July was the YLO pride month, possibly because of a protest against performative June pride commitments, also possibly due to scheduling delays and a lost wordpress password…I’ll never say… The discussion is non-the-less an important one. We discussed South Africa on the instagram page, which is often heralded for having progressive laws, yet we saw that changing the law often isn’t enough, social changes still restrict the enjoyment of human rights. Hate speech is often regarded as mindless opinions, yet can have the impact of harmful people justifying their violent behaviour with these views. This month we also took a look at two more conversations around LGBTQ+ rights:
- The argument of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities being “unAfrican” and rejected by the Bible
- The argument that there are more important issues
This is how those played out;
The argument of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities being “unAfrican” and rejected by the Bible
This has never made sense to me. The fact that measuring the extent of Africanness is in the same breath as Biblical principles doesn’t compute because it’s never been a secret that the Bible was a significant tool for colonisation to succeed. We don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater here, the Bible is also very insightful and a source of peace for many, in this instance though, it seems to me like those who rely on this argument can’t see that they have taken on the role of the coloniser, using a book of hope and love to perpetuate the idea of “hating in the name of God.”
But pushing the contradiction of this aside, suppose we accept the Bible as the standard of what should be accepted in Africa and what shouldn’t, there are things that are very obviously unAfrican and rejected by the Bible; heterosexual couples sharing clothes (Deuteronomy 22:5 technically forbids a girl from looking cute in boyfriend’s hoodie and a guy getting cosy in his girlfriend’s gown), women preaching
(1Timothy 2:11-12; 1Corinthians 14:34; Acts18:26; 1Corinthians14:35) , braiding hair (Timothy 2:9-10)….these are commonly accepted with ease and translated to purposfully accomodate more ways in which many Africans want to exist authentically and comfortably, yet relationships between consenting adults are too difficult to accept by people who are not even required to participate in those relationships.
Identity and Divisions
During this month I came across the idea that ‘if we view our roots and tell our stories from slavery the best we can hope to be is great slaves,’ similarly I’m of the view that if we focus on the lines that divide us to justify exclusion, we can only hope to be more divided. Is Africanness about who you sleep with? I got into a mini-silent protest against stating my sexual orientation and gender identity, mutually fuelled by me swivelling on the spectrum and my interest in this subject. I don’t think it’s fair that members of the LGBTQ+ community have doors closed for revealing this part of life, take for instance the Digashu case, if gender and sexual orientation were not used to make decisions about people’s choices, then a family could have peacefully moved through countries just as any heterosexual headed house does. I will acknowledge that this is also a pessimistic view of self-identifying, because this is also rooted in having pride for one’s own existence and celebrating oneself fully and loudly.
I also could not articulate this view well and my mini-protest was met with some reasonable conflict, my initial reasons were that it puts a bull’s eye to violent attackers and that its information that should only be asked by people who are romantically interested in a person, not as a means to try categorise a person. An acquaintance would tell me me that the bull’s eye is necessary because it is more harmful to hide from adversity, and that martyrdom is a risk that comes along with this, it made ‘picking the hill you would die on’ make more sense too me. This same acquaintance sees a necessity in categorising people as a way that people make sense of the world more easily, I can understand this view because it is human to do so, I do it too. But, I think its important to challenge these boxes rather than rely on them. I’m on the fence with how this can be applied because I can also see how it can result in people not being accepted as unique beings, but leaning on categories and boxes perpetuates stigma and discrimination and has the very possible effect of stopping people from broadening their experience of life.
Conclusive View: Differences in identity are part of being in a community. We aren’t all the same and its important to accept and acknowledge that. Viewing sameness and peace as synonymous is harmful. That’s the formula for oppression, because in a system like that, only those with power get to define and maintain the sameness while calling it peace. To be African intrinsically means accepting and welcoming diversity and that we don’t all understand each other and that’s okay for as long as we are not harming eachother, we have about 3000 tribes in this continent and none is more African than the other. Expanding this to diverse sexual orientations and gender identities involves accepting the reality that we are not all identical and that is something worth celebrating, each of us should be able to exist in fulll bloom of uniqueness.
The argument that there are more important issues
This argument assumes that problems can’t be solved concurrently. It undermines the whole LGBTQ+ movement and treats those in it like toddlers having a tantrum over wanting sweets when the electric bill isn’t paid. As if a group of people saying, “I can’t go to the police, they will chase me away because I’m gay, but I can’t go home because there are people who want to kill me for being gay,” shouldn’t be a human rights crisis. Had the word ‘gay’ been exchanged with the word “Christian” or “Black” the insensitive response of a passive “Then stop being that way,” wouldn’t roll so easily out of people’s mouths.
Not to mention, other issues aren’t often pitted against eachother in this way. I’m yet to hear someone respond to the issue of youth unemployment with the notion that its not important because we need to focus on more important issues like sanitation in informal settlements. I can guarantee that the outcry over how dismissive this is would lead to an almost instant loss of political power. No one likes to be dismissed, especially when they are crying out for help.
Democracy is intended to make sure all voices are heard. In practice this can be difficult for several reasons. The most clear to me are that;
- “The power is in the people” seems like a formality. The power is in the administrative decision makers.
- Many administrative decision makers are largely influenced by their political power and rhetoric than their administrative role.
