The South African photographer Zanele Muholi is exhibiting some of her work–at the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation (26 Wooster Street) as part of an exhibition of contemporary photographers, “Lesbians Seeing Lesbians: Building Community in Early Feminist Photography” Here’s a link to the catalog essay. The exhibition, which opened earlier this month, is on till October 22.
A 13-year-old South African girl is the latest victim of “corrective rape,” in which men rape lesbians to “cure” them of their sexual orientation in South Africa. As The Guardian reports 31 lesbians have been killed because of their sexuality in the past decade, and more than 10 lesbians a week are raped or gang raped in Cape Town alone. “Last month, a 24-year-old woman who belonged to a gay and lesbian rights group was stoned to death after an apparent gang rape.” Why do some South African men do this? The Guardian quotes Dean Peacock, co-founder and co-director of the Sonke Gender Justice Network, an organization that works with men and boys:
… [S]ome men described feeling threatened by gender transformation, including the assertion of women’s and children’s rights … When you compare South Africa with other countries, what distinguishes it is gang rape: a performance of masculinity, young men proving themselves to each other and saying to a woman: ‘We’re not prepared for you to assert that kind of autonomy, especially sexual autonomy’ … [S]ome men in post-apartheid South Africa occupied a “dangerous nexus” of patriarchy, masculinity, poverty, radical disappointment with the government, profound feelings of insignificance, and a sense they can act with impunity. But they were still individual agents able to make choices, and nothing could excuse horrendous violence against women …
Frank Mungisha, an Ugandan gay rights activist included in The Advocate’s “Forty Under 40” list last year, will speak at The New School in Manhattan tomorrow night about his experiences. From the promotional material:
He has played a leading role in combating the “Anti-Homosexuality” bill proposed by the Ugandan legislature that threatens lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals and their family members, with harassment, imprisonment and even death. In November 2010, Mugisha was targeted for elimination by the Ugandan tabloid Rolling Stone, which urged the public to hang him along with 100 other suspected homosexuals.
More information here.
CNN has a story on why despite South Africa’s progressive laws, lesbians and gays are still under attack there. The basic moral of the piece is that if you’re middle class, you can form your own safe, comfortable communities even if other middle class people want to discriminate against you. If you’re working class–and South Africa is a very social conservative country, with the working classes holding some objectionable views too–and gay, then you condemned to a more precarious life.
The (British) Channel 4 news report (video above) on “corrective rape” of lesbians by men in South Africa (among the victims was the former captain of South Africa’s women’s football team, Eudy Simelane) has won the Stonewall Award, which “… celebrates those who have made a positive impact on the lives of lesbian and gay people in Britain.”
HT: Herman Wasserman
So Uganda, with the help of their rightwing, American Christian boosters, want to “wipe out” gay people by making laws that bans even thinking about it. Now Kenya wants to do a “census” of its gay population. Their excuse is this is a way to fight AIDS. This is when it is common knowledge that most people infected with HIV and AIDS are straight and being gay is illegal (homosexual activity is punishable by up to 14 years in jail in Kenya).
Uganda’s Parliament–encouraged by American evangelicals (who converted Uganda’s President, Yoweri Museveni above)–last week introduced new draft legislation, The Anti-Homosexuality Bill, that will “… greatly expand criminal penalties against lesbians and gays.” Currently, “carnal knowledge of any person against the order of nature” carries a sentence of up to 14 years imprisonment in Uganda’s penal code. The proposed legislation seeks to imprison anyone convicted of “the offense of homosexuality” for life, while “aggravated homosexuality,” will incur the death penalty.
More information:
That’s South African Judge, Ratha Mokgoathleng, unable to contain his homophobia, speaking earlier to the prosecutor in the case of the murderers of Eudy Simelane, a lesbian woman brutally raped and murdered in a township outside Johannesburg. The New York Times reports that one the killers has been sentenced to life in prison.
To contextualize the outcome of the case, my friend, Dan Moshenberg, forwarded me links to the case:
What it means to be a Black lesbian, to be a gay man or lesbian of any sort, in South Africa and on the continent more generally.
South African TV clip focusing on the work of photographer Zanele Muholi.
Via Dan Moshenberg
