The Politics of Being Queer and Nigerian with Adebayo Quadry-Adekanbi
In this episode of Odejuma, Harry chats with Writer and Scholar Adebayo Quadry-Adekanbi about the complexities of queer identity in Nigeria. Adebayo draws on his experiences living between Nigeria and the UK to not only share his journey of discovering his queerness but also speak to the historical impacts of colonialism on current anti-LBGTQ laws and what visibility truly means in places where homophobia runs deep. They dive into the politics of safety, how queer spaces are being commodified, and the role of the elite in shaping how people view queerness.
From cultural practices that quietly affirm queerness to the contradictions we all face, this episode challenges listeners to understand the complexity of navigating queerness as a Nigerian. With a blend of vulnerability and critical insight, Adebayo presents a bold vision of what it means to live authentically as a queer individual. Their conversation serves as a poignant exploration of identity, resistance, and the potential to envision queer futures beyond borders.
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Transcript
Hi, my name is Harry, and welcome to Odejuma.
Speaker A:Odejuma recognizes the magic of storytelling.
Speaker A:From personal experiences to stories of adventure, from tales of resilience to finding joy in the simple things, this story seeks to inspire, entertain, and educate, because there is power in the stories of everyday people, and these stories are worth telling.
Speaker A:Hi, folks, and welcome to another episode of Odejoma.
Speaker A:I'm super excited about this one because I have one of my favorite people, very intellectually sound, such a really great personality.
Speaker A:I have Adebayo Cordrey, Adequan B.
Speaker A:Who is an international development professional, a writer, a scholar, a researcher, just, you know, wears many hats.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Hi, Adebayo.
Speaker A:How are you doing today?
Speaker B:I'm doing very well.
Speaker B:I'm very shy.
Speaker A:There's nothing to be shy about.
Speaker A:But thank you so much for coming on my podcast.
Speaker A:We've been trying to do this for a while from, like, the old podcast, and I'm really glad that you are, like, sharing your time, so very, very much appreciative.
Speaker A:I think I want to just start, like, from, like, the very beginning.
Speaker A:Like, as someone who is Nigerian, we share that identity.
Speaker A:Talk to me a little bit about growing up and when did you discover, like, that you were queer?
Speaker B:Honestly, that's a very interesting question.
Speaker B:I feel like, as queer people, you always know.
Speaker B:Like, I don't think there's a point in which you realize and discover, like.
Speaker B:Well, I guess there's a.
Speaker B:There's a point in which you as a person comes into knowing and fully understanding what queerness means to you and how you embody that.
Speaker B:But, like, your body always knows.
Speaker B:But I feel like for me, when I started to really process my idea of what queerness is, I think a lot of it actually aligned more so with forms of identification that have to do with queerness.
Speaker B:Because it's like, I remember, I think I was like, 11 or something.
Speaker B:I'd start.
Speaker B:Started year seven here in the UK and like, I think within the first five minutes of starting the school, there was, like, this tiny boy that they asked to come and show me around.
Speaker B:And he walks up to me, and the first five minutes that we walked out, he looked at me was like, are you gay?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And I think, like, that was.
Speaker B:I didn't even know what it was.
Speaker B:I genuinely didn't know what that was.
Speaker B:And so I had to, like, really sit down.
Speaker B:I was like, what?
Speaker B:What is that like?
Speaker B:Because a lot of the times I don't think there was ever an attachment of an identity framework to how I acted, especially because up until that point, I spent a lot of my time around Nigerians, my family, my parents, my sibling, my.
Speaker B:Yeah, all of that stuff to which the idea of a sexual orientation was never attached to the actions that I was doing.
Speaker B:So I also never really attached and I.
Speaker B:A form of identification to those actions.
Speaker B:So when, yeah, when I, when he asked that question, it was kind of.
Speaker B:I was really taken aback because I was like, what the hell is that?
Speaker B:I think I was like 10 or 11 and I was so confused.
Speaker B:But, yeah, but I would say I think that that was when I then really started to fully understand that because, you know, I feel like once that question came, it opened the floodgates of not just more of those questions from other people, but more of those questions from myself as well.
Speaker B:What that meant, what that looked like.
Speaker B:And honestly, it's still something I'm still answering till this point.
Speaker B:I'm still consistently unwrapping and unraveling what identification means to me and to queerness in general.
Speaker B:Yeah, Effy.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's real.
Speaker A:And I really appreciate you sharing that.
Speaker A:I think I have a curiosity about, as someone who grew up in like the UK and in Nigeria, and I know you seriously trying to, you know, it's an ever evolving or continuous discovery of your identity and who you are.
Speaker A:But how did growing up in those two locations that are very different but still kind of similar in a weird way, how did I shape you just understanding your identity?
Speaker B:You know what?
Speaker B:I will say this, and this is something that I say quite often is that like, and I think this is also something that motivated a lot of my research and in so many different and interesting ways.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker B:And before I say that, and I will also say, like, obviously a lot of these experiences are very specific.
Speaker B:There's.
Speaker B:There's so many factors that come into place to determine how one person exists in a specific way.
Speaker B:But like, I've often always found it easier to understand my queerness in Nigeria than I do here in the uk.
Speaker B:Like, I think there is a.
Speaker B:There is a way that I think forms of identification, I think going back to that point has really, I think, stunted a lot of understandings of queerness and how we understand what queerness is.
Speaker B:And I think that's often the case for me as well.
Speaker B:Like, and the way I always think about it is when I was younger and you know, people would always talk about me behaving effeminately or, or what have you.
Speaker B:It.
Speaker B:It always felt like a joke I was in on, if that makes sense.
Speaker B:I think that's one thing it always felt like a joke I was in on.
Speaker B:But I think also what I always.
Speaker B:What I found anyway was that it was more a conversation about how I acted and not necessarily who I was.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:And I think for me, that's informed how I see and understand queerness, because for me now, queerness is not necessarily who I am, it's what I do.
Speaker B:And I think there's a very specific.
Speaker B:And it's not to say and, you know, there's.
Speaker B:There's that interesting conversation about, you know, what does.
Speaker B:Where does who you are stop and what you do begin?
Speaker B:Like, where.
Speaker B:How do you draw that line?
Speaker B:And I think that's, again, it's.
Speaker B:It's a whole other conversation.
Speaker B:But I think for me, I'm starting to reconfigure queerness for myself.
Speaker B:Not simply as who I am.
Speaker B:There is an element of that, but more so about what I do.
Speaker B:There's an intentionality to how I embody, how I embody space, how I take up space within the world that is intentionally queer, that I think goes beyond just a form of identification.
Speaker B:Oh, this is how I identify.
Speaker B:It's more so about the things that you're doing that I think culminate into forms of queerness.
Speaker B:And it's a lot easier to do that, for me, anyway, in spaces like Nigeria because fundamentally what I do is part of, like, my culture, my cultural practices, or the way I relate to family, community, space, all of that.
Speaker B:And when you exist in a space that you consider to be like home or whatever, it's just a lot easier to perform those actions than it would be somewhere like.
Speaker B:Yeah, in the uk.
Speaker B:And I know for a lot of people, there's a.
Speaker B:There's a way that we ascribe freedom and.
Speaker B:And inclusivity and diversity and all of these things to Western states like the uk and we say, oh, that's because they have rights.
Speaker B:It's free.
Speaker B:They're free to be queer.
Speaker B:But I think it's also important to understand what that means and what that looks like.
Speaker B:What does queerness mean in this space?
Speaker B:And it's not that you can't be queer in Nigeria, but there's different ways that you have to be queer and your queerness has to look a specific way.
Speaker B:And the same with here as well.
Speaker A:That is a very interesting, interesting perspective that I really want to dive in a little bit deeper on with, like, talking about, like, the ways you feel like, as opposed to, like, the uk, where you have to be queer in a certain way.
Speaker A:Can you like kind of expound on.
Speaker B:That a little bit when you think about like what queerness means?
Speaker B:I think on a fundamental level I think we can often see queerness.
Speaker B:It's very easy for us to see queerness as like a, a rejection of normativity.
Speaker B:And I think a lot of people see queerness in that way.
Speaker B:It's like.
Speaker B:And I think especially when you think about like the queer movement and queer theory and queer politics of like the 90s and specifically that's come out of Western, Western spaces.
Speaker B:It's always been about, you know, queerness is an anti normative, we're moving against heteronormativity, we're moving against all of these forms of norms and norms and norms and norms.
Speaker B:But for me it then becomes a question of like, you know, when queerness then becomes the norm in a space, what does queerness mean there?
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So in a space like the UK that they've supposedly giving rights in spaces like the US in spaces where there is to some people an objective form of freedom for queer people.
Speaker B:So they have now been inserted into the normative frameworks of that space, I. E. The law.
Speaker B:Are they still then queer if we keep defining queerness as anti normative?
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And so I start to then think about all of those questions and it's, it then brings up, I think, what, how I define queerness or how I understand queerness, which to me queerness is not necessarily going against normativity.
Speaker B:Queerness is sitting beside it and understanding the multiplicities that can exist.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So it's not establishing, it's not saying that we are against this norm, it's saying that we, we are saying that there should be multiple things that can exist.
Speaker B:Do you get what I mean?
Speaker B:So it's non normative, it's not anti normative.
Speaker B:And I think when you think about somewhere like Nigeria, there are so many spaces, especially spaces outside of elite frameworks and frameworks that are aligning themselves with Western framing, which again always, usually the elites, you tend to find spaces that allow those forms of non normativity to exist.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And I think one of the spaces we can look at that is like our entertainment industry or yeah, our entertainment industry is a very good one.
Speaker B:Like it's very relatively queer.
Speaker B:Like if you're looking at it because.
Speaker B:And it's a very, it's a very weird thing to say, but it's like it's.
Speaker B:We have a very queer way, but it's just, we don't call it queer.
Speaker B:And I think that's also the interesting thing about queerness.
