Carte blanche
LGBT: Benin, Africa and the world

Recently, I saw a moving documentary on a Belgian channel about a trans man. The gender reassignment surgery had put this person in a traumatic state where the now almost genderless person found their existence questioned and felt distraught about what he had become.

The film brought back memories of a case in Africa from the heart of the Mammisi voodoo community ten years ago. One of the deities of this centuries-old African religion is the water goddess Mami Wata who encourages her followers to follow the path of seduction, pleasure and conquest. For the Mina people living along the coasts of Benin, Togo and Ghana, being a follower of Mami Wata means to celebrate femininity and prepare the body to be consecrated as an object of the goddess’ desire for achieving bliss.

When Solie, who was engaged to a photographer, left the Mami Wata community in Benin's largest city of Cotonou, she changed her sexual orientation. A Mammisi whom she had got to know during her initiation became her new partner. Her parents were unable to shake her decision and threatened to disown her. But the young woman was adamant. Finally, driven into a corner, she set herself on fire. This incident shook the entire community.

Contrary to what is widely believed in Africa, changing one’s sexual orientation is not a "decadent and degenerate" concept from the West. It is a conscious decision about something that already existed at birth or emerged during development, and which one sometimes accepts only against enormous resistance from a violent and hostile environment dominated by traditional gender roles.

It’s a highly controversial topic, so it is not surprising that hardliners in Africa reject the instrumentalisation of these issues by the international LGBT movement and its discourse which can sometimes be insensitive and domineering. Those fighting for the LGBT cause should be the first to appreciate that unhelpful attitudes and narratives can do more harm than good. But many of the actors don’t seem to grasp the extent of rejection in African societies for Western paradigms, the result of centuries of – sometimes only imagined – diktats from the West.

They do not comprehend the wariness in Africa for all types of copy-paste approaches. Africans have their own experiences in dealing with sexual fringe groups, so interfering in spaces that are taboo for Africans can end up in killings and murders. "What you do in your bedroom is none of my business," protests a Senegalese pop star. So why tear down all the veils and be outraged if not everyone looks?