A Nigerian media personality in the United States, Christiana Amarachi Mbakwe, has created some sort of debate on Twitter after tweeting that there were gay unions in the Igbo culture.
A cursory search by WuzupNaija showed that the suggestion of the existence of some sort of accepted homosexuality in Africa, the Igbo culture especially, was not new. However, the tweet by Mbakwe – who described herself on Twitter as a “British lady in NY. @columbiajourn alum. Reppin South London at The Daily Show with Trevor Noah” – generated some varied reactions from Nigerians.
She wrote,
One day I’ll do a thread on female husbands in Igbo culture, marriages between women that existed pre-colonialism. There was a female wife and a female husband. The British banned these unions when they imposed Victorian norms.
There’s a lot of talk about the “erasure” of queerness in Black Panther, but I disagree. In traditional African societies, sexuality was not your identity it was merely an act. It was of little importance to a person’s self.
Because these societies had such evolved views on gender and sexuality, there was no need to “come out” you just were who you were. No one cared.
So to center Okoye’s gender or sexuality or make her speak of it wouldn’t be African. To assert your sexuality or gender is a profoundly western thing, because Westerns have always been hostile to different gender or sexual expressions.
Homophobia is a very western import. My mother grew up in Kanu, Nigeria. In the 1960s there was an area where drag queens and trans women/men lived. No one cared, everyone left them alone.
But I think if you view queerness through a western lens, Okoye’s identity was erased. Through an African prism, nothing was erased she just was who she was.
Addendum: I’d just like to correct a typo from earlier. Any offspring the female wife produced, would bear the female husband’s last name.
The equivalent of a surname in the culture is explicitly stating who a child belongs to. So the child would referred to as “Amarachi, nwa Ngozi” not “Amarachi, nwa Nnamdi” Ngozi is the female husband, Nnamdi is the sperm donor (for lack of a better term)
If you’d like to read more @ikeanya recommends ‘Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society’ by Professor Ifi Amadiume
I just saw a thread about female husbands in Igbo culture. We are trying everything humanly possible to prove that homosexuality is a part of some African heritage.
— Ezinne (@zynnnie) February 19, 2018
They’re actually thinking Africa is still a country and doing everything to prove Darwin afresh that man came from apes!
— #WhereIsTheLOVE © (@brunoegwumba) February 20, 2018
LMAO, u don’t know everything, maybe read and do some research, homosexuality was here and it was perfectly accepted…youre actually not thinking “African”…youre thinking colonised
— Your bae’s side chick (@cynnerr) February 19, 2018
You people will just be liking things without reading up. The Igbo female husbands were marrying wives *for* their husbands in order to have children not ‘just because’ they were queer or anything to that effect. #context
— Elle D (@4elleboogie) February 19, 2018
