homophobia was forced on africa

[fabulouslyghetto]

because of the anorexic public curriculum on african history a lot of people don't understand that africa was once, like native american culture before they were mercilessly slaughtered, welcome to LGBT. like natives, many african tribes and cultures considered gay/trans people to be spiritually enlightened or even harbingers of luck. this was before white men showed up with chains and bibles.

https://www.stonewall.org.uk/about-us/news/african-sexuality-and-legacy-imported-homophobia

In June, Botswana overturned colonial-era laws which criminalised homosexuality, with the judge, Michael Leburu, declaring that "the anti-sodomy laws are a British import" and were developed "without the consultation of local peoples."

To keep this brief:

-Gay marriage was legal in South Africa before it was legal in the US

-South Africa lifted the ban on gay blood donors while the US has yet to do so

-There were several LGBT kinds and queens including King Mwanga II (Buganda, present day Uganda) and Nzinga a female ruler who successfully defended her nation from colonial invasion whose official title was "Ngola" which means "king." He/she had a harem of men who dressed as women, what would today be considered drag queens.

-In some African nations during times of war soldiers would take on male lovers to supplement their wives' companionship

Before the implementation of rigid European rigid binaries, within the Dagaaba tribe of Ghana, Burkina Faso, and the Ivory Coast, gender identity was determined differently. Shaman Malidoma Somé of the Dagaaba says that gender to the tribe is not dependent upon sexual anatomy. “It is purely energetic. In that context, one who is physically male can vibrate female energy, and vice versa. That is where the real gender is.” The Igbo of Nigeria, also in Western Africa, “appear to assign gender around age 5” (Bolich 246). In Central Africa, the Mbuti do not designate a specific gender to a child until after puberty, in direct contrast to Western society.

link

-Area Scatter was a male Igbo folk singer who disappeared into the woods and returned dressed as a female claiming to be endowed with musical gifts from the gods, little is known outside of a brief clip of her performing for royalty, her name means "one who comes to disorganize a place, to shock, and to reclaim."

 

[eddielee]

Yes, I was aware that African culture was more enlightened when it came to sex. When Western culture invaded and forced itself upon African culture it introduced very repressive sexual beliefs among other nasty things.

 

[Reischfleger]

white men showed up with chains and bibles

The same white men did the same thing in Latin America with the Mayans, Aztecs, and Incas. The natives, taparrabo was smarter than all of them.

 

[PipRosi]

European colonizers were especially offended by the various indigenous matriarchal cultures they found.

 

[Kahaih]

But, aren't harems made up of sex slaves? If they were enslaved, there's likely no way of knowing their sexual preference- how willing they might have been.

Do you know if they were castrated?


And, guess what; slavery, taking slaves from enemy tribes, was quite common/acceptable amongst most [so called] Native American tribes. How about African tribes?

 

[Reischfleger]

But, aren't harems made up of sex slaves?

To ensure the obedience, many of them were bought and kept into slavery. However, not all members of the harem were slaves.

Slavery among African tribes was practiced in many forms: Debt slavery, enslavement of war captives, military slavery, slavery for prostitution, and enslavement of criminals.

 

[unloadonme]

And, guess what; slavery, taking slaves from enemy tribes, was quite common/acceptable amongst most [so called] Native American tribes. How about African tribes?

Yes, the Africans dealt in slaves too.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-53444752

 

[PipRosi]

Only Europeans and the mini-me colonies they pooped out claim manifest destiny as moral authoritarian rulers of the world while pillaging the whole place.

Transnational race-based slavery is its own beast of course.

like natives, many african tribes and cultures considered gay/trans people to be spiritually enlightened or even harbingers of luck. this was before white men showed up with chains and bibles.

I'm reminded of parts in the book I'm reading:

"[...]the gay/ straight binary is not intrinsic to human sexual life.[...] The prologue shows how central transgender identities have been through almost all of human sexual history, rooted in the close connection between sex and kinship [...] also describes the impact of European colonialism on the construction of sexuality in the rest of the world, and the rise in Europe of separate men’s and women’s spheres and same-sex romantic friendship.

