Silencing LGBTQ People in Sub-Saharan Africa Through Violence and Demonization

Anthropologist and activist David Graeber said that violence is a way of controlling situations without having to understand the people in them. Understanding people requires effort and imagination. Violence requires only hitting a person over the head (if the state says you can). 

Violence is the first way to silence and control gender and sexually diverse persons.

The structural violence in communities leads to situations when LGBTQ+ persons are reported to authorities by siblings, cousins, LGBTQ+ acquaintances or intimate partners who knew what punishment the reported person would receive.

The second way to silence and control them is demonization.

There is a lot of talk in research literature about the belief that LGBTQ+ persons recruit or initiate boys or girls into ‘gayness’ (which meant any part of the LGBTQ+ spectrum), but this ‘recruitment’ did not come up in interviews as often as expected.

Instead, what came up in a lot of conversations was the demonization of LGBTQ+ persons, with ordinary people on the street telling them ‘you are satanic’, ‘you get your money from the Devil’ (even when it was clear the person had no money). On Sundays, church priests and pastors also talked about LGBTQ+ people being demonic to their congregations.

The thing is, if people say you are ‘satanic’, it warns African Christians it is dangerous for them to even try to understand LGBTQ+ people because by doing so, they will endanger their souls.

For Christians, the satanic realm is a no-go zone for interpretation. That makes this approach very effective in silencing people who are gender and sexually diverse.