African homophobia and the colonial roots of African conservatism

June 22, 2019 8:04 AM

Turn any homophobic corner in Africa and you're guaranteed to run into a delirious celebration of "African culture," but there's nothing African about homophobia. Kamau Muiga writes.
posted by hugbucket (12 comments total)

Pullquote for flavour and so you don't go there right off the bat:

Ever since Europe colonized Africa on the back of an imperial propaganda of the “Civilizing Mission,” the West has always been seen as an enemy of the customary, a modernizing savior rescuing a reluctant Africa from the jaws of a tribal existence. In this narrative, pre-colonial Africans lived in corporate tribal units characterized by a common language, culture, kinship, hereditary membership and tribal laws enforced through tribal hierarchies of power. Europe then swooped in and disrupted this centuries-old order, actively dismantling African cultural life and forcibly modernizing the continent, making it imperative for Africans today to decolonize themselves by reclaiming and protecting their “original” culture. This narrative is as neat and efficient as it is thoroughly fictional.
posted by hugbucket at 8:06 AM on June 22, 2019 [7 favorites]

In addition to the colonial garbage this article discusses, much of the recent organized anti-gay political activity in Africa has been at the advice of American homophobes. Scott Lively is the one I've followed most closely because I lived in Oregon in the 1990s when he started his anti-gay political career there. He since moved on to Russia and then Uganda, exporting his hate and grifting for money everywhere he's gone.
posted by Nelson at 8:19 AM on June 22, 2019 [27 favorites]

Whoa. How much overlap in (deliberate) misconception does this have with Native American/American Indian* (NA/AI) experience with European colonization? NA/AI Tribes are portrayed in this bordered/hierarchical manner in the US as well....

As well as the obvious, disgusting, divide-rule-conquer aspects, did these (mis?)conceptions of tribal division between Europeans and Native Americans influence colonial action in Africa? Was it vice versa? Or were the assumptions about tribal nature in each case just created from whole imaginary, prejudiced cloth?

*I know this terminology is fraught.
posted by lalochezia at 11:02 AM on June 22, 2019 [2 favorites]

Long-form comic from The Nib "Queerness has always been a part of life in the Middle East and North Africa." Covers some of the same territory as the article.

The gifts of Colonialism just keep on giving.
posted by irisclara at 12:41 PM on June 22, 2019 [8 favorites]

Perhaps related is this movie (which I haven't watched):

In Uganda, a new bill threatens to make homosexuality punishable by death. David Kato, Uganda’s first openly gay man, and retired Anglican Bishop Christopher Senyonjo work against the clock to defeat state-sanctioned homophobia while combatting vicious persecution in their daily lives. But no one is prepared for the brutal murder that shakes their movement to its core and sends shock waves around the world.

posted by aniola at 2:38 PM on June 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

This is a pretty great article, though I do have to quibble with the way that Richard Burton is portrayed third-hand. The "Sotadic zone" wasn't Burton describing homosexuality—he was describing pederasty.
posted by klangklangston at 12:47 PM on June 23, 2019

Would someone from that era even distinguish homosexuality and pederasty as separate things?
posted by idiopath at 4:04 PM on June 23, 2019 [1 favorite]

Imagine being the first openly gay person in an entire country.
posted by gottabefunky at 8:13 AM on June 24, 2019

Here's one answer from r/Askhistory re:scholarly historical consensus on the claims made in the article.
posted by lalochezia at 8:44 AM on June 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

"Would someone from that era even distinguish homosexuality and pederasty as separate things?"

Very much so. Especially Burton, who apocryphally went under cover in a male brothel.

(Would they distinguish them in the same way that we do? Probably not. "Homosexual" as an orientation wasn't really a thing until around the time Burton died; same-sex activity was both common and criminal in most Western states. Pederasty was, in part because of Burton, Orientalized, so while more of a coherent identity, not something people described would likely articulate.)
posted by klangklangston at 8:25 PM on June 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

That's interesting to hear. The tendency of "old fashioned" institutions like the Catholic Church to conflate the two creates the impression that the distinction is a new one.
posted by idiopath at 11:15 AM on June 27, 2019

In Burton's day, sex-segregated social spheres were the norm, and when that happens, there's a higher prevalence of same-sex sexual activity (think prisoners or sailors). But that's behavior, not necessarily identity. Similarly, there was a social celebration of same-sex platonic love (philia) even while the general social structure required opposite-sex marriage for economic, political and status reasons.

This is in contrast to the relatively huge amount of Classic literature, which upper-middle class Burton read extensively, that specifically creates a pederast identity involving both same-sex sexual activity and a distinct difference in age and power. Same-sex sexual activity, or even same-sex romantic activity, wasn't a coherent, connected thing the way we think of it, but lacking the age and power difference (in general), it would have been outside of the "Sotadic Zone."

(This is complicated somewhat by the general use of Classical allusions in descriptions of romance and sex during Burton's time, meaning there's significant overlap.)
posted by klangklangston at 6:18 PM on July 18, 2019 [1 favorite]