Across Africa, parents and families of queer persons are using WhatsApp support groups to help understand and accept their children as well as deal with the challenges and trauma of living with homophobia.
These online groups provide a safe space where families of queer persons can come together to share their experiences, find acceptance, receive professional counselling, and plan in-person gatherings.
Anne Nafula, the parent of a queer person in Nairobi, said parents like her access these groups through links shared at in-person gatherings for queer persons and on social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
“When I found out my daughter was a lesbian, I found it hard to accept, especially because her masculine way of dressing made our family the subject of ridicule,” Nafula said. “A friend I confided in told me about a WhatsApp group for parents of queer persons and shared the link with me. Through it, I am slowly beginning to understand my daughter.”
Clare Byarugaba, an openly lesbian LGBTQ+ activist based in Uganda, founded an organisation called Parents and Families of Lesbians and Gays Uganda (PLFAG-Uganda) that provides online and physical support groups for families of queer persons. These groups offer consistent and credible information to facilitate greater understanding and acceptance, along with the ability to speak to a clinical psychologist.
In Uganda, Byarugaba was inspired to start PFLAG-Uganda after her own traumatic experience of having her sexuality outed by local tabloids before she had disclosed it to her parents.
She realised then that some of the critical support available to queer persons was not necessarily available to their families.
“I felt compassion for what my parents were going through when they were outed as parents of a queer child, which is one of the biggest sources of shame in Uganda,” Byarugaba said. “Home should be the safest place where queer persons feel fully accepted, but to achieve that, parents need support as well.”
One of the beneficiaries of PFLAG-Uganda is Sara, not her real name, whose son is queer. Sara learned about the support group from him and said that through it she has been able to understand and accept him.
“When I first attended the meeting by PFLAG, I was very happy to see other parents like me who had given birth to a child like mine sitting at one table,” Sara said. “I am also now able to access resources online through WhatsApp for parents of queer persons, which I have found very helpful. I used to lock myself in the house to escape gossip but now I advise other parents of queer children to accept them.”
Stressing the importance of families in creating acceptance, John Njuguna, a queer person living in Nairobi, said that how families react to their children coming out as queer can severely impact their mental health.
“Supportive families enable queer persons to speak about and express their sexual orientation and gender without fear, while parental biases are in part responsible for higher rates of poverty and homelessness as well as worse mental and physical health outcomes among queer persons,” he said.
“My family played an enormous role during my transition journey as a transgender man by supporting me, which was vital in my self-acceptance.”
World Post Changers Network was started in Migori County, a rural part of southwestern Kenya, with the aim of creating a safe space for LGBTQ+ persons and awareness among the community about the rights of LGBTQ+ persons through advocacy.
Mwese Kibebe, an advocacy officer at World Post Changers Network, said there are still gaps in creating awareness on the rights and welfare of queer persons especially in rural communities, which has contributed to discrimination and stigma against queer persons, even from their family members.
“We offer psychosocial help, safe houses for LGBTQ+ persons, and try to reconcile them with their families,” Kibebe said.
“There is need to raise awareness and create safe spaces for queer persons because there is a lot of homophobia and transphobia. There is a family who had chased their child because they presented as a queer person, but we visited the home and intervened and the mother accepted them to return home.”
Mwese said World Post Changers Network hosts physical meetings with individual parents of queer persons because most are reluctant to join an online group or be known and identified as parents of queer persons.
“We use dialogue and explain to the parents why their queer children are the way they are, and slowly some of them begin to accept them,” he said.
Nafula acknowledges the significance of WhatsApp groups in creating awareness among parents of queer persons as well as advocacy efforts by organisations.
‘’We talk about human rights but forget it speaks about equality for all regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity,” she said. “Why should my daughter be treated differently because of her sexual orientation? We need to put a stop to all this hate,” Nafula said.
In 2014, Amnesty International published an advocacy toolkit for activists titled “Speaking out: Advocacy experiences and tools of LGBTI activists in sub-Saharan Africa” in an effort to counter discrimination against queer persons and to increase awareness about the discrimination and criminalization they face.
Amnesty International has also called on African states and governments to publicly acknowledge and protect the human rights of all people without discrimination and to refrain from criminalizing consensual same-sex conduct.
Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) in 2018 research reveals that 89% of queer persons in Kenya who either revealed their identity or had their queer identities disclosed against their will were disowned by their families, subjected to psychological therapy, expelled from schools, or dismissed from jobs. Consequently, many queer persons are forced to hide their identities over fear of torture, persecution and societal stigma.
According to the National Library of Medicine in United States of America, parents often reject their queer childen, sometimes leading to relationship dissolution.
The 2016 study was done in three Kenyan cities titled “The Impact of Heteronormativity on the Human Rights of Sexual Minorities” revealed that 30% of queer persons were evicted by family upon revealing their sexual orientation.
Article written by Amy Moyi
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