This is a feedback on the ongoing community outreach events that Inkanyiso held as part of visual activism initiatives. We host the screenings at various places especially in the townships and surrounding areas. The previous one was of a Lesbian Wedding that took place in Durban in June 2012. The screening that was held at Kwa-Thema on the 3rd of March 2013.

by Nqobile Nxumalo
There were about 15 people that initially came, but others ended up sitting outside enjoying their refreshments. So there were about 10 of us who watched and participated in the gathering.

We were a diverse group of young and matured, males and females.

Ages ranged from 19 years to 52 years.

The screening started at 2:00pm and it was successful because the main aim was achieved.

We watched a documented wedding between two of our kind, a butch and femme woman. The wedding was beautiful even though I didn’t watch the whole thing. We then talked about the fact that the butch bride (groom in this case) was addressed as a man (sir, Mr, husband).

Most of butch lesbians in the room agreed that they would rather be addressed as women where as some felt they wanted to be addressed as men. We all came to a conclusion that it all comes down to personal preference.

Hate crime was the next topic on the table. Recently there have been more murders and rapes due to hate crimes against homosexuals than there has been in the past years. People use corrective rape to cure or correct homosexuality or turn them heterosexual.

They sometimes murder homosexuals to remove them from society. This act against homosexuals is so demonic and inhuman. I personally think that these perpetrators should be given life sentence, that’s if there’ll ever be justice in South Africa because they always get away with it.

We discussed this topic which is very sensitive to the homosexual community and agreed that we are faced with a huge problem. We need to stand together to protect and fight for our rights to live freely. People need to be educated about sexual orientation and that like heterosexuality no one can choose their sexual orientation. We further spoke about educating each other as we sometimes as homosexuals over do things, Like wanting to compete with men, and you find that in all murder, rape cases the story is the same, the Butch has been murdered/raped by her friends at 2am coming form a tavern.

So we need to educate ourselves and remember that we are still women at the end of the day. Now in the group there were different age groups one of the older gays he said he is 52 years of age, in his time there were no such things because they used to look after each other gays and lesbians. They also respected men and their women, not going to pick fights or show men they are better than them, taking their girlfriends.
Initially referred to as gay community but as time passed , LGBTI was formed. After LGBTI there has been more additions of terminologies to the family. First it was I and A which stand for Intersexual and Asexual respectively, but however, recently Q for Queer was added, which I thought was a term used to insult gay people.
Apparently there is another addition, P for pansexual. Only few people in the room knew or even understood about these additions to our community, they seem a little lost. We as the LGBTSQIA community must take an initiative of educating ourselves and each other, because this is our home, where we feel we belong, where we’ll never be raped, murdered or sworn at.

This meeting was fun and educational at the same time, there was sense of mutual understanding and everyone was free to talk. No ones ‘opinions was ignored or belittled.

Charmain is a good facilitator and made us all feel comfortable to speak our minds, we had so much fun that we asked her to please come back again, so we can unpack the topics we touched on and to watch other documentaries.
Inkanyiso I believe is doing something different and new, we as the young generation we always want to have fun. We did have fun and got educated at the same time.

I learned so much.

_____________________________

About author

I am Nqobile Precious Nxumalo born on the 06th of July 1989.
My names were given to me by my mother, Nqobile which means victory when translated to English She gave me the name Precious because I was her first child, she felt that I was the most important person in her life.
I am a qualified Language Practitioner. I studied at Tshwane University of Technology where I studied Language Practice.  I have both a Diploma which I obtained in 2011 and a BTech which I completed in 2012 in the same course.
I am currently unemployed and still seeking for a job.