[...]the distinction between heterosexuality and homosexuality took clear shape only in a later, specific regime of capitalist accumulation, classical imperialism, towards the end of the nineteenth century. This was part of a series of processes that included imperial expansion, the rise of pseudo-scientific racism, the invention of a working-class family wage, the celebration of heterosexual romance, the first wave of feminism and the medicalisation of sexuality. Even then, homosexuality was conceived in a way that was often as much transgender-related as gay, and linked to ‘sexual inversion’. I define the same-sex regime of this period as ‘invert-dominant’.

[...]only in the course of the twentieth century did the gay/straight binary, founded on the idea that same-sex desire is ‘innate to a certain subset of individuals’, take the form seen in North America and Western Europe by the 1970s, following the maturation of the Fordist regime of accumulation. I call the same-sex regime in which this binary prevailed, and transgender and other patterns were marginalised, ‘gay-dominant’. It depended on rising wages, a welfare state, a transition from old conceptions of manhood and womanhood to a more ‘performative’ definition of gender, the second wave of feminism and pervasive sexualisation linked to a commercial scene."

Then it gets into the role of neoliberalism.

 

[NotHardUp1]

If the OP's premise were true, if any of them ever are, wouldn't it then beg the question of how great a culture could be that outnumbered its conquerors by millions, and does today, but is apparently so weak that it cannot resist.

Instead, they seem to run headlong into embracing not just homophobia, but more virulently than in the colonial powers that are supposedly infecting them?

Then there is the problem of treating Africa as a) a victim continent, b) as one culture, and c) as unaccountable for its nations and cultures' vices.

As in all of Fab's racist threads, the point always seems to be to excuse the failings of some group by blaming another, rather than give examples of how, say, black culture in America, where education and enlightenment are presumably what differ from Africa's benighted colonial legacy, but leave blacks as one of the most homophobic groups in America if taken as a population. There's that.

 

[PipRosi]

Then it gets into the role of neoliberalism.

For example:

"[...] lgbt people’s victories over the past forty years are both real and important, on the one hand, and hopelessly tangled up in real and significant defeats, on the other. The increasing commercialisation of the gay scene, the drift to the right in lgbt movements and the weakness of a left alternative prompt a re-examination of the question of how sexual freedom should be defined." (i.e. should not be defined by openly serving in the military, estate and tax planning for affluent same-sex couples while low-income benefits are cut, or lgbt people being pitted against immigrants/Arabs/Africans.)

"For decades under neoliberalism (current form of capitalism), legal equality has been ‘an empty shell that hides expanded substantive inequalities’. This reality has been concealed behind a ‘truce’ between the gay mainstream and capital, which welcomes gay ‘consumers and professionals in return for acquiescence and accommodation’."


I saw this vapid consumerist and right-wing turn in LGBT community alongside the larger culture. You see on this board the disdain many display toward mention of colonialism or racism. It's clear they perceive a stark divide between LGBT struggles (of acceptable LGBT) and other legacies of struggle. They feel a need to protect the status quo vis-a-vis race, class, gender and 'geopolitics' (obscurantist term for global mafia). They believe it's serving them. You have to provide an element of "what's in it for them", how revolution for justice and equality is a vital imperative even for the conservative snapping turtles of JUB. Because with their current skewed western lens as default they don't bat an eye when Africa is painted as a worthless cultural cesspit only good for raping of resources and punchlines about kwanzaa. Since we're sitting behind computers they can let fly with insensitivity on the subject. Europe building empires on transnational slave labor, carving up and taking ownership of Africa, is all seen as a big fat favor for those savages. Few are aware of how strong the 'post-colonial' pan-African socialist movement was, what a huge threat to empire this was seen as, the brutal terror campaigns (including assassinations of democratic leaders) that the West/U.S./C.I.A. perpetrated against these revolutionaries. Given the dire circumstances of land and people that the revolution was trying to address (including awful tribal sexism), it's a heartrending lost opportunity. And of course it's part of a pattern. From the americas to Vietnam to Iraq. Go back a bit and indigenous pagan europeans were wiped out too.

