By Lufuno Zwe Eugene
Whilst the queer story still largely remains a subjective personal experience connected to your legal and socio political environment ,there is a shared commonality of experiencing ,suffering and in most cases surviving abuse. Buried deep in the folds and crevices of even the most progressive communities in the stereotypically “western liberal states” is the most disgusting homophobic scum of the earth .Queer people all around the world confront a daily othering where they constantly have to negotiate for human dignity and experience human freedom in modest instalments selflessly given by the straight male machinery that runs things .
Every time when I walk out into a public space or go through even the remotest interaction with another human being I’m ever aware that they are looking through me and into my soul, formulating foul opinions and estimating the moral calculus of my positionality. The straight friends you hang with to reinforce your masculinity silently nudge you into the queerness that is sensitive and “accommodating” to heterosexuality completely discounting that the same heterosexuality is the establishment, the standard and the “truth”.Queer people come from a sad, sad place and in most
areas around the world members of the LGBTQAI+ community live each day in immeasurable pain. The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex Association (ILGA) conducted a survey concluding that at least 76 countries in the world impose laws that criminalise homosexual activity. In some cases, the language used refers to vague and undefined concepts, such as “crimes against the order of nature” or “morality”, or “debauchery”. What these laws have in common is their use to harass and prosecute individuals because of their actual or perceived sexuality or gender identity .In many of these countries this is a crime punishable by death.
At some point in history AIDS was called GRID (Gay-related Immune deficiency) until some female patients were uncovered .The US Centre for Disease Control (CDC) did not particularly go out their way to find female patients either, they were obviously too occupied with frequenting gay public baths sniffing out gay boys with Kaposi Sarcoma.
Although the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from its classification of diseases in 1992, a number of countries still classify homosexuality as an illness. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture has noted that “sexual minorities are said to have been involuntarily confined to State medical institutions, where they were allegedly subjected to forced treatment on grounds of their sexual orientation or gender identity, including electric shock therapy and other ‘aversion therapy’, reportedly causing psychological and physical harm.”
The chat
Exclusion has dreadful horrors. A people with a history of persecution inherit a lifestyle of fear .This means that for the most part victims of abuse are only ever that, never complete human beings just soulless and bland remnants of their dehumanisation. The oppressive lethargy of choicelessness and powerlessness is imprinted into one’s psyche leaving you as merely another statistic in the surveys of Human rights groups.
This is almost true for the queer community. Queers all around the world suffer from acute mental health issues ranging from clinical depression and mere anxiety about what life holds for them the next day . The cyclical marginalisation and concerted efforts towards locking out queer bodies from the levers of power has had a brutalising effect on queer identity, not just for the individual but for the community as a whole. In the grander scheme of things queer identity is synonymous with human suffering, generations of assaults on personal liberty and egregious human rights violations. Queer people are victims, they are vulnerable and they live in perpetual fear of a fatal danger that is forever imminent and lurking in vicinity.
Even in our personal interactions with the heterosexual world, we find ourselves ever the object of pity and concern, sometimes overt charity cases. There is always that one ally who sheds a tear when overwhelmed by the horror of it all. Some queer rights activists in the United States promote the performance of radicalised victimhood in order to effect visceral sensitisation of those in positions of privilege and power on the realistic dangers that queer bodies have to dribble on a daily basis.
Today the face of queer culture is that of a battered wife .It’s not a bold, confident and unperturbed face with a raised chin .It’s a horrible sad mom face .Such a face is not an asset as a face and more often the camera never catches its good angles because there are no such good angles for the light to strike. It’s a manifestation of umgowo, it doesn’t emit positive vibes, and it doesn’t foster unity in the movement and lives a lot of people unhappy about their identity.
The problem
I have attended many a fora where Queer bodies organise for constructive discussion and to share notes .In the vast majority of cases most of these fora always allocate a substantial amount of time to discussing lived experiences ,this often features people from all walks of life discussing their episodes of abuse ,persecution and oppression. Whilst this is an objectively good practice which allows people to share, to get things off their chests and inspires empathy for comrades in arms, it is also has its own profound negative externalities.
Firstly ,this is all we have been discussing for as long as I can remember. There is a particular forum that I attend every year in South Africa hich often runs out of the little allocated time it has because other items on the agenda have been boxed out by the segment dedicated to sharing of experiences .The conversation never evolves ,the narrative is stagnated ,as a matter of fact there is no narrative .Hardly ever do we get time to discuss recommendations or to have epistemic chats about the theory of our unique identity from a scholarly perspective .As a forum ,we have little to show for our lengthy existence and annual meeting because we spent the last ten years crying in a group .The worst part is that when we philosophise on our problems annually we still come back the next year complaining about the same conduct because all we ever do is come up with new trendy synonyms for the abuse we suffer.
Secondary to that is the fact that no one wants to go and be with a group of people like them just so they can remind each other how much of a sucky place the world is for them .The sad reality is that when we sit in a group and discuss our suffering ,we relive that suffering .It is magnanimously counterintuitive to put vulnerable people in a room ,every chance you can get so you can make them sad again .These forums genuinely make people unhappy ,they cause people to have deep moments of profound sorrow. Many people are severely triggered by these conversations and are perpetually reminded of times when they almost lost their lives, lost loved ones or had violent run ins with the repressive state apparatus.
What this practice does is that it brands our community for us ,it defines our culture on our behalf because quite frankly we are what we repeatedly do .It is what we commit our time and resources to that indicates our interests and preferences .The world will always perceive us from how we channel ourselves to the world through the practices we seemingly fetishize when we organise as a community .This is why ours is a culture of sadness ,one to be spoken of in hushed tones ,never to be celebrated with colourful buoyancy .This is an unfortunate by-product of a mess we have unconsciously made .It is something that needs to change.
The cost of this cultural identity is that it excludes a lot of people who do not wish to be part of a sad patrol. The queer loses a lot of social capital and political currency. It also suffers from harmful negative stereotypes and a lot of young people especially those who are still coming to terms with their sexual Orientation would much rather not go through that drag and emotional turmoil.
Lufuno Zwe Eugene is a final year law student and a legal intern at fancy law firm. He writes on the leftist revolution and exploring counter-culture and effective organisation. During his spare time, Lufuno fancies himself a budding supermodel and argues with people who claim that veganism is white culture.
Born Free Blues 