• There's a newfound willingness to confront extortionists before the law
May 17 is on the calendar as the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia (IdaHobit).
These phobias are the expression of an irrational hatred, intolerance and fear of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people, and are mainly born out of ignorance, fear and in many cases, immaturity.
Homophobia takes the form of insults, discrimination and even includes violence. Such abuse is motivated purely on the fact someone is of a different sexual orientation.
Wikipedia tells us that biphobia is aversion toward bisexuality or people who are identified or perceived as being bisexual.
You would think that having experienced homophobia, gay and lesbian people would guard against being biphobic, but many bisexual people of my acquaintance have told me that many a time, their sexuality is seen as void.
They complain that like the rest of society, many lesbians and gays believe that people are either straight or gay, and refuse to see that that sexuality is a spectrum.
When it comes to transphobia, once again my handy Wikipedia explains that transphobia can include fear, aversion, hatred, violence or anger towards people who do not conform to social gender roles.
Amid all the bad, sad news of the last year or so with regard to Africa’s LGBTQ community, there have been a few, quiet, small wins that may have gone unnoticed by the majority.
I found my small victory to celebrate during this year’s IdaHobit in a story written by Nita Bhalla, the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s East Africa correspondent and her colleague Adam Smith.
The story was written for Context Newsroom and was picked up by print and broadcast media across Africa.
The story said: “For too long, Kenya's LGBTQ+ community has stayed silent about blackmail and extortion on platforms like Facebook and dating apps like Grindr, afraid of being outed and jailed themselves in a country where gay sex can land you in jail for up to 14 years.”
It reported that now, a handful of lawyers in Kenya are helping victims counter these crimes and deliver justice to people often shunned by society.
For me, this was amazing news, considering that long before the advent of social media, blackmail and extortion were a major feature affecting the lives of Kenya's LGBTQ+ community. This forced many members of the community to remain in the shadows for fear of being their true selves.
If I had their permission to do so, I could tell at least a dozen stories of friends and acquaintances who suffered blackmail and extortion because of their sexual orientation in the 1990s.
I will, however, tell you why one of a few attempts to blackmail or extort me in those days failed.
When this particular attempt was made on me, I was fortunate, in fact privileged, to be in a situation where my family, close friends and most importantly in this particular case, my employer knew I was gay.
While few in my family were happy with the situation, at least they were aware, and so any attempt to frighten me by saying I would be exposed to my family or friends for that matter, would have fallen flat on its face.
Work, on the other hand, was a very different story. While my homosexuality might have come as no big surprise to some of the people I worked with, it still might have caused issues that made earning a living as a journalist, or anything else, very difficult.
Fortunately for me, my employer at the time was an international broadcaster that had anti-harassment, bullying and nondiscrimination policies, which included LGBTQ+ individuals.
As such, any malicious person running to tell them that a particular employee was gay would have been met with a “So what?”
Most of my friends in the community did not have such protection, for lack of a better word, and many were targeted by blackmailers and extortionists who made their lives a misery, to say the least.
This newfound willingness and courage to confront blackmailers and extortionists before the law counts as a win in my book.