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 […]
homosexuality
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
Dear people with stupid gay questions
Over the holiest weekends of the year (holy for the four days of rest) I encountered questions that left me tired. From the age of about five or six I have been subject to such questions. Sometimes, they came from friends, sometimes from adults and sometimes these questions were not questions, they were rhetorical accusations […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence
How is one to be gay, black and free?
Simon Nkoli once said “In South Africa, I am oppressed because I am a black man and I am oppressed because I am gay. So when I fight for my freedom I must fight against both oppressions”. This is the dichotomy that many black gay men find themselves in. What comes first, what is more […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence, News/Politics
Anti-homosexuality legislation in Africa: The Hart-Devlin debate revisited
The news this week that The Gambia has passed a Bill that further criminalises homosexual conduct and imposes life sentences in cases of “aggravated” homosexuality, along with the continued coverage of the constitutional fate of similar legislation in Uganda, provides an occasion to revisit the most famous debate about the criminalisation of homosexuality in the […]
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
Africa, gay rights and how culture shifts
By Gedion Onyango In a previous post, “Africa: The link between gay rights, chieftaincy and patronage”, I made a sociological analysis of gay legislation status in sub-Saharan Africa, and encouraged more research into the issue. The responses I got were interesting. The commentators’ views broadened my perspectives and more explanations from me are in order. […]
Posted inEquality
Africa: The link between gay rights, chieftaincy and patronage
By Gedion Onyango The gay stance between Uganda versus international community is simply a struggle in defining standard international socio-cultural norms in a globalised system. This involves the processes of determining who defines these norms and how these norms should be enforced. It also brings into question contents of these norms and how these norms […]
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 inEquality, News/Politics
Phantsi homophobic Uganda phantsi
“Thou shall practice homosexuality, thou shall rot in jail.” — Clause 2(2) of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill. For about four years Uganda’s ruling political class has held an axe above the head of that country’s LGBT community, and has only just mustered the courage to pass a law that bans homosexual acts. This anti-gay legislation punishes […]
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 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 […]