ECHOES FROM WITHIN

My dilemma is that the pastors are all praying against the spirit of homosexuality in me, but I am not a homosexual, I meet males and have sex with them, but I am a heterosexual...

This is the fifth time in my long ordeal with my parents trying to force out the spirit of homosexuality from me.

Before I go on with my tales of woes, I need to allow you to meet me, although for security reasons I will not be disclosing my name but not withstanding I will only let you into me, only on informal settings.

I am the first and the only son of my middle income earning parents. By the standard in my country Nigeria, my parents are civil servants and we live in a three bedroom Government Issue apartment building in Lagos.

We are such a close knit family that we the children always long for vacations from school, in order to spend a lot of times with our parents.

Dad is always fun to be with, although being a strict disciplinarian that he is, he always makes sure we have something that must connect to our academic every day, like reading of newspaper, not to discuss current events, but to improve our reading skills. My younger sisters always have sweets in packs, because of the free cross-word puzzle in it. Life was fun for us. O! How I long for those days!

My mum was the greatest cook in my world; we longed for her meals and we dear not eat out on our way to school or during the school recess, since we always have our little lunch pack ever ready even before we take our breakfast. She was always keen about what we the children eat.

We grew up looking at each other as our best friends, never hiding anything from each other. Even when my sisters started having the school runs, it was our own little secret, and some other times I get to decide for them which guy is good for them, at least to feel better that my sisters are in safe hands.

All through these times, I have always feel that I am a girl feeling trapped in a male body. I love to do things that girls do, feel need to be cared for the same way like my sisters. I remember that I am the first to always try out any cloth that they buy. I am the family’s model, everyone always wait for me to come and do the cat walk and ease the family’s tension. To them I am only amusing them, but to me, I am just being allowed the place to be myself. They never seem to understand.

The problem started when all the children started leaving for the university, I left after my immediate younger sister, not because I was not good for the admission, because I choose to study a feminine subject, in the opinion of my father, catering and hotel management. “How can my son, the only one at that, study that kind of a course? What about medicine, or even engineering? Why should he fill that in his jamb form?”

So the next year my dad, had to buy and fill the university matriculation examination form by himself on my behalf, even choosing a subject without my knowledge, only to be told that he has bought and submitted the form and I need to start preparing for the examination.

Getting the admission was his headache, but he made sure I got the slot, to study a masculine course that he chose, civil engineering. I struggled to cope, and I just needed to cope if I will still make the family happy, so I started living for the peace of the family, even when it means that I was waging a war against myself internally.

My mum’s worry was about my orientation, just guessing though, she is always on the lookout for the cutest girl in church for me, a conspiracy between her and my sisters. But I am just in a battle against myself, needing not to be a failure by living my life for them and making everyone happy.

I had some relationships with the female folks, but just to make them believe that I am still what they expect me to be. Within me, I was trapped, trapped in my body, looking for a way to be with males.

In my university days, I met males of like minds, although they were all gays, I do not feel gay, I feel that I am a woman, and not a man. I feel the sense of worth when I am with them, not that they fully understand me, but that I get the male attention I needed. I am in a heterosexual relationship not a homosexual relationship. I am a girl, but all you see is a male, just what you want to see.

Our last born was the first to have noticed my attraction, her friends consider me cute, but I just cannot see myself in a relationship with a fellow female, really a no go area.

After my graduation, I needed to get married, after much pressure, some friends advised that I move out of the country, but I cannot see myself leave my parents, it is like turning my back against them, I really love them, so that option was never considered. Another friend, later sold an idea to me that I look better and if well put together I can still be safer with me and also pleasing my parents.

He advised that I get a lesbian girl who will agree to get married to me and we both can still continue with life style. Based on this we contacted a friend of ours who is a lesbian and I narrated my plight to her. She agreed to help talk to some of her friends who were in the same state as I am. Eventually, I was able to get someone, who will be my live-in friend, but to my parents my lovely wife.

We signed a pre-nuptial agreement and we started ‘dating’, not long afterwards we got married in one of the society weddings in my area. My parents were the happiest parents; their first and only son is now married. The very thing they were expecting were their grand children, according to my mother and sisters with of course the subtle encouragement from my dad.

It is at this stage that I really need to confide about myself to my mother, I told her about what I feel inside, that I feel more like a female than being a male. Did hell let loose? No, but that opened the torrents of prayer sessions.

I am now tired of the fasting and prayer sessions, the fifth in the series, but my dilemma is that the pastors are all praying against the spirit of homosexuality in me, but I am not a homosexual, I meet males and have sex with them, but I am heterosexual, no wonder their prayers are never answered. I am only a female trapped in a male body; I need the freedom, which is what I need prayers for. (To be continued...)

