Homosexuality in Africa

Among Swahili-speakers on the Kenya coast, particularly in the port of Mombasa, mashoga are
transgenderedtransgendered prostitutes who have all the liberties of men and are also welcome in many contexts in which men are prohibited. The paid partner usually takes the receptive role during intercourse, but it is likely that his inferiority derives from the fact that he is paid to provide what is asked for, rather than from his undertaking a particular sexual role. The one who pays is called the basha (derived from "pasha," a high-ranking official and the local term for the king in packs of playing cards).
Among the Fon, the predominant people in Dahomey (now Benin), Melville Herskovits in the 1930s reported that, after the age at which boys and girls may play together, "the sex drive finds satisfaction in close friendship between boys in the same group . . . . A boy may take the other 'as a woman,' this being called gaglgo, homosexuality. Sometimes an affair of this sort persists during the entire life of the pair" (though he earlier referred to homosexual relations as a "phase" through which adolescents pass).
Egalitarian Homosexual Relations
Most of the reports of homosexual relations not involving differences in age or gender status involved young, unmarried men's sexual relationships with each other. Kurt Falk wrote about an especially intimate bond of association, soregus, among the southeastern African Naman that included sex both between men and between women (with mutual masturbation the most common form of sex, but also males taking turns at anal penetrations and females using dildoes on each other).
An "exceptionally reliable" Nykakyusa (a people living around what is now the Tanzania/Zimbabwe border) reported to Monica Wilson in the early 1930s that male friends, who live in villages of age-mates when not out herding cattle, generally sleep together. The Nykakyusa accepted that male friends who danced together would have sexual relations. "Even if people see them in flagrante delicto, they say it is adolescence (lukulilo), all children are like that: they say that sleeping together and dancing is also adolescence," according to Wilson's elder. He reported that interfemoral intercourse is "what boys mostly do" and also reported anal and oral sex, ("some, during intercourse, work[ing] in the mouth of their friend, and hav[ing] an orgasm").
Female Homosexual Relations
Controversy continues about the purported chastity of female husbands in various African cultures. An Ovimbundu (in Angola) informant, told an ethnographer, "There are men who want men, and women who want women. . . . A woman has been known to make an artificial penis for use with another woman." Such practices did not meet with approval, but neither did transvestite homosexuals of either sex desist.
Among the Tswana (in addition to homosexuality among the men laboring in the mines), it was reported that back home "lesbian practices are apparently fairly common among the older girls and young women, without being regarded in any way reprehensible." Use of artificial penises was also reported among the Ila and Naman tribes of South Africa.
There is more surmise than documentation of sexual relationships in female compounds in various African societies, though there are attestations of female homosexuality in some of the same places in which male homosexuality was more intensively studied (including Mombasa and among the Azande).
The most extensive discussion is of "mummy" and "baby" (that is, age-differentiated) roles in Lesotho. Relationships are initiated voluntarily by one girl who takes a liking to another and simply asks her to be her mummy or her baby, depending on their relative age, according to Judith Gay. "The most frequently given reason for initiating a particular relationship was that one girl felt attracted to the other by her looks, her clothes, or her actions. . . . Sexual intimacy is an important part of these relationships." Over time, a Sotho may undertake both roles (with different partners) or play the same role with different partners.
Conclusion
With reports from hundreds of sub-Saharan African locales of male-male sexual relations and from about fifty of female-female sexual relations, it is clear that same-sex sexual relations existed in traditional African societies, though varying in forms and in the degree of public acceptance. Much of this same-sex activity was situational or premarital, though there were long-term relationships, too. The special Christian animus toward homosexuality was carried to Africa by Europeans and stimulated denials that "the sin not named among Christians" existed among "unspoiled" Africans.


Many forms of ambiguous sexuality can be found throughout the traditional arts of Africa, including images of androgyny, hermaphroditism, and transvestism; and much of erotic sculpture and theater can also be seen as homoerotic.literature
The treatment of same-sex relationships in African literatures has been influenced by the traditional belief systems of various African societies, the imported views of Christianity and Islam, and the political and legal legacies of European colonialism.social sciences
Anthropology, the first of the social science disciplines to take sexuality--and particularly homosexuality--seriously as a field of intellectual inquiry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, has achieved a new impetus in the post-Stonewall era.
social sciences Beginning in the 1960s increasing numbers of ethnographers have conducted research on glbtq issues, spurred by the premise that studies of diverse sexualities are crucial to understanding human behavior and culture.
social sciences "Indigenous" is a concept important in the history of anthropology, particularly as it regards anthropology's treatment of same-sex sexual relations.
social sciences
Santería, Vodou, and related belief systems comprise a complex of religious ideas, practices, and imagery whose origins can be traced to West African traditions.social sciences sciences/situational_homosexuality.
Situational Homosexuality
Situational homosexuality is same-sex sexual activity that occurs not as part of a gay life style, but because the participants happen to find themselves in a single-sex environment for a prolonged period.social sciences
Although evidence of his own homosexual leanings is inconclusive, in his lifetime Sir Richard Burton was regarded with suspicion because of his knowledge and understanding of same-sex sexual activity.


