“Homophobia hurts”: Mourning as resistance to violence in South Africa

Abstract

Much has been written on the successful lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex movement in South Africa, and the resulting institutionalization of sexual minority rights. Comparatively less has been written about the forms of activism undertaken specifically by Black lesbians that are not oriented toward legal change. In this article, I assert the need to examine public demonstrations of mourning as an act of Black lesbian resistance to violence in South Africa. Based on in-depth interviews with members of Free Gender, a Black lesbian organization, I argue that members' conceptualizations of mourning as providing community support force a reconsideration of what it means to be human. In order to grasp the decolonial potential of Free Gender's activism, I draw on Sylvia Wynter's argument that a singular Western bourgeois conception of human has come to dominate globally.

Whose Lifestyle Matters at Johannesburg Pride? The Lifestylisation of LGBTQ+ Identities and the Gentrification of Activism

“…Despite a progressive framework for LGBT rights, the disparity between legal rights and everyday experience can be stark, particularly for black South Africans (Judge, 2017; Scott, 2013). Violence against black lesbians, from ‘corrective rapes’ to murder, has steadily increased from the 2000s onwards and has been accompanied by a general lack of official action or broader societal concern (Fletcher, 2016; Judge, 2017; Moreau, 2017). While the governing ANC formerly led the enactment of LGBT rights, there is now a distant relationship between formal politics and Johannesburg’s Pride events, with little engagement from the ANC but more visible involvement by the predominantly white-supported Democratic Alliance, which seeks to present itself as the more LGBT-friendly party.…”