Happy Women’s Day to all women, mothers, girls, sisters, daughters, (evil)queens and femmes.
Around this time last year, the Anti-Homosexuality Act 2023 was making its rounds in parliament. The bill awards the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality” and rules that “the promotion of homosexuality” is punishable by 20 years maximum in prison.
Not surprisingly, my mental health took a downturn during this period. Every day I would scour the news, anticipating the worst. Amidst all the anti-LGBTQ+ panic I hoped I'd see local news coverage on the rising homophobic violence that was swallowing the Ugandan LGBTQ+ community. Nothing. Ugandan journalism seemingly forgot that we exist even though we were the ones most affected by the damn bill. I remember seeing one or two articles in the Daily Monitor about various LGBTQ+ rights activists who were bravely opposing the bill, but no reports on what the community was experiencing on the ground as a result of the state-sponsored homophobia.
I remember Western news sources such as The Guardian and Reuters and the Arab-owned Aljazeera were the only reliable sources alongside the Ugandan queer-owned Kuchu Times that I could trust.
I remember I was so angry at the world and heartbroken, watching in real-time as my worries about the future flashed before my eyes. I remember thinking to myself, “If ‘promotion of homosexuality’ can get me jail time what chance do I have to accomplish the work that matters to me? My blog could get me in trouble. It's featured on my public LinkedIn profile. What sane Ugandan employer would even want to hire a ‘homosexual’? I’m just a deviant anyway…”
It was too much to handle. Looking back I was also outraged. I would call my older sister and she’d let me rant about my frustrations. Shoutout to her, because she inspired me to start an anger journal. So I did. I even took it a step further and began compiling mood boards that captured the hurricane of emotions I was feeling at the time.
Interestingly enough, I used female characters to convey my sorrows and frustrations. Perhaps even more peculiar is that these characters are either villains in their stories or widely disliked by many in their respective fanbases as in the case of Carol Danvers from the 2019 Marvel movie Captain Marvel who is disliked by some Marve Cinematic Universe fans. Additionally, almost all of them are sometimes considered “LGBTQ+ icons” for either being queer-coded or explicitly written as queer.
So without further ado, the mood boards:
Maleficent Angst Mood Board
Angry Korra
Captain Marvel Feminine Rage Board
BAD-BITCH SCARLETT WITCH
Yzma Mood.
Whenever I revisit these mood boards, I am filled with awe. All of the women depicted above are insanely powerful, yes, but every single one of them is denied something that pushes them over the edge. It’s so cathartic to watch them unleash their anger and/or their grief. I think so many times women (and men) are socialized to repress certain emotions. In my experience, men are often socialized to repress grief and sadness. I can’t count how many times I was told “boys don’t cry” as a child.
Women, on the other hand, have been socialized to repress anger. When a man gets mad and raises his voice, it’s expected. People will say he’s just angry. When a woman does the same, especially if she’s Black, she’s a “mad woman”.
As a queer person invested in deconstructing rigid gender binary norms, nothing aggravates me more than this gendered approach to emotional expression. Why must someone’s emotions be dismissed or misconstrued on the basis of their gender? I am well aware of my privilege in this arena as a cisgender (someone whose biological sex matches their gender identity) male. But even I have experienced what it feels like to have my feelings dismissed like they don’t matter. Now multiply that by 2 and you get the casual misogyny many women experience regularly.
I think that is what sets “feminine” expression apart from “masculine” expression. For decades femininity has been policed and scrutinized by patriarchal attitudes in a way that diminishes feminity as "less than". The things women are allowed or not allowed to do with their bodies have historically been regulated through compulsory patriarchy. And when you have that much repression collecting in each successive generation, it’s no wonder people are tired of the bullshit. Yet somehow it is still considered 'revolutionary' for people to just feel what they feel and to be able to express that freely.
In all of this, I return still to the feminine power displayed by the women in the mood boards above. This power is not defined by raw physical strength or intellectual prowess as is stereotypically the case when it comes to male dominance. For me, their power is linked to the frustrations and losses they face which ultimately lead to episodes of 'feminine rage' in some cases.
