“You can be gay and straight at the same time:” Contextually contingent negotiations of gay and bisexual identifications among same-gender-loving men in Ghana

ABSTRACT

In this essay, I draw on interview discourses with 22 Sassoi – same-gender-loving men in Ghana – to examine how they discursively deploy “straight,” “gay,” and “bisexual” identifications in specific contexts. Drawing on the work of postcolonial studies and queer intercultural communication scholarship, I show how Sassoi infuse gay, bisexual and straight identifications with alternative meanings to resist the exclusionary discourses of Ghanaian sexual citizenship and Western understandings of same-sex sexuality. In the end, I argue that in contrast to narratives of reconciliation where queer subjects resolve multiple aspects of themselves, such as being gay and religious, queer African subjects draw on a politics of complementarity – where polar identities such as gay and straight are not always perceived as oppositional..

KEYWORDS:

• Postcolonial Theory
• Ghana
• Sassoi
• Queerly Ambivalent
• LGBTQI+ Rights

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).