This true life series was put together by Michael Akanji

NIGERIAN WRITER WHO FELL IN LOVE WITH BINYAVANGA

BY EVAN MWANGI 

 If I were to write a novel to respond to the anti-gay politics seeping through the Ugandan border into Kenya, it would probably be like the Nigerian author Jude Dibia’s Walking with Shadows. But I’d write mine in my mother tongue.

Dibia’s novel is a fearless book that is reputed to be the first work by a Nigerian literary artiste to explore in detail the theme of male homosexuality.

Dibia is a bold writer. One of the many admirers of Kenya’s Binyavanga Wainaina, the Nigerian writer does not shy away from taboo topics, including writing graphically about incest. His other favourite authors include Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and Virginia Woolf.

Besides Binyavanga, among Dibia’s contemporaries the Nigerian novelist is most closely drawn to the Zimbabwean Petina Gappah (author of An Elegy for Easterly) and NoViolet Bulawayo (pen name of Elizabeth Tshele, author of We Need New Names).

Born in 1975, Dibia belongs to the “third generation” of Nigerian writers, a loose group of artistes that comprises such household names as Chris Abani, Helon Habila, Sefi Atta, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Adichie is the best known in Kenya among these writers.

Dibia’s Walking with Shadows was first published in Nigeria by Blacksands Books in 2005.

Noting the pervasive presence of subversive queer desire, one of the leading queer theorists in the world today, Tavia Nyong’o (cousin to our golden Lupita), urges us to take seriously that “figure of absolute abjection that is, paradoxically, part of our everyday experience.”

Dibia uses language exquisitely to examine an issue that many writers would give a wide berth: homosexuality among married men in Africa.

Sympathy for gay people in Wole Soyinka’s The Interpreters (1965) is very oblique. It took Gaurav Desai’s essay, ‘Out in Africa’ (1997), to clarify to most critics that Soyinka’s novel is not homophobic in its portrayal of one of its characters, Joe Golder, as both African American and gay.

Like the South African K. Sello Duiker — author of The Quiet Violence of Dreams (2001) and Thirteen Cents (2000) — Dibia is more open in his sympathies towards gay men than Soyinka in The Interpreters. However, Dibia avoids the confrontational tone we encounter in Duiker, some of whose passages read like angry pornography for the queer oppressed.

Dibia’s novel is a deftly told story about Adrian, a Nigerian head of a risk business unit. His job description connotes the “risks” he has to negotiate around, as he is also a gay man in the closet, married to a beautiful woman, the father of gorgeous daughter, and a respected mentor to many young men.

It becomes public that Adrian is gay, thanks to Tayo Onasanya, a former employee whom Adrian had sacked for corruption. Tayo learnt about Adrian’s sexual orientation from a lesbian mutual friend.

The narrator depicts in detail and with great sympathy the crisis that hits Adrian when his wife, Ada, is told about his sexual past.

His relatives’ responses are varied. Younger people sympathetically reach out to Adrian, but his elder brother, Chiedu, engages a priest to exorcise the ghost of gayness from Adrian.

The novel broaches several issues about sexuality. It demonstrates that even the most liberal people might become suddenly conservative when it comes to homosexuality.

Adrian’s wife, an innovative interior designer, is not one to believe in such a thing as an immutable African culture. But it is impossible for Ada to even begin to wrap her mind around her husband’s non-normative sexual desire.

Although he insists he had not slept with a man since he met his wife, Ada cannot believe what she has heard about her husband’s sexuality even without waiting for him to put everything in context.

She asks: “You knew this and still deceived me and still married me and still had the guts to make love to me and put your thing in me!”

The infelicitous repetition of “still” signals her shock, anger and bewilderment. The narrator rubs in her disbelief to also underscore her coldness towards a man she had claimed to love.

“She could not bring herself to look at him,” the narrator says. “She kept trying to wipe out the mental image in her head about him and another man.”

Queer theorists mostly see sexual identity as socially constructed. But Dibia’s novel seems to present Adrian’s gayness as congenital. He has always liked boys and enjoys playing girls’ games as a kid.

In presenting Adrian’s homosexuality as somewhat in-born, the author is trying to enhance our sympathy towards the character. There is nothing Adrian can do about his gayness. He would even want to leave it behind him, to no avail.

MANY VIRTUES

The novel has many virtues in its characterisation. While men are usually presented negatively in novels critical of patriarchy, African feminist novels usually depict at least one good man who is sympathetic to women’s issues in order to avoid demonising all men as gender-insensitive.

Following this trajectory, Dibia added an episode in a revised edition of the novel published in South Africa in 2007, in which a straight young man, Rotimi, stands by Adrian in his troubles at work.

We learn from Rotimi, one of the novel’s voices of reason, that right-thinking straight people should always stand with the oppressed minorities.

From its inception in the 1950s, African writing has always painted the folly of a society that mistreats its minorities. For example, in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, the society disintegrates partly because it pushes its minorities to defect to new religions.

