The Dictionary of Homophobia by Louis-Georges Tin Page A

halted in their succession and destroyed by colonization in the nineteenth century. What followed was a process of re-tribalization which, by administrative will, divided populations into ethnic groups. This explains the broad definition of what, in this region, is considered a tribe or ethnic group. For example, the Fulani are present in nine countries, including Cameroon and Chad; the Mandinka are found not only in Mali, but also in Guinea, Niger, Senegal, and Sierra Leone; the Hausa are in Libya, Chad, Niger, Cameroon and Nigeria; and the Yoruba are in Benin and Nigeria. Members of these ethnic groups number in the millions; they are further made up of subgroups, whose origins are composites of ancient alliances, pacts, or blood relations. Ethnicity in this region is thus often a construct whose origins are difficult to explain, and becomes a sort of convenient catch-all phrase used to justify historical precedence for particular beliefs or behaviors, all the while playing an important role in the construction of identity.
    Historically, the creation of great empires in West Africa had the effect of mobilizing great armies, each exclusively male, with the exception of the Kingdom of Dahomey (now Benin) from the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries, where one found the famous Dahomey Amazons, an all-female military regiment. For the most part, these empires projected the image of a strong and dominant masculinity, which resulted in an important social stratification that first appeared among the Mandinka in the Empire of Mali in the form of castes, organized according to myths by the empire’s founder himself, Soundiata Keita. Accordingly, in the great chieftainships, certain powerful men could live with another man, who assumed the status of spouse or wife. To this day, in Yaoundé, Cameroon, there is evidence of homosexual relationships between man-wives and their customary husbands.
    In fact, while homosexual relations are generally condemned, old traditions have sometimes created social conditions in which these relations can take place, as in Gagnoa in the Ivory Coast, where one finds the concept of male couple known as woobi / yossi (female/ male). Ferdinand is a young man, a woobi who performs the role of the wife in his relationship with a yossi . He states: “In my family, my homosexuality has never been a problem. My grandmother raised me as a little girl. It was no surprise to anyone that I was feminine. At the age of ten, I knew I was a woobi .” Moreover, he explains: “On the other side of the country, in the East, there is another tradition, the day of the Abissa. On that day, girls dress as boys and boys dress as girls. But most of all, each has the right to reveal his or her life to their family, who must accept it without reproach. It is the day when young woobis talk to their parents.” However, if local traditions allow a certain amount of flexibility in gender and sexuality, on the whole, stigmatization remains the general rule.
    Animist Traditions
In West Africa, while religions of Semitic origin value masculinity above all, ancient myths represent divinities who are often twins (male and female) or hermaphrodites; and in agrarian societies, a good number of divinities are female, which makes it easy to find female priests, seers, healers, initiates, and members of secret sects. Traditions inherited from ancestors often include initiation rituals celebrating masculinity or femininity that conform to social group models, which include the act of male circumcision, a procedure which almost every man in the region has undergone to this day, and female circumcision, still present in countries such as Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Senegal. In these ways, sexuality remains highly controlled by the social group, especially as pro-birth attitudes in the region are quite present, given the fact that child mortality remains high and life expectancy is between forty-seven and fifty-four years of age