled as deux doigts or tantouses (slang for masculine lesbians in the local popular language). It is alleged that their unbridled sexuality might get out of control if it is not tamed or otherwise squelched. One can understand why the non-normative gender and sexual identities of masculine women football players have always been an object of great concern to a number of government or football officials from Central and West Africa. This also explains why these governments are constantly engaged in stringent policies of control and policing of the sexual behavior of these masculine women players, as they are seen to embody the image of a sexually perverse butch lesbian who might spread immorality and sexual perversion within the women’s national football squad (Adjepong Reference Adjepong and Nyeck2019).

There have been sustained efforts by Cameroon’s football officials to eliminate from women’s football the so-called “homosexual peril” which allegedly hampers the development of this sports activity within the country (Nyeck Reference Nyeck and de Hernandez2010:85–89). For example, in the wake of the government’s aggressive actions to halt the propagation of homosexual behavior within women’s football, ministerial instructions have been given to the managers of various national women’s football squads to constantly keep an eye on their “girls,” and especially to discipline and punish any player who transgresses the government-mandated ethical code of sexual conduct that has been enacted to guide the players’ behaviors and attitudes.

For example, on November 17, 2015, Mutations, one of the most widely read Cameroonian newspapers, published an article that voiced the concern of Cameroon’s football management with the so-called immoral sexual behavior of some players on the national women’s football team, known as the Lionesses. In that article, Enow Gatchou, at that time the head coach of the team, was quoted as saying that “there is no place for lesbianism in the national women’s football squad.” He reportedly added that “lesbian players should do their things ailleurs (elsewhere) and not in the national squad,” which he described as “a respectable team that promotes moral values and civic behavior among players.” He also reminded his “girls” that any player who joins the national football team should bear in mind that Cameroon’s government strongly opposes homosexuality and that the staff management has received strict instructions to expel from the national team any player found guilty of lesbian behavior.

Mr. Gatchou’s mise en garde followed a series of sexual scandals that rocked the national team to the point of upsetting the training program of the Lionesses, who were busy preparing for the AFCOM women’s football match which Cameroon was planning to host in June 2016. Reports from several local tabloids suggested that there were recurrent tensions among former lesbian partners who were regularly involved in brawls. It was also reported that some young players were complaining of being sexually harassed by their senior teammates, who threatened them with violence if they dared to reveal their locker room’s secrets. Less than a week after these incidents, three players were officially dismissed from the national team. Although the press release read on the main state-controlled radio and television (CRTV) used the metaphorical expression of conduites inappropriées et indécentes (inappropriate and indecent conduct) to justify the expulsion of these players from the women’s national team, many people assumed their eviction was related to homosexual behavior.

One former women’s football staff member, who is now a top-ranking official at the Ministry of Youth and Sports, once justified the tight monitoring of sexual behavior of the masculine-presenting female players by invoking their alleged unbridled sexuality. During an interview he granted in his office in Yaoundé, he made these comments:

In other respects, Cameroon’s football officials have tried to “normalize” the sexual behavior of masculine players on the national women’s football team. This policy has often involved the imposition of compulsory heterosexual norms on those women who present a nonconventional gender appearance; they are often coerced into adopting more conventional heterosexual behaviors, attitudes, and mode of dress. The “normalization” of the sexual and gender identity of these so-called cross-gender players often means encouraging them to conform to a normative women’s dress code during official ceremonies or to engage in more conventional heterosexual relationships. For example, one former player of the Lionesses, a thirty-six-year-old woman with a masculine appearance, recalled the obsession of some football managers with feminizing the behavior of some of the more masculine players through conventional women’s dress: “We were required to dress like a woman. The manager did not like it when some of us dressed like men. He kept reminding us that we were above all women and not men” (JT, interview with the author, Paris, March 12, 2018).

