This website was inspired by queer culture in South Africa. It is about re-imagining queer life in South Africa. It is about challenging assertions that homosexuality is “un-African.” It is also about recognising that the LGBTI struggle is not divorced from the gender struggle and other forms of oppression. So the issues discussed here are sometimes not directly LGBTI but they are important for ALL South Africans to think about. The concept of Queer Consciousness was inspired by Queer Theory outlooks on life combined with Steve Biko’s Black Consciousness. Imagine a South Africa trying to balance Queerness and Black Consciousness. We would be unstoppable.
Queer Consciousness entails understanding that sexual diversity is part of the human experience.
Queer Consciousness can impact society as a whole. Perhaps this consciousness can impact both LGBTI and broader society, and perhaps be adopted by people who are not LGBTI.
Queer Consciousness confronts the complex intersection of race, class, and gender that makes black lesbians vulnerable to ‘corrective rape’ and murder.
Queer Consciousness is recognising that the way LGBTI communities structure their relationships has the potential to educate us all about gender, about shifting the boundaries that society places on sexualities, and about liberating people’s sexuality, including heterosexuality.
Queer Consciousness demands that we in LGBTI communities be very vigilant about the ways in which “new” normative standards of establishing relationships and life in general can be used to subjugate others within LGBTI communities.
Queer Consciousness is about letting the imagination run wild in trying to answer the existential question of “who am I?”
For more on the concept of Queer Consciousness visit the post on Queer Consciousness.https://queerconsciousness.com/queer-consciousness/