 

[unloadonme]

because of the anorexic public curriculum on african history a lot of people don't understand that africa was once, like native american culture before they were mercilessly slaughtered, welcome to LGBT. like natives, many african tribes and cultures considered gay/trans people to be spiritually enlightened or even harbingers of luck. this was before white men showed up with chains and bibles.

https://www.stonewall.org.uk/about-us/news/african-sexuality-and-legacy-imported-homophobia

I'd dispute the conclusions drawn from the Stonewall piece for a number of reasons. Firstly, it seems to me, that it blames current anti-gay laws in Sub-Saharan Africa on specifically British colonialism rather than colonialism generally on the basis that the British were less tolerant of homosexuality at home than say the French. That may well be true.

It's also true to say that homosexuality has always existed. The article mentions in that context some ancient Egyptians and King Mwanga II of Buganda to which we could all add more, perhaps Kings William II, Edward II and James I of England. The presence of homosexual figures in a nation's history proves nothing.

The report then lapses into trendy woke nonsense with passages such as "other civilisations at the time not only acknowledge a third gender, but venerate it" and "many African countries did not see gender as a binary in the way that their European colonisers did, nor did they correlate anatomy to gender identity".

The conclusion the report reaches is that anti-gay laws were therefore the result of (mainly British) colonialism. It says "In no African country prior to colonisation do we see any persecution of LGBT individuals because of their sexuality, nor any anti-LGBT laws". In other words, we don't see it, so it never existed. How exactly would we see anti-LGBT behaviour and laws in pre-colonial Africa? What exactly was ever written down?

There is at least one factual claim in the Stonewall article which is plain wrong. It's untrue that "the last men to be sentenced to death by hanging in England were in 1835 for engaging in homosexual sex". In fact, the last men to be sentenced to death by hanging in England were executed for murder in 1964. (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-28687221)

To suggest that pre-colonial Sub-Saharan Africa was some sort of gay Shangri-La is at best naïve and at worst a cynical attempt to advance an anti-white agenda.

 

[unloadonme]

I've just noticed this good news story about the decision of Singapore to decriminalise gay sex. The legislation was a hang over from British rule, but, unlike in many former African colonies, the Singaporeans are not rabidly homophobic. I can't see the likes of Uganda following suit any time soon.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-62545577

 

[KaraBulut]

...The conclusion the report reaches is that anti-gay laws were therefore the result of (mainly British) colonialism. It says "In no African country prior to colonisation do we see any persecution of LGBT individuals because of their sexuality, nor any anti-LGBT laws". In other words, we don't see it, so it never existed. How exactly would we see anti-LGBT behaviour and laws in pre-colonial Africa? What exactly was ever written down?

There's a group of activists that blame Europeans for bringing homosexuality to the continent of Africa.

It's probably not what those activists intended, but they may have a point. What the Europeans brought was a perception of homosexual activity as immoral.

The laws that imposed on colonies had more to do with getting rid of paganism and the Church's discomfort with what is commonly referred to as a "boy wife"- a young male who entertains older males.

...To suggest that pre-colonial Sub-Saharan Africa was some sort of gay Shangri-La is at best naïve and at worst a cynical attempt to advance an anti-white agenda.

Africa is a continent, not a single culture. PreColumbian North America was not a single culture either. Attitudes toward homosexual activity and the role of transgender people varied across cultures. To make any statement that broadly assumes all cultures had uniform attitudes is a mistake that a lot of Westerners make about other cultures. They continue to do so in their exploits in the middle East where there's a lot of men who have sex with people other than women, even though homosexuality is illegal in those same countries.

Incidentally, what was said in the opening post does have some truth: in some indigenous cultures in Africa, the Americas, Australia and across the Middle East, gender wasn't always binary at birth and there was a broad view of human sexuality. But, that broad view also brings up some things that Westerners don't want to talk about- like pederasty and male prostitution.

