Activist Nigerian woman says gay men marrying women is bad
A Port Harcourt-based women’s rights activist is alarmed over the rate at which gay men are deceiving heterosexual women into marriages to hide their sexual orientation.
Photo for illustrative purposes only. Source: Google
By Mike Daemon
A local activist [name withheld for safety] who is currently working with a women’s rights organization in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, says she is seeing an increasing problem of gay men marrying women.
She discussed the issue in a recent conversation with NoStringsNG, which she contacted for help in dealing with the problem.
Many women who come to her for counseling and support are married to gay men who deceived them into marriage, the activist said.
The women who reach out to her for help are aggrieved and devastated upon finding out that their husbands are gay, she said:
“A lot of women come to me all the time complaining that their husbands have been having affairs with other men. They are mostly confused, bitter, disappointed and do not know what to do. Many of them often consider divorce as an option. But making that decision is often a hard one for them.”
She is deeply worried about the alarming rate at which more women are “selfishly” being used by many gay men to hide their sexual orientation, she said.
She considers such marriages to be a type of violence against women:
“I consider this deceptive act violence against women. The most painful thing about this whole issue is that these women are suffering so much upon realizing that they have been completely fooled into a sham marriage. For many, years of their lives have been wasted and this has negatively affected their mental health,” she said.
In a bid to help women who have gone through similar experiences, she is developing a new project that she hopes will provide support for those women, especially those in the Port Harcourt region.
Actually gay men marrying women to hide their sexual orientation from the society is not new, and one must be careful about pointing fingers and placing blame.
Honestly, most gay men and lesbians dream of a life with someone of the same sex, but many sadly act otherwise, due to homophobic laws against homosexuality, ignorance, wrong perceptions about human sexuality, pressure from family and relatives as well as the society’s generally negative attitude towards LGBT people.
Until all of these issues are systematically addressed, everyone will continue to suffer the repercussions of stigma, homophobia and discriminatory laws toward homosexual persons.
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While the force of homophobic laws there make this a loaded topic, I’m afraid that this ‘activist’ may be missing an important point about natural development of sexuality. 1) There are genuine bisexuals that can be with partners of either sex, and be quite comfortable doing so. Erasing bisexuals is an all-too-common omission, only recognizing a ‘binary’ of either being hetero or homo-sexual, rather than sexuality as a continuum (a la Kinsey.) 2) Plenty of men and women realize they’ve succumbed to family or societal pressures to please others by marrying, and then realize later their sexual identity. It doesn’t mean it is any less painful to break up a marriage, moreso when children are involved, but it doesn’t mean that the male intentionally lied or misled the female. There is certainly truth to the charge that some partners do lie and deny their own true sexual identity, and it ruins relationships and is painful for both partners when the truth comes out. But…seems to me the lesson here, is that honesty about sexuality is the better policy–whether in intimate relationships, or the law of a country!
On point! Well illustrated
I am gay carry born is not just. Play love with women is not working in my site, I don’t know why. I say eleven years without meet women and man,