‘Mna ndiyayazi uba ndizotshata intombazana’ | I, for one, know that I will marry a woman’: (Re)creating ‘family’ and refl ections on rural lesbian women’s experiences of child rearing and kinship

The primary reason why Wendiswa was happy to have debuted with a woman earlier, she explained, is because she sees that among some of her friends who are lesbian women and did not debut sexually early on with a woman, many have children. Having children, according to Wendiswa, was not positive but rather negative because many of these lesbian women who have children with men are ashamed of this and sometimes even hide their own children. Moreover, although Khalisiwe already had a child, she also stated that she did not want to have children and that even the one that she had was not planned or wanted. She thus stated an explicit rejection of hetero-expectations of idealised womanhood. The stories shared by Wendiswa and Khalisiwe simultaneously challenge and reinforce traditional gender norms. They disrupt gendered labour patterns by allowing their sisters to seek work, while at the same time performing the traditional female caregiver role.