Paper short abstract:

Lgbt*iq in East Africa face numerous challenges in their human rights situation. Discourses on sexual orientation/gender identity (SOGI) operate in intersectional fields of tension of colonial continuities, imperialist clerical fascism, cis-heteronormative matrices and global political homophobia.

Paper long abstract:

Human rights for lgbt*iq are challenging on various levels – in global perspectives and varying in national/local contexts. Concepts of human rights must also be critically examined. For the global south, most laws criminalising homosexuality had been implemented by European colonial powers and thus move within colonial continuities. Regional political contexts of homophobia meanwhile create narratives of the – essentialised – homosexual „other“ as „enemy“ – using culturalized images of homosexuality / the „queer other“ as „western import/decadence“. Entangled with those lines of othering, concepts of religion as the US evangelical hate propaganda against lgbt*iq also have powerful influences. This leads to overlapping constructions of difference with political aspirations on power of actors as religious movements, national leaders, global political interests – all of which are politically and strategically working with the enemy narrative of lgbt*iq with queer- and trans-hostile lines of argumentation for their own interests benefit; and do understand to use political homophobia as a weapon and clever diversionary manoeuvre from actual challenges or crisis. So political homophobia is shaped and used by history and colonial continuities in contexts of regional political power and international relations, in culturalized and religious narratives and images, and, of course, in language, discourse and political strategy.

With a perspective on the situation of lgbt*iq in East Africa via triangulation of methods, we explore fields of tension of political homophobia in intersections of cis-heteronormative matrices and colonial continuities, plus the intersectional constructions of otherness, systems of dominance and mechanisms of oppression.