Rage is defined as uncontrollable anger that leads to violence. Maleficent turns into a dragon and curses an entire nation into a comma all because she is an outcast and unwanted. In the events of The Marvels (2023), Captain Marvel destroys Hala's sun because she's had enough of the injustice and violence perpetuated by the Kree Supreme Intelligence. This display of violent rage throws the inhabitants of Hala into a post-apocalyptic world with unsuitable living conditions.
These violent acts cannot be justified, but they are embedded in the realm of feminine expression which I have already pointed out is often scrutinized by patriarchy and shaped by inherited repression. Captain Marvel's actions cannot be absolved but when situated in the context of the brainwashing, psychological torture and borderline enslavement she underwent at the hands of the Kree in the first Captain Marvel film, we can see that her anger is rooted in a history of oppression.
I think that's probably what led me to create feminized expressions of my anger. My anger is similar to Captain Marvel's in that it is rooted in a history of oppression, mine being at the hands of a homophobic society. Like Maleficent, I too felt unwanted and outcast during the height of the anti-gay panic. I wanted to burn the world for refusing to accept that 'homosexuality' is no more unnatural than 'heterosexuality'.
I still feel like burning the world. In the words of Mark Ruffalo's Bruce Banner from Marvel's The Avengers (2012), "I'm always angry". Let the world consider itself lucky that I can't turn into a dragon like Maleficent, because if I could I'd show them just how much of a 'deviant' I can be.
I am furious at the state of human rights violations in this country. It boils my skin to know that politicians are more interested in passing legislature that uses sexual minorities as a scapegoat instead of making policies that address the epidemic of child abuse currently strangling the nation’s youth. I am livid at the current parliament and administration. They can all go and fuck themselves.
I’m angry at people who tell me to ‘calm down’ as if that will actually help me calm down! I’m angry at the people (and I didn’t single out men here because some women do this too) who dismiss women and other marginalized groups that are voicing their grievances with the systematic oppression they undergo every day.
I am grieved by countless LGBTQ+ youth who have faced discrimination, homelessness and abuse at the hands of their families and communities who were supposed to love and care for them. I am grieved by the many closeted homophobes who will live decades of their lives running from who they are while spitting in the face of people just like them.
I’m grieved by the women in my life who shoulder everyone else’s pain and barely ever get time to themselves. I hope you find the grace to focus on yourself for a while. Everyone else can deal with their own fucking problems.
I am grieved by the forgotten, abused and murdered women and children; the women and children in Afghanistan, Palestine, Congo (DRC), Sudan, Kenya, Uganda and the list goes on and on and on. The authorities in control never apologize for the atrocities they commit against them. I will not apologize for calling those authorities out for their negligence. They are complicit in murder and war crimes and they must be held accountable.
But if you're like me, you probably ask yourself "What can I do to help? I'm just an ordinary person minding my own business."
If you do anything today, first and foremost show some love to the women in your life and then please go and read up on the things that are happening in the world as far as gender inequality and women’s rights are concerned.
I’ve left some helpful resources to help get you started. I know all too well how education and access to information are gatekept behind egregiously high tuition fees and convoluted academic language. The resources I've left below are relatively easy reads (there's one video too). I read these myself before and during the creation of this post and I can guarantee they won’t make the anger go away. They might even make it worse. But at least you’ll have taken the time to educate yourself on some of the challenges people in our world face.
Martin Luther King Jr. once said: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”. Even if none of these experiences relate to you personally, they each reflect symptoms of the larger global issues that many of us are facing. The first step to dismantling those issues is to READ:
Research (using credible, fact-checked sources)
Engage (meaning, spend some time with the text and issues at hand. Reflect and jot down some notes while you read. This helps me remember key points whenever I read anything longer than 30 pages.)
Analyze (meaning, critically dissect what you are reading and pay attention to what you learn and unlearn. Ask questions. Don't assume what you read is always unbiased or free of flaws.)
