Coming Out and Reaching Out: Linguistic Advocacy on Queer Nigerian Twitter

ABSTRACT

Anti-homosexuality and anti-LGBTQ attitudes persist in Nigeria, cutting across the activities of state and non-state actors. However, away from the hostile public physical spaces, the digital world has become a refuge where Nigerian queers attempt to exist true to their self-identities, and to take charge of the narratives about their existence. In examining how Nigerian queer males assert their agency, this study pays attention to the linguistic advocacies around the topics of “coming out” and “reaching out”. I analyse how Nigerian queer men navigate the digital media space and engage in anti-homophobic advocacies. The data are retrieved from Twitter via keyword searches and manually selected tweets. Using located and embedded knowledge, I identify that the performative use of language achieves the functions of coming out and confronting homophobic cyberbullying; providing information to non-queers; representations of family and acceptance in queer tweets; and, speaking out against politicians, government and society. The implications are that queer Nigerian males identify and use digital platforms for expressing their sexualities as well as for purposive identity formations which manifest in both in- and out-group advocacies.

KEYWORDS:

• Queer
• Nigeria
• Twitter
• coming-out advocacies
• homophobic cyberbullying

Acknowledgements

This article is part of a larger study funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. I am grateful for their award of the Georg Forster Fellowship. I thank the users of the Twitter accounts cited in this study for being real and true to their identities. I am grateful to Ayobami Onanuga for her suggestions which greatly improved this manuscript. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 https://www.asherfergusson.com/lgbtq-travel-safety/.

2 https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/04/18/morocco-gay-men-terror-naofal-moussa-sofia-talouni-ltrans-woman-outed-gay-dating-apps/.

3 https://www.statista.com/statistics/282846/regular-social-networking-usage-penetration-worldwide-by-country/.

4 https://www.internetworldstats.com/top20.htm.

5 https://twitter.com/Blaise_21/status/1208705795011096576.

6 https://twitter.com/iam_modashe/status/1180842603862007808.

7 Arewa is an endonym for the Hausa-Fulani ethnic group in the Northern part of Nigeria. https://twitter.com/kzytwt/status/1152708399878082560.

8 https://twitter.com/Akiin_Taiwo/status/1152629689825058816.

9 https://twitter.com/pheeelll/status/1152632959129849857.

10 https://twitter.com/janda2015/status/1152709307319738368.

11 https://twitter.com/hellonnachedo/status/1152692750397186048.

12 This account is currently suspended.

13 https://twitter.com/janda2015/status/1152714445908393984.

14 https://africanarguments.org/2019/08/14/nigeria-survey-shows-decrease-in-homophobic-attitudes-kind-of/.

15 https://twitter.com/biwomdz/status/1215894096495153152.

16 https://twitter.com/Miss_Matagu/status/1215921816226729985.

17 https://twitter.com/OmogeDami/status/1210841989094223872.

18 https://twitter.com/asangelwassayin/status/1144704796395540480.

19 https://twitter.com/KolaBoof3/status/1144681964785602562.

20 https://twitter.com/RachealCapaldi/status/1211283516769615873.