Africa: Homosexuality Isn't Some Western Invention

One of the current favorite ploys of corrupt and incompetent African rulers who are desperate to distract their ignorant and uneducated populace from the severity of their misrule is to play the gay card and depict homosexuality not only as a threat to "authentic African social norms" but to also claim that it is a western import that has corrupted traditional African society.  The claims, of course, could not be further from the truth and the state the case for the argument that many African countries in actuality were far better off as colonies of European powers than under corrupt, incompetent self-rule.  Further intensifying the poisonous mix has been the propaganda of American Christofascists and charlatans like Scott Lively and Rick Warren.  A piece in The Advocate shines the spotlight on the fact that homosexuality existed in Africa long before the European conquest and that the homophobia we see today is the true western import.  Here are excerpt:

The claim by some African leaders that homosexuality is a Western export — used most recently by Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni to defend his country’s brutish legislation — doesn’t even pass the laugh test. But to get beyond guffaws, it helps to read Boy-Wives and Female Husbands, by Will Roscoe and Stephen O. Murray, published in 1998. The book, which draws in part on older ethnographic studies, catalogues so many varieties of indigenous African homosexuality that it makes the range of Western sexual identities seem positively narrow. The myriad examples of Boy-Wives and Female Husbands suggest that, of the competing forces of homosexuality and homophobia, only the latter could plausibly be an import.

» The Fante people of Ghana believed that people born with heavy souls — of either sex — would desire women, while those with light souls would desire men.

 

» In Akan society, lesbian affairs were “virtually universal”; some women purchased extra-large beds to accommodate multiple partners.

 

» Among the Zande of southwestern Sudan, a warrior who chose to marry a boy paid spears to the boy’s parents, addressing them as gbiore (father-in-law) and negbiore (mother-in-law).

 

» The Ovigangella people of Angola used the term kuzunda to describe a type of mutual masturbation in which the glans are rubbed against each other. “Solitary masturbation is so unfamiliar... that not a single word exists for it.”

 

» In Ashanti society, older boys penetrated younger boys or engaged in reciprocal anal intercourse (known as jigle keton).

 

» The Lovedu people of Lesotho were ruled by queens who were required to take wives and even assembled female harems.

 » In South Africa, migrant workers often took male partners, who became known as “mine wives.”

Homophobia and fundamentalist religious beliefs both rely on the same thing: ignorant populations that can be manipulated by the power hungry be they wearing pastor robes or seeking political advancement.  Sadly, when  individuals like Uganda president Yoweri Museveni make statements like the one noted above they are relying on the ignorance of their own populace but also announcing their own ignorance and stupidity to the world.  In fact, this basic theory applies across the broad be it Vladimir Putin making the foul claims or some fundamentalist pastor someplace in Bumfuck America.

The take away?  The importance of knowing true history and being able to challenge the batshitery of the "godly folk."  As for Museveni, he might just as well have "I'm a fucking moron" tattooed across his forehead.  He makes a trained circus dog appear to be the height of intelligence in comparison.