lesbian - The African Mirror

Jan

2022

Don’t ignore butch lesbians, says T.S. Eliot prize winner Joelle Taylor

ELLA BRAIDWOOD BRITISH poet Joelle Taylor, winner of this year's prestigious T.S. Eliot prize for a collection exploring lesbian identity, says it is time the mainstream media gave a voice to "butch dykes" like herself. Taylor, 54, said she hoped her prize-winning "C+nto & Othered Poems" could act as a catalyst for other under-represented LGBT+ people to offer "an alternative narrative", urging TV production companies to embrace them as writers. "It's about the media accepting a far more diverse set of narratives, and the way we look and owning the fact that they own the narrative to begin with," Taylor…

Aug

2021

By The African Mirror

Ghana LGBT+ bill would threaten fight on HIV/AIDS, says UNAIDS

HEALTH

NITA BHALLA A proposal to criminalise LGBT+ people in Ghana is "a gross violation" of human rights and could set back a decade of progress fighting HIV/AIDS in the West African nation, according to the United Nations. The Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill, 2021, received a first reading in parliament on Monday. It will now be reviewed by a committee before going back to lawmakers for a second reading. "This proposed legislation is a gross violation of the human rights of Ghana's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, who already face high levels of…

Oct

2020

By The African Mirror

‘It got scary’: Gloria Estefan’s daughter on coming out as a lesbian

LGBT+

HUGO GREENHALGH FORBIDDEN by her global superstar mother Gloria Estefan from coming out as a lesbian to her grandmother, singer Emily Estefan said she contemplated suicide. The second child of multi-Grammy award-winning Cuban-American singer of hits like "Rhythm is Going to Get You" said her "anxiety went through the roof" when her grandmother died a few months later in 2017. "It got scary, it got pretty bad," the 25-year-old told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a joint video call with her mother. "I was disconnected from my music, so I was really feeling that I just didn't want to be…

Sep

2020

By The African Mirror

Flying straight and level as an African lesbian

LGBT+

ENID OTUN AS a Black, female commercial pilot in Nigeria in the 1980’s and 90’s, I was starting to grapple with the big questions. What am I? Who am I? I never used the word gay. I never used the word homosexual. I had no issue with those words in themselves, I had just never thought about relating them to me. I realised that something inside me was saying that I was perhaps drawn more to women, but I certainly wasn’t in the right location for that to be happening. In Nigeria being gay is not well received. That’s putting…

Aug

2020

By The African Mirror

Pride in Africa is for those who come after us

LGBT+

MARLINE OLUCHI SHARING about visibility, the struggles, the triumphs, the wellbeing and the needs of LGBT+ people in Africa is a creative struggle between emotions, sensibility, objectivity and the need to write from a deep place of hurt, layering down my vulnerabilities. It is first of all, an inner struggle to validate yourself, rationalize your feelings, and follow your passions, without having to worry about people frowning at your choices, to adequately capture what it means to be different from the acceptable societal norm our people have been preconditioned to expect, in a bid to promote bigotry, homophobia, transphobia, discrimination…