In modern social thinking, norms are generally thought of in opposition to a space of freedom that is more or less curtailed by and through processes of normalization. ‘Transgression’ thereby becomes an implicit or explicit act of resistance against the norm. This is particularly clear in Western Queer Theory, where a political and analytical investment in anti-normativity has – paradoxically – become a field-defining norm. Yet such strong anti-normativity can become a liability when trying to do justice to actually existing queer dynamics in past and present African realities. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork among sexually dissident young men who call themselves ‘fioto’ in urban Democratic Republic of Congo, this article shifts the always already oppositional relationship between queerness and normativity – not by arguing that queer is normal too or by showing that queer lives produce their own norms alongside heteronormativity, but by suggesting that queerness is a potential of normativity, rather than an opposition to it. It specifically thinks with two groups of fioto friends in Kisangani to show how and why norms generated their own queerness – as something that was already there as an inherent dimension of their own dynamism and multiplicity.

在现代社会思维中，通常认为规范与自由空间相对立，而自由空间或多或少地受到规范化过程的限制，或通过规范化过程而受到限制。因此，“过犯”成为对规范的隐性或显性抵抗。这在西方酷儿理论中尤为明显，因为反规范性的政治和分析性投资（反常地）已成为定义领域的规范。然而，当试图对过去和现在的非洲现实中实际存在的酷儿动态伸张正义时，如此强烈的反规范性可能会成为一种责任。在自称为异教徒的性异见人士中，从人种志田野调查中吸取了经验在刚果民主共和国，这篇文章改变了酷儿与规范之间一直存在的对立关系-不是通过争论酷儿也是正常的，也不是通过表明酷儿的生活与异规范一起产生了自己的规范，而是通过暗示酷儿是一种潜在的的规范性，而不是反对。它特别与基桑加尼的两组Fioto朋友一起思考，以说明规范如何以及为何产生其自身的古怪性-这种已经存在的东西是其自身活力和多样性的内在维度。