According to the same informant, to prevent the appearance of homosexual (mis)conduct among purported lesbian players, and especially to protect the so-called innocent heterosexual players from their allegedly dangerous butch lesbian teammates, the Lionesses’ management did not hesitate to separate players with non-normative sexual and gender identities from their “normal” fellow players. Football officials also managed the sleeping arrangements in order to enforce a separation between players considered heterosexuals and those perceived as lesbians. This generally happened when the team traveled abroad or was sequestered in a training camp. For example, each time the team was housed in a hotel or a guest house, the allegedly “oversexed” masculine players were generally put in separate rooms, so as to avoid any intimate contact with their heterosexual and “normal” fellow players. On some occasions, these purportedly lesbian athletes were lodged in single rooms by themselves, while the other players shared double rooms. The football management often justified their discriminatory policy by stating that if these women with unconventional sexual and gender identities were allowed to share a room together, they might participate in homosexual acts.

The above comments suggest that women’s football clubs at large and particularly national women’s football squads have become places where a dominant political and administrative order attempts not only to enact a certain heterosexualist ideology but also strives to squelch women’s homosexuality, which is generally seen as a threat to both the development and social “normalization” of women’s football in Cameroon. Moreover, because of a general tendency to (homo)sexualize the bodies of masculine women football players, both the local women’s football clubs and the national women’s football squads have become spaces where football managers and trainers endeavor to suppress the open expression of homosexual activity among players or to marginalize players who display a so-called “butch lesbian identity.”

In other respects, the attempts by state officials to heterosexualize the sexual conduct of the Lionesses is justified by the fact that international women football players at large (like their male counterparts) generally are expected to embody the image of good and moral heterosexual citizens as projected by the Cameroonian government. This heterosexualization of international women players is a result of the politicization of football in Cameroon since its independence in 1960 (Ntonfo Reference Ntonfo1994). As Anima Adjepong has also argued in the case of Ghanaian sportswomen, the politicization of football as both the embodiment of an anti-colonial nationalist project and the reinforcement of a postcolonial hetero-patriarchal society has led to the official projection of the national women’s football team members as “national representatives.” These so-called “civic” and “responsible” sportswomen are expected to comply with the government-promoted ideals of appropriate, respectable, and exclusively heterosexual femininity (Adjepong Reference Adjepong and Nyeck2019).

Postcolonial Representation of Female Masculinity and Butch Lesbianism

To have a better understanding of both the hypersexualization of the unconventional physical appearance of young masculine women football players as well as the inscription of their bodies in a metaphysics of difference, it is important to recall the biological conception of gender and the heterosexualist vision of sexuality by Cameroon’s government (Abega Reference Abega2007), which incorporates ideas from both the African patriarchal societies and the western colonial powers. As a number of studies have pointed out, most of these institutions developed and sustained a biological and genital conception of gender that established a dichotomy between women and men, female and male, on the basis of their assumed physical differences (Amadiume Reference Amadiume1987; Epprecht Reference Epprecht2005; Hoad Reference Hoad2007; Tamale Reference Tamale2011). While men were attributed masculine and virile characteristics, women were conversely associated with femininity, which was generally conceived of as weak and passive, the opposite of masculine. In this line of thought, nonbinary (such as gender queer or gender fluid) or ungendered (agender or genderless) categories were dismissed as abnormal or contrary to nature. This anatomical understanding of gender has inspired a heterosexualist vision of sexuality, resulting in a political construction of two distinct sexual and gendered subjectivities: a libidinal and virile African straight man, to whom one analyst has referred as the Muntu (Ndjio Reference Ndjio2012:609–31), and a sexually passive and submissive heterosexual African woman.

More importantly, this biased representation of sexual and gender roles has contributed either to the subordination of women or the alienation and marginalization of people with unconventional or nonbinary sexual and gender identities in many African societies. This is the case with the masculine-appearing lesbian, who is often perceived as the antithesis of the passive and docile African woman, who has even been elevated by a certain nativist and Africanist literature to the rank of a muse (Senghor Reference Senghor1945).

In Cameroon, as in a number of other African countries where nonbinary gender and sexual expressions are generally condemned as un-African or as representing sexual and gender aberrations imported from the West (Aarmo Reference Aarmo1999:255–80; Epprecht Reference Epprecht2004, Reference Epprecht2008), queer people are often branded as traitors to the nation. The alienation of these sexual minorities as well as the violent problematization of their transgressive sexual and gender roles has been exacerbated by the state’s nationalist project to forge a heterosexual (imagined) national community (Ndjio Reference Ndjio2012:609–31, 2016:115–36).