Speaker B:It's somebody like Nigeria, is that we do so much queer stuff.
Speaker B:Sorry, I don't want to.
Speaker B:Quiet.
Speaker B:We do so much queer stuff.
Speaker B:Right, Okay.
Speaker B:I mean, I'm generally not even someone who swears, so it's like, I.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:But it's like, we do so much queer stuff, but we don't call it queer.
Speaker B:And I think that's important, actually, that we don't, because.
Speaker B:And it goes back to that thing about actions versus identity.
Speaker B:Because especially when you think about the crackdown on LGBT rights that's happening at the moment, a lot of it is because we are consistently keep attaching actions to identities.
Speaker B:It's like, if you do this, you are gay.
Speaker B:If you do this, you are gay people.
Speaker B:That.
Speaker B:And, you know, we keep going back to African history trying to look for gay and queer icons that we can use to prove that we've always been queer and, like, queerness have always existed.
Speaker B:And to me, I think that's a very important task to take.
Speaker B:But I think on one.
Speaker B:On one hand, on another hand, I'm like, actually, it shouldn't matter whether queer people existed or not.
Speaker B:The fact is, queer people exist now, and we should be able to exist here, period.
Speaker B:But I think whenever we keep laying emphasis on this idea of, oh, let's.
Speaker B:Let's identify, let's look for these things that these people were doing.
Speaker B:It's like, oh, this former king of this nation had boyfriends and this and that.
Speaker B:And we keep ascribing very.
Speaker B:Again, it's not that it's a lie, but again, we are establishing frameworks of identity that don't always fit because they don't often see those actions as gay or as lesbian or as.
Speaker B:Or informs in the same ways that we are seeing them now.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:And even.
Speaker B:And I think we.
Speaker B:We also forget that, like, the term, even these terms, lgbt.
Speaker B:LGBT has an identity is very, very new.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:A lot of that came, like, during, like, the, like, gay rights movement that was happening in the 80s and the 90s and all of that.
Speaker B:But even the terms, the forms of identification themselves, they're new.
Speaker B:They.
Speaker B:They're very much products of modernity.
Speaker B:So it's not like these are constants that have always existed through time.
Speaker B:So I think whenever there's this fixated idea of, oh, we have to attach actions to identity to prove that these identities have always existed, we are also falling into the trap of recreating and limiting some of the actions that we're doing to Only those identities.
Speaker B:And it's like, oh, only people that do this are this.
Speaker B:So now people that are doing this but are not this, are also now in that same issue, that same boat for some reason.
Speaker B:But also people that are doing this but don't want you to know that they are this are also now implicated because you're now.
Speaker B:And it's like there's ways that we, I don't want to out ourselves to some degree based on some of these things.
Speaker B:And I, I think it's one of them ones that like.
Speaker B:And so it's like all of these tensions exist in somewhere like Nigeria because a lot of queer things that we call that we understand to be queer now in contemporary society are so embedded in our culture.
Speaker B:And it's one of the reasons why, you know, while we have some of the worst laws, and especially someone like Lagos, a lot of them are very difficult to enforce because the queer things that they're punishing are so embedded in our cultural practice.
Speaker B:It's one of the reasons, like the anti cross dressing bill is having a lot of difficulties to pass because, you know, how do you define cross dressing when men wear, are also wearing wrappers?
Speaker B:Like, what does that look like?
Speaker B:What does that mean?
Speaker B:And again, like I said with the entertainment industry, it's one of the reasons why they had to put a clause on there that says, oh, unless you're doing it for entertainment purposes, because where are you gonna put most of Nigerian content creators if you ban cross dressing?
Speaker B:Like that is like.
Speaker B:And you know, I'm very reluctant, I'm gonna whisper this.
Speaker B:I'm very reluctant to call it drag, but it's like, when we call it drag, it's again, we're attaching it to a framing that's very specifically queer in a sense.
Speaker B:But like, like, and it's, it's like, sorry to say, hush, hush.
Speaker B:But like, that's what they're doing realistically.
Speaker B:Like, again, I'm, I'm so.
Speaker B:Because, you know, there's a, there's a big movement now of queer people trying to name it that.
Speaker B:And I'm like.
Speaker B:Or should we though?
Speaker B:Because it's like, number one, it's, we can't always ascribe it to again, forms of queerness.
Speaker B:But also number two, you're now actually putting an extra form of surveillance on that action that some people have been able to find joy and respite in and able to sit within their queerness, within that.
Speaker A:Effy, I love how you put this into perspective.
Speaker A:For me, it's a Very new way that I haven't thought about before, but it actually does make a lot of sense.
Speaker A:But I think my curiosity now is having that understanding and knowing, but living in a country with three anti gay laws, with a possible fourth one, you know what I'm saying?
Speaker A:And navigating that experience, it just feels very, you know, like, what is going on?
Speaker A:Like, okay, how do we, how do we shift that?
Speaker A:I don't feel like that's a question that we can fully answer in itself.
Speaker A:But how does living under a very homophobic system where the actions of multiple people can be deemed as queer?
Speaker A:I don't know if you get what I'm.
Speaker A:What I'm saying, Effy.
Speaker B:No, I get that.
Speaker B:And I think that's the complexity of the conversation.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:But I think it, it's also a reflection of how I think time has.
Speaker B:Like.
Speaker B:Like, because what, what you're finding.
Speaker B:And I think it's.
Speaker B:It's really unfortunate because you.
Speaker B:We are.
Speaker B:We're kind of existing in this weird cycle where unfortunately.
Speaker B:And I think that's why the conversation really is almost fundamentally about culture and claims to culture and this idea of like, sovereignty and linking it back to the colonial project.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Like, and I know that whenever people talk about that, it can be.
Speaker B:There's always this idea that, you know, colonialism was a long time ago.
Speaker B:It's like the Nigerian state and everything they're doing now is they're doing it from their own agency and in their own.
Speaker B:And yes, I'm going to give them agency and say they are also very much complicated, implicated in this.
Speaker B:But there is a very interesting relationship that I think people often ignore in the sense that, yes, the colonial project is seemingly done, but it's not complete.
Speaker B:Like, it's, it's just kind of repackaged itself in, in a very, in a new way.
Speaker B:But also the effects of the colonial project are still long lasting because what you have now is because of how much the colonial project really warped a lot of our culture, understandings of our culture and our claims to our culture.
Speaker B:You now have a situation where patriarchal nationalists are able to kind of lay a claim to culture, but base it on these colonial framings that they have now adopted and things that often sit antithetical and contradictory to the culture of that space.
Speaker B:And when you then think about what that means within global, like the global scene and how there's a lot of tension that's happening there.
Speaker B:So when you think about the Nigerian laws, for example, you know, the SSMPA did not exist In a vacuum like the Nigerian state did not wake up one day and say, okay, let's pass the ssmpa.
Speaker B:A lot of it started from very complex, complex, complex international tensions, right?
Speaker B:So when the conversation started, a lot of people think, oh, the SSMP did.
Speaker B: The SFP did not just come in: Speaker B:No, it's a conversation that's been happening for years.
Speaker B: asanjo was still president in: Speaker B:That's when they really started to have these conversations about queerness.
Speaker B:Around that same time, you had a situation where, you know, in the Western states, you had Gene Robinson be the first openly gay Christian or something that pissed off the religious community because they were now like, okay, where are the gays in our churches?
Speaker B:You know, you had legal civil partnership being passed in the uk you had South Africa granting gay marriage rights then also, obviously, a lot of LGBT activism was happening for gay rights in a lot of particularly Western states.
Speaker B:So you have, number one, this attachment of being LGBT to a very Western framing, because that's where a lot of the conversations on the basis of being LGBT was happening.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:So the attachment of being LGBT was then attached to a Western, to a Western space.
Speaker B:And so you had situations where people in Africa, these African countries who are already pissed at the fact that, okay, the Western are doing things that they are seemingly pissed off at, are now trying to lay a claim to their own culture by again, rejecting Western colonialism.
Speaker B:So in their heads, the anti LGBT movement and anti gender movement is actually a decolonial movement.
Speaker B:Like, as far as they're concerned.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Oh, we're actually being decolonial.
Speaker B:And I'm like, well, I mean, like, are you.
Speaker B:Like, you're not.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker B:But in their heads, it's actually a decolonial project because they are trying to reject Western imposition as the Western imposed during the colonial era.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And then you also had around that same time conversations of what, like, in academic, it's called homonationalism, right?
Speaker B:Which is this idea that it's.
Speaker B:It's profitable for a country to appear to be gay friendly.
Speaker B:You know, that's where the whole thing about gay washing and pink capitalism and rainbow capitalism and all these things come in.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:Like, a lot of these countries are not just queer because I'm not just queer friendly because it's.
Speaker B:They're queer friendly because they also understand the financial implications of that.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And so when it's important that these states show themselves as better as utopia because it means that, you know, they can attract a lot of that financial benefits of being.
Speaker B:Of appearing that way.
Speaker B:And this was especially the case in.
Speaker B:Around.
Speaker B:Especially again around that time that the SSMP was being passed.
Speaker B:So it's, It's.
Speaker B:You had these Western states who are laying claim to their.
Speaker B:To their.
Speaker B:Oh, their goodness and their utopia, and we are so great for LGBT people, which is not an objective fact.
Speaker B:And I need people to understand that.
Speaker B:Like, it's, It's.
Speaker B:It's a very different reality for the queer people who live in these countries, especially when their queerness intersects with other forms of identification.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So on an intersectional perspective, if you're black and queer, if you are black, queer, disabled, if you're an immigrant, like, there are so many ways that your queerness is not protected if you.
Speaker B:If you align with other things in these countries that are supposedly queer friendly.
Speaker B:So we know that that's not an objective fact on a grand.
Speaker B:And that's this thing, like, on a much more big scale.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:But when you look at it a bit more microscopically, you see that actually, no, they're also not as safe as they claim to be.
