Colonial Transcriptions of Homosexual Identities: Early Attempts at Categorisation in the Film, Proteus

Constructions of race, sexuality, and gender in South Africa’s colonial period mirrored emerging Western views of homosexuality, casting it as abominable and later as depraved. This article considers how notions of race and masculinity operated in South Africa during its extended colonisation. It examines the influence of these constructions on homosexual subjectivity, self-identification, and representation in the film Proteus (2003). Like other African nations under colonial rule, South Africa inherited constructions of sexuality common in Europe at the time. Before 1994, many laws governing sexual conduct in South Africa were derived from Dutch and British influence, linking colonialism to the framing of homosexuality.