From: pmmst8+@pitt.edu (Paul M Mweene)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Rank, Gender, and Homosexuality: Mombasa, (Wiener please read this)!
Date: 15 Dec 92 06:37:01 GMT
Organization: University of Pittsburgh

In article <101984@netnews.upenn.edu> weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener) writes:
>
>>Why should I believe you more than Alfred Machela?

For the same reason that I do not believe that all white men are cannibals
like Jeffrey Dahmer.

>I went down to the library (yes, sometimes I get that far out of my
>armchair), and found John Middleton THE WORLD OF THE SWAHILI, a new
>book.  He mentioned that homosexuality exists among the Swahili, but
>not very much, and that any steady relationship is taboo.
>So what do your Swahili friends say?
>-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)

My old girl friend in 1988, was part Arab. She came from Dar Es Salam 
zania. She told me many things about Dar, which up to now I have resisted 
posting. After, I read your comments above, I went to the library and obtained
a book entitled "The Cultural Construction of Sexuality", Edited by Pat Caplan.
I quote liberally from the article entitled "Rank, Gender, and Homosexuality
:Momabasa as a key to understanding Sexual Options".

Mombasa: the social context
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

There are roughly 50,000 Swahili-mixed blood Arab-Africans-in Mombasa, of whom
I would estimate 5,000 are homosexual. Lesbians and homosexuals are open in the
ir behaviour.However, close kin are saddened by a boys homosexuality.....

The Swahili word for homosexual is shoga, an Arabic word, which is used by womento mean friend. The Shwahili word for lesbian is Wasagaji (the sagaji) which is
also used for the grinding of grain in millstones.

The contribution of Islam to the institutitionalization of h.sex. in mombasa is
examined later.It certainly is afactor,for non-muslim Africans living nearby are
scarcely involved; yet explanation cannot rest there, for a glance through the
literature on the Middle East reveals that attitudes toward h.sex vary from 
acceptance to horror.

Mombasa, for most of its history, was a port existing for trading of African 
raw materials (ivory, gum and copal, and for a while grain) against imports of
cloth, beads, wire and so on.Omani Arabs and Portuguese competed for the town,
and at the beggining of the 20-th century it becamepart of the Omani Sultan of
Zanzibar, under indirect British rule. The British found a cosmopolitan society
of elite Arab land owners and Arab and Indian enterprenuers, a large middle 
class and a lower-middle class of Swahili and a substantial number of slaves
drawn from all over east Africa, who worked in a wide range of urban and rural
tasks. Before the abolition of slavery and Mombasa's economic expansion, the
rown was almost 100% muslim.


ARAB CULTURE:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Arab culture is emulated and admired in Mombasa, and the fact that there is a
long tradition of acceptable male homosexuality in many Arab countries is rel
evant. Homosexuality is forbidden in the Koran (surah 4:20) but Arabic litera
ture contains both jocular stories about h.sex such as those in the Arabian 
nights and fine love poetry to h.sexuals. (Arberry 1965; Gigg 1963).

Richard Burton heard in Shiraz of a pious muslim father publicly executing his
son for h.sexuality (Brodie 1971:82); at the other extreme end of the Siwa Oasi
s in the western desert of Egypt , Cline in 1936 found every single male except
one immigrant was or had been a homosexual.(Cline 1936:43); h.sex. is a part of
daily life in Aden (Ashworth and Walker 1972: 153) and in Oman (Wikan 1977), 
and is the subject of popular love songs in Afghanistan (Dupree 1970: 361). Sig
nificantly for our understanding of Swahili, h.sex. is common in the two origin
al areas of most Arab immigrants to East Africa: South Arabia and Oman. Their i
ncorporation into Swahili life was often as superiors-traders, rulers, wealthy
settlers-and their attitudes to h.sex. must have been influencial.

H.sex. is very much an urban phenomena in East Africa, following the  routes 
by which Islam spread through trade. Non-muslim town dwellers are very rarely
h.sex, and even village Swahili seem to be less likely to h.sex. than townsmen.

References to Lesbianism in the Middle East are rare, but al-Katib mentions of
their existence in 8 th century Baghdad and Medina (cited in Musallam: 154, n.8)where they explained their choices as being in order to do without men, and to
avoid 'scndalous' pregnancies. The same author refers to male h.sex. as form of
contraception, incidentally.

Interestingly, though, lesbians on the East African coast are unlikely to have
acquired their sexual preferences in imitation of Arab women, for very few ever
migrated to East Africa. On the whole the men who came took local wome as conc
ubines. It seems likely they imitated the pattern of male h.sex. they saw loca
lly, as in the past they imitated mens competetive dance societies (Ranger 1975:167-70). Alternatively, we may argue that the great segregation of Arab life
in East Afican coast towns, in contrast with that in adjacent rural areas, auto
matically produces the conditions for h.sex. to emerge. 

Conclusion:
^^^^^^^^^^^

Sodom and Gomorrah, two white cities, which were located near the dead sea are
said to have been destroyed by god ostensible because they were 'plagued' with
sosdomy, among many things god disapproved. It is fair to say that Sodom was 
a white city (the truth not being always pleasant). Conversely, Egypt in which
jews allegedly found their nationhood was conspicously devoid of this trait.

If we extrapolate that the majority of current Africans derived fron Nubia and
Egypt (Kmt, Sais, Tamerri) and that at that time greeks, romans and other white
s acculturated and even had their roots in Sodom, we can see how  things have
not changed. Except where there has been an excessive application of foreign
cultural (slavery, swahili, mombasa  # apartheid, Alfred Macheda, South Africa)
pressure, African have eschewed same sex sex. 

The history of Europe (and middle east, as above) however replete with this be
havior, from Julio Ceaser, Michael Angelo, Da Vinci, Mozart (Beethov??) etc
to Napoleon. So many have have homosexuals been in white history that the gay
community has at times felt justified to claim that ALL MEN get homosexual im
pulses, but some just suppress them! Holy god!.
 
Judging from the ignorant rantings of Philip "Whiner" Wiener, whose total pre
parations consists of getting an encyclopedia, obtaining therefrom an African
name and then conjuring and posting any fantasy, however ridiculous, that he
feels inclined to post. The ignorance of wiener is amazzzzzziiing. His asser
tions apart from being based on innuendo, are largely motivated by extreme
Afriphobia. In tandem with his bosom, beloved pal, Tim Smith, they have posted
some of the most ourageous stuff on the net.

As it is unlikely that I will ever post again, let me say that I do not hate
or fear homosexuals. There is nothing unfair or homophobic in pointing out 
that there are no homosexuals in Africa, save those who are the concubines of
or the surrogates of the varios types of white men abounding on the continent.

This statement is meant to be as derogatory as say an eskimo declaring that 
blakcmen are not native to greenland. That does not mean that they cannot 
start living there if they now to do so.
Or better still if an eskimo (oops, I am sorry Inuit) teaches them....


makala




RANK, GENDEllR