In a well-timed, well-choreographed move, my friend and colleague writer Ken Binyavanga Wainaina, via various web media, announced that he is, has always been, a homosexual. For good measure, he confessed that he is a failed heterosexual. Good for him! Well choreographed and well timed I say.
Immediately thereafter, follow-on reactions, discombobulation, messages of support and congratulations, hullabaloo, shock, front-page hogwash and pure disappointment took over. Distraught and amused and amazed gasps. Binyavanga himself now launched into a frenzy of Facebook posts with homosexual themes, taunting Nigeria, Uganda, mourning homosexual dead, elevating gay positions etc. Eloquence gained. Platform appropriated. I will be wrong if I claimed that Binya has not previously been open about his defense of the gays. He has, only that this time round, with the attention of all nincompoops mustered, he was screwing them real deep. Good for him.
But then I also began, from that day to this, to receive pleas from simpletons to explain what the matter was or is with my friend. Did he just say he is gay? (Dude, go back to school if you can’t comprehend a writing?) Is it for real? (Girl, you wanna give him a shot so you believe?). Did you always know he was gay? (What change would it make if I didn’t know?). Gosh, I only thought he enjoyed plaiting and coloring his hair! (Well, he has more hairs I would guess!). So what’s your take on B Wainaina coming out? (I give no rat’s ass if he comes in or interrupts coitus gal!). And I get irritated. For most of these who posed these rhetorical queries to me have never, in the first place, ever ‘come out’! I don’t know if they are straight or gay! Or both. Hypocrites. Maybe they assume that I assume that they are heterosexual…but again, they would be the quickest to deny a heterosexual a shot if requested! So what are they? Mimi sijui! Shida zenu na Binyavanga msiniletee.
Interesting things have arisen since this creatively written ‘confession’ by The Binj. Take these empty-heads who have now come out to declare that they support him. How can you support Binya? Don’t you think he is much capable of supporting himself? What support does he need anyway? Others are congratulating him for bravery. What bravery is there for one to declare he is gay on a community that interacts daily with gays, and have not created an environment negative to their living? For let’s face it: Kenya is not a country where homophobia reigns. What reigns in Kenya is the curiosity, the imagination of penile-anal intercourse between man and man. Really! We do not care that men and women have anal sex. Do we? We are just curious how men make it, period. Don’t we even have a stock threat to enemies that, “nitakufira mkundu”? Don’t we all have these guys we know whom we ‘suspect’ are gay? Don’t we have girl-friends who confess their love for the salon service they get from this particular gay hairdresser who has queer dressing and talking code? Don’t we all laugh behind the backs of these infantile homosexual acquaintances who try to force their gayism, throwing masculine buttocks in desperate imitation of females, contorting sopranos, spotting red lipstick that make them look like black cats that have stolen pyramid quails? Do we not dabble in our own rumors over which of our politicians ‘huchapwa nyuma’ and which one is living a double life? Don’t we go to Nakumatt just to see gay condoms and adult nappies? See, we are accommodating. Only stupidly and idly curious. And should stop this hypocritical shock with Binya’s revelation.
Me, me I don’t mind ‘homos’. Which heterosexual man will mind that another man is a homosexual? Shit! It lowers competition for women, see! Right?
So live and let live! Of course Binyavanga has his reasons for ‘coming out’. Nigeria has just passed controversial laws on gay marriage, Uganda is grappling with how to state and package their national position on homosexuality while at the same time not lose donor monies and the West are busy forcing themselves into normalizing homosexuality. And therein lies where Binya ameona mbele. Binya has interests in Nigeria, and what better adventure being an activist for ‘gay rights’ at this hour, in this context, watched by this world? Binya has Ugando-Rwandese connections. What platform and opportunity then is this for a dude to redefine himself and take on the coming-out fad! For within that short week of his declaration, Binya has become the messianic homosexual hero of the silent gay. Homosexuals are happy that he and his influence are on their side. Good for him.
