Paper short abstract:

This paper will present the linguistic, comparative ethnographic, oral tradition, and archeological evidence that Bantu speaking peoples living within the Bantu Matrilineal Zone (BMZ) did not conceptualize gender in binary terms. Over the Longue Durée, there were no words for "woman” or “man.”

Paper long abstract:

This paper will present the linguistic, comparative ethnographic, oral tradition, and archeological evidence that Bantu speaking peoples living within the Bantu Matrilineal Zone (BMZ) did not conceptualize gender in binary terms. The BMZ is a large area of Africa that spans from modern Angola in the West to Mozambique and Tanzania in the East. Over the Longue Durée, humans in the BMZ were not classified by their genitalia, and there were no words for “woman” or “man.” Instead, life stages such as mother, grandfather, child, or ancestor were the important categories for determining status, authority, and responsibility. Gender, when considered important, was relational. For example, Lunda, as did many other Bantu speaking peoples, considered a mother without breasts as an appropriate term for a maternal uncle. Yet today modern African nations create laws and legislation based on binary gender categories. Developmental agencies seek to “aid” those humans classified as women, but only in binary gender terms. The resilience of these complex social relations in the BMZ requires that religious, governmental and aid institutions begin to acknowledge that gender dynamics in this part of Africa is quite different from those in the West. This study will also show how colonial and missionary activities forced patriarchy and binary gender categories onto African people. In the Western world there are raging debates about binary gender and how it may not reflect all the human experience, matrilineal Bantu speaking peoples have understood this for a long time.