At the just concluded Ake festival, there was a panel called “The Gender Binary And Everything In Between”, a panel which brings about inclusion of LGBT matters in creative spaces. On this episode we have our very own Lady Yin (@lady_yinn) discussion with us the interdependence of art spaces and queer advocacy, read below her opening poem... Call us by our names.
Romeo Oriogun
Dennis Macaulay
Delle
Chibuzor
Ife
Call us by our names!
Not by the failed attempt at humor in pathetic insults aimed at us because we are vile and disgusting.
Call us by our names!
Cici
Aisha
Titi
Halimah
You call us strange, abnormal, unafrican because we love who we love in a definition of love you cannot accept because you have boxed yourself with a religion that tells you that man must love woman who must not love woman but must love man who can never love man.
Call us by our names!
Us who you have said do not exist!
Us that are suffering from the white man’s disease, us that you have tried to wipe from history.
Call us by our fucking names!
Iliana
Nkem
Fola
Tosin
Dami
We are your brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, husbands, wives.
We are the congregations in your churches, we are the soldiers in your army, we are the most diligent workers in the state’s service.
We are more than the ambiguous, vague, seemingly nonexistent L-G-B-T, we are here, we are blood, and we are Africans, pure and strong so call us by our fucking names!