Speaker B:So it creates this very.
Speaker B:For them.
Speaker B:They create this binary of a good state and a bad state.
Speaker B:And, you know, the good states are, you know, the Western states, America, the uk, Canada, we are good because we give people rights.
Speaker B:And the bad ones are Nigeria and Uganda and all of these countries.
Speaker B:And that you're the bad, terrible states.
Speaker B:And so that narrative was also happening at that time.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And then when you think about aid, so you had David Cameron, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, all of them threatening to cut aid to a lot of these African states, including Nigeria, if they did not protect LGBT rights and give LGBT people their rights.
Speaker B:And so you had a lot of these patriarchal nationalists who, in their heads, it's like you're now trying to tell us what to do, you know, in our own country.
Speaker B:In our own country.
Speaker B:Exactly.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:And that tension is, again, for them is a lot of that tension is what really created and established the SS mpa.
Speaker B:It wasn't just something that established.
Speaker B:And then what you had was you now had a lot of LGBT people in Nigeria as well, who are seeing that discourse and were internalizing a lot of that.
Speaker B:So they were also then mobilizing based on those same identity framework that the Western people were doing, because they were seeing that, okay, what they're doing over there is successful, so let's try and do the same.
Speaker B:But what it ignores is, again, the legacy of colonialism that's already happened.
Speaker B:That means that it's actually a little bit more complex for you to just replicate what the Westerners are doing here.
Speaker B: you think about in the early: Speaker B:Like, people have been mobilizing since they've been doing things, right.
Speaker B:A lot of the.
Speaker B:Like, there's a few organizations, not to name any names, but like, that are still standing today.
Speaker B:But a lot of them came about before the.
Speaker B:Way before the SSNPA, right.
Speaker B:You know, when you think about Reverend Judy McCauley.
Speaker B:Right, and House of Rainbow, and a lot of the tensions that Reverend Judy was experiencing at the time was not just because Nigerians were against Reverend Judy.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:A lot of it was also, when you think about how Western media, because of their mission to portray African states as failed, as, like, terrible, as bad, they, you know, a lot of them started to carry the news on their heads of Reverend Jude's Gay church.
Speaker B:That's what they were calling it, a gay church.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Like, it's.
Speaker B:It was this idea that, like, look at them.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker B:They are doing something that we don't expect them to do at all.
Speaker B:And a lot of this news, you know, as all of these, like, again, this patriarchalist, they see that and they see it as Western because, again, it's the west where it's being praised, and it's.
Speaker B:Again, it's the west that is giving the support and the money and all of that stuff.
Speaker B:Newly established LGBT organizations that we're now forming at that time.
Speaker B:And when you think about before then, you know, a lot of the queer movement was mobilizing based on.
Speaker B:Not identity frameworks necessarily, but based on causes.
Speaker B:So, you know, you had a lot of people mobilizing based on the HIV and AIDS epidemic.
Speaker B:It was never necessarily about how it affects LGBT people specifically, but about the fact that, okay, this is a cause we need to fight for.
Speaker B:You know, you had a lot of queer women fighting for reproductive rights and women's health care.
Speaker B:A lot of them were fighting for feminist issues, women's in politics, and it was never necessarily about being lgbt.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:But again, when you then had these LGBT movements coming out of Western spaces, it then kind of started to encroach into how they.
Speaker B:How even the LGBT people themselves started to mobilize and see things.
Speaker B:So, like, it's.
Speaker B:For me, it's like that.
Speaker B:That that conversation is very complex, and there's a lot of tension that I think isn't just encapsulated in Nigeria itself.
Speaker B:What sits within, I think international tensions.
Speaker B:And I think again, that's another thing that people often forget.
Speaker B:And it's like, yes, these laws exist, these laws are draconian, these laws are terrible, but they don't exist in a vacuum.
Speaker B:And there is a whole.
Speaker B:And that's why.
Speaker B:Yeah, like it's not a, it's not a question that you and I can answer very easily in this podcast because there are so many layers to it.
Speaker B:You know, it's a conversation about aid.
Speaker B:It's a conversation about colonialism, it's a conversation about Nigerian state.
Speaker B:It's itself and what it's become sometimes because of colonialism, but also due to the process of kind of how we run as a country.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:Like it's not, it's not a coincidence that a lot of these African states around the same time were having the conversation about this anti LGBT laws and stuff.
Speaker B:Like a lot of it sat within international tensions.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, that's real.
Speaker A:I just, even just naming that one of the laws, the anti gay laws is a colonial law that was passed down to us.
Speaker A:It wasn't like it was created by us, you know, and also wanted to add that for folks who don't have an idea, the SSNPA is the same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act.
Speaker A:Profiles are not familiar with what the law is in Nigeria that criminalizes same sex marriage with 14, 14 years in prison and other things.
Speaker B:And I think this is a thing that people don't always understand about visibility, specifically on an identity framework.
Speaker B:Like visibility on an identity framework can be very, very dangerous for queer people in Nigeria.
Speaker B:Like you have to walk that fine line between like visibility and invisibility.
Speaker B:And you know, I think, and I think that's the.
Speaker B:Going back to the question you asked, it's the nuance between how to be strategic with how to be queer.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And you know, because when you think about what's happening in Ghana right now, the, the, I mean, the conversation again, similarly with Nigeria, the anti SSMP has been happening for a really long time.
Speaker B:And when you think about how religion and religious bodies and institutions have been really fundamental to that conversation.
Speaker B:But a real, like something that really sparked the fire on the conversation at the time was the.
Speaker B:I don't remember the ins and outs of it.
Speaker B:It.
Speaker B: s around, I think February of: Speaker A:Is it that one?
Speaker B:Is it.
Speaker B:I don't, I don't remember what it was.
Speaker B:I don't remember the exact name of it, but an organization opened and, you know, they had this very public, you know, opening that was like that, yeah, we've opened comments visit us.
Speaker B:And then you had a lot of, again, Western media covering it.
Speaker B:You had a lot of Western ambassadors who went there to show their faces.
Speaker B:And that was what really pissed off the thingy.
Speaker B:Like, that was not the first LGBT organization in Ghana or the first organization that served LGBT people, but that was the one that really caused a lot of uproar specifically because of how much it sat publicly, you know, And I think it's when you think about how dangerously and how quickly the conversation has gone just because of that one incident, right?
Speaker B:And a lot of people don't often link that incident back to that issue, right?
Speaker B:And it's like.
Speaker B:But I'm like, we all know that.
Speaker B:And it's been what, two years now or three years now, and the conversation is still very actively going on because of that one thing.
Speaker B:And it's like, there is this.
Speaker B:There is this fine line that unfortunately queer people have to walk of like, visibility and invisibility in this moment.
Speaker B:That in sense that you need to be very strategic regards to how you do it.
Speaker B:Because there's a lot of like, organizations that are supporting queer people without calling themselves queer, without calling it.
Speaker B:Like, there's a few we can name here, even between you and I, right?
Speaker B:But they don't call themselves queer, but they very much serve queer people all the time.
Speaker B:And some of these organizations I went to during my field work, like, some of them are even cruising spots.
Speaker B:Like, they are so visibly, understandably queer.
Speaker A:I like.
Speaker B:They really are.
Speaker B:And because you've not been to some of them, like, it's real.
Speaker B:I. I don't know.
Speaker B:There was what I went to that like.
Speaker B:And this is.
Speaker B:I will never forget this day in my life.
Speaker B:It was so funny, but, like, because I was looking into like, healthcare centers and seeing, you know, which.
Speaker B:How they were serving people in Lagos.
Speaker B:And there was one I went to, I just saw that this guy came up to this other one, said, this is the second time that I'm seeing you in public and you're ignoring me and pretending as if you don't know me.
Speaker B:And it was basically then found out, essentially.
Speaker B:I think what had happened between them was that they had hooked up and then one of them had just not called the other one back.
Speaker B:And he was just like.
Speaker B:He just came to like, like, you see me and you pretend as if you don't know me.
Speaker B:Like, what the hell and it was really interesting that like that was happening publicly and everybody just kind of understood that that's what this is, right?
Speaker B:And yeah, and I feel like it's.
Speaker B:It was, it was really interesting to me because I'm like, wow, all of this is happening.
Speaker B:And there was another one that came up to me.
Speaker B:He said, sorry, Java pen.
Speaker B:I said, oh, no, I don't.
Speaker B:He says, because I wanted to write your number, so I'll go and find one.
Speaker A:I said, like, was it like a health, health care that serves queer people specifically or.
Speaker A:No?
Speaker A:No.
Speaker B:And that's what I mean.
Speaker B:It was not.
Speaker B:This is not a space that serves queer people specifically.
Speaker B:Oh, and a lot of queer people go there, right?
Speaker B:A lot of people go there.
Speaker B:I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna say the name and stuff, but a lot of people, queer people go there.
Speaker B:And that was why I was shocked because I did not expect to then go there and see such a strong queer presence because it was so fascinating to me because I'm like, oh my God, like, this place is queer af.
Speaker B:Like almost everyone that served me, like, obviously I don't want to be the one to ascribe acts to queerness, but it's just like everyone, I think, had a very non normative way of existing, we'll put it that way.
Speaker B:Seemingly from the outside looking in.
Speaker A:But you know, when you talk about visibility in Nigeria, I, I know that, speaking from a personal experience, I wasn't a queer journalist in Nigeria.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:But you know, like you said, there are things that, you know, you, you do.
Speaker A:Because, because also the safety piece you talked about, right?
Speaker A:Yeah, because it's, you know, it's unsafe if I say I am, as someone who is a journalist, reporting on a national news platform and I say, oh, I am gay.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And then I'm walking down the street of K2, I'm going to get.
Speaker B:I'm going to.
Speaker A:You're going to beat me up.
Speaker A:You know what I'm saying?
Speaker A:It is what it is.
Speaker A:It's gonna be.
Speaker A:I'm so navigating that experience.