Male gay novels tend to represent women negatively, including lesbians. Although we don’t see many positive traits among female characters in Dibia’s Walking with Shadows, Dibia is deferential to the few women who feature in the novel.

His next novel, Unbridled (2007) is, to the best of my knowledge, the only African novel by a male writer that convincingly uses an autobiographical female voice. It is hard to tell from the story itself that the author is male.

Reminiscent of Nuruddin Farah’s Ebla in From a Crooked Rib (1970), Ngozi in Dibia’s Unbridled narrates with great candour her experiences in abusive relationships. But unlike Farah’s novel, Dibia’s work uses the first person narrative voice.

Besides Walking with Shadows and Unbridled, Dibia is the author of Blackbird (2011), an equally provocative novel about the moral and political corruption in Africa.

Dibia’s Walking with Shadows demonstrates that queer is the new colonised. But it does not explore in detail the factors behind homophobia among African elites, except suggesting that homophobes are either stuck in the past or are negatively influenced by American Pentecostalism.

According to Richard Ryan, a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester, homophobes are usually closeted gay people.

The all-male anti-gay caucus in Kenya’s Parliament and the equally comical all-male Maendeleo ya Wanaume should be read in a similar light when they make statements dismissing “gayism” (sic) and “resbianism” (sic): they are acting out their repressed homosexuality.

evanmwangi@gmail.com

Culled from: http://mobile.nation.co.ke/lifestyle/Jude-Dibia-Binyavanga-Wainaina-Homosexuality-Africa/-/1950774/2235606/-/format/xhtml/-/phy7a/-/index.html

SEX IN AFRICA IS MORE DIVERSE THAN GAY-OR-STRAIGHT.

BY CHANTAL ZABUS

On 13 January the Nigerian president, Goodluck Jonathan, signed a bill against gay relationships, outlawing gay marriage, public displays of same-sex relationships and membership in gay groups. A few days later, Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, refused to sign an anti-homosexuality bill that has been in the works since 2009 on the grounds that there are other ways of dealing with “an abnormal person”. Pondering the issue earnestly, he wrote: “Do we kill him/her? Do we imprison him/her?”

Museveni is not alone in pondering how to kill sexual dissenters. In the wake of the trial for “sodomy” of the first president of Zimbabwe, Canaan Banana, his successor Robert Mugabe spoke of homosexuals in a 2002 campaign speech as “mad person[s]” who will be sent to jail. “We don’t want to import it [homosexuality] to our country,” he said. “We have our own culture, our own people.”

At least 76 United Nations member countries have laws that criminalise same-sex relations; some 37 African countries, along with Middle Eastern countries, constitute a majority of those. It is still dangerous and even life-threatening to be out in Africa.

In many places, homosexuality – itself a slippery category, with roots in 19th century medical literature – is still thought to be quintessentially “un-African”. South African Bishops were the only ones among African Anglican bishops not to help defeat the Church of England’s 1998 attempt to improve attitudes toward homosexuality. The Church in Africa, especially in its Evangelical garb, is still often ready to identify homosexuality as an abomination to God. Ugandan film-maker Roger Ross Williams, director of God Loves Uganda (2013), argues that American missionaries are often behind this frenzy against gay sex – this in a country that happens to be one of the top global consumers of gay porn.

Homosexuality is also often depicted as an import from the deviant west. But the African continent has always been more queer than generally acknowledged; it has always rainbow-hazed into a huge range of sexualities. It is therefore a serious matter of political and critical concern that homosexuality (of all kinds) and African cultures are read as mutually exclusive. In fact, many African sexualities fall outside of the purview of the law – and even of language.

Same-sex practices are common throughout the African continent; it is the claiming of homosexual identity that remains widely forbidden. The question of what constitutes “sex” in Africa, and in particular same-sex sex, is still something of a blind spot. As the work of Marc Epprecht has revealed, not all African men who have sex with men or women who have sex with women think of themselves as gay, homosexual, bisexual or queer. They are seldom members of activist LGBT organisations and are not computed as such in the health literature on HIV/AIDS. In Africa, as in Latin America and other parts of the world, there is a tension between homosexual identity and homosexual practice.

Anything but straightforward

What we see in recent legal developments is the policing of African or Islamic same-sex desire as a form of resistance to westernisation. Terms such as “gay” and “lesbian” (which reek of western liberation struggles), and more recently “queer” (a movement generated in academe), certainly point to the globalisation of sexual identity. These words were originally imported to the African continent via English, French and other western languages, and often clash with indigenous designations and practices. In South Africa, a “masculine man” playing a dominant role in a relationship with another man is called “a straight man”, and is not perceived as “gay” because he acts as penetrator during sexual intercourse.

