{"id":75453,"date":"2026-06-18T10:53:53","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T14:53:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/canada\/?p=75453"},"modified":"2026-06-18T16:23:57","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T20:23:57","slug":"pride-memory-and-decolonisation-rethinking-the-lgbtq-acronym-from-the-global-south","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/canada\/en\/story\/75453\/pride-memory-and-decolonisation-rethinking-the-lgbtq-acronym-from-the-global-south\/","title":{"rendered":"Pride, memory and decolonisation: Rethinking the LGBTQ+ acronym from the Global South"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Rusly
Rusly Cachina is a Member of Migrantia, Equality Technician, Head of Afro-Queer Migrations, Coordinator of Voz Migrantia Lavapi\u00e9s, Coordinator of AMIGRAS, Activist, and Trans Expert Peer.\u00a9 Rusly Cachina<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

This story is also available at Greenpeace Spain, in Spanish<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n

Every year, specifically in June, Pride Month fills social media, streets and institutional spaces with flags, messages, speeches and celebrations. Important dates are commemorated, celebrating advances in LGBTQ+ rights and making visible identities that have long been denied.<\/p>\n\n

But this global image doesn\u2019t always feel universal<\/a>. From the Global South \u2013 especially from African and diasporic contexts \u2013 many of us experience this month with a complex mix of emotions: recognition, yes, but also distance, tension, and questions that don\u2019t always find a place or space in dominant narratives.<\/p>\n\n

What does the acronym LGBTQ+ stand for, and why is it not neutral?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n

The acronym LGBTQ+ (a condensed version of LGBTQIA2S+<\/a>) is an umbrella term used to describe a person\u2019s sexual orientation or gender identity. It stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer with the + representing other diverse sexual orientations and gender identities. This acronym has been fundamental in building political visibility and articulating common struggles. However, it is also necessary to recognise that it is a historical construct situated in specific Western contexts<\/a>, shaped by languages, categories, and ways of understanding gender and sexuality that are not universal.<\/p>\n\n

When these categories are presented as the only possible framework for naming diversity, they risk rendering invisible other forms of existence, identities that do not fit within them, and our relationships and connections. Because naming is not just describing: it is also ordering the world.<\/p>\n\n

How colonial language, legal, religious and administrative systems erase collective memory<\/h2>\n\n
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Prior to European colonisation, across the African continent, there were multiple ways of understanding gender, the body, and sexuality that did not conform to a rigid binary model. These understandings were not homogeneous or identical, but they did share something important: they were deeply connected to spirituality.<\/p>\n\n

For example, we could talk about Logun Ede<\/a>, a minor orisha of the Yoruba pantheon, known as the crown prince, son of Oshun and Oshosi. He represents duality, beauty, youth, and transformation, living six months in the river (feminine characteristics) and six months in the forest (masculine characteristics).<\/p>\n\n

In the community context, we could talk about \u201cFemale Husbands\u201d<\/a>: Historically, some Nigerian women assumed the role of husbands (an economic and social perspective) to marry other women, thus perpetuating lineages. With the process of colonisation, a legal, religious, and administrative system was imposed that reorganised all these realities according to a binary and punitive logic. Anything that did not fit into this order was often reinterpreted as sin, deviation, or crime. <\/p>\n\n

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Anything that did not fit into this order was often reinterpreted as sin, deviation, or crime.\u2013 Rusly Cachina<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

For example, there is the story of Francisco Manicongo<\/a>, a person forcibly transported from the Kingdom of Kongo \u2013 today part of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola \u2013 to Brazil during the 16th century, in the context of the transatlantic slave trade. The reason for his persecution was not only his status as a slave, but also his gender identity and expression, since he dressed and acted according to Congolese traditions associated with the Imbandas, which the colonial authorities interpreted as \u201csin\u201d (sodomy). His case illustrates how colonial violence not only exploited people but also persecuted and punished sexual and gender dissidence. In this process, not only were bodies criminalised, but memory was also rewritten.<\/p>\n\n

What I am writing goes beyond seeking \u201cproof\u201d, beyond trying to find an African queer history. What emerges is something more complex: the evidence that multiple ways of life exist, which were systematically filtered, erased by colonial logic, or reinterpreted.<\/p>\n\n

Africa is not a territory without queer history<\/h2>\n\n
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Stating this does not mean idealising the past or denying internal conflicts or tensions. It implies recognising that diversity is not a recent import.<\/p>\n\n

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The problem lies not in a lack of history, but in who has the power to narrate it.\u2013 Rusly Cachina<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

In various African contexts, there have been non-normative gender roles, diverse relational practices, and historical figures whose existence challenged modern categories. Many of these memories unfortunately survive only in oral narratives, cultural practices, or local languages; others have simply been fragmented by centuries of colonisation and continue to be so due to neocolonialism, radicalisation, religious extremism and the statisation of law.<\/p>\n\n

The problem lies not in a lack of history, but in who has the power to narrate it.<\/p>\n\n

The queer present: violence, war and inequality<\/h2>\n\n

Discussing decolonisation cannot be relegated to the past. The here-and-now, the present, armed conflicts, political instability, and resource exploitation continue to shape the lives of billions of people in various territories of the Global South.<\/p>\n\n

In regions like the Democratic Republic of Congo, armed conflicts \u2013 including the presence of groups like the M23<\/a> \u2013 cannot be understood without the broader context of extractive economies, decades of structural violence, and geopolitical interests. In these contexts, violence is embodied. It is not abstract.<\/p>\n\n

These people \u2013 whom Western categories reduce to the acronym LGBTQ+, but who in their territories are known as Woubi, Mashoga, or Shoga, among many others \u2013 face social stigmatisation, a lack of institutional protection, and, in many cases, direct violence<\/a> in contexts where state collapse and militarisation exacerbate all forms of abuse.<\/p>\n\n

War is not only territorial. It is also bodily.<\/p>\n\n

What has climate change and global inequality got to do with Pride?<\/h2>\n\n
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