Paper short abstract:

Sexual rights activism relies on openness. Queer organising in Senegal shows that discretion (sutura in Wolof) is key however. The challege for organisations is to reconcile these seemingly incompatible positions, to secure credibility and enhance the space for same-sex intimacies in society.

Paper long abstract:

Sexual rights activism relies on openness. The question that is often debated is whether such efforts will 'free' African queers from 'the closet', or whether they create a local backlash in the form of increased social and political homophobia. In this paper, I propose that it is more fruitful to examine how the sexual rights discourse and its activism are adopted and molded by queer Africans and their organisations, and to examine how globalising discourses transform spaces for navigating same-sex intimacies. This paper is based on six months of ethnographic fieldwork in urban Senegal, predominantly Dakar. Queer organising in Senegal shows that discretion (sutura in Wolof) is key. The challenge for organisations is to reconcile the seemingly incompatible positions of openness and sutura, to secure international and local credibility. This paper explores how two queer organisations are engaged in the creation of social spaces for queer women. Rather than focusing on the political debate about sexual rights, this paper focuses on the social role of these organisations. I will argue that instead of seeing local queer activism as a move towards a global gay culture and as the adoption of the globalising sexual rights discourse, it must be understood as an ambiguous realm that combines sociopolitical work on the enlargement of the space for same-sex intimacies with work from a distinctly local background whereby social events and care are organised with respect for the value of sutura (discretion, modesty).