The term “male lesbians” is an attempt at translating the northern Nigerian Hausa for “passive” male partners, or “yan kifi”; conversely, “lesbian men” in Namibia are women who play the dominant “butch” role in a same-sex relationship. Even though the terms “butch” and “femme” are not known in Namibian Damara culture, various sexual practices and dress codes have some resonance with the western butch-femme dynamic. Meanwhile, in Kampala, Uganda, where sections 140 and 141 of the Penal Code condemn same-sex relations, some Ugandan women identify themselves as “tommy-boys” – biological women who see themselves as men (rather than “lesbians”), who need to be the dominant partner during sex, and who often pass as men.

From Senegal to Southern Africa, many African gay men invoke animistic beliefs in ancestor spirit possession. A gay Shona man in Zimbabwe might claim he is inhabited by his “auntie”, whereas in Senegal, the “gor-djigeen” (“male-female” in the Wolof language) is haunted by the primordial severance between male and female in the creation of the universe.

In her autobiography Black Bull, Ancestors and Me, written in the safety provided by the new South African constitution and its ground-breaking sexual orientation clause, Nkunzi Zandile Nkabinde recounts her gradual empowerment as a lesbian “sangoma”, or traditional healer. But beyond the famed sexual orientation clause, the relationship between her and her “ancestral wife” is sanctioned by Zulu spiritual possession cults, which often privilege female men over male women.

Upon closer scrutiny, it appears that lesbian sangomas and their ancestral wives are not united in a common identity based on shared sexual orientation but rather are distinguished from each other according to gender difference, complicated by spirituality. Ancestral wives can only exist in their relation to masculine females or “male women”, the way “dees” (a term from the last syllable of the English word “lady”) exist solely in their relation to “toms” (from “tomboys”) in Thailand. Thai toms are capable (“khlong-tua”) biological women who protect and perform sexually for dees or female partners, without toms and dees being thought of as lesbians. Even though Zandile Nkabinde, unlike the Thai tom, translates her gender identity into “tomboy”, “lesbian” and “butch”, the Zulu label for her “ancestral wife” is simply not part of the global gay rights vocabulary.

Both in and outside of Africa, there is a frenzied debate raging around the instability of gender and sex, fuelled by a complex array of interests. These legal skirmishes are at their worst potentially deadly in Africa, as the Ugandan example showed. But the answer to these conflicts goes far beyond western gay/straight categories. The array of African homosexualities that is already accommodated by indigenous cultures shows how we must embrace and protect a diversity that dare not speak its many names.

CHANTAL ZABUS HOLDS THE “INSTITUT UNIVERSITAIRE DE FRANCE” (IUF) CHAIR OF COMPARATIVE POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURES AND GENDER STUDIES AT THE UNIVERSITY PARIS 13-SORBONNE-PARIS-CITÉ, FRANCE. © COPYRIGHT © 2010–2014, THE CONVERSATION TRUST (UK).

HTTP://THECONVERSATION.COM/SEX-IN-AFRICA-IS-MORE-DIVERSE-THAN-GAY-OR-STRAIGHT-22500

- Culled from: http://www.arsrc.org/features/sex-in-africa-is-more-diverse-than-gay-or-straight.html#sthash.nZmSue8q.dpuf

SANGOMAS ARE NOT UNAFRICAN

Gay sangomas are not un-African, rather they hold an important place in cultural tradition, a new study suggests.

A practising sangoma and graduate student at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Lindiwe Mkasi, has published a study which challenges the traditionally-held belief homosexuality is “un-African”.
The study argues the existence of gay relationships among Zulu healers means they hold a fundamental place in cultural tradition.
Mkasi followed 10 female traditional healers in same-sex relationships in Kwa-Ngcolosi and Inanda and her study found male and female sangomas practised same-sex relationships without discrimination.
Sangomas, or healers, are thought to serve as human links to ancestors and to the divine.
Many researchers call sangomas “custodians” of Zulu culture and heritage.
Yet many Zulu leaders have condemned homosexuality, decrying it as a cultural import from the West.
Titled “A threat to Zulu patriarchy and the continuation of community”, the study on lesbian sangomas shows homosexuality is not “un-african”.
Dr Sarojini Nadar, Mkasi’s research supervisor and a professor of gender studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said Mkasi’s research was “a sort of spin-off” on a wider study on HIV prevention they had worked on together in 2008.
In that study, one woman revealed she had not slept with her husband in several months because she suspected he might be HIV-positive.
Nadar said they had asked how the woman could have this kind of sexual control in such a patriarchal context, and it emerged the woman was a sangoma.
She had then taken a lesbian partner because, according to her, it was safer.
Some study participants said they had been possessed by male spirits when having sex with other women.
“When ancestors do not want men… you actually feel it, yourself,” said one.
Another sangoma, Nkabinde, said she had been possessed by a male spirit named Nkunzi, saying: “Nkunzi loves women especially young women.
“If I am with a woman of 21 or 22, normally Nkunzi will want to have sex with her… I have more power when Nkunzi is in me, especially when we both desire the same woman.”
Becoming a sangoma has long served as an alternative for Zulu women who find traditional marriage “burdensome,” according to Gina Buijs, a social anthropologist at the University of the Witwatersrand.
“As a sangoma, there is a space for a lesbian woman to be herself without the pressure to form a relationship with a man,” said Buijs.
But Nadar said Mkasi’s findings also pointed to the extensive homophobia in traditional Zulu culture, where “ordinary men and women don’t have that kind of freedom”.
The title of sangoma may protect lesbian women in townships, where they face serious dangers if they come out as lesbian.
In particular, a woman who is perceived as homosexual may be subject to “corrective rape,” where she is raped in an effort to “turn” her straight again.
The emphasis on hyper-masculinity in traditional Zulu culture can also lead to gang formation in urban settings, according to Buijs.
Since 1994, the constitution has forbidden discrimination on the basis of gender and sexual orientation. Yet prejudice persists in the highest strata of society.
Two years ago, many prominent Zulu leaders campaigned to have this clause removed, and Jacob Zuma’s failure to condemn Uganda’s recent anti-gay legislation has drawn international scrutiny.
Yet there are signs South Africa’s leaders are catching up to its constitution.
Last April, the first traditional Zulu marriage involving a gay couple took place. Tshepo Modisanea and Thoba Sithole, both 27-year-old young professionals, faced a lot of negative backlash from social media outlets and some Zulu academics. But other citizens took heart at the news.
One, a blogger named Lenox Magee, called the story “beyond epic”.
“Undoubtedly, this wedding will go down… as one of the most significant events in South African LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersexual) history,” he wrote.