Since the mid-1960s, the government’s dismissal and denial of nonconforming sexual and gender identities has led to the enactment of a number of legislations that outlaw both male and female same-sex sexuality by making such behavior a criminal offense liable to severe penalties. For example, article 347(bis) of Cameroon’s penal code, which was first adopted in September 1967 and revised in September 1972, imposes a punishment of imprisonment from six months to five years and a fine ranging from 20,000 FCFA (USD40) to 200,000 FCFA (USD400) for any person who is convicted of consensual same-sex sexual acts.

Moreover, in the wake of the collective homophobic paranoia triggered by the emergence in the early 2000s of an assertive and militant homosexual identity in the national public sphere (Awondo Reference Awondo2010:315–28; Nyeck Reference Nyeck2013), in December 2010, Cameroon’s government passed new anti-homosexual legislation to deal with what the official rhetoric considered a homosexual threat to the “heterosexual Cameroonian nation”Footnote ³. The implementation of this new sexual policy was accompanied by the political invention of a “homosexual subject” who is now judicially harassed not only for sexual misconduct but also for actual or perceived “homosexual” look or identity, and sometimes solely on the basis of physical appearance and dress style.

In many respects, the current sexual policies of Cameroon’s government increasingly target a certain “type” of individuals, notably people with a distinctive non-normative sexual and gender identity (Gueboguo & Epprecht Reference Gueboguo and Epprecht2010; HWR 2010). This is the case of the so-called garçons manqués who, like the filles garçons (effeminate or female-looking men), seem to be the main victims of Cameroon’s aggressive management of same-sex sexuality and unconventional gender identity.

The recent emergence of an unprecedented form of polymorphous sexual identity that oversteps the boundaries of normative sexual and gender roles has increased the suspicion of the garçons manqués as potential butch lesbians, regardless of their actual sexual orientation or identity. This distrust has sometimes led to police harassment and juridical persecution of these women who present a nonforming gender appearance. For example, in an unpublished report, SIDA’DO, a human rights association that provides both healthcare and legal support to LGBTIQ persons in Cameroon, relates several cases of persons who were arbitrarily arrested and detained because they allegedly displayed a homosexual look or because they were suspected of being homosexual. This was the case of Diane Essamba, a twenty-three-year-old masculine-appearing woman who was arrested in the August 2012 by the Yaoundé Juridical Police before being transferred to the Yaoundé Tribunal of 1^st Instance, where she was finally sentenced to five years in prison for her purported “lesbian appearance”.Footnote ⁴

The twenty-seven-page report not only provides a wealth of information on how Cameroon’s government deals with people with unconventional gender and sexual identities or treats women who display a physique d’homme (male physical appearance); it also indicates how the country’s juridical and administrative system often fabricates its “homosexual criminals” or “butch lesbians” by conflating the sexual orientation and identity of an individual with his or her physical appearance. Indeed, according to the report, much of the accusation of lesbianism leveled against the young woman was based on her alleged masculine look, or apparence d’homme (male appearance). In other words, the defender was profiled as a butch lesbian because she exhibited a physical appearance that was administratively and judicially construed as an indicator of her assumed lesbian identity and orientation. Moreover, in the eyes of the ministère public (prosecution), the accused embodied the despised image of a woman who is allegedly devoid of the sweetness, fragility, and delicacy which supposedly characterizes a typical African woman (Abega Reference Abega2007; Senghor Reference Senghor1945).

In other respects, by inferring the accused’s alleged (butch) lesbianism from her masculine manner and look, the prosecution was following the dominant nativist conception of a lesbian woman as a kind of species that is physically and mentally distinctive from the so-called conventional feminine (heterosexual) woman. In contemporary Cameroonian society, where women with a masculine appearance play a central role in the local representation of lesbianism, only the garçons manqués who overtly display masculine manners and physical appearances are generally perceived as lesbians. Conversely, women who do their best to present a feminine appearance are rarely profiled as lesbians. Even though they may be themselves engaged in same-sex relations or are receptive to butch lesbians, these “femmes” are however perceived as ordinary and normal (heterosexual) women.