Speaker A:I know that I remember this experience when I was hosting a show on TV and I think I tweeted about it on Twitter.
Speaker A:I was hosting a show on TV and I crossed my legs because it's just very comfortable, you know, to cross your legs where you're hosting a TV show.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:You don't, you don't.
Speaker A:If that's the way, you know, how you compose yourself when you're sitting down.
Speaker A:For me personally, yeah.
Speaker A:And it Was a calling show, was live and this lady calls it and it's like, Harry, why are you crossing your legs?
Speaker A:It's not good.
Speaker A:A man should be crossing his legs.
Speaker A:This is a show about entertainment.
Speaker A:It's an entertainment show.
Speaker A:Live show.
Speaker A:We were talking about.
Speaker A:I don't know whether it was whiskey or some artist, right?
Speaker A:And people were calling and giving in their opinions, right?
Speaker A:And we were for hosts on that particular day.
Speaker A:And you could hear a pin drop in the studio.
Speaker A:The camera folks were there, the people in the, in the control room were there.
Speaker A:It was so embarrassing to be.
Speaker A:Having to be dealing with that, you know, and also just throughout my time being on TV and hearing the things that will be said about me online or offline or amongst my co workers or amongst my colleagues, having to navigate that and even starting the rusting times and having us use my name for like the first, maybe like three years.
Speaker A:I think it was until I did Defiance that I started using my name on the platform.
Speaker A:But at that time I wasn't working actively in the national media space anymore.
Speaker A:And so it's like having to navigate your own safety.
Speaker A:And I, But I also, you know, I'm talking with like, people need to see people.
Speaker A:People need to see, you know, representation in quotes, right?
Speaker A:But you know, at what cost?
Speaker A:What is it going to cost the person who has to put themselves on the line to be visible in a country that there are no protections, you know, when you are finally like out and just doing your thing, you know, because even, you know, I don't, I don't know how Bobrisky identifies, but just even looking at Bobriski's trajectory in public media throughout.
Speaker A:In Nigeria, and now they don't even live in Nigeria anymore, you know, and so it's like, I don't know, but.
Speaker B:I mean, even thinking about Bobriski, like, I think, and I think Bobrisky is a very good example about this because.
Speaker B:Because again, another thing that I think people often miss is that Bobriski's.
Speaker B:Bobriski's recent, I'd say contro.
Speaker B:Controversy, like, I mean, Bobriski has always been a controversial character, but it's never really stopped Bobriski existing in Lagos in Nigeria.
Speaker B:I don't, I think they were based in Lagos.
Speaker B:I don't like Bob's existence in Lagos was never really.
Speaker B:Was never really a problem, right?
Speaker B:Like, Bobriska has just always been this very controversial character.
Speaker B:And I think Bobriski is also another good example of like how queerness can sit within Nigeria, right?
Speaker B:Or a Space like Lagos, because, number one, I think it really highlights something we can touch on a little bit later.
Speaker B:But how, you know, people that benefit from the forms of identification and the.
Speaker B:And the.
Speaker B:And the visibility that comes from queerness are really elite, or people that are elite adjacent or people that are able to access elite frameworks.
Speaker B:But also Bobrisky's downfall, so to say, was not just a random thing that happened on a Tuesday, right?
Speaker B:A lot of people don't know because a lot of people aren't in the.
Speaker B:In that circle or in that news line.
Speaker B:But a few days, even a week or so before Bobriski was arrested, Bobriski had gone on a movie premiere and won best dressed Female.
Speaker B:And it.
Speaker B:That sparked the beginning of the end for Bobrisky getting arrested, because that got a lot of people angry, right?
Speaker B:It got a lot of people angry because, again, it sat within that framing of identification.
Speaker B:Up until that point, Bobrisky has very much sat within the comfortability of queerness as an act.
Speaker B:Without needing to identify it.
Speaker B:Bobrisky never, you know, came out, say, this is how I identify, you know, like.
Speaker B:And I think that's the thing.
Speaker B:Bobriski is always very careful to walk that fine line.
Speaker B:But the moment where Bobriski is like, where there is this attachment of the identity and the identity does not sit well with everybody else's head of like, but wait, why would you call yourself a female or whatever?
Speaker B:Or why would the.
Speaker B:I guess the people that are presenting the award give it to Bobriski?
Speaker B:You know, a lot of women that were there came out and were like, oh, I.
Speaker B:You know, they put a lot of effort into their thing.
Speaker B:And then Bobriski came and doubled down.
Speaker B:I was like, well, I look better than y'.
Speaker B:All.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:And, you know, and I think that's the.
Speaker B:You know, so the.
Speaker A:The.
Speaker B:That really got a lot of people angry.
Speaker B:And I think the protection that Bobriski really stopped getting was not even just because Bobriski started being more visible.
Speaker B:It was.
Speaker B:A lot of it was because Bobriski started to become more visible on an identity framework that seemed antithetical to Nigeria.
Speaker B:So it's like her as a trans woman, as this very visibly queer and, you know, quote, unquote, successfully queer person started to then become an issue because it's.
Speaker B:It's no longer just that.
Speaker B:Bobriski was no longer just this person who was doing queer things.
Speaker B:You were now fundamentally cementing Bobriski as a queer person in a queer identification framework.
Speaker B:And I think that was when it started because that was when the protection kind of went off.
Speaker B:Bobrisky.
Speaker B:And then, you know, she got arrested.
Speaker B:And all of these things started to happen as well, one after the other.
Speaker B:But many people don't know, like, it didn't just happen out of thin air.
Speaker B:It.
Speaker B:There was.
Speaker B:There was.
Speaker B:There was something that then led to it.
Speaker B:And I.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And yeah, and I think again, that that's a whole.
Speaker B:I mean, that's a whole other conversation about just how transphobic a lot of Nigerian communities are and can be.
Speaker B:But yeah, so just to say, like, I think when it comes to that conversation about visibility, it is very important.
Speaker B:And I think that's why I've moved away, like, a lot of.
Speaker B:Even in my thesis, this was something that came up was like this idea of invisibility.
Speaker B:And it's this way that I think believe queerness exists in a space like Nigeria, but specifically when you see it so prominently in Lagos.
Speaker B:And the idea of invisibility is something that came when I read Carla Moore's thesis that really delved into, like, the dancehall community and talked, like, the Caribbean dance hall and talks a lot about, you know, how queerness exists there.
Speaker B:And you see the similarities, especially with spaces that I've experienced colonialism in spaces that I've been.
Speaker B:That experienced a lot of Western, I'd say, like, obfuscation of knowledge.
Speaker B:You have a lot of that tendencies for queerness to exist on invisible terms where it's.
Speaker B:It's not invisibility.
Speaker B:So queerness is not invisible and erased.
Speaker B:It's something that is felt and seen but not acknowledged.
Speaker B:So we all know that Nigeria and Lagos is queer af, but we don't call it that.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:We don't say that it is because oftentimes when you name it and you, like, attach that identity, that's when it can be really become violent.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:And I think it's this idea that a lot of people are reluctant to kind of sit within that because I think we're so used to this idea of, I think, like you say representation and the fact that you need to be able to not only just see yourself, but then attach that identity, a form of identification, back to yourself.
Speaker B:And I think for me, representation politics is very interesting because I recognize the importance of representation, of visibility, of being able to see yourself represented in certain spaces.
Speaker B:But it also, I think, brings a conversation about what does that say about you as a person and who you are.
Speaker B:Because we are such complex human beings.
Speaker B:Like, there is all.
Speaker B:There's so much to us that it's Almost impossible to be represented, except you are the one that's there, right?
Speaker B:Like, you and I are sat here right now.
Speaker B:And I don't think either of us are representative expression of the other.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Even though we share a lot of similar identities that intersect, right?
Speaker B:We're both black, we're Nigerian, we're both queer.
Speaker B:Like, there's so many things that I'd say intersect with how we live and we exist.
Speaker B:But there's.
Speaker B:But a lot of these things have come together in different ways to create very different people.
Speaker B:And we've.
Speaker B:And then.
Speaker B:But there also.
Speaker B:There's other aspects of our existence, how we were raised, other factors that have really.
Speaker B:That really complicate the idea of what it means to represent.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And I think sometimes people forget that.
Speaker B:And the example I like to use is under the Tuscan sun, which.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:Have you seen that film?
Speaker A:No.
Speaker B: Under: Speaker B:Is this really.
Speaker B: but it's like, I think early: Speaker A:I gotta put it on my watch list now.
Speaker B:It's about this academic whose husband cheats on her and she, like, lives everything and moves to Tuscany to.
Speaker B:And she buys a villa and rebuilds the villa and all of that stuff.
Speaker B:And it was just like one of those movies that when I was done watching it, I was like, that is so Adebayoko.
Speaker B:Like, that is something I would do.
Speaker B:Like, no, like, that is something I've never.
Speaker B:Like, I. I felt so seen by that movie in so many different aspects.
Speaker B:Because, you know, not only was she an academic who was, you know, taking her job seriously and all of that stuff, which, again, I also relate to, but, you know, there was also this element of, like, community that was established at the end, you know, this idea of looking at love outside of romantic.
Speaker B:Outside of romance and, you know, an expansive idea of love and loving that.
Speaker B:I was like.
Speaker B:Like go off fab.
Speaker B:Like, I love that, right?
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:But it's like, this is a white woman from New York who, like, has no form of identification that I align with.
Speaker B:Except, again, some of the things I've mentioned as an academic, you know, husband.
Speaker B:I don't have a husband that's cheating on me.
Speaker B:But you get.
Speaker B:You get what I mean?
Speaker B:But it still didn't change.
Speaker B:Like, see, So I think there's.
Speaker B:There's two strands to this.
Speaker B:Where one hand, I'm like, yes, absolutely.
Speaker B:Representation.
Speaker B:Love it.
Speaker B:Let's do it.