Pretoria News

http://m.iol.co.za/article/view/e/1.1679062

DANGER IN THE SILENCE OF THE MAJORITY

When the madness started majority stood by since it was perceived that its none of their business, they joined in the applause in calling for the head of those that are the minority, claiming that in democracy, the minority can only have their say but the majority must have their way, even when it means that having their way is against all known principles of human rights, the mob led the way.

Subsequent actions showed the illusions of the so called majority that thought that they had their way. The majority that rationalised human rights principles in tbe name of voice affirmation suddenly become the hunted, and now calling for the support of the oppressed minority for support in breach of the majority's human rights.

In Nigeria, population statistics have shown that the young population far out weighs any other segment of the population, but despite the power of the size, we are still begging for recognition in the scheme of things.

According to the constitutution, any  citizen if the country that is 18years and above can be voted for and also vote for any candidate of their choice, but that is a fallacy, as the same constitution does not allow between 18 - 35 years to contest for any elective position, hence that automatically shuts out the largest segment of the population in decision  making.

As a result, young Nigerians have been made statutory beggers and social miscreants in the anals of governance of tne country. Beggers in the sense that we only get into policy making bodies through appointments that is thrown at us, like morsel to the dogs that cant seem to be quiet.We are social miscreants  because they only remember us during elections, not for anything but for rallies and vote ( rigging).

These is not only limited to the govermnet in power but also to the opposition parties that prentend to love the youths on for them to be given the slot of vote of thanks at events, and as a friend once said, the youth get the slot so that the event does not get rowdy, a means to get them to sit through out the programme.

This attitude of the political class is manifested in the number of youth delegates ( still under debate whether there are any TRUE young  delegates invited)  to a conference that discusses the future and the show of shame in the way Nigeria' future generation was swindled in the name of employment by the government yesterday.

The minister response to the saga is the typical response of any politician to issues concerning the youths, you are never patient, another cliche of you are leaders of tomorrow why be concern about

While I destest the present government and the other turn coat hypocrites calling themselves opposition, it is important for all to note that when we keep quiet when human rights principles are being violated, then we are also given the oppressors the green light of impunity and that is what is happenning.

We must stand against the violations of the rights of the minorities for the right of the majority to be protected, a tyrant is a tyrant even the tyranny is directed to a minority.

#Istandwith9jaLGBT

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THE MYTH OF AFRICAN HOMOSEXUALITY

by Lizabeth Paulat

February 23, 2014

Recently, anti-gay bills have passed through the governments in Nigeria and Uganda, sparking debate across the continent. While African LGBT groups have held safety meetings, President Jammeh of Gambia referred to homosexuals in his country as ‘mosquitoes’ and ‘vermin.’ And in Nigeria men merely suspected of being homosexual were marched through the streets of Abuja naked and beaten with wires, metal rods and clubs. Though many deplored the direct violence in Abuja, a majority of opinions applaud the incarceration of homosexuals.

Popular logic here often decries homosexuality as a ‘western concept’ and  just another import from colonial days. Pressure from the West to give LGBT citizens equal rights is often seen as further coercion from former colonialists, trying once again to control the African agenda. Recently, Uganda’s President Museveni sharply rebuffed Obama for his comment that Uganda’s anti-homosexuality bill could “complicate” relations, asking for him to respect the differences in African culture. This delighted numerous Ugandans, who saw their president as standing up for the sovereign rights of an African state. Yet the history of homosexuality in Africa is far more nuanced than the current debate lets on,with numerous studies showing homosexuality is, in fact, as African as the soil itself.

