On assumptions, labels, and being misread

Over the past few weeks, I have introduced a set of key terms and perspectives that speak to experiences many of us recognize, even if we have never had language for them. These reflections have moved through questions of language, marginality, ambiguity, and ambivalence—concepts that often surface in everyday life, long before they are named as such. I wanted to use this space to expand on those ideas more deliberately, and to draw some of the threads together. If you have not read the earlier pieces, you can find them here:  The whatever act…, Marginality in spaces of unconditional belonging and Between what is said and what is meant……

What I have been writing about often begins in ordinary moments that carry more weight than they appear to. A decision not to respond. A pause that lingers in a meeting. Stepping back from an expected role. In another article, I described a moment that could resemble a protest but resisted naming it as one, not because it lacked intention, but because naming it would have narrowed its meaning. The act mattered because it remained ambiguous.

When Words Do More Than They Admit

This kind of ambiguity appears elsewhere too, particularly in language. We are surrounded by phrases that seem harmless on the surface but often work to someone’s advantage rather than expressing what they claim to mean. “I didn’t mean it like that.” “You’re reading too much into it.” “Let’s not make this a big thing.” “I’m just being honest.” These expressions are familiar and for that reason rarely questioned. They move easily through workplaces, relationships, and families, often surfacing at moments when discomfort, disagreement, or harm is being named.

Before going further, it feels important to pause and ensure that the underlying ideas are clear. Ambiguity, ambivalence, and marginality are often treated as problems to be solved as signs of uncertainty, weakness, or lack of clarity. In my writings, I approach them differently. I am interested in their generative potential. In how not naming something, not resolving a tension, or not fully occupying the centre can become a way of navigating constrained spaces. They are positions, responses, and sometimes strategies.

This perspective is shaped by my research. In my doctoral work, I interviewed women activists in Zimbabwe whose political engagement did not fit neat categories. Many resisted explicitly naming themselves as feminist, even when their work might make that seem obvious. What emerged was not contradiction, but a careful negotiation of visibility and risk. Their ambivalence was not a lack of commitment. It was an orientation shaped by context, history, and consequence. Scholars such as Silvia Bawa have similarly framed ambivalence as strategic rather than indecisive. In her research on generational perspectives in Ghana, Bawa shows how many younger women avoid feminist identification, not out of disengagement, but because the label itself carries social and political cost. Their work continues, even as the name is refused.

Now hold that thought.

Chihera- Defiance or strength

I want to return briefly to a more personal place. My sisters and I are Chiheras. I am Chihera, descended from the Eland (Mhofu) clan within the longstanding Shona totemic system. Totemism, a belief system in which human beings share kinship or a mystical relationship with spirit beings such as animals, has survived colonialism and remains a defining aspect of Zimbabwean cultural identity. Within this system, identity is not simply individual; it is relational, ancestral, and deeply embedded in history.

Recent scholarship by Chitando and others reframes Chihera as representing the ideal of African women’s emancipation. Chihera women are described as assertive, fearless, and unyielding in their resistance to patriarchal dominance, women who challenge gendered expectations and reject second-class status within social and cultural structures. The term has evolved to symbolise women and girls who refuse to be diminished.

This reframing matters. For a long time, Chihera women have been reduced to caricature. We have been the subject of jokes, warnings, and memes portrayed as difficult, unruly, excessive, too much. Traits such as assertiveness, independence, and refusal have been recast as moral failure. What recent scholarship does, finally, is name these traits as strength rather than deviance. It articulates what many of us have known intuitively but have rarely seen affirmed.

Placed alongside the earlier reflections, this matters because it shows how naming itself is never neutral. Who gets named positively, who is caricatured, and who is left ambiguous shapes how people are allowed to exist. Sometimes, refusing a name or sitting uneasily with one is not confusion. It is a response to long histories of misrecognition. Meaning that ‘whatever act’ we performed under the tree could therefore be read in multiple ways, depending on the lens brought to it. Seen through one perspective, it might register as defiance or disruption; through another, as indifference, excess, or simply as being read as strong and assertive etc.

What is striking about the Chihera example is that it is not unique. Similar dynamics appear across cultures, genders, and racialised identities, even if the names and histories differ. Certain identities become shorthand. They are flattened into traits, warnings, or expectations that circulate long before we enter the room. Black men are aggressive. Black women are strong. Asian women are submissive. Latina women are fiery. These phrases are familiar precisely because they are so easily deployed. They travel quickly. They sound descriptive, but they operate performatively, shaping how people are received, feared, admired, or managed.

What complicates this further is that these labels are not only imposed; they are sometimes adopted. Not because they are accurate, but because they can be useful. Depending on context, leaning into or away from a label can become a way of navigating power. Strength can be invoked when vulnerability would be dismissed. Assertiveness can be amplified when silence would be misread. At other times, the same labels are softened, avoided, or carefully reframed.