However, a garçon manqué arouses more juridical or police suspicion about her alleged lesbianism when she is involved in football, which has always been considered a “flagship masculine sport, and serving to support and maintain male domination,” as Mari Haugaa Engh (Reference Engh2010:12) has argued in the case of South Africa (see also Hargreaves & Anderson Reference Hargreaves and Anderson2014; Pelak Reference Pelak2005, Reference Pelak2010). The data collected in several courts of Douala and Yaoundé indicate that a number of Cameroonian judges often use the participation of some masculine women in the sport of football as evidence of their purported homosexuality. In some cases, being a female football player or expressing a passion for football suffices to be labelled a “lesbian” and even to be condemned for lesbianism.

In 2008, I attended a trial at the Douala Tribunal of 1^st Instance of two young women who were being prosecuted for lesbianism after the vice squad police broke into their room in the middle of night and arrested them. Though they were both charged with homosexual offenses, the two unfortunate girls were treated differently by the juridical order, which seemed to adopt a double standard policy when it dealt either with a so-called “femme” or a butch lesbian. Indeed, while the more feminine accused was sentenced to one year in prison, her more masculine-appearing sexual partner was condemned to three years’ imprisonment. This discrepancy in the penalties inflicted on the two young women was partly justified by the fact that the defender who presented a masculine appearance was judicially profiled as an active lesbian or a meneuse (leader, motivator, or initiator), whereas her more feminine partner was excused as a passive lesbian or simple suiveuse (follower or subordinate), as the public prosecutor put it. In other words, the court was less severe with the “girly” suiveuse, who was considered a victim of the alleged dangerous “boyish” meneuse, who might have dragged her into lesbianism contrary to her will.

The masculine woman’s participation in football might have also prompted her profiling as a butch lesbian. Indeed, when questioned about her occupation, the accused stated that she was a football player. This caused the procureur général (public prosecutor) to interpret the young woman’s involvement in football as a preuve intangible (intangible evidence) of her deviant gender and sexual identity. He emphatically put it in these terms:

This arbitrary and biased construction of a butch lesbian identity on the basis of the woman’s participation in football has also been noted by other African queer scholars. In one article about the paradoxes that exist in women’s football in Ghana, the anthropologist Anima Adjepong reveals how she was stopped in December 2016 at Accra’s Kotoka International Airport by two border patrol agents, who asked if she was a football player. This sexist question was prompted by the fact that she displayed a masculine appearance. In the local imagination of non-normative sexual and gender identity, this indicates a natural inclination for football. Yet the question, “Are you a footballer?” that was asked to her sought comprehensive information not about her profession or hobby, but rather about her assumed (unconventional) sexual and gender identity that might have disturbed the two police officers. As she argues, this question reveals above all a “slippage between sportswomen’s masculinity and the specter of the mannish lesbianism” (Adjepong Reference Adjepong and Nyeck2019) that has always haunted postcolonial African society at large. No wonder that the unfortunate woman was subsequently questioned about her gender and sexual orientation before being allowed to check into her flight.

The two cases referenced above not only highlight the stereotyped representations of masculine women football players whose non-normative sexual and gender identities induce what Judith Butler calls a “gender trouble” (Butler Reference Butler1990), which blurs a traditionally fixed gender line between the world of masculinity and that of femininity. They also illustrate the connection that some representatives of state power in Africa often make between non-conforming gender, dissident sexuality, and women’s participation in footballFootnote ⁵. Furthermore, both cases demonstrate how in some Central and West African countries both the juridical and administrative orders sometimes endorse the popular conception of mannishness in women’s football as an expression of a certain form of butch lesbianism.

International Lesbian Football Players: The Good “Femmes Fortes” and Patriotic Homosexuals

Despite the fact that in most African countries, football officials are generally prone to stigmatizing so-called lesbian players, who are construed as a danger to heterosexual players as well as an affront to the social order, the Cameroon women’s football team includes more homosexual players than any other national women’s team. The tradition of recruiting openly or self-identified homosexual players or players who display a masculine lesbian look by Cameroon’s team has created the popular belief that the Lionesses has become a squad for garcons manqués and tantouses. After watching the muscular and athletic players of the Lionesses singing the national anthem on television during an international football match, a friend of mine made these troubling comments: “Why does the management of the national women’s football team only select lesbian players in our national team? Didn’t they see any feminized player who could give a more feminine image to our national team? Honestly, our country deserves to be better represented with more conventional and feminine football players than with these players who are neither women nor men.” He further blamed Cameroon’s football authorities for saturating the national women’s football team with players with a highly masculinized physical appearance.