We nevertheless need to ask ourselves, what is this heterosexual obsession with homosexuals? Cannot heterosexuals have their sex in peace and leave others alone! Is it your mother’s sex they have stolen from you? For heterosexuals have this irritating, self-righteous moralistic scorn that they bandy around, even sometimes ostensibly meting out ‘just’ punishments and doling out the rights that homosexuals should enjoy. They claim that homosexuals are the worst of the human lot, will corrupt our living and put our children in danger. Yet I swear, aren’t heterosexuals the greatest testament of primitivity: the greatest perpetrators of rapes are heterosexuals; the most corrupt politicians are those that bandy their heterosexual exploits; heterosexuals were the greatest murderers during the 2007/8 post-election violence; heterosexuals have the most irritating dress codes, sagging trousers to reveal sweaty, smelly ass cracks and spotting lows to parade cleavages of reviling stretch-marked jugs (not to mention the irritating hips and thighs in Prime Time News! Nkt!); heterosexuals (while denying homosexuals marriage) are the worst breakers of marriage, killers of wives and husbands and children! (Fucked up life I say: Celibates bonding heterosexuals in marriage, heterosexuals denying homosexuals a marriage they’ve failed to master, homosexuals demanding a marriage they can’t fruit. Mad shit life I tell you). Frothing, righteous heterosexuals have shown that their sexual orientation has not been good for the earth. So what makes it ok for these thickheads to parade their conformity to a false ‘normalcy’? A false, plastic smile ‘naturalness’? Do not heterosexuals realize that they have their own filthy linen to clean, logs to saw off their eyes before they are concerned with the anuses and penises of two consenting male adults? If heterosexuals find it vile that homosexuals are a moral danger, then they should equally own and clean their vile heterosexual madness and filth. Heterosexuals (may) have to come together with homosexuals at some point to shake hands and share ejaculations of their orientations over coffee without ‘devilling’ each. Really.
That then, as I rush to my conclusion, leads me to asking then, what is being gay? Is it a qualification like a degree that annoints one the privelege to be (or do all that appertains to being) stupid, weird, illogical, and irrational? Is being gay an ideology? A style? A briefcase political quest? What makes homosexuals think we are so daft that they can shout the impossible from the rooftops, like Binyavanga allegedly realizing he is a homosexual at age 5? Age 5! Fuck, at age five you should have been busy getting diarrhea, practicing ABC, fearing injections and running after imaginary cars and crying over nothing: not being sexual! Homosexual. What makes this community of homosexuals believe that they have a unique right above other humans and that they should be kid-gloved and treated with a certain artificial acceptance? What makes them consider it heroism to come out! Can’t they just fuck and shut the fuck up and show up in the office the next day kujenga taifa? Are gays so clueless, so empty in creativity, so idle that they should spend their days thrusting ill-fitting clad in the name of free expression, choke us with deathly-applied deodorant and walk as if their orgy of ass-fucking is about to burst on their fronts? Even women who have anal sex don’t go shouting about it, do they? What is this sex war between heterosexuals (I hesitate to believe they are ‘straight)’ and homosexuals?
So fuck, I am heterosexual and it is no deal at all. Let me be and let the homosexual be and if we get some STI or some such shit, lets seek competent medical attention haraka. We’ve all got some living to do.
Love at Last Sight 
Posted by NiniK on January 23, 2014 at 03:29
Interesting post but the fact is this: to declare yourself to be a homosexual in Kenya, is incredibly BRAVE. We are part of an East African Community, and this community is one where our brothers and sisters are being beaten, killed, and burnt just a border away. Someones gotta make a stand otherwise the common laws of a common region will be lobbied for and approved right here, under our noses.
For your info – and you must know this already – there are many parts of this city (Nairobi) where landlords and neighbours chase you away if you are suspected to be gay. And many parts of this country where you will be ruined should your ” abnormal” sexual orientation be uncovered . And there are many, many parts of this continent that being gay is a death sentence. What happens if you are a gay person that travels outside your “safe space” frequently? What would you, Oh Brave Heterosexual Blogger do , should the shadow of the whip be on your back? Shut up or speak out?
You are the kind of individual who thinks they are open minded, yet who if were there when suffragettes were tying themselves to posts to demand a vote or if you were there as a white majority in the US in the 60s when black people were demanding equal treatment would have had EXACTLY the same reaction as you are having to Binyas ” outing” today. “Just get over it!” You would be saying as you walk away completely unaware that the person you are speaking to is about to be pistol whipped by some -virtue-imbibing-influence- guzzling-saintly-looking-whip-bearing- git.
Juuuuuust because you ( we) are fine and living on the sunny side of the street doesn’t mean that all, is well in the world and certainly doesn’t mean that those in a community under threat should stay mum.
Yes, Binya can look after himself and he knows that.
But this isn’t about him, at this point. Its about so, so, so much more. What makes “this community of homosexuals think they (…) should be kid gloved? ” Because they, unlike we heterosexuals can, and are being persecuted and killed in this place we call home.
Yup. Im one of the heterosexual “empty- heads” who proudly and loudly applaud him. Because by supporting him loudly and proudly, I am also supporting my own rights to be free, in whatever ways I choose to be free. The rights that a dysfunctional moral majority (who cant even stand each other) seem to believe they are the masters of.
And imagine, imagine… They are not.
Posted by Prince of Sheba on January 23, 2014 at 11:33
Dude, you got the message wrong. The writer is neither anti gay nor anti heterosexuals. What (s)he did was try to establish that one sexual orientation shouldn’t be superior to another. She gave ample and effective reasons why one should live and let the other live too. I think it’s a great piece of writing. Annoyingly so, yes. But great nonetheless.