Speaker B:But at the same time, you know, it's like, we shouldn't always have to wait for that Representation to happen to validate our existences.
Speaker B:Like, you know, when you talk about.
Speaker B:And I think that conversation always happens to me whenever people talk about, oh, you have to see.
Speaker B:See it before you believe it.
Speaker B:And I'm like, well, I already am it, so why, like, seeing it as me?
Speaker B:Like, I can look in the mirror to see if that's what's necessary.
Speaker B:And I think also sometimes it's.
Speaker B:It goes back to, again, this form of identity where I think there's so many ways that we exist as queer people that, like, we can limit, we almost need.
Speaker B:It's almost like we're asking for permission to do some of the queer things that we want to do or exist in the queer ways we want to do.
Speaker B:We want to.
Speaker B:So, you know, some people, it's like, oh, I can't.
Speaker B:I don't know how to define my sexuality because I'm, you know, mostly attracted to this person, but I'm.
Speaker B:I'm kind of attracted to that, and I'm sort of attracted to that.
Speaker B:And it's like, we then have to.
Speaker B:But I'm only attracted to this person under these conditions.
Speaker B:And, and that's where you start having new forms of identification come out.
Speaker B:You know, it's like right now, the LGBT Alphabet, it's, It's.
Speaker B:We keep adding new ones and, and it gets it.
Speaker B:Sorry, this is a very controversial point, but it's like new ones keep getting added because it's almost like, oh, I. I also need to be it.
Speaker B:But it's like, it's fine for you to do all of that and just call it whatever you want to call it.
Speaker B:Like, it doesn't have to be something that sits within a form of, like, something already existing, shouldn't be.
Speaker B:What gives you permission to exist right now?
Speaker B:Like, the fact that you're here now is enough.
Speaker B:And I think that's what.
Speaker B:Why I, you know, talk about this idea that, like, yeah, let's go on historic.
Speaker B:Let's look at historical figures that, you know, represent queerness or have some forms of queerness within them.
Speaker B:But let's not limit our imaginations of queerness to that and say, oh, because they existed.
Speaker B:That means.
Speaker B:Because, you know, we had.
Speaker B:We have issue in Yoruba cosmology that means, you know, issue was non binary.
Speaker B:So that's why I, as a Yoruba person, can now be non binary.
Speaker B:Like, no, I mean, yes, that's true.
Speaker A:Was issue non binary.
Speaker B:See, and this is the.
Speaker B:And this is another thing, right, in regards to how we see Yoruba cosmology because I think issue being seen as non binary or.
Speaker B:Sorry, this is a whole other rabbit hole you've opened up.
Speaker A:I am curious if you.
Speaker B:But is usually seen as like the crossroads between genders because oftentimes issue can switch genders.
Speaker B:All right.
Speaker B:Because issue can switch like even genitals.
Speaker B:And so issue is often seen as the bridge and the crossroads.
Speaker B:It's also one of the reasons why they consider issue to be the trickster God, because Orisha.
Speaker B:Sorry, I don't like to use the word God.
Speaker B:Orisha.
Speaker B:So it's like issue is.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Often conceptualized as this.
Speaker B:So a lot of people in contemporary society now use issue as a queer icon.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:As a symbol, as a symbolism of queerness within Yoruba cosmology.
Speaker B:But my argument to that is actually that like issue does not represent queerness in a Yoruba cosmology that is not queer.
Speaker B:It represents queerness because the Yoruba cosmology itself is queer.
Speaker B:So you using issue as a symbol of queerness is almost a tautology because not is tautology be the right word, but it's like the Yoruba cosmology itself is queer.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So any example you gave from it should represent queerness or should be a representation of queerness.
Speaker B:And I like to think about that even regards to how we think about like pre colonial Yoruba society.
Speaker B:And it's the case with a lot of pre colonial African societies as well.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Like, you know, the ideas of non normative frameworks.
Speaker B:Which is why goes back to what I mentioned about how I understand queerness non normative, not anti normativity, but non normativity.
Speaker B:It's not about negating norms, but understanding that different kinds of norms can exist.
Speaker B:We see that even in how we practice our religion.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:In these ideas.
Speaker B:You know, a lot of people like to talk about women, women, women to women marriages, which again for me, like, these are all symbols that.
Speaker B:Not of a.
Speaker B:An exception of what?
Speaker B:Of queerness in an otherwise unqueer world.
Speaker B:But we're actually symbols of a queer world in itself.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:So it's like they're not.
Speaker B:They're not signs of queerness that we can cherry pick because the world itself was then not queer.
Speaker B:It's like it's.
Speaker B:Those signs are there as queer because that world itself was.
Speaker B:And, but.
Speaker B:And queerness does not.
Speaker B:Because I, And I think a lot of people then you know, think of it as like, oh, but you know, they were.
Speaker B:They were still homophobic.
Speaker B:They still did this, they still did that.
Speaker B:And it's like, oh, it was still not safe for queer people.
Speaker B:And I'm like, first of all, queerness is not all you safety.
Speaker B:Like, because something is queer does not mean it has to be safe.
Speaker B:And because something is safe doesn't mean it has to be queer.
Speaker B:Like, there are so many things that, like, yeah, like, it's, it's.
Speaker A:I'm curious about that.
Speaker A:Like.
Speaker B:Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit.
Speaker A:You're just pulling.
Speaker A:I'm like, I want to ask about this.
Speaker A:Then you drop something else.
Speaker A:I'm like, okay, let's talk about this, but just talk about queerness.
Speaker A:I'm curious about that.
Speaker B:Yeah, I think there's a lot of ways, and I use this word especially because of how.
Speaker B:And I think we could talk about this in the context of Lagos specifically and how queerness manifests in Lagos.
Speaker B:I think you have a situation where there's a lot of queer people who try and establish safety in Lagos for queer people.
Speaker B:But unfortunately, that safety tends to align with elite frameworks.
Speaker B:And a lot of that is because the concept of safety in somewhere like Lagos is fundamentally aligned with wealth and elite framing.
Speaker B:Like, that is, those are the people that safety has always been given to safety in.
Speaker B:Like, Lagos is not safe for anybody.
Speaker B:Like, it's like Lagos is such a chaotic space.
Speaker B:And I say that, like, as a blanket statement, not because it's objectively true, but like, like Lagos is very ridiculously chaotic.
Speaker B:That, like, for you to be able to access safety, yes, you need to have certain degree of affiliations with wealth and safety in a very specific way in a, in the very, I think, middle class, elite way that we conceptualize safety, which is really just a removal of poverty and poor people from our sight.
Speaker B:Like, that is what we understand to be safe.
Speaker B:And that's it.
Speaker B:It's not a coincidence that all of the LGBT events and queer events that call themselves queer all happen on the island.
Speaker B:That's not a coincidence.
Speaker B:And I think it's important that we start having that conversation.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:Because I think there is such a very limited and almost frustrating understanding of queerness where we limit it so much to the island.
Speaker B:And it's.
Speaker B:And that space that it's like, that's the only place where queerness can be.
Speaker B:And so because of that, and a lot of the reasons why they do that is because that is where safety is.
Speaker B:But a lot of that safety is not because they are establishing any forms of safety within that island.
Speaker B:It's because the island in itself is already conceptualized that safe and it's not even because it's objectively is.
Speaker B:It's because of a very.
Speaker B:Of the way it's been affiliated with wealth and the elite framing, which in itself is colonial and intentional.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Because when you think about the conception of Lagos, like Lagos was conceptualized with the island, so Iko ivi, Lagos island, where what made Lagos like that was Lagos.
Speaker B:And then when Lagos gained municipality was when the mainland was then brought into that.
Speaker B:And then you had a.
Speaker B:Where a lot of the indigenous people in those spaces were dislocated to make room for the elites and the western and the whites, like colonizing the state and like the government workers and stuff.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So you had a situation where.
Speaker B:So especially in Lagos island, like Lagos island was really where Lagos as you know, you had a lot of civil servants, all that work in there.
Speaker B:So when, yeah, when Lagos gave municipality, there's a lot of amenities and a lot of stuff that were then like pumped into the island itself.
Speaker B:So those areas specifically, so infrastructure, wealth, a lot of those things were concentrated in those areas.
Speaker B:And so it's not a coincidence that those areas are the more elite spaces in Lagos.
Speaker B:It's not because it doesn't just happen organically.
Speaker B:It's happened because of how Lagos was designed.
Speaker B:And so now it's sustained itself and gained itself that legacy of being safe, whether that's objectively true or not.
Speaker B:And so for you to access some degree of safety or conceptualized safety, you need to be in those spaces.
Speaker B:So it's those spaces that we now see as safe.
Speaker B:So for us to be able to access those spaces, especially as queer people, it's like, okay, yeah, no, let's go to the island.
Speaker B:And so, and the idea, and I think for me the idea is always, you know, ask.
Speaker B:I ask.
Speaker B:And this was something that came up a lot during my research was like, ask.
Speaker B:I asked a lot of question, why?
Speaker B:Like why are you doing on the island?
Speaker B:And they said, because it's safer.
Speaker B:Who is it safe from?
Speaker B:They say, oh, because area boys cannot raid the place.
Speaker B:You can have.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's mainly, it's mainly area boys, right?
Speaker B:And not just area boys.
Speaker B:But you know, you can't have all these riff raffs, all these people that will come and raid your party.
Speaker B:But the fact is those people are always there, even on the parties on the island.
Speaker B:They're outside selling drugs, stealing your phones, doing petty crime, all of that stuff.
Speaker B:Their, their presence is there.
Speaker B:So it's not them necessarily that's the issue.
Speaker B:And all of these events, events happen on the mainland all the time.
Speaker B:Queer events happen on the mainland all the time.
Speaker B:Oftentimes they don't call themselves queer.
Speaker B:But also, number two, they don't get the same level of attention support that the island ones do.
Speaker B:Because again, this idea of safety, it's also one of the reasons why, you know, you have a lot of queer people, when they start to gain some degree of either wealth or something, they move to the island because the next step is that that's a good way to access safety.
