The play is based on an old practice from East Africa where aging women without children or male heirs were allowed to marry. There is too much hullabaloo about same-sex marriage and this seems to be aggressively focused on the male practice of same gender marriage or sexual cohabitation. The play is not a pun, but a direct examination of the feminine practice of same sex marriage. In practice, husband has always been viewed as a sub-category of male, thus a female husband woman was culturally recoded to take on the aspects of male husband. The Nandi female husband was thus clearly culturally recoded as a man to merely take the outward position of man, all else, the physical anatomy inclusive, remained female. Thus, we can understand this rib when Taptuwei (Taptuei actually), a female-husband-woman says "No, I don't carry anything on my head, that is a woman's duty and nothing to do with me. I became a man and I am a man, and that is all.Why should I assume women's work anymore?" R.S. Oboler (Is the Female Husband Husband a man? pg 69. Women did not own property in the face of their husbands, thus to be able to pay dowry, the initiate female husband had to be first be coded as man. This involved a ceremony that made had to abandon female chores.