I am aware of this tension in my own life. I am proudly Chihera in some spaces, among people who understand the history, humour, resilience, and refusal carried in that name but in others I find myself naming it more cautiously, already anticipating how it might be received. I remember this clearly around my engagement, when my partner’s family at the time learned I was Chihera. The reaction was not curiosity so much as apprehension, followed by jokes that landed as warnings: Varume ka ava—Chihera women behave like men; Unomugona?—can you manage her? The concern was less about compatibility than containment. In that moment, Chihera ceased to be a cultural identity and became a shorthand for difficulty and excess. A story was written about who I would be before I spoke. The name did not describe me; it positioned me.

What stayed with me afterward was not only the reaction itself, but how familiar it felt. Similar logics appear across cultures and racialised contexts, even when the language shifts. Black men are described as aggressive rather than direct. Black women are praised for being strong, often at the precise moment they are expressing fatigue or asking for care. These characterisations circulate easily, and we sometimes find ourselves leaning into them or pushing against them, depending on what the situation seems to require.

“And What Is My Background?”

I have seen this play out in North American contexts as well. There are lighter moments, though even those carry something underneath. During one particularly hot Canadian summer, a white Canadian man struck up a conversation with me and said, quite confidently, “Oh, you’re from Africa, you’re probably used to this heat.”

“No, sir. I am from Zimbabwe. Not Africa-as-a-continent, but Harare. And no, it does not get this humid, “ I responded. The comment was casual, almost friendly, yet it rested on a flattened idea of place and experience, leaving little room to correct it without appearing confrontational

Another moment, less amusing in hindsight, happened during my Master’s programme. After enrolling in a course, a white professor requested a one-on-one meeting. He explained that he wanted to “warn” me that the class was complex, given my background. I remember asking, calmly, “And what is my background?” There was a pause. We did not get very far after that. At the time, I laughed it off. Sitting with it now, it sounds less funny and more familiar.

I could keep going. I have many stories like these. But by now, I think the pattern is clear.

• Language does things—it shapes expectation, closes possibilities, and shifts responsibility.
• Identities are negotiated, not fixed; we learn when to lean in, resist, or let ambiguity do its work.
• Marginality, ambiguity, and ambivalence are not failures of clarity, but responses to repeated misreading.

If  you have not grasped these concepts, let’s make it simpler ……

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie speaks about the danger of a single story, i.e. the risk that comes from hearing one narrative repeated so often that it begins to stand in for truth. Single stories flatten difference and erase complexity. They don’t always show up as open hostility, but as everyday assumptions that feel normal to the person making them. The moments I describe here—being praised for strength, assumed to be used to heat, or quietly doubted—are not isolated. They are single stories at work, shaping how someone is seen before they have a chance to speak for themselves.

And perhaps this is where ambiguity, ambivalence, and marginality matter most. They interrupt the single story. They refuse to resolve people into something easily digestible. They insist on complexity not as an academic ideal, but as a lived necessity.

Acknowledging Inequality Without Erasing Agency

Let me add a final practical example from the development industry, the field I have worked in for 15 years. In development language, “marginalised” and “vulnerable” are often used as neutral descriptors. Yet there is a real risk in how marginality is approached, particularly when we focus on the marginality of children, women, or other groups labelled as vulnerable. While these categories are intended to draw attention to inequality, they can also narrow how people are seen. Marginality becomes synonymous with lack, fragility, or need, and in the process, other dimensions are obscured.

These words, even when used with good intentions, carry weight. To be labelled marginalised often positions someone primarily as a recipient of intervention rather than as an agent with knowledge, strategy, and capacity. The focus shifts quickly to deficits, i.e., what is missing, what is lacking, what needs to be fixed. Less visible are the forms of resilience, creativity, and relational intelligence that allow people to navigate constrained environments long before any programme arrives.

I am not denying the existence of inequality or harm. Structural exclusion is real and naming it matters. But when marginality is treated only as a condition to be remedied, rather than a position shaped by power, we risk missing what people are already doing within and around that position. Women who are described as vulnerable/ marginalized are often managing households, mediating conflict, sustaining networks, and making strategic decisions under pressure. Children labelled at risk are often deeply attuned to their environments, adapting in ways that are neither accidental nor passive.

What gets lost, then, is complexity. Marginality becomes a fixed identity rather than a relational condition. Vulnerability is framed as inherent rather than situational. And strength is acknowledged only when it aligns with predefined outcomes or success indicators.

Returning to the broader thread of these reflections, this is why I am interested in marginality not only as exclusion, but as a standpoint. A place from which people see differently, move differently, and sometimes choose ambiguity or ambivalence as a way of navigating systems that do not fully account for them. When we rush to resolve marginality, we may inadvertently silence the very forms of agency we claim to support.

Perhaps the question is not only how to include those at the margins, but how to learn from the ways they are already negotiating the world often with insight, skill, and intention that go unrecognised.