Conservatism: A word used to evade societal truths

Franz Fanon once said that “Each generation must discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it in relative opacity”.  Ours is to dismantle myths and lies that were fed to us and repackaged under conservatism. The treatment of queer bodies like dirty little secrets in Zimbabwe is one of the bones I would like to pick today. Heterosexism is to homophobia what eurocentrism is to racism. There is this constant fear that the patriarchy and the heterosexual relationship safety net is under attack. There is a lot of obsession in African cultures around proper outward experiences. Understand that it is not just an African thing and I will unpack how Victorian values have contributed to our views about sexuality. There are certain social customs and myths that have been created to protect what is perceived to be the right expression of sexuality. The product of a sexual relationship in a marriage setting has to lead to offspring. It becomes hard for people to understand the point of homosexual relationships. Thus the debate around alternative sexuality being dismissive, highly emotional with a lot of violent rhetoric being thrown around.   The nature of the structure of the family in Zimbabwe is meant to be functional in nature. A woman has to prove that she is able to bear children and continue with the family bloodline. This aim to prove fertility is protected even through the ‘show of fertility’. If a couple is unable to have children and it is discovered that the husband is impotent a trusted male relative impregnates the wife and the child is regarded to be the child of her husband. This speaks to the culture of keeping up appearances and the myth of a functional social machine. It is kept together by lies and the culture of quietness and ‘discretion’. Even if things have fallen apart and are not put together the African family tries by all means necessary to maintain the image that everything is well. This same culture of of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ contributes to a lot of misunderstanding about the topic of sex itself. It also contributes to men’s anxiety about what it means to be a real man. Men are also shocked when women do not seem to submit to male desire. It also does not help that most values that we think are ours were simply white men legislating various parts of our lives according to the Eurocentric agenda. In the same way that they gave themselves an entire continent, they then moved to legislate African sexuality.   Understand that seeing queerness as a white man’s disease was created by the white man himself. The white man said he was a missionary thus if he dared to talk about sex it would be him condoning fornication. Like all other ‘uncomfortable’ conversations it was dismissed as unchristian and would be against the Christian missionary propaganda. This allowed Europe to encourage homophobia under the rhetoric that even the savages were moral enough not to have same sex relations. For years they were able to call queerness a moral disorder. This was harmful in the understanding of sexual harassment. Sodomy was classified as the accused having to have a penis. That already excluded women from being protected from sexual harassment perpetrated by other women. It narrowed the scope of what sexual assault was. When the specifics of these sexual acts were overlooked in the effort to protect patriarchal dignity, this also shut down African men from talking about sodomy. Rituals and various corrective measures contributed to the minimizing of the heaviness of sexual violation.   The renaming of societal truths has contributed to many issues being swept under the carpet. There is the acknowledgment that something exists but its existence is deemed to be too vulgar to be spoken about. Gay men in the Shona community would be called ‘tsvimborume’ (one who does not marry) and ‘sahwira’ (an intimate male comrade). There was the acceptance of male friendships being inherently homoerotic in their nature that there would be a quick explanation and one word that describes that a man doesn’t seem to have a woman in his life.   Women were constantly overlooked in these conversations thus the Zimbabwean constitution mostly targeting male homosexuality over female homosexuality. Women are not seen as a threat.  This is because of the weaponization of rape in silencing women’s voices. No one is ready to take a woman seriously when she says her romantic partner is a woman. They assume that she is just sexually frustrated and needs to be raped to reset her brain to factory settings. It is said that she is trying to be a man. It is assumed that she is mentally ill. This translates to the societal norm of constantly making decisions for women both explicitly and implicitly. Sex is used in silencing women’s voices that even in politics a woman’s journey in activism comes with the expectation that she will be sexually harassed. The current male archetype demands heterosexuality. It claims that men must be dominant but a lot of prejudices prevent this show of dominance from being natural instead the whole essence of being male is rooted in aggressive expression. During the colonial era the white man called African men ‘boy’. Their masculinity was constantly under attack .Their achievements were seen as inferior, imitative and childish and defined along the white man’s line. Shortage of land and opportunities to create wealth so they could afford a fertile and submissive wife gave the appearance of masculinity being under attack. The independence of women who were financially independent and more sexually liberated contributed to the identity confusion of the African man. A man wasn’t a man if he did not have a woman to lay with at night. Thus in the African man’s effort to restore his masculinity, he said he is traditional and said homosexuality was unafrican.   In the African society the patriarchy is protected even when he engages in acts that show that he is more animalistic than human. The culture that the family structure must not be tainted shortchanges those who are not benefitting from the patriarchy. The phrase that ‘this must stay in the family’ is problematic and it should die a violent death.