Hey, my fans want me to post.
Cannot disappoint them, can I? Yet I am wondering how to say what I do want to write.
Should be a rant, like the ones that 27th is famed for. But I dislike shouting. Just makes me not to hear anything. Cold remorseless logic is better, gets to be heard, even when I am making little sense.
And yes, I am dedicating this to 27th, who accuses me of a western bias, because I am gay.
Ugandans know a guy called Brenda. A gal, because Brenda is a trans person. Meaning that biologically the birth was to a male baby, but growing up Brenda was more confortable in the female role, and ultimately embraced the female gender.
Far as I know, she has not got surgery.
I expect Ugandans to know of her because she fascinated them, on our coming out in August 2008. She detailed the imprisonment that she had gotten, the beatings, the ridicule and physical abuse at the press conference. She took out her teeth to show that she was wearing dentures after one time that the police beat her up.
Why was she being beat up?
Well, I am gay. And we have met, 27th and I. But he did not know that I am gay, because I do not ‘look’ gay. Trans people are different. They usually, visibly, cross the gender roles. And they pay the price heavily.
I can, and do hide the fact that I am gay. Brenda does not. She does not hide the fact that she is transgender.
Recently, Brenda needed travel documents. They were denied. Reason, they don’t give them to ‘people who have changed themselves’. Julie Victor Mukasa tells of the time that she had to prove that she was biologically female at the RDC’s office in
Our constitution states that it is a citizens right to get a passport. Brenda is apparently not included in that definition of a citizen. But that is besides the point. Fact is, those of us who are in LGBTI activism, are suddenly finding problems getting travel documents.
I don’t doubt that Nsaba Buturo knows who gug is. He was crowing to the fact that he knew who we are. We appeared in the press conference in masks, and Ssempa had Victor’s picture on a website, and our names were read out on the church fm stations. And I cannot in truth hide from the state intelligence apparatus. Would be lying myself to think so.
I am ranting, very carefully, because it has made me mad to realize again that I am a second class citizen because I am gay. And that the likes of Nsaba Buturo think that they can deny me what is mine as a Ugandan, simply because I am also gay.
Very likely I may have problems traveling next time that I need to do so. My passport may light up or something. Happened in
27th, this is my beef with you.
You state, almost jokingly, that we are ‘collaborators’. You think it is so, simply because we do accept friendship from the west, from people who are like us, gay, and have passed through the same experiences. You demand the impossible, that if we do want to be ‘legitimate’ we have to follow your paths to emancipations. Paths which mean that we shall never have emancipation.
Bullshit, 27th.
I do like your idealism, but not when you use it to step on my freedom.
That is exactly the reasoning that Nsaba Buturo and Ssempa are using to justify stepping on our civil rights. The fact that you have it so prettily zazzed up in speech and your ideology does not mean that you are correct.
Hell, you are welcome to your beliefs. So is Buturo, and Ssempa, as long as they do not mean that my freedom is curtailed. Sex workers are also human beings. They do have a constitutional right to meet. So do LGBT people, as we proved last year.
I will rail, again and again that just because we are different, that does not mean that we need to be more patriotic than you. To reject ourselves in the interest of being African enough for the likes of you. To have to listen to your bullshit about how we should live our lives, and what friends we should have, and whether they have the correct skin colour or the correct ideology.
Comrade, I am the oppressed here, and I will also take up the gun to defend myself. To hell with your self serving idealism and condemnation.
I am what I am, and I do not need to measure up to your ideals.
Tell Ssempa and Buturo that, and if deTamble cannot push it down your throat, well, believe in whatever the hell you believe in. But let me be me.
Uhhhhhhhhhhh!
That is what it means to take something off ones chest? Think I should do it more often.
GayUganda