Discuss (engage with your community, family and friends and start having conversations about these issues. This is a good way to apply what you have learned. And oftentimes these conversations lead to a repetition of the READ cycle as more perspectives and questions are brought up.)
And one last thing. Not everyone is an activist. I am not an activist. I am more of an advocate. I think as Gen Z we tend to think that our online outrage at the injustices in the world is enough to make change happen. Change, especially that of a social-political kind is very, very slow. The issues you're fighting against probably won't see brighter days until after you're dead. You are not Korra; you can't summon fire from thin air and fire blast all your enemies. Believe me, I've tried. But you can stay informed and share that information with your small sphere of influence or anybody who will listen. There's a reason oppressive regimes systemically stifle educated, well-informed masses from rising.
Recommended Resources:
The following are links to some of the articles, books, websites and social media pages that I've been engaging with recently. Feel free to bookmark these in your browser and return to them whenever you need. NOTE: this list isn’t exhaustive. Hopefully, you recognize a few of these and if you have any more helpful sources you’d like to share with everyone, please drop them down in the comments below!
African Sexualities A Reader by Sylvia Tamale.
Sylvia Tamale is a Ugandan feminist and activist. I've found her work in various articles and journals to be very helpful during my time as a university student at Arizona State University. I cannot recommend this book enough. It includes essays, articles, poetry and so much more about gender, sexuality, politics and everything in between but from an Afro-centric perspective.
"The Taliban and Global Backlash Against Women's Rights" by Heather Barr
Much of the inspiration for this blog post came from this article. Barr highlights how the Taliban's human rights violations against women and girls in Afghanistan have larger implications for gender equality on a global scale.
Bombastic 7th Edition by Kuchu Times Media Group
Kuchu Times is a Ugandan-based, queer-owned news platform dedicated to providing a voice to the African LGBTQIA+ community. They've been releasing an annual magazine called Bombastic which brings attention to some of the challenges the Ugandan LGBTQIA+ community goes through. This year's edition is all about how the COVID-19 Pandemic disproportionately impacted queer Ugandans, specifically queer youth. It's full of first-person accounts from members and allies of the community, so it's your best chance at seeing the Ugandan LGBTQ+ representation we rarely see elsewhere.
"The Urgency of Intersectionality" TED video featuring African-American feminist Kimberlé Crenshaw.
I love this video because in it Crenshaw explains her theory of 'intersectionality' which she coined as a political framework to understand the ways systemic oppression is experienced to specific degrees as a result of overlapping or 'intersecting' identities. I think it is more relevant than ever considering how some people will say, "Africa has bigger problems than LGBTQ+ rights". Those people also fail to understand that on top of all the economic, political and environmental hardships we're all going through, LGBTQ+ Africans experience all of it while also dealing with queerphobia and state-sponsored discrimination.
"Silencing Women: Tracking Femicide Cases Reported in Kenyan Newspapers from 2016 to Date"
This webpage demonstrates how the femicide issue in Kenya is systemic as much as it is a social ill. The data reported suggests that delays in justice and limited coverage of ongoing cases are undermining the urgency of the issue. I also include this resource here because it shows that this issue has been ongoing for several years now. The recent deaths and subsequent widespread protests in Kenya have brought much-needed attention to this issue, but it is truly heartbreaking that this has been happening for years without any real urgent response from government officials.
"Increased child abuse in Uganda amidst COVID-19 pandemic" (2020) by Sserwanja et. al
It should come as no surprise to my Ugandan readers that children are by far one of the most marginalized groups in Uganda. Child abuse rates were already high to begin with, but the COVID-19 Pandemic lockdown exacerbated the issue and saw an increase in violence against children, child labour and child sexual abuse. This article reports on the alarming increase in child abuse in Uganda during the COVID-19 lockdown period, how the lockdown made matters worse and what needs to be done to reverse this trend.
Once again, if you have any resources you'd like to share please drop them in the comment below! Let's share what we learn with each other.
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