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Tulane University <spierce1@tulane.edu> Ibrahim Hamza should probably read more about 'yan daudu or engage in structured research on them before making categorical pronouncements. The best academic account is probably Rudi Gaudio's Ph.D. dissertation, "Men Who Talk Like Women," to which Hamza may have been alluding. 'Yan daudu are only the most visible component of a much larger culture of people in northern Nigeria and surrounding regions with gender-transgressive affect or an interest in same-sex sexuality. Many 'yan daudu will agree with the proposition that sex between men is immoral and un-Islamic. That does not, however, necessarily imply that they don't have sex with men (though typically with masculine-identified men, termed in subcultural slang 'yan aras--according to Gaudio, 'yan daudu call sex with one another "lesbianism"). There are certainly many people in northern Nigeria who would consider 'yan daudu (and, if they are aware of it, other men and women engaging in same-sex sexuality) a "social problem. There are also many people who don't think it a problem and many people unaware of anything but the visible effeminacy of 'yan daudu. Interestingly, in the same-sex communities in northern Nigeria that I know something about, Sudan is identified as a place where homosexuality comes from. Enjoying same-sex sex is thought of as learned behavior--people aren't "gay" in an orientational sense but rather are taught to enjoy homosexual sex. This, like anything else, can be considered to be the work of god. Many other writers in this thread have already pointed to the distinction between homosexual activity (arguably a near-universal) and homosexual orientations (probably a recent construct with its origins in the West) and have emphasized the homophobia, ahistoricism, and ethnocentrism implicit in blaming "African homosexuality" on Western influences. Narratives of sexual danger and contamination, both religious and secular, are important in contemporary northern Nigerian discourses about homosexuality, but (pace Hamza) that doesn't make them a transparent source on the development of same-sex sexuality in the region.
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