Speaker B:And I think what then happens is you have this idea of a concentration of what we understand to be queer being attached to elite frameworks.
Speaker B:So even in, as a.
Speaker B:It's one of the reasons why, you know, even when you think about keto crimes and a lot of crimes against queer people specifically that are about extortion and stealing money and all of that is this idea that they see queer people as like having some degree of wealth and some degree of money.
Speaker B:And I think a lot of that is also the attachment of queerness to wealth because we as queer people ourselves have attached queerness to wealth.
Speaker B:But a lot of that is because we've seen that as one of the only ways to access safety.
Speaker A:So the idea is that safety is not guaranteed regardless of whether you have access to.
Speaker A:Yes to the wealth.
Speaker B:What are your safety from?
Speaker B:Because the police, the police can raid your party on the island.
Speaker B:There is no form of safety that you establish that will stop them from really, even if you have the biggest bodyguards at the door, they don't offer protection from the police.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:The only form of safety you're really saving yourself from is poor people.
Speaker B:Like, if we're, if we're keeping it back, right.
Speaker B:If we're being honest, if we're being almost like some of the only things you're saving yourself from is.
Speaker B:Or people that even.
Speaker B:And it's so it's like.
Speaker B:Because it's like, oh, police are less likely to raid people on the island.
Speaker B:But again, why is that?
Speaker B:And a lot of that is because again, it's like, oh, you don't know which.
Speaker B:Whose children you're going to be raiding if you raid a party on the island, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker B:But again, that is a question of it's still conversation about elite framing and how that's been attached.
Speaker B:So it's like, okay, so yes, you're attaching queerness to elite framing because of its access to safety.
Speaker B:But I think also that's.
Speaker B:This conversation is very, very broad.
Speaker B:Yeah, it was a whole chapter in my thesis, but it's you know, when you also think about the idea of like the creative economy in Nigeria, like the creative scene is so saturated by like the Lagos elite and their friends.
Speaker B:And a lot of that is because of the way that they utilize queerness.
Speaker B:And particularly when I talk about queerness and like they utilize the creativity and the, and the, and the non normative expressions of queerness that really facilitate creativity.
Speaker B:They utilize that a lot and they utilize that for the functions of the elites.
Speaker B:And you know, a lot of people now see the Lagos creative economy as very inclusive and diverse.
Speaker B:It's like, oh, I know there's, there's many, there's a lot of diversity in the creative scene, but it's actually not a lot of diversity because it's people that would have already had access to those spaces anyway because of their affiliations to the elite.
Speaker B:Either because you yourself have, you're rich or you have rich friends, or you have other forms of capital.
Speaker B:So you have social capital or you're very beautiful and you have beauty.
Speaker B:Like that's a thing that, you know that, that attracts people.
Speaker B:But it's like it's, it's some form of capital that you have that you're able to negotiate to access those spaces.
Speaker B:But I think going back to the actual question you asked, which is the idea of queerness, not only your safety, but it's like, yeah, like all of these spaces are safe, but then you have a situation where there is a very big caveat to the queerness that's allowed in that space.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So when you situate your event only on the island, you're only.
Speaker B:You're ultimately limiting it to only people that can access it on the island.
Speaker B:Yeah, right.
Speaker B:And when you think about little things like infrastructure, transportation, ticket costs, these things are expensive and they tend to have them at these venues that again, a lot of people, some people can just not afford.
Speaker B:And I think that was something that was really interesting for me because I'm someone who, I would consider myself to be part of this island elite adjacent people as well.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Like, I don't remove myself from that.
Speaker B:Not necessarily because I grew up on my parents.
Speaker B:Like I grew up on the main.
Speaker B:I grew up in Nick Baja.
Speaker B:I'm like, I'm a mainland word, like down, down.
Speaker B:But what I found was you had a situation where most of my friends, my social scene, all of that was on the island.
Speaker B:So I had to do that navigation between the mainland and the island.
Speaker B:So whenever there was an event, I would have to do that journey.
Speaker B:And I keep Thinking to myself, like, I'm someone who has some degree of, I don't know, like access, but also, you know, and I'm finding it difficult.
Speaker B:So I can't imagine what it would be for someone else.
Speaker B:So you have a situation where it's almost like if you want to be queer and have a good time, you have to be able to access the island.
Speaker B:And I think for me now, one thing that I'm.
Speaker B:That I've been doing a lot of calls with a lot of like event organizers on the mainland is like on the.
Speaker B:On in Lagos is like, can we start thinking about how to like, not just bring queer people, but also meet them where they are?
Speaker B:Because, you know, like.
Speaker B:And that's what I mean when I say queerness does not then all use safety.
Speaker B:Because what that means is that the event you curate might not be the safest in the world, but it doesn't mean that queer people will not still be there doing queer shit.
Speaker B:And I know that for a fact because, you know, for my thesis I was talking to queer people in Moshe, in Ojwalegba, Querent, Oshodi, in Agige, who talk about how they are constantly like having parties and enjoying themselves.
Speaker B:And they.
Speaker B:So it's not like.
Speaker B:And I say that to say these things exist.
Speaker B:So I'm not.
Speaker B:I'm not erasing the things that already exist, but I think just in the realms of our imagination to know that, yeah, actually you can do that.
Speaker B:So your.
Speaker B:Your parties don't always have to be on the island.
Speaker B:It doesn't always have to be at Alliance Francis, for crying out loud.
Speaker A:You know what's funny?
Speaker A:You know, back in the day, there should be this queer party promoter who used to throw parties in Egberta.
Speaker A:And it was like in a hotel in Egberta and sometimes in Surul area as well.
Speaker A:And we'll go for that.
Speaker A:And obviously if you go for those kind of parties, you're going to consider us.
Speaker A:You're not like part of the cool kids.
Speaker A:You will, you know, you're obviously raz for going to.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker B:That's it.
Speaker B:That's the problem I have.
Speaker B:It's like, why.
Speaker A:It's like you're not cool.
Speaker A:And obviously, you know, two of those parties in the greater were rated by the police at some point at different times.
Speaker A:But just the.
Speaker A:The idea of the fact that the parties that would happen in Ikoyi or.
Speaker A:Or maybe like a British commissioner's house or something, or those parties are the ones that are like the.
Speaker A:So I Even, even living in, on a much more global perspective, there's a conversation that's ongoing about how career spaces are becoming very exclusionary.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And so it's like you go for a Pride Pride event or Black Pride or something, and all the, all the party promoters are charging, say $60, $70 to get into a party.
Speaker A:Not inclusive of drinks, not inclusive of anything.
Speaker A:You just, you go in there and then you're spending X amount of money on drinks.
Speaker A:You have to buy your fit because if you're not dressed well, you know nobody's going to talk to you.
Speaker A:So it's like queer, the queer community in quotes is not really a community anymore.
Speaker A:We are just people who have shared identities, you know, because we're not, it's not inclusive, it's not accessible to folks.
Speaker A:It is just people who can, who can afford and this idea that, oh, we're just trying to build community, but are we really building community though?
Speaker A:Is that what we're doing?
Speaker A:If everybody can afford to show up, you know what I'm saying, and have a good time, you know, if only folks who have access to social capital or financial capital can show up.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's something that bothers me just personally, like, I don't know, I don't understand how our, our struggle in quotes has become so profit driven.
Speaker B:It's, it's intentional.
Speaker B:It's, it's very, very intentional.
Speaker B:And again, which is what I'm saying, they commodify the safety, they commodify the fun, they commodify the, the, the visibility.
Speaker B:Because it's like, oh, this is the, we're going to create a space where you can be queer in peace and you can be free to be yourself.
Speaker B:And they commodity, they use all of these buzzwords, they commodify it and then they charge you.
Speaker B:And, and that's why I talk about these spaces that happen on the island and how exclusive, exclusionary and exclusive they can be, especially based on like cost and price.
Speaker B:Because what happens is they talk about, it's almost like the incentive for why they can charge you as much as they do.
Speaker B:Like, they leverage the idea of safety.
Speaker B:And I think about, you know, you think about even the context of the people that only do partisans on the island.
Speaker B:It's like they, they almost justify how much they charge you because it's like, oh, but we're creating a safe space for you to be yourself and for you to be free and for you to do all of this.
Speaker B:And I'm like, but you're not actually Doing anything except having the party on the island, that's the only form of safety you've established.
Speaker B:Like, it's literally the only thing that you've done that is establishing safety.
Speaker B:Because oftentimes when you think about, like, the nuances of it, like I mentioned earlier, you're not safe.
Speaker B:You're not safe from the police.
Speaker B:You're not safe.
Speaker B:Even if these area boys really wanted to raid your party right now, it's not the two big bounces that you put at the door that will stop them.
Speaker B:Like, you've actually.
Speaker B:All you've done is leveraged the supposed conceptualized safety of the island and used it for economic advantage.
Speaker B:I think for me, I'm really pained because of the implications on the creative industry, because it's really controlled by the elites and their friends.
Speaker B:And the idea is always, oh, this is the space for you to do.
Speaker B:The Altay space is not Altay.
Speaker B:It's not Altay.
Speaker B:Like, it's.
Speaker B:It.
Speaker B:No, like, I like it.
Speaker B:It's one of those ones that, like, when you think about the definition and the understandings of how even they define it, I'm like, oh, you realize that's not what you're doing.
Speaker B:Like, it's full of the same people who dress the same way, do the same things and who all went to the same school.
Speaker B:Like those, like two or three schools that.
Speaker B:One won't name them now, but they all went to that school.
Speaker B:But it's like they all went to those schools and, you know, all of a sudden they're all passing each other's scripts around each other and directing each other's music videos and all of that stuff.
Speaker B:And then what you have is they bring in queer people and it's this idea that, oh, we're, we're diverse when it comes to identity, but those queer people that you've brought in yourself as well are not necessarily queer people that have any form of diversity of thought from you.
