Here’s how Trump undercuts anti-LGBT, anti-woman Africans
African opponents of equality for LGBT people and women will have to change their tune, at least a bit, now that racist, anti-LGBT and anti-female forces in the United States have succeeded in electing Donald Trump as president. Ugandan researcher/ activist Stella Nyanzi explains:
By Stella Nyanzi
When we advocated for the rights of women, people blamed us for copying Western feminism. When we agitated for the recognition and protection of the full and equal human rights of homosexual people, they blamed us for copying American evil ways supported by Obama and the Clintons. When we called for the provision of safe medical abortions for women who choose to terminate their pregnancies, they accused us of copying the wicked ways of the Bazungu [which means white people or simply foreigners]. They said we were colonised Africans copying Bazungu in America and Europe.
But now, Donald Trump is the president-elect of the United States of America. Similar to many other Bazungu Americans who voted him into power, he is a misogynist who does not respect women’s rights. He is not a feminist. He does not support the full and equal rights of homosexual people. He does not believe in providing women with safe abortion services but rather believes that the women who get abortions must be punished. Donald Trump provides clean evidence that there are many Bazungu living in America who hate and fear women, homosexuals, and foreigners.
So, these people who were saying that feminism is American or Western, what is your excuse going to turn to? The people who were saying that advocating for LGBTIQ rights is copying foreign Bazungu agendas, what is your new argument going to be? Donald Trump is a conservative Muzungu who is as homophobic, sexist, and misogynist as yourselves. What is your new excuse going to be? Feminism and LGBTIQ rights in Africa can no longer be refuted on grounds of being American, Western or things for Bazungu. What is your new excuse???
Nyanzi also commented:
The values we espoused can no longer be referred to as American values because the man voted to rule America is a misogynist homophobe who believes in the criminalisation of women who have abortions. … My point is that those of us on my side of the line can no longer be blamed for propagating foreign American ideals. …
We are all human beings — equal in our common humanity, whether male, female or other gendered, whether homosexual or heterosexual or queer. We are all human! …
The excuse used against advocates for women’s rights, LGBTIQ rights, and abortion rights — that their causes are based on foreign values upheld by America — can no longer be used because many Americans including Trump have actually shown that they do not hold these values.
Related articles:
- This blog’s archive of articles by or about Stella Nyanzi