In the Buganda Kingdom of Uganda, Mwanga II, the Kabaka (king) of the region was openly gay. Mwanga actually battled the attitudes of early missionaries towards homosexuality, sometimes even killing Christians who dared question his sexuality. And although Ugandan children are rarely taught this when they learn the history of Buganda, it has been an open secret for years. In Northern Uganda, Nilotico Lango tribes allowed men to shift their gender status, rendering them free to marry other men.

In South Africa, the Lobedu Kingdom had the Rain Queen Modjadji who took up to 15 young wives as she saw fit. Prominent families would send their daughters to her to increase tribal loyalties and ensure wealth through rainfall. She enjoyed such prominence that during a meeting with Mandela, he was only allowed to speak to her when spoken to. In fact, many healers throughout broader Southern Africa were thought to have been comprised of homosexual or asexual women. Part of this reasoning involved the healer being closer to women and therefore, closer to nature’s fundamental source of sustenance.

In the book “Heterosexual Africa?” By Marc Epprecht, he takes on the assumption that same-sex relations were nonexistent in Africa prior to western influence. Epprecht cites evidence to suggest that sexuality, in terms of how we think about it today as being an identity, did not exist in pre-colonial classifications. Homosexuality didn’t function as the antithesis to heterosexuality; rather sexuality was part of an innate spectrum. Because of this, soldiers bedding and even living with male companions were simply considered part of a natural sexual occurrence in certain areas, notably in Southern Africa.

In the book “Boy-Wives and Female-Husbands” edited by Stephen Murray and Will Roscoe, a study of the Bafia people in Cameroon, notes homosexuality being quite normal when women had reached puberty. Out of fear of impregnating girls before full maturity could take place, boys often took up boyfriends, and it was suspected the women did likewise. Those that never married and stayed within their own sex were simply termed as those ‘without children.’

In Lesotho, lesbian behavior was well known, yet existed without the social construction of what ‘lesbian’ means. Because traditionally, the African family always needed to produce offspring, lesbian relationships rarely formed with the intention of a permanent pairing. Rather, affections or sexuality existed side by side with the concept of marriage to a man. This is later echoed in the Hausa tribes of West Africa, where, “There was not a necessary connection between marriage and heterosexual desire.”

It is worth noting that the African continent is incredibly large and diverse, with thousands of languages and cultures. So when we discuss homosexuality in pre-colonial Africa, we must take into consideration oral histories and cultural concepts, which shift over time. Yet there is a very clear divide between pre-colonial attitudes on sexuality and post-colonial law.

Current popular opinion may prefer the erasure of Africa’s homosexual past, deeming it a sin, an abnormality, or simply unAfrican. But the reality is Africa has always had a gay community, and regardless of current discriminatory measures, it always will

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/the-myth-of-african-homosexuality.html#ixzz2uEUtj7O8

LOST

LOST IN THOUGHT….NEVER ABOUT LIFE BUT IN THE CONDEMNATION OF SELF

LOST IN THE OCEAN OF IDEAS …. THAT WAS NEVER MINE

LOST IN THE REJECTION OF MINE …. ONLY ABRACADABRA OF VOODOO FOR FUFU

LOST IN THE CLAIM OF TIME …. ONLY TO DOUBT MY EXISTENCE

LOST IN THE FUMES OF LIQUOR…. ONLY TO THE ILLUSIONARY BREW

LOST IN TRANCE …. ONLY TO COMMUNE WITH MIRAGE

LOST IN QUESTIONS ….. ONLY FOR THEM TO ELOPE IN SENTIMENTS

LOST IN ME … ONLY TO BE DISCOVERED IN THE BROKEN GLASS

THE SEXUAL MINORITY AND LEGISLATIVE ZEALOTRY

By: Prof. Wole Soyinka

Let us go back a little, nearly a year ago, to that earlier attempt to interfere in, and legislate on sexual conduct between consenting adults. Profiting from that experience, I would like to caution – yet again - that it is high time we learnt to ignore what we conveniently designate and react to as ‘foreign interference’.  By now, we should be able to restrict ourselves to the a priori position that, as rational beings, we make pronouncements on choices of ethical directions from our own collective and/or majority will, independent of what is described as ‘external dictation’. The noisome emissions that surged from a handful of foreign governments last year should not be permitted to obscure the fundamental issue of the right to private choices of the free, adult citizen in any land – Asian, African, European etc. Those external responses were of such a nature - hysterical, hypocritical and disproportionate – that, speaking for myself at least, I could only wonder if they had not been generated by a desperate need for distraction away from the economic crisis that confronted, at that very time, those parts of the world.

