It is inhumane and unAfrican. People must interrogate themselves and their reasons for being cruel to the gay community
gay
Posted inEquality
Pronouns are small but mean a lot
For trans and non-binary Africans like Matthew Blaise, sexual identification and acknowledgment is a daily struggle
Posted inEquality, Gender violence, Health, Lifestyle, Media
Can young people really know they are gay?
By Pierre Brouard and Judith Ancer If a young person feels that they are gay, is the priority to work out if they are sure they are gay, or to help them deal with the fears and anxieties of their family and friends? We are two psychologists who work regularly with this dilemma, and recent […]
Posted inEquality, Health, Lifestyle, Media
Researching and re-imagining the “Fag Hag”
By Zipho Dolamo We’ve all heard the term “fag hag” – generally defined as a heterosexual woman who primarily associates and maintains friendships with gay men. Bruce Rodgers is one of the authors accredited for coining the concept in his 1972 book The Queen’s Vernacular: A Gay Lexicon. Rodgers(1972, p.78) defines a fag hag as: […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence, General, News/Politics
Inxeba reveals the paradox of our own wounds
I have been gay for as long as memory serves me. I vividly remember spending the bulk of my formative years vacillating between denial and self-hate; from a young age I somehow knew that acting on my romantic feelings would come at the unbelievably high cost of shaming my family, my friends, and my culture. It […]
Posted inEquality
The ancient Greeks’ wisdom regarding sexual orientation
As history unfolds, people tend to regard earlier eras as being surpassed in practically all areas of cultural activity, the most obvious one being technology — “progress” regarding which, incidentally, seems to me to be proportional to retrogression in other spheres of culture, specifically self-understanding: the more gadgets there are to be fascinated by, the […]
Posted inEquality, General, News/Politics
The thinking Christian’s gay dilemma
It is no surprise, if media reports are to be believed, that the driving force behind Uganda’s new hate legislation against its LGBTI citizens is backed by US-based fundamentalist evangelical Christian organisations. It’s frankly embarrassing, as an albeit liberal Christian, to be associated even in general description with this kind of behaviour. What would Jesus […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Magical thinking is behind the gloom over SA’s Constitution
Despite the evidence to the contrary – 20 years of successfully protected freedoms – it has becoming increasingly fashionable to badmouth the South African Constitution. Sceptics range across the political spectrum, from radicals, who want the state to be unconstrained, to liberals who claim that the Constitution has effectively already been negated by the state. […]
Posted inEquality
What is a lesbian?
“What is lesbian now?” I begin explaining “queer theory” to my grandmother and the diffusion of human rights and international instruments that hold states accountable. These terms and phrases mean nothing to her. I try to tell her about Michel Foucault and she asks if he is my husband. Suddenly all those hours spent in […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence, News/Politics
Why are (black) men silent on the war on queer bodies?
By Gcobani Qambela and Thoko Sipungu Toni Morrison says “evil has a blockbuster audience, goodness lurks backstage. Evil has vivid speech, goodness bites its tongue”. It is not difficult to remember these words when looking at the peculiar silence from heterosexual black men when it comes to issues of LGBTI and queer individuals. Writing for […]
Posted inGeneral
Gandhi, Kallenbach and the controversial ‘Vaseline’ reference
Presumably some of the elderly members of the audience had no idea what the speaker was getting at when the subject of Vaseline came up in his talk on M K Gandhi and Herman Kallenbach. They, after all, belonged to a time when Vaseline was still associated with skin care rather than as a means […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
What will King Zwelithini make of the Zulu gay wedding?
KwaZulu-Natal broke new ground recently. Two men, draped in traditional apparel, stood before family, friends and well-wishers. There was music, there was love and I imagine the good-old wedding jitters. They said “I do” and shared a kiss. The newlyweds are Tshepo Cameron Sithole-Modisane and Thoba Calvin Sithole-Modisane. The Sithole-Modisanes are not your “ordinary” young, […]