Reflecting on the masculine character of most of these Lionesses and their un-feminine physical appearance, it does seem as if the management of the national women’s football team tends to recruit women who display characteristics or attributes that digress from femininity and femaleness. In addition, acknowledging the fact that a great number of Lioness players are either masculine women or often self-identified lesbians, it is tempting to conclude that both female masculinity and butch lesbianism seem to be the main criteria that determine or influence the selection of players for the national women’s football team. As a matter of fact, while most European and North American coaches and managers primarily look for more technical, talented, and tactical players, in Africa at large the emphasis is conversely on the physical, sporty, and athletic qualities of players. One Cameroonian women’s football trainer once rationalized why football management tends to select female players with masculine appearance in these terms:

These comments remind me of the comments made by one young aspiring female football player from Douala, who failed to realize her football dreams because she was not tough enough to become a professional player. At the time, she was a twenty-one-year-old undergraduate student from the University of Douala; she blamed football’s management for privileging more physical players at the expenses of weaker and less robust players such as herself. Although she was praised for her quickness and technical skill, she was never accepted on the national team. She was told that she was trop légère (too light) and faible (weak) to be selected for the Lionesses, whose players are often physically the antithesis of the culturally idealized image of a weak and soft African woman. She explained her failure to be selected in these terms:

As a matter of fact, with her 1, 59 meter (5.22 feet) height and her 52 kg (115 lb.) of weight, it would have been a real challenge for this delicate twenty-one-year-old girl to compete against the other female players who are generally tall and muscular and who embody what some Cameroonians often call sac de muscles (bag of muscles).

The disgruntled young female player might be excessively biased in her explanation of her failure to achieve her dreams of joining the Lionesses. However, anyone who has had the opportunity to watch African women’s football players might agree with her that African women’s football managers generally select a certain type of female athlete for their national teams, choosing women who embody characters and qualities such as athleticism, muscularity, and power.

In a highly competitive game such as football, which often dramatizes a symbolic war between nations, football managers need strong, vigorous, and robust players who are able to compensate for a lack of talent and technical skills with their exceptional physical strength, or who could offer a physical resistance to more technical, skillful, and gifted players from the northern world-class football nations. Moreover, to outplay some of the big western teams, the national women’s football teams of these African countries need to rely not on soft and highly feminized players who are most likely to be out-powered by more professional players from the northern hemisphere, but rather on powerful, masculine players. Female players who are tough, strong, and athletic are the much-sought-after type of athletes who are needed to take the national women’s football teams to the international level, and who might be able to deliver some stunning wins over world-class teams such as The Netherlands, Germany, France, Japan, and the US. That is why in their search for players who are able to withstand the competition with tough adversaries and challenges, African football’s officials generally idealize hyper-masculine female players. Moreover, in the battle for supremacy in women’s football in Africa, many team managers use masculine players not only to assert their team’s superiority against their rivals but also to intimidate their opponents. They are also aware that players who reject normative heterosexual practices eliminate the potential problem of unwanted pregnancies, which could dissolve or break the team’s cohesion or interrupt a player’s ability to finish the season.

Some of the more masculine or self-identified lesbian players who make up Cameroon’s national women’s football squad have even risen to the level of stardom and become national icons. This is the case of the Cameroonian women’s football superstar Gaëlle Enganamouit. Following the outstanding performance of the Lionesses at the 2015 FIFA women’s World Cup, where she emerged as one of the tournament’s best players and top scorers, the very athletic female football player became one of the country’s most sought-after athlete in any sport. Beverage and mobile telephone companies and other local corporations have been competing with each other to secure an exclusive contract with the now thirty-two-year-old athlete, who has come to symbolize the renaissance of Cameroon’s football and sport at large. Over the past four or five years, she has appeared in several commercials which celebrate the image of a strong, powerful, athletic female football player who embodies an idealized masculinity rather than the expected femininity.