Speaker B:They're the same queer people who are.
Speaker B:Who would have already accessed your space, but it's just now you can use their identity as queer to leverage their positionality as include, as included.
Speaker B:As included and inclusive.
Speaker B:So, like, I think for me, it's, it's, it's very, it's.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:It's very sad, actually.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah, it is sad.
Speaker A:I think I have a. I have a curiosity about how you, you have.
Speaker A:This is all of this knowledge, right, that you have, some of it lived experience, some of it based on your research that you've done.
Speaker A:How do you move through the world with the knowledge that you have.
Speaker A:Because I feel like sometimes it's a very different.
Speaker A:By knowing.
Speaker A:Knowing an application is different, knowing I'm being in space with people is also very different.
Speaker A:So how do, how does that work for you?
Speaker A:How do you navigate that?
Speaker B:Honestly, the very simple answer is I've navigated that by embracing my contradictions as a person.
Speaker B:I think, you know, I spent a lot of my early twenties being angry some about, about some of these issues, but other issues too.
Speaker B:And I think I spent my mid-20s being very curious and I think now I'm in my late 20s and I'm spending it accepting, you know, I, I think we, as, I think it's important for us to embrace the contradictory experience and the, our experiences as contradiction, as contradictory people.
Speaker B:And, and I say that because I talk about these spaces, but I'm there, I attend these events.
Speaker B:I'm sat there and I think that's the, you know, it's the, it's, it's the, yeah, it's a very complex position to be in because, you know, sometimes you hate it and you're just like, oh my God, I wish I wasn't here.
Speaker B:It goes back to what I talk about as queer people.
Speaker B:Like, we, we unfortunately have to embrace that contradiction to be able to exist.
Speaker B:And because that contradiction sits with you, understanding who you are, understanding what spaces you want to be in, understanding what brings you joy, and understanding how to navigate it with a certain degree of nuance and knowledge and understanding.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:But also just acceptance.
Speaker B:And I think then to go one step further, embracing inconvenience.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Like, Right.
Speaker B:Because there are, you know, a lot of this discourse and all these discussions are things that we need to be able to have conversations with each other about them openly and comfortably.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And it's not necessary because I think a lot of people feel like when you have these conversations, you're asking for them to bring the solutions and for them to.
Speaker B:But it's like sometimes the conversation is only coming up because it's like, are we aware?
Speaker B:Yeah, because what's going to happen is let's first do that because then we can start having a conversation about then how we navigate it moving forward.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:What do we need to do?
Speaker B:How can we circumvent some of the issues that come out of this?
Speaker B:You know, and, you know, and I think that's what I'm trying to do now in a lot of the work that I do outside of, like, since I've kind of done this research and done this work.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:I've been trying to really look at ways to have these uncomfortable conversations, but also see ways that.
Speaker B:That can, I guess, to some degree, pour into, you know, these other frameworks that I talk about that exist too, because I don't.
Speaker B:I don't think, you know, when we talk about the creative scene being monotonous and all that stuff, I don't think the creative scene has done a bad thing.
Speaker B:I don't think anything.
Speaker B:People are.
Speaker B:I don't think this.
Speaker B:You know, I talk about these spaces on the island being exclusionary.
Speaker B:The bad thing is not the fact that they are.
Speaker B:They.
Speaker B:They only create space for specific people.
Speaker B:The bad thing is the pe.
Speaker B:The way they exclude other people and the fact that these other people then don't often always have alternative.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:But also the bad thing is how they carry hegemonic control.
Speaker B:So they sit at the center of what queerness is or what queerness means.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And so it means that you can't have these multiple existences that can sometimes be contradictory to each other.
Speaker B:You know, like the idea of.
Speaker B:And I think actually, even visually, when you think about the island and the mainland, a lot of people will see those two things as contradictory because it's like, you know, the island is safe, it's rich, it's wealth, it's all of that stuff.
Speaker B:And people see the mainland as the opposite of all of that.
Speaker B:But it's like, fine, but both have valid ways that queerness are expressed and embodied.
Speaker B:And so I think for me, it's about embracing those contradictions.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:But most importantly, and I think first and foremost, which is the work I'm doing now is embracing a contradiction within myself.
Speaker B:I would.
Speaker B:I would go to these events, and even.
Speaker B:Especially when I was doing my research, I would go to these events and I'd be so pissed because I'm just like, you know, I don't like the fact that it's on the island all the time.
Speaker B:And, like, why is it.
Speaker B:And a lot of that frustration is also because I've had to pay 16k for an Uber.
Speaker A:Oh, my God.
Speaker B:No, not literally.
Speaker B:No.
Speaker B:I don't think I ever paid that much.
Speaker B:I don't think.
Speaker A:I'm not surprised now, what I'm hearing now.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's what I mean.
Speaker B:Like, now, like, a lot of that frustration is because I've just had to pay this stupid amount.
Speaker B:But another level of that frustration is because, like, where am I going to sleep tonight?
Speaker B:Like, I need to go back to the mainland.
Speaker B:Another frustration is, oh, I bet you when it's time for me to go home, I'm going to have to fight one or two Uber drivers before I get to my house.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:Like the shake that Uber drivers showed me in Lagos, Harry.
Speaker A:Ah, I don't miss that.
Speaker A:I really don't miss that at all.
Speaker A:Because it was always.
Speaker A:Because I always used to.
Speaker A:Like you said, I'm always on the island.
Speaker A:When I worked at the BBC, our office was in Ecoee.
Speaker A:Like, like, yeah, it was.
Speaker A:It was a mess.
Speaker B:It was a shake day that they showed me.
Speaker B:And the thing about, like, also is that, like, obviously it's not like I was gonna enter the bus anyway, but, like, you know, there is no transportation infrastructure on the island.
Speaker B:Like a good one, because once you cross that bridge, it's only expressway.
Speaker B:Like inside of the island are.
Speaker B:Are just not.
Speaker B:So it's like people will inevitably have to get tech Ubers to get around.
Speaker A:And everybody's gated and like, secluded out and yeah, it's crazy, that gated situation.
Speaker B:These people, they'll put gates at one end of the street, gates at another end, or call it estate estates.
Speaker B:Do you know how many times I remember there was this time I was going to one.
Speaker B:I was.
Speaker B:I was at.
Speaker B:I was at one place in one gated community.
Speaker B:This is all in Oneiru.
Speaker B:I was in one and I was going to the other one.
Speaker B:I'd gotten an Uber to the first one.
Speaker B:The other one was like one street ahead.
Speaker B:It was literally not far.
Speaker B:So I'm like, okay, I'm just gonna walk because it's there.
Speaker B:I got to the gate.
Speaker B:This man did not let me in.
Speaker A:Oh, wow.
Speaker B:I said, oh, I know someone in there called the person in there.
Speaker B:The person was not available, so I couldn't reach them.
Speaker B:And I was like, oh.
Speaker B:I then, because the person had given me a code that I had to.
Speaker B:I told this man the code.
Speaker B:He did not let me in.
Speaker B:I left, came back a couple of hours later with my friend in her car.
Speaker B:This man didn't ask for anything.
Speaker B:He asked for questions.
Speaker B:Ah, yes, yes.
Speaker B:And it's like this very weird.
Speaker B:Oh, God, I hated it so much.
Speaker B:Anyway, sorry is very interesting.
Speaker B:Mad, but anyway, none of that has to go in there.
Speaker B:But what I like, I think my point is that, like, embracing contradiction within yourself.
Speaker B:I think that's where I'm at now in the sense that a lot of those things that you talk about, we all participate in them in one way or another.
Speaker B:I think it's important to acknowledge that even in our critiques like I'm not.
Speaker B:And it's, I think to a lot of people it sounds like when I say this, it's this like very high and mighty or I'm better than you situation.
Speaker B:But it's like, no, we're all in it together.
Speaker B:Like I'm, I'm in it too.
Speaker B:So there's a vet, there's, there's.
Speaker B:And I think that I'm, I'm starting to accept within myself as well that reality.
Speaker B:Because I think, yeah, a lot of my early 20s, a lot of that anger I started to realize was, was an angry, was an anger that came from really repression because you repress your own desires, you repress your own forms of joy, you repress your own ways of existing and you ultimately get very angry and resentful at people that are then doing it, you know, And I think that's why we have two hands.
Speaker B:Well, if you're a fully able bodied person, you have two hands and it's like we can do both.
Speaker B:You know, we can experience joy, we can experience all of these things.
Speaker B:Things.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:But I think another thing that I'm starting to practice is, and I think that sits within that realm of contradiction is also the politics of refusal, which in itself is refusing politics as usual, which is the idea of looking at yourself as like just refusing, refuse them.
Speaker B:The gaze of the state of allies of all of these systems that are trying to like tell you how to live and what to do and essentially starting to find you yourself as a person and understanding how you exist in the world.
Speaker B:Because I think that is one of the really great ways for you to not just self reflect, but also accept critique.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:Like when people then tell you and say, oh, you're doing this, that's not necessarily, that could be antithetical to the movement, to the politics, or to the community in which you exist in.
Speaker B:You can be more self reflective to be like, okay, yes, actually maybe that's wrong, maybe that's terrible, you know, and because I think right now a lot of the ways we're enacting politics is we're trying to.
Speaker B:A lot of people are very big on freedom and they're trying, they're big on sovereignty.
Speaker B:Again, you know, I have to be able to.
Speaker B:This is how I identify this.
Speaker B:I have to be like, we need to exist.
Speaker B:We exist in community with people all the time.
Speaker B:And I think it's important to understand that, but also to understand that there is no sovereignty.
Speaker B:Like you yourself are not a sovereign being.
Speaker B:And because you always exist in relation to somebody or another.
Speaker B:And that goes back to the conversation I mentioned about, you know, inconvenience, because it's something Lauren Balant talks about on.
Speaker B:In.
