Published in April this year, “She Called Me Woman: Nigerian Queer Women
Speak” (Cassava Republic Press, ) is a compendium of 25 personal accounts by
individuals from Nigeria’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender communities.
The trio of editors – Azeenarh Mohammed, Chitra Nagarajan and Rafeeat Aliyu –
have done the laudable work of collecting first hand narratives from every
political zone in Nigeria with a measured but clear objective not to “provide a
comprehensive picture but rather snapshots of histories, experiences and
realities” of being a queer woman in Nigeria.
“She Called Me Woman” also works as a strong rebuttal to the Same-Sex Marriage
Prohibition Act which the country’s parliament passed in 2013 and was signed into
law by President Goodluck Jonathan in January 2014.
Same sex has been illegal under federal law, enacted by British colonial rule,
since 1901. Same sex relationships has since been decriminalised in the UK in
1967 but rather than follow suit, sexual and individual freedom has regressed in
Nigerian lawmaking and among its populace.
Neither the adopted British law nor its Nigerian incarnation over 100 years later
specify against sex between “women”. Instead, the word used is “persons” which
could suggest relations within women was and is less threatening or moreconceivable, though when enforced, women suffer as much from the law as do
men.
One common denominator in “She Called Me Woman” is the “Nigeria problem”
which is to mean the real and perceived way the country does not support, in
material or existential terms, the dreams and ambitions of its citizens, regardless
of sexual orientation:
“Somebody my age in another country would have masters, PhD and subsidised
school fees…somebody my age would be planning retirement but in Nigeria life is
just starting” (KZ, age 40, Lagos in This Is Not Our World).
The many Nigerians who celebrated the country’s law makers for passing the
Same Sex Prohibition bill and President Jonathan for signing it into law will, in the
next breath, condemn vehemently other poorly conceived laws and abysmal
security apparatuses founded in ignorance and a lack of compassion,
incompetence and corruption, as well as the myopia shown by the same set of
people – when it is these same factors that have led to the “anti-gay bill” being
passed into law.
It’s 2018. If the educated and ruling elite do not, by now, know that attraction
between same sex persons is as natural and biological as it is in opposite sex
couples, what hope is there for the masses who are subjected to largely
substandard education and unscrutinised interpretations of imported religions.
This also presents a missed opportunity for “She Called Me Woman” which would
have gained even more authority from foregrounding, for the reader, proofs that
scientists (religion’s chief foe) do not know the precise reason why any oneindividual is hetrosexual or homosexual, and are only surer of sexual orientation
as a genetic fact.
Another set of problems many individuals face is rejection from their immediate
families:
“I can never tell my mother that i like girls, i can never tell that i fantasised
about marrying a woman, i can never tell that all her wishes for me – a good man,
2.5 kids and a ‘good civil service job’ – are my biggest nightmares”. (HA, age 30,
Abuja, I Convinced Myself i Wasn’t A Lesbian)
Individuals are rejected by their immediate families who, sometimes subject
them to beatings before ostracising them (while others choose to ostracise
themselves to preempt such a move). Away from the emotional and financial
support of a family – in a country without a welfare system – individuals endure
hardship and mental breakdown, added to the real fear of being killed or raped
by homophobes and the suffocating hostility many face everyday.
In the editor’s note, the editors forewarn the absence of contributions from LGBT
women above the age of 40 and regret the experience and richness this
demographic would have brought. The few they have included show a marked
shift in concerns, some of which are directed towards the young and queer who
apparently care less for their safety or the image they portray to the
heterosexual majority:
“Before, you wouldn’t see a gay person. You would have to call your people to be
at a gathering, but now you go to Shoprite and you see everybody…you see
tomboys sagging, you see them wearing jellabia, somethings looking dirty. Youknow how guys wear slippers halfway and drag their legs? Some tomboys are just
like that” (KZ, age 40, Lagos, This Is Not Our World).
More than one contributor recalls a Nigeria that was accepting of homoseuxality
with one citing an age bracket: “I think older people, not fifties and sixties but
seventies and above, are more tolerant because it was normal in the culture back
then” (OW, age 25, Ondo, My Sexuality Is Just The Icing On The Cake).
Another is convinced that: “no other country has an many lolas as Nigeria – we
have the most on the African continent but you won’t know because everyone is
lowkey” (AG, age 21, Plateau, Everybody In J Town Is Now A Lola).
The same-sex prohibition law has not made Nigeria an upright and moral society
as was said to be the aim. All it has done is further doomed hopes for a fuller and
freer life for its own citizens.
This failure of compassion (if full on acceptance is such a hardsell) is a shameful
stain on the Nigerian consciousness which all three editors and the 25 narratives
may not cleanse but may normalise homosexuality in the mind of a reader by
simply normalising the lives of individuals; many of whom would just like to be
left alone to live their lives as they wished. More so, discriminating against an
individual’s natural sexual orientation, for whatever reasons, is the real act
against nature.