 

[NotHardUp1]

The frequent reference to some Native American cultures, or some African cultures as proof cases of some intrinsic sexual acceptance is a problem. There is an observable bias in most of those sources to be countercultural to the dominant societies of the First World countries, a cheap and easy poke in the eye to prove how edgy social reformers and intellectuals can be.

Many times such arguments are broadened to imply that there was some idyllic pre-Colonial goodness in native cultures that was spoiled by European dominance. Nothing could be further from the truth. Great empires the world over spread by brutal power, in ancient times, in Colonial times, and somewhat today. But, that dominance doesn't in turn make the cultures they conquer(ed) virtuous, merely different.

This thread is yet another in a series of threads that are accusatory and blame "white" cultures with everything from hangnails to raping slaves to you name it. For reasons that "Westerner" mods don't reveal on this forum, these biased attacks are both permitted and supported. Conversely, we don't see any of the obverse biases posting attacks blaming Chinese, Blacks, Indians, Native Americans, or others, much less a series of systematic attacks blaming those racial groups for the failings of today's cultures. And why don't we? Because neither is true.

Any honest review of the threads on the first four pages of Hot Topics will see and can numerically prove this bias. It is poisoning the site.

 

[KaraBulut]

...Many times such arguments are broadened to imply that there was some idyllic pre-Colonial goodness in native cultures that was spoiled by European dominance. Nothing could be further from the truth. Great empires the world over spread by brutal power, in ancient times, in Colonial times, and somewhat today. But, that dominance doesn't in turn make the cultures they conquer(ed) virtuous, merely different...

That's true but you failed to mention one thing: the motive for their conquest?

 

[PipRosi]

-There were several LGBT kinds and queens including King Mwanga II (Buganda, present day Uganda) and Nzinga a female ruler who successfully defended her nation from colonial invasion whose official title was "Ngola" which means "king." He/she had a harem of men who dressed as women, what would today be considered drag queens.

-Area Scatter was a male Igbo folk singer who disappeared into the woods and returned dressed as a female claiming to be endowed with musical gifts from the gods, little is known outside of a brief clip of her performing for royalty, her name means "one who comes to disorganize a place, to shock, and to reclaim."

Reminds me of the West African trickster god/dess Afrekete/Eshu master of the art of transformation and language play:



Youngest daughter of MawuLisa, "thunder, sky, sun, the great mother of us all," Afrekete is the mischievous linguist, trickster, best-beloved, "whom we must all become."

The more widely used name of Eshu (or Elegba / Elegbara) is often referred to as MawuLisa's "youngest and most clever son". However "in many...rituals, his part is danced by a woman with an attached phallus." Messenger between all the other Orisha-Vodu [gods] and humans, he knows their languages and is an accomplished linguist. Eshu is also a prankster, a personification of all the unpredictable elements in life.

Prominent in the mythologies of Yoruba cultures found in Nigeria, Benin, Brazil, Cuba, and Haiti, among others, Eshu is "master of style and of stylus, the phallic god of generation and fecundity...." A partial list of [Eshu's] qualities: “individuality, satire,...irony, magic, indeterminacy, open-endedness, ambiguity, sexuality, chance,...disruption and reconciliation[...] all of these characteristics...taken together, only begin to present [...] the complexity of this classic figure of mediation and of the unity of opposed forces.”

That last part is also basically the definition of the transcendent function and coniunctio in depth psych/jungian psych.

Both Henry Louis Gates jr. and Audre Lorde point to associations with “unpredictability, abundant eroticism, and gender ambiguity." Commenting on Lorde's references to Afro-Caribbean mythical figures, AnnLouise Keating writes that Lorde "...reverses the dominant values of a society which "defined us as doubly nothing because we were Black and because we were Woman..."

In Another Mother Tongue, Judy Grahn paraphrases a description of Eshu and Afrekete offered by Lorde: "[o]riginally he was a female, Afrikete, in the old thunder god religion that preceded Yoruba....Eshu/Afrikete is the rhyme god, the seventh and youngest in the old Mawulisa pantheon....As the trickster, he/she makes connections, is communicator, linguist, and poet. Only Afrikete knows all the languages of all the gods."

 

[backagain]