Speaker B:On the inconvenience of other people.
Speaker B:Because it's like we.
Speaker B:I feel inconvenienced by people because I am an inconvenience to people.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And you get.
Speaker B:Do you get that?
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:So it's like.
Speaker B:So it's like you feel inconvenienced because you are an inconvenience.
Speaker B:So it's important to acknowledge that, number one, but also acknowledge that, like, every action you take, everything you do sits within a community of people.
Speaker B:And so, you know, if you want to exist within that community, you need to be able to embrace inconveniences.
Speaker B:That inconveniences could be them calling you out today and being like you're doing that inconvenience could also be them doing something that makes you feel a little bit uncomfortable, or you understanding that, or you having to do something uncomfortable, or you understanding that, like, this is for the betterment of the community that I love and I want to be in.
Speaker B:And, you know, and I think that's what freedom is.
Speaker B:And this is something Tony Morrison talks about.
Speaker B:And I think it's so beautiful because it's such an apt definition of freedom and liberation.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:It's not.
Speaker B:Freedom is not sovereignty.
Speaker B:It's not the idea of not having any responsibilities and doing your own thing on your own terms, but it's being able to choose what you're responsible for, being able to choose the spaces in which you exist.
Speaker B:And I think for queer people, especially in spaces that are where criminality exists, criminality of queerness exists.
Speaker B:It's very important to remember that because, you know, the state is constantly trying to tell you how to live.
Speaker B:And there's a way that we internalize that through a lot of self surveillance and self regulation, where we then, you know, internalize, okay, this is how I should live.
Speaker B:This is what I should do.
Speaker B:This is where I should be.
Speaker B:This is.
Speaker B:And I think that's what ultimately determines all these things.
Speaker B:We're talking about always having parties on the island, only conceptualizing safety this way.
Speaker B:What we mentioned about invisibility and invisibility and all of that, like, it's because of these state apparatuses that are like, this is how you should do.
Speaker B:This is what you should do.
Speaker B:And then we ourselves internalize that and decide, okay, this is what I want.
Speaker B:I want to be strategic.
Speaker B:I want to do this.
Speaker B:I want to do That I want to do those.
Speaker B:But, like, you know, there's points at which we can also just refuse all of that and just be like, look, I just want to do whatever the hell I want to do.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And I think that a lot of times as queer people, we don't unpack and understand those nuances when we're moving through the world.
Speaker A:Um, because a lot of times it feels very academic and not practical.
Speaker A:But I really appreciate the practicality you bring into this conversation.
Speaker A:And so thank you for that piece.
Speaker A:I don't want the listeners to think that all you do is just, you know, talk politics.
Speaker A:Just read, read, read.
Speaker A:So I have a couple of very, like, random, rapid fire random questions I want to ask you.
Speaker A:Yeah, I think the first one is what are like the three songs you're listening to currently right now?
Speaker B:Oh, my goodness, I love this question.
Speaker B:Let's look at my.
Speaker B:On repeat.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:Goddamn by Rabina and Shode.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:God damn, that's on there From Scratch by Raven Lenae.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:And okay, this song came back on my cycle, but that's actually very up, so.
Speaker B:Tennessee by Kevin Abstract and Luna's X.
Speaker B:Okay, cool.
Speaker B:That's been on there too.
Speaker B:But yeah, there's a.
Speaker B:There's a few.
Speaker B:But that's.
Speaker B:I'd say that's like my top three on rotation at the moment.
Speaker A:What is your dream travel destination?
Speaker B:Sorry, I know we just said we won't get political, but now we're about to get political again.
Speaker B:Because my dream travel destination is Hawaii, but they've told us to not, not come.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:And I am.
Speaker B:And honestly, I'm respecting their wishes, so.
Speaker B:And even if I was to go, people will never know that.
Speaker B:Actually, I'm joking.
Speaker B:I would.
Speaker B:I wouldn't go.
Speaker B:But aside from that, I don't know.
Speaker B:I really want to go to, like, Brazil, I think.
Speaker B:I've never been, but I really want to go.
Speaker B:I think especially because I'm trying to learn and understand a bit more about, like, Yoruba spirituality and how it manifests in that side of the world.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So I'd say Brazil.
Speaker B:Somewhere in Brazil.
Speaker B:Okuba is another place that, like, again, it's very awkward to go to because do I still want to go to America in my life after ask the questions.
Speaker A:That is real.
Speaker A:That is very real.
Speaker A:What is the book you recommend to people to always read?
Speaker B:Invention of Women by Oyo and Koyewumi.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:The Invention of Women.
Speaker B:That is my absolute favorite book ever.
Speaker B:She really, really dissects and explores this idea of gender and sex within Yoruba society and really, I think, disturbs our understandings of what.
Speaker B:Of what your gender means and looks like as a Yoruba person.
Speaker B:But, yeah, Invention of women.
Speaker B:Okay, cool.
Speaker A:I love that.
Speaker A:Favorite thing to snack on.
Speaker B:Okay, so tuna and sweet corn wrap.
Speaker B:I don't know if that's a snack, but that is all I ever eat.
Speaker B:It's like a meal, isn't it?
Speaker B:But that is almost all I ever eat.
Speaker B:And it's actually starting to become a problem for me and everybody around me because for the past, like, two years or more, it's been an addiction.
Speaker B:I don't even know where to begin.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's been a lot.
Speaker B:But if I was to just.
Speaker B:Just snacks.
Speaker B:Oh, nuts.
Speaker B:I love cashews.
Speaker B:Yes, cashews.
Speaker B:Cashews.
Speaker A:I love cashews as well.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And finally, what is your guilty pleasure?
Speaker B:Oh, buying property.
Speaker B:I'm joking.
Speaker B:I'm joking.
Speaker A:I am screaming.
Speaker A:Wasn't it.
Speaker B:I think it was Serena Williams that said that, wasn't it?
Speaker B:They were like, oh.
Speaker B:They were like, oh, what's your.
Speaker B:Yeah, I think it was guilty pleasure or past or favorite hobby or something.
Speaker B:She was like, buying properties.
Speaker B:And I was like, damn.
Speaker B:Like, fair enough.
Speaker B:You know, I've just.
Speaker B:I've just gone on a whole rant about elite queer people, and I thought.
Speaker A:And I talk about, yeah, like, I'm gonna buy property.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:I think maybe I'll go back to tuna and sweet corn as a gutted pleasure.
Speaker B:I don't know why.
Speaker B:I can't think of anything else.
Speaker B:I don't.
Speaker B:Honestly.
Speaker A:Reality TV or something.
Speaker B:Reality.
Speaker B:I mean, I love Great British Bake Off.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:But I don't know if I would call that a guilty play.
Speaker B:I'm not guilty about that.
Speaker B:I have no guilt.
Speaker B:I have no guilt about my love of great British makeup.
Speaker A:Okay, cool.
Speaker B:What am I guilty about, Flip?
Speaker B:Giving pleasure from.
Speaker B:Well, that I'm allowed to say on a podcast because, I mean, there's other things I have guilty pleasures about.
Speaker A:But you mean buying property.
Speaker B:Buying property.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Let's leave it at that.
Speaker B:You know what?
Speaker B:I really don't.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker A:Yeah, but what is next for you now, like, in your work and everything that you're doing?
Speaker A:What is.
Speaker B:What can we say?
Speaker B:Rest.
Speaker B:Rest.
Speaker B:Rest.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I feel like a lot of.
Speaker B:Yeah, a lot.
Speaker B:The past few years, I've really spent on the go, and I think I'm at a point now where I just want to.
Speaker B:I want to rest.
Speaker B:I want to.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I want to sit with myself a bit more and it's been one of the most beautiful things and experiences being able to do that at the moment.
Speaker B:Yeah, just, you know, now the PhD's done the.
Speaker B:I can.
Speaker B:I'm just.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And I'm not in academia and I have.
Speaker B:I do work that doesn't stress my life out and I actually love and enjoy.
Speaker B:So I feel like now I'm just able to kind of just sit with myself a little bit more.
Speaker B:And I really like that.
Speaker B:So I'd say, yeah, that's.
Speaker B:That's what's on the table for me right now.
Speaker A:Awesome.
Speaker A:That is pretty cool.
Speaker A:And yeah, just thank you for coming on and for, you know, sharing and for dropping.
Speaker A:This is going to be the longest podcast episode I've ever done, but it is definitely.
Speaker A:It is.
Speaker B:That's what happens when you bring a yappa on board.
Speaker B:This is on you.
Speaker A:It is definitely worth it, though.
Speaker A:And I feel like there is.
Speaker A:There are parts of the conversation that I really will have loved us to expand on, and I know that we can't do that on the podcast and so do you have like a substack or something that folks can follow to see?
Speaker B:Honestly, not necessarily at the moment.
Speaker B:However, I do have.
Speaker B:I don't know when this is going to be released, but I do have an anthology that I'm editing, co editing with Ayodele Olufitwade, another amazing, amazing, amazing writer in Nigeria.
Speaker B:Yeah, I have an anthology.
Speaker B:It's called the Shit on the Sunrise.
Speaker B:It should be out soon.
Speaker B:We're currently just finalizing, like some of the discussions about publishing and stuff, but we kind of explore how queer artists in Nigeria are navigating hope and despair.
Speaker B:So kind of.
Speaker B:That.
Speaker B:A lot of these things that we've discussed today, I think, come up in various spaces.
Speaker B:So that's.
Speaker B:But yeah, we kind of got a bunch of really talented writers together to write different chapters with different artists.
Speaker B:So that is coming soon.
Speaker B:But yeah, aside from that, that's.
Speaker B:That's largely it.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Well, thank you, Adebayor, and I'm.
Speaker A:I'm hoping you had a great time.
Speaker A:And for the folks who stayed all the way to the end who listen and were watching on YouTube.
Speaker A:Thank you for watching or listening.
Speaker A:Yeah, this is Odejuma and I'll see you next time.