During the time when Gaëlle Enganamouit was attaining the status of a national hero and was celebrated as an inspiring role model for national female youth, her homosexuality was an open secret for many Cameroonians, many of whom refer to her as the mec des filles (the boyfriend of young girls) or derisively call her “Monsieur Gaëlle.” All of these contemptuous terms make reference to her alleged butch lesbianism or unconventional sexual and gender identity. Prior to her rise to fame and stardom, some local tabloids featured a series of sexual scandals, which involved several top players of the national female football team. Recently, there have been a number of leaks disclosing intimate pictures and videos in which the football star seemed to be romantically engaged with another young girl she presented in one video as her cherie (mistress or lover), with whom it was stated that she formed a “very romantic couple.”

Yet Gaëlle Enganamouit is not the only (butch) lesbian player on the national women’s football team. On social media, I have also come across some salacious pictures showing two well-known Lionesses kissing or cuddling each other in either a hotel or a dressing room. While some international players might be more discreet with regard to their sexual relationships, others are not reluctant to publish pictures of themselves enjoying the intimate company of their girlfriends or female lovers on their Facebook or Instagram pages.

Moreover, during the official reception for the Lionesses at the presidential palace by the head of the state in July 2016, I witnessed a scene that is representative of how Cameroon’s government often excuses, tolerates, or ignores certain type of lesbianism. The event pointed particularly to a more tolerant and permissive attitude by Cameroon’s officials toward prominent masculine female football players. While some players tried, through their feminine clothes, to present a more feminine image, many of their self-identified lesbian teammates instead chose to dress like men and did not hesitate to exhibit through their cross-dressing their unconventional sexual identity and orientation. This sexual and gender transgression was expressed before the very eyes of the Cameroonian head of state and a hundred special guests who came to congratulate these new national heroes who, according Cameroon’s president, represented the “pride of the whole nation” and embodied the image of a “Cameroun qui gagne” (a Cameroon that is successful).

Yet neither the government officials nor the football authorities made any comments on the masculine attire of these female players, who seemed to take pride in exhibiting in public both their sexual and gender difference. Even the local sensationalist tabloids did not make any reference to the fact that most of the key players of the Lionesses were dressed in men’s attire, which seemed to confirm their unconventional sexual orientation. Instead, most of the official comments and statements recorded by the reporters of the state-controlled television CRTV commented only on the women’s exceptional football talent, particularly the athletic and mental qualities of these masculinized women players, who were now referred to by such names as “Amazons,” femmes lions (lion women), femmes fortes (strong women), femmes combattantes (women with a fighting spirit), filles vaillantes (brave and courageous girls), joueuses talentueuses (talented female players), and lions au feminine (feminine lions). Both the unconventional cross-dressing and extravagant hairstyles of these masculine women players were metaphorically framed as a look singulier (singular look) or style particulier (particular style) of players aux physiques hors-normes (exceptional physical aptitudes), as two cabinet ministers who attended to the reception ceremony phrased it when they were interviewed by a local TV channel.

In many respects, unlike the traditionally despised and ostracized garçons manqués, the officially acclaimed femmes fortes who were honored as football heroes and heroic patriots by Cameroon’s state officials symbolized a figure of the heroic, combative, and brave butch lesbian players.

Butch Lesbian Football Players: Between Heteronationalism and Homonationalism

It is necessary here to clarify the two key concepts that guide my analysis: heteronationalism and homonationalism. I use the term “heteronationalism” to refer to a kind of sexual ideology that represents the national community as fundamentally heterosexual, and therefore condones a political practice that allows for the political exclusion and the juridical persecution of citizens with noncompliant or divergent gender and sexual identities. This term also accounts for the way heterosexual norms and values are mobilized by the state power to define the nation-state or to serve its nationalist goals. As far as homonationalism is concerned, although I borrow this notion from Jasbir Puar, my reading is quite different from hers. Contrary to what she argues about the US neoliberal policy in regard to gay rights (Puar Reference Puar2007), by homonationalism I mean in this essay a political practice by which the state power grants respectability to some homosexual subjects who have been successful in the defense of the nation’s pride, and rewards them with visibility and social recognition.