Hopefully, the majority of Nigerians have also learnt to sniff out ploys of legislative distraction within the nation.  At that initial attempt to cloak prurience in legislative watchfulness, the timing of the removal of the oil subsidy was coincident with a sudden obsession with homosexual and lesbian conduct. Was this truly an accident of timing?  And now? Attempting to mobilize public sentiment against what many, admittedly, do consider deviant sexual conduct certainly takes attention away from the crumbling of society and the failures of governance in multiple directions. These range from minimal infrastructural expectations to mind-boggling escalation of corrupt practices in high places, and the basic issue of security in day-to-day existence of the populace as it affects high and low, affluent or impoverished, old and young, regardless of profession or records of service to Nigerian humanity.  

But, to begin with, I implore all those who boast the capacity for reason: let us separate two distinct, albeit related issues within that one bill tabled before our legislatures. One issue is: homosexual practice; the other, same-sex marriage. I first became aware of, and alarmed by, the conflation of the two – quite deliberate in most cases - when, after a lecture at the University of Technology, Calabar,  a year ago, I advised the legislators to mind the numerous, and urgent businesses for which they were elected, and take their noses out of sexual practices between consenting adults.  Either deliberately – as I have already indicated – or thanks to the now familiar deficiency in listening that sadly characterizes Nigerian responses to public pronouncements, the main reactions were unleashed against something I had not even commented upon, which was:  same-sex marriage. With the now confirmed outing of this bill however, the law-makers have served notice that their monitoring zeal is intended at nothing less than the right of state interference in private lives, especially in personal relations of the most intimate kind. This is the warning shot of legislative fascism. It has no place in a democracy.

Basically, such legislations constitute improper encroachment on personal lives, leaving the door wide open for all forms of social persecution, intimidation and even – as we know very well in this society – incitement to violence against targeted individuals, including lynching.  Next, as several nations all over the world have come to acknowledge after centuries of blindness and hideous injustice, such state interventions glorify ignorance of the science of the human body, and contribute to the elevation of limited or zero knowledge on any subject to the altar of the morally sacrosanct.

The biological truth is this: some are born with imprecise gender definition, even when they have sexual organs that appear to define them male or female. Years, indeed decades, of scientific research have gone into this, so what is needed is understanding and acceptance, not emotionalism and the championing of ‘moral’ or ‘traditional’ claims.  Let us take the first. For those who base their position on moralities extracted from received scriptures, permit me to state bluntly that articles of faith are no substitute for scientific verities, no matter how passionately such faiths are embraced or espoused, or for how long. In any case, faith is also a very private matter, so what we have here is simply one private plaintiff, a ‘conscientious objector’, attempting to lord it over the rights of another private entity, this time one that yields to sexual impulses in obedience to Biological Scriptures. Now, which one should lay claim to precedence?

We must make up our minds where we belong.  We must choose either to create a society that is based on secular principles, or else surrender ourselves to the authority of - no matter whose - theocratic claims. What this implicates is that the next time a woman is sentenced to be buried live in the ground and stoned to death on the authority of one set of scriptures, other scripture adherents must learn to hold their peace and allow such ‘laws’ to run their course. The full implications of either position leave no room for fence-sitting. The national train must run either on secular rails or derail at multiple theocratic switches. No theology can be privileged over another in the running of society.  This means, theology and its derivates cannot be privileged over material reality and its derivatives.

The science of the body is not limited to issues of consenting adults alone. It is what guides the making of laws in rational societies, what makes the law frown decisively on sexual relations with the under-aged, and spells out just what the law means by ‘underage’ in specific years of existence. Adult males earn several years in prison for sexual relations with the under aged because scientific knowledge has identified – beyond argument – the often irreparable damage that is done to a pre-pubescent body through sexual penetration by males. Society therefore protects the potential victim. Has an adult homosexual run to the law for protection in any society we know of? Only where they have been, or are in danger of becoming victims of rape – and there, the law is firmly on their side. Otherwise, the law should have no interest whatsoever in any form of consensual sexual conduct between adults.

So far, we have only addressed the issue of the homosexual act itself as it should concern – or should not – a nation’s legislatures.  Let us now turn to the related problem of same-sex marriages. My interest is not – as a hysterical prelate, among others, tried to over-simplify in his reaction to my observation in Calabar – it is not whether or not homosexual marriages should be permitted or banned. Let us take it step by step. 

The issue, to start with, is - ‘criminalisation’!  Perhaps such marriages exist in Nigeria – I am not aware of them. But we do know that homosexual liaisons exist. Are they granted the status of marriage? Not that I am aware of. Was there a threat somewhere that this might soon happen? Are they a menace to society? Again, all this is shrouded under legislative mystery. No case, to the best of my knowledge, has been brought to public notice where a court registry has been compelled to register same-sex marriages. No priest has been hauled up so far for sanctifying such a marriage. Always open to debate is the right of institutions (civil or state) to be part of the formal mechanisms for pledges that adults undertake in their relations with one another. Priests – of any religious adherence – remain free to refuse to become involved in the ceremonies of such associations. Individuals cannot be compelled to endorse such conduct. It remains their right to privately ostracize or embrace such liaisons – formal or informal.