bibliography

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Donham, Donald L. History, Power, Ideology: Central Issues in Marxism and Anthropology. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Epprecht, Mark. "The 'unsaying' of Indigenous Homosexualities in Zimbabwe." Journal of Southern African Studies 24 (1998): 631-51.
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. "Sexual Inversion among the Azande." American Anthropologist 72 (1970): 1428-34.
Falk, Kurt. "Homosexualiät bei den Eingeborenen in Südwest-Afrika." Geschlecht und Gesellschaft 13 (1925): 209-11.
Gay, Judith. "'Mummies and Babies' and Friends and Lovers in Lesotho." Journal of Homosexuality 11 (1985): 97-116.
Herskovits, Melville. Dahomey. New York: Augustine, 1937.
Murray, Stephen O., and Will Roscoe. Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies of African Homosexualities. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998.
Shepherd, Gill. "Rank, Gender and Homosexuality: Mombasa as a Key to Understanding Sexual Options." The Cultural Construction of Sexuality. Pat Caplan, ed. London: Tavistock, 1987. 240-70.
Wilson, Monica. Good Company: A Study of the Nyakyusa Age Villages. 1951. Rpt. Boston: Beacon Press, 1963.

HOLOCAUST FOR NIGERIAN GAYS?

I have followed this debate with a lot of interest but it is not easy to stay quiet in the face of indirect mobilization of people to do harm to others and themselves. Many people may shy away from this topic or address it superficially of falsely because of societal prejudice.

What did we know of gays, homosexuals, transgender etc while growing up in our villages and towns in Nigeria? I dare say almost nothing? Some smart ones in the south who do not even know how to explain its dynamics say ‘it is something evil Moslems (Hausas) do in the north. Probably the case/accusation will be the opposite when you get to the north ………It is always other people’s problems.

Why all these ‘kill them, exterminate them, don’t allow them, the bible said……, God said….., nature said……. etc’ that is going on in our communities now? The rat said that he is not annoyed with the person who hit him with a broom as he is with those who were shouting “don’t allow him to escape”. We should rethink and moderate our words. i.e the weight and influence they might have on others.

This brings to mind the killing of twins and other little complications our level of scientific knowledge couldn’t arrive at until the missionaries arrived. Who would have convienced our ‘ignorant’ grand parents that they weren’t defending nature and the laws set by God. ‘……..A WOMAN SHOULD GIVE BIRTH TO ONLY A CHILD AND NO MULTIPLE GESTATIONS LIKE GOATS…….’ These were considered words of God because 98% of the populace did so.

My auntie told me that when they were kids their neighbour had a son very normal and very lively, but they noticed that he was using more his left hand so they hung a stone on that left hand so that he would not use it as it was clear the child was becoming left handed; something not still accepted in many Nigerian cultures. The kid used his right hand and my auntie told us that the very boy at a point became strange and was always strange, did not associate with people and spoke rarely to anyone. When he grew up at about the age of 22 he committed suicide. I do not want too much psychology but any reader will understand the role suppression and psychological repression played here.

The writer from Abuja claims that one is trying to change what God has created by being a gay, transgender etc. Who created the Gay or do we believe he went through a process to learn it or are we associating it to a vice like stealing that should be addressed through re education? There are so many mechanisms and dynamics that one must have undergone before expressing his homosexual attitudes.

Following some of your debates one will even attribute it to God. I do not think that God will punish my father for opening the earlobes of my sisters for the ear rings nor put him in hell fire for circumcising his male children, with the accusation of changing what he GOD has created. Nobody told God how to create him but the society decides who stays in the society; is this against Gods wish? Some people are born genius and some imbeciles; the society takes the genius and the imbecile is condemned to death in one way or the other according to the social education of the populace. How do we put Gods wish here. Why are there less imbeciles, down syndrome persons etc in our Nigerian society? Someone opined that we are more blessed than the Oyibo people who he claims indulge in many unnatural activities. We all know the truth; they are either put to death knowingly or unknowingly in our society. You may see cases of children with such syndromes in many educated/schooled families in Nigeria. Why? High level of Social and cultural understanding which in many cases advances also economic levels as simple as this.

Every religion is claimed to condemn homosexuality. This is alright and true. My preacher in Nigeria whenever he comes in and sees my girlfriend in trousers was always fast in showing me where it is written in the bible that men should not wear clothes of women or the other way round (pardon but I cannot remember that verse). I do not know if that portion is still in the holy book. I do not intend to blaspheme anyway. I had always pointed out to him that Jesus (from the images were made to see and believe) never wore trousers i.e men’s cloth but attires I as a Nigerian may associate with women’s dresses ). Therefore, that the application of that verse is relative and may still change with time and places. Don’t remind me I know “….everything will change but the words of God will remain……” this is also somewhere, but I cannot remember…….heeelp!!! This is just a little insight into how things can change or applications may vary.

Why are we intolerant to things we do not understand instead of getting to know what and why it is happening? Why do we see homosexuals as evil and never wonder if the other person is thinking the same of us who may still be the majority? How have we transformed ourselves to ‘super beings’ quasi gods capable of assigning and interpreting feelings?

I will stop here because I may be having inspection in the office.

Later I will say something of my working experience with homosexuals, Tran’s genders, prostitutes etc.

Charles Okey.C

(Roma-Italia)