As already alluded to in the introduction of this essay, in a number of countries of West and Central Africa, the management of lesbianism in women’s football is generally marred by contradiction and ambiguity. This ambivalence is manifest in a policy that oscillates between rejection and acceptance of women lesbian players, between denigration and celebration of the very same women. Cameroonian officials sometimes deliberately turn a blind eye to the unconventional sexual and gender identities of some of the top players of the Lionesses, despite their unambiguous homosexual identity. This clearly indicates that their (butch) lesbianism is overlooked and even excused when these key players contribute through their outstanding performances to the success of the national women’s football team in international competitions. Indeed, in the state officials’ consideration of football performance, butch lesbianism ceases to be considered a sin, depravity, or evil, or to be condemned in the name of both traditional African and Christian moral values. Instead, it is viewed as a key asset and perhaps even necessary for achieving good results in women’s football. Likewise, a female masculinity which is generally dismissed as a threat to traditional femininity or perceived as a sign of degradation toward a hyper-masculinity, is now praised as a beneficial quality or positive attribute. Ironically, the very same (heterosexual) femininity that is promoted by Cameroon’s government is sometimes viewed in women’s football as a hindrance to realizing their athletic goals. As a result, players who do not display this overtly masculine version of femininity are often sidelined by national women’s football teams.

In other respects, it is the complex and multifaceted sexual politics of Cameroon’s government which rationalizes the state officials’ appraisal of masculine members of the Lionesses as “Amazons” or “superwomen.” Indeed, Cameroon’s politics of sex is fraught with ambivalence because it celebrates heteronormativity as an expression and a marker of national belonging and civic citizenship, but at the same time, it allows for the profiling of some unaccommodating masculinized women players as deux doigts or tantouses, who are sometimes ostracized or prosecuted when their sexual and gender dissidence is perceived as a threat to the heteronormativity which the government promotes. Conversely, to bolster its (hetero)nationalist project, the state has had to adopt a homonationalist stance which favors the perception of some forms of lesbianism in women’s football as tolerable or acceptable, especially when this deviant sexual identity is tied to the intérêts supérieurs de la nation (nation’s higher interests), the defense of the fatherland, and the nation’s pride. Moreover, it is the same nationalist project of Cameroon’s government to build one of the most competitive and successful national women’s football teams in Africa that sometimes causes Cameroon’s football officials to consider the butch lesbianism of the Lionesses’ top players as irrelevant in the players’ performance or as something of little importance.

In the previous section, this study related the friendly treatment of some masculine players of the national women’s football squad by the Cameroonian authorities. The state’s tolerant and permissive attitude toward some cross-gender Lionesses suggests that it is thanks to their success and outstanding achievements in international women’s football that the often socially stigmatized and politically excluded homosexual bodies can be homonationalized, as Jasbir Puar (Reference Puar2007) would put it, or can be reintegrated within the imagined heterosexual national community. This points to the ambivalent instrumentalization of football by the Cameroonian authorities to address the burning issue of female masculinity or butch lesbianism. On the one hand, the government officials use women’s football not only to implement their heteronationalist project or ambition in sports at large, but also to reinforce their disciplinary regulations of the non-conforming sexuality of self-identified or suspected butch lesbian players. On the other hand, it is thanks to a successful participation of these sexually non-conforming women in international women’s football that Cameroon’s government manages to normalize their initially disturbing and potentially embarrassing unconventional sexual and gender identities through a political invention of “good,” “civic,” “patriotic” lesbian football players, who are projected as a reversal figure of the despised and pathologized garçons manqués. In other words, it is women’s football which enables a variation between heteronationalism and homonationalism with respect to butch lesbianism, or a fluctuating representation of masculine lesbians either as garcons manqués or as femmes fortes. In addition, women’s football is the chief domain where Cameroon’s state power not only condones or promotes the expression and performativity of a certain form of “useful” and “patriotic” (female) homosexuality, but also tolerates, excuses, and even approves the presence of unconventional sexual subjects, who are under other circumstances stigmatized, ostracized, and even criminalized. Contrary to the US case discussed by Jasbir Puar (Reference Puar2007), the homonationalist politics and practice of Cameroon’s government are incomprehensible without the heteronationalist ideologies which legitimize its anti-gay policies, its tactical and opportunistic acceptance of some forms of deviant sexual and gender identities, and especially its ideological construction of a binary opposition between two distinctive categories of female masculinity, garçons manqués and femmes fortes.