The state however overreaches itself where it moves to criminalize them. Biology takes precedence over ‘moral’ sentiment. Physiological compositions are increasingly held responsible for a number of mental and/or physical predispositions. Only in the past few decades was schizophrenia successfully tracked backwards to – among other causes - the contraction by mothers of some forms of ailment during pregnancy, as well as to genetic transmission. We should learn to listen wherever the voice of the empirical can be called upon to testify in human conduct.

On the ‘moralists‘, we urge a sense of proportion, and a turn towards objectivity. Yes, a society without moral signposts is only a glorified arena of brute instincts. Nonetheless, morality is far too often mired in subjectivity, sometimes touted as ‘revelation’, erected on untested foundations, increasingly subject to mass hysteria and manipulation. Morality therefore – we must re-emphasize - when applied to the private realm of the human body,  must take second place to biology - morality either as derived from cultural usage or religious givens. We are speaking of – plain biological human composition, over which no individual has any control whatsoever. No individual was responsible for his or her birth, for emerging as a precocious being, a budding genius, or handicapped - either mentally or physiologically.  Those who evoke ‘morality’ so loosely should take care that they do not keep company with theocratic warlords like al-Shabaab of Somalia, who instituted amputation at the wrist for anyone found guilty of the ‘immoral’ act of shaking hands with a fellow human being of the opposite sex!

Permit me to address some of the anxieties – publicly addressed or not – that I happen to have encountered. No one denies the perverse agency of ‘peer pressure’ in certain societies – or institutions - where homosexuality is considered ‘fashionable’, or even becomes a membership card for advancement in some professions.  It is also the admissible right of the individual to experience and express disgust at the mere thought of homosexual conduct: the complement, incidentally, also obtains among some homosexuals with regard to heterosexual practice. I have encountered some who declare that the very thought of heterosexual act makes them sick.  Also, there exist the bi-sexual individuals who live and die at ease – or with resignation - with their complex anatomy. None of these tendencies justifies criminalization.

The heterosexual – or ‘straight’, to use that tendentious expression - minds his or her business like the rest. Laws, if any are promulgated in these cases, should be towards the protection of the vulnerable in society, vulnerable from whatever cause, including deviations from the sexuality of the majority genders. Non-consensual conduct is a different matter, or coercion, such as rape or other forms of sexual abuse, and these apply both to the homosexual and the heterosexual. I have had occasion to intervene in boarding schools to demand protection for some young pupils whose lives were bedeviled by sexual harassment from their senior colleagues. Their teachers turned a deaf ear to the victims’ complaints to an extent that virtually amounted to connivance. Now that is one area against which legislators might usefully want to turn their legislative ire – such teachers deserve to be brutally purged from their positions and made to face prosecution. 

I shall be remiss if I do not also to address the appalling evidence of hypocrisy among the law makers. New laws are being proposed for private conduct that has never constituted a danger to the fabric of society. By contrast, the notorious violation of existing laws by a member of the law-making fraternity was rendered a non-event by a conspiratorial silence, amounting to connivance and enthronement of impunity. 

A former governor and present Senator violated the laws of two lands – Egypt and Nigeria – through his sexual behaviour. Serial paedophilia and cross-border sex trafficking are criminalized near universally. Laws for the protection of minors are rigorously enforced in civilized societies. On that, and allied issues, the law-making conclaves of wise men and women remained mute or conciliatory. An opportunity to enforce the existing laws in high places as a high profile deterrent to others was simply discarded. No new laws have been proposed, not even as a sop to outraged public conscience, to re-criminalize such acts, yet the legislatures take time off to make laws that criminalize private conduct that have not constituted a threat to the well-being of the vulnerable in society.

Is it too much to ask that our legislators cool their moral ardour for a study period during which they seek to understand a phenomenon that many hold abhorrent? (Please note: this is not intended as yet another incentive to undertake expensive study tours around the world – the relevant publications are available everywhere.)  If there are scientific explanations for homosexual conduct - and these have been expounded in profusion - then a process of education is called for, enabling a more empathetic response to what appears an aberration to the majority. That it appears an aberration to some does not however make it immoral or socially subversive.  And foreign interventionists should – let me repeat - at least exercise a sense of proportion, recalling that even within their own societies, such issues are still up for debate, with see-saw decisions between state and federal courts – examples include the United States - right up to the present.

The high moral grounds that those nations attempt to occupy by hurling threats of sanctions etc etc. merely strike one as extreme cases of hypocrisy, unmindful of their own scriptural injunctions that urge: ‘Physician, heal thyself ”

Culled from: http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/the-sexual-minority-and-legislative-zealotry/132815/