Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

Current discourses on 'homosexuality' in Cameroon relate in unexpected ways to gender stereotypes implying different roles attributed to one and the same person. Thus 'homosexuality' seems to become an empty signifier. Is this a reason why it becomes such an unsettling notion creating a moral panic?

Paper long abstract:

In the current discourse on homosexuality in Cameroun the linking of alternative forms of sex to gender differences follows a standard pattern. The young men that are arrested on accusations of same-sex practices are suspected of feminine behavior and the players of the female soccer team are stereotyped as lesbian tomboys. However, there is also another discourse in which 'the' homosexual is depicted as a supreme phallocrat - 'un Grand', subjecting young boys to anal penetration. This discourse centers on Dr. Aujoulat, a French doctor who played a crucial role in the decolonization of Cameroon in the 1950s and who is, especially since 2000, regularly accused of having corrupted the new Cameroonian elite by submitting them to such homosexuals practices. Striking is the combination of quite different roles attributed to such 'homosexuals': Ahidjo, the country's first President is depicted in recent cartoons as a crying baby in diapers and as an inveterate penetrator, sodomitizing his courtiers; same for his successor, Biya. Striking is that local ideas on same-sex practices as a 'medecine of wealth' are similarly polyvalent about the exact role attributed to such lovers. Thus, the notion of 'homosexuality,' now very current in the country, risks to become an empty signifier. Is it because of this that the term has acquired such an unsettling impact?