Namibian LGBTI Community Need to Reflect on Internalized Homophobia and Transphobia

A journalist from a local media and says- Hello Ms. Baumann … 

I am **** from the **** … 

I am busy writing an article on LGBTI community- Looking at internalised homophobia, transphobia within your community and why homophobia and transphobia is only placed on persons who do not identify as homosexual… 

And finally I want to know about the mushrooming of LGBTI organizations in the country. 

Now that is an interesting story to match up to because rarely do we as persons who identify as LGBTI ever reflect on internalised phobias that shifts bridges as our focus is always on persons from the outside…

In our community the rifts are so high that we do not even understand nor tolerate the diverse background, identities and expressions within the LGBTI community. 

The conflict, internal violations amongst each other and just the general lack of comprehension of who we are a community and our role in this dispensation… 

When it comes to the mushrooming of LGBTI organisations… Well that clearly carries its social philosophies of establishment with very minimal political foundation hence the continuous attack from within and outside… 

I wonder at times what it would take to have us as the Namibian LGBTI convene to engage on the basics that would lay a collective agenda, collective understanding and having collective modalities that would advance and benefit the greater LGBTI community and nation at large… 

30 October 2017

14h10