Posted by OKN on January 25, 2014 at 02:49
Dude your observations are spot on! This is the kind of liberal back talk people like Oluoch-Madiang like to peddle around and pretend like they have done the world a huge favour. For one liberals make light of monumental issues. In America for instance a liberal would declare racism over while secretly happy that multitudes of black “thugs” rot in prison because they sent themselves there by their own will. Or white liberals in the 60s using the n-word just to show how down with the cause they are without realising the overwhelming pain, sorrow and humiliation the word carried.
Binyavanga’s coming out is the single greatest thing to happen to queers in African and around the world. In an ideal world, coming out might be irrelevant but in the here and now, where laws have be drawn and communities riled up, it becomes a noble sacrifice. This article is so irresponsible and juvenile I have no words to describe it. To say that Kenya is not a homophobic country is to display such an acute naïveté that one wonders what world the author lives in. I mean just being suspected of being gay is reason enough to be fired from work, expelled from school or kicked out from home. Just because there are no lynchings does not mean that gay people do not live under a blanket of constant fear.
I hope that this article was written in jest. If I was Binyavanga I would not call the author a friend of mine.
Posted by Omukhulo wa Namang'ale on January 23, 2014 at 06:00
wow!
Posted by fairygodsister on January 23, 2014 at 06:59
I just enjoyed the infusion of your language in this post. So the swearing made it a tad more passionate but I promise you it would have carried your passion just as well without it.
As for Binya ‘coming out’, I must confess I read it twice before I understood he was ‘coming out’ (and I like to think I am educated). Why? Well because the first time I read it I was too busy enjoying the trip my emotions and mind were on, and it was only when I read the last line I thought to myself that I needed to go back and reread. And I did.
I am straight (lol, that adjective/description always makes me chuckle) and I am Nigerian, resident in a country that welcomes people persecuted for their sexuality. My religion says homosexuality is sin. Some of my most profound relationships/friendships are with people who are gay. I love them.
I think that the law in Nigeria is a joke, because it is first and foremost a duplication of already existing laws that forbid sodomy and same sex marriage (incredible but yes we already had those). My country is plagued by a lot of things, top of them the politicians who signed this joke into law, hiding behind the ‘our constituents wanted it’ cloak.
I wish they would read your post Oluoch, and just let everyone (straight, bent, curved, square, triangle, oblong) be.
The entire discussion is becoming proper excruciating.
@chiomachuka.
Posted by mz_agams on January 23, 2014 at 11:02
Apparently not all gay men have anal sex as a gay friend of mine went to great lengths to explain to me once. Part of the stereotypes we need to avoid and stop spreading
Posted by Karanja karanja on January 23, 2014 at 11:06
Here we go again with another episode of the ‘GAYS OF OUR LIVES’. I am ANALising this situation of coming out and it’s becoming a tad too boring. Stuff and be stuffed MR B and let us be.
Posted by Hazel Simila on January 23, 2014 at 12:07
Gratingly raw. But damn I enjoy your play of words…..and how you come at them….both homo and hetero. True, true, there’s more to life than someone declaring their sexuality. Thumbs up!
Posted by sadhi80 on January 23, 2014 at 13:36
What do you know about coming out in Kenya?! It is indeed a BRAVE thing to do else he would have just hushed about it!! If you think cocngratulating him is wrong, why didn’t he come out before the death of his mother yet he was “practising” already for lack of a better word? I am speaking as one of those who silentely congratulated him for coming out. Your passion on the matter is nauseating!
Posted by amarieadhis on January 23, 2014 at 15:03
I also don’t get this coming out thing. Keep it to yourself. If you managed to do it all this time, then it won’t kill you to keep it to yourself to death. The only people you need to come out to are your God, your family and close friends. I definitely am not having sleepless nights over whether or not Binyavanga is gay. Should I also have a party to celebrate my being straight?
Posted by mz_agams on January 23, 2014 at 20:22
At a time such as now in Africa with the homophobia going on Binya’s coming out is very very important
Posted by shanon on January 23, 2014 at 21:44
God this is the best thing I have read ever,! Let people be whatever the wannabe, I have some gay friends, and its okay with me, I don’t see why their personal life should affect my life. Let people be happy and have a life.
Posted by Kiu on January 24, 2014 at 15:05
http://www.boston.com/news/world/africa/2014/01/22/protesters-throw-stones-disrupt-nigeria-gay-trial/Zrp2Cd3rkN5ajDjZPrifzI/story.html
Posted by amiho on January 25, 2014 at 09:24
oh. man, how we exaggerate. brother simply stated where he is at with regard to his buddy coming out. what’s with the vitriol then? hot, dang! like the man said, live and let live. y’all got a life to live too. i’m sure. so git with it.