- Political power mostly rests in the hands of post-colonial war heroes and I’ve explored how these powers can be destructive in their goals to maintain power here
- Innovative thinking and new ideas are only welcomed by these powers if they are profitable or if they promote their ideas.
Ultimately, it seems like the goal of democracy in action is to maintain the ideas of the political power in force, not to put the power int the hands of all the people. The question of “your rights end where mine begin” is poorly addressed when it comes to just recognising that the LGBTQ+ community is a community of human beings who deserve human rights. A common response to “You’re not part of the relationship, no one is asking you to participate in them, your life will go on as it usually does” they say it will confuse the children. Children are easily confused by many things, shall we ban taxes, mortgage, talking about puberty, mathematics and school in general because of the risk of confusion? This, in my view, is a veiled response instead of an honest admission; “I won’t know how to respond to my children if they ask.”
Love and Culture
Religious dogma and cultural beliefs provide a comfortable standard for accountability. What we owe and expect. Human Rights does this too. Unfortunately, these face the challenges of political power being very linked to control of decision making in the law.
I got into a couple of conversations with two men who were against the lgbtq+ community. Both of them argued about morals and that there are more pressing issues. Both of them pressed on the idea that the goal of romantic relationships is to produce children. Both seem to me like genuinely kind people who have different views from mine. I did get heated when they said statements that are dismissive, but I had to bite my tongue, it was not the time to shove my perspective down someone’s throat, but to listen. We may never reach an agreement, but it may be possible to create more acceptance and inclusivity, but perhaps if we see where the other side is coming from, we can foster more conversations that allow for inclusive laws and accomodating societies.
I’ll just point out that this says a lot about why the crisis of single motherhood and absent fathers is riduculously high in Namibia. It comes off as if they think they have fulfilled a duty by making someone pregnant. But I digress, love is gatekept, or rather, what love should look like is so heavily guarded by heteronormative views even when the arguments in favour of them make no sense, this isn’t new information, and sometimes its for the safety of those who cannot consent to love but are subjected to harm in the name of a one sided idea of love. We did agree on the idea of love being co-built, that consenting adult couples should help eachother determine what they want their love to look like. This idea did not translate well with my conversation buddies when I asked if we could make it about hetero and homosexual couples having that right when they are in the same community. Adult-adult relationships self-determining in general without others qualifying them by gender or what they’ll do in the bedroom. These interactions were also limited to brief 10-15 min cab rides so we didn’t really go into too much.
When I brought up couples who can’t have children, those who choose not to have children, those who vow celibacy for life, IVF, and adoption, the response would often still go back to the Bible allegedly saying that love is only for heterosexual couples for the purpose of children. The two men I spoke to seemed well intended, their belief is also in love, seemingly, love of the community. They spoke to me as caring fathers trying to correct a lost child. It felt demeaning, and whether that was their intention or not, the core of it is that they believed they were being helpful. That made me challenge the idea that homophobia is motivated by hate.
It dawned on me that their expression of care and love is control, to not listen but to just lead, after all the man is the “head.” At least that’s what I concluded from that interaction. And when I say love I don’t mean some deep sentimental connection, I mean an ethereal platonic care that religion and spirituality say exists in all people.
For a good while it would upset me that the hating in the name of God is a thing, and that many are of the view that it is necessary to do so. While some do hat in the name of God, others decide what God’s love should be and that everyone should view it that way and follow their understanding. Moral superiority. People are responsible for their own souls, we must not try to be the messiah for everyone. Everyone shoul be free to express their own spiritual views as they wish. If I decide that my god is a cricket on a cloud, and I am not harming anyone, that’s my business. Friendships, relationships and the like should be about how we relate to eachother. Conversations on morality can take place with the goal of gaining insight rather than imposing views. A general view that none is greater than the other.
These conversations would fortify my ideals on feminism, equality and human rights. Mostly that patriarchy is a massive contributing problem. These men genuinely seemed to speak from a place of concern and care, to give some context, one is a cab driver I have been familiar with for a while who often drives me from school, and during exams extended his hours specifically to drive female students who were staying late at the library. We saw each other in town and it was an instant reminder of how broad life is, that feeling when you see your school teacher doing something ordinary people do like buying bread. I knew he’d had that same feeling when he jokingly asked, “I didn’t think you went anywhere else but UNAM, so you also come to Wernhil…” The other I had met for the first time, and he was a jolly guy who was just being social and bubbly, he shared jokes and small anecdotes from his life, before saying “aaah but I don’t understand why so many children are lost, this same sex ruling will be the end of us,” which shifted the conversation significantly from an upbeat “My son eats bread like I own a bakery, I don’t understand that boy’s stomach, but he will never refuse food, its good because the groceries don’t go bad…” into a low toned “My daughter, you are lost…” They didn’t speak violently, but I do wonder if I was just spared harshness for seeming correctable, but again this ‘wondering’ might have been my own implicit bias expecting harshness from calm men who just have different views from mine.
Conclusive View: Undermining rights violations and systemic failures that are happening concurrenty is a patriarchal approach to problem solving. I say patriarchal because not everyone is involved in deciding what the priority should be and patriarchy has made many facets of life that are intended to be inclusive, very heirachical. Democracy plays out as being about who has power and religious love seems to be about controlling behaviour and beliefs not acceptance.
ZENZE 