Navigating homophobia and reinventing the self

Abstract

Discriminatory practices against the Nigerian gay community take the form of state and non-state sponsored opposition, censorship and violence. This study investigates how gay Nigerians combat homophobia by using language agentively on social media as a semiotic resource towards self-assertion and identity construction. Data retrieved from Twitter via keyword searches suggest that in addition to harnessing agency through positive self-representation and ingroup affirmation, the digital discourses of Nigerian gay men recontextualise religion as a legitimising tool, transforming it into a site of affirmative struggle. These resources reach a crescendo in the practice known as ‘kito-ing’, a discourse strategy that protects the gay community from threats by publicly ‘outing’ homophobic actors, thus contesting the prevailing gender hierarchy. While Nigerian physical space restricts queer livability, the digital space becomes a locus for agency whereby various semiotic resources are used to refuse the status quo and assert nonnormative sexualities against an otherwise oppressive social order.