Chantal Zabus Quotes

#1. The African continent has always been more queer than generally acknowledged.

Chantal Zabus

#2. [Mark] Epprecht's larger thesis [...] is that Europeans introduced homophobia, not homosexuality, to Africa.

Chantal Zabus

#3. In pre-colonial Africa, men who had sexual relationship with older men almost always married a woman later in life and had children. Exclusive homosexuality would not have been and is still not a viable option for Africans who value wealth and patronymic extension through marriage.

Chantal Zabus

#4. As is often the case, an individual who has been racially oppressed may be blind that the same mechanisms of exclusion and denigration are at work in gender oppression.

Chantal Zabus

#5. Out in Africa examines the anthropological, cultural and literary representations of male and female same sex desire, as it is at odds with an apparent context of heteronormativity and emphasis on reproduction, in a pan-African context, from the nineteenth century to the present.

Chantal Zabus

#6. African "homosexualities" can never be comfortably slotted within identity politics carved out of Western "gay" and "lesbian" liberation struggles, and display queer and even post-queer characteristics.

Chantal Zabus

#7. Stonewall" has come to mark the origins of gay political activism although earlier groups in countries such as Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the French movement that grew out of the May 1968 events cannot be ignored.

Chantal Zabus