South African author Mark Gevisser described how the world has been divided in an entirely new way through the context of sexual orientation and gender identity during a virtual talk hosted by Carleton University and the University of Ottawa on Nov. 10.
The event, part of Carleton’s “Knowing Africa Series,” was hosted by Shireen Hassim, a Canada 150 Research Chair in gender and African politics. The series covers a wide range of issues from African theorists, decolonial epistemologies and the feminist era in Africa.
Carleton women’s and gender studies professor Ann Cvetkovich and University of Ottawa feminist and gender studies professor Jordache Ellapen joined Gevisser to talk about his latest book The Pink Line: Journeys Across the World’s Queer Frontiers. According to Gevisser’s website, the book is about how LGBTQ rights have divided the world and how this issue affects LGBTQ people.
Gevisser started the panel by explaining his inspiration for the term “pink line,” which he defined as the border of sexual orientation and gender identity that has come to divide the world in an entirely new way over the first two decades of the 21st century.
He said when he was little, he played a game where he would use an address book and a map book to deliver gifts to people at various addresses.
He said he soon noticed that there were clear borders between white South Africans and Black South Africans as the map book used pink lines to divide the suburbs. The pink lines informed his understanding of borders and cultural dividers.
“The conversation was about marriage equality in North America or about very basic rights in countries in Africa, like Uganda,” Gevisser said.
Gevisser said it seemed like globalization was improving LGBTQ rights. He explained that through the improvement of these rights, new cultural dividers for LGBTQ people were being created, meaning that in certain places progress is being made for LGBTQ rights and in others it is not.
“And yet, what was clear was that there were pink lines through this—pink lines that were defining who was in and who was out, who had rights and who didn’t have rights,” Gevisser said.
Gevisser said he believes a new pink line is being created. He explained this new pink line can be understood in terms of America legalizing same-sex marriage around the same time that Nigeria banned it.
Gevisser said the pink line could be seen as a border between parts of the world that accept LGBTQ people and parts that don’t. He said there are two sides of the pink line.
“On the one side of the pink line they were seen as people who needed to be saved,” Gevisser said. “On the other side of the pink line queer people were being seen as foreign agents, as some enemy from within who had been infected or contaminated by gay people in the west.”
Gevisser explained that some countries view gay rights as an assault on their sovereignty. He said this is worsened by African countries that have been colonized in the past, who often combine LGBTQ culture with Western culture.
Hassim said that Gevisser’s book takes a journalistic approach to the topic. The book consists of information he gathered from interviews with queer people from around the world who found themselves divided by the pink line.
“[The book] is full of these incredibly rich accounts of people’s lives. I think [Gevisser] does a great service by breaking apart the nationalist framing,” Hassim said.“I think [Gevisser] is a brilliant author.”
Some of the people Gevisser wrote of in his book include a transgender woman fighting for custody of her child in Moscow, a lesbian couple campaigning for marriage equality in Mexico, and a community of kothis in an Indian fishing village, who Gevisser said define themselves as “women’s hearts in men’s bodies.”
The final talk in the “Knowing Africa” webinar series will be on Dec. 1 featuring Christopher Ouma, a professor from the University of Cape Town, who will discuss childhood in African diaspora literature. Gevisser’s talk was recorded and is available online along with the previous lectures in the series.
Featured graphic by Sara Mizannojehdehi
