thinking of how communal homophobia interacts with violence and harm in queer relationships
images obtained from his Instagram @its_edwinchiloba
Before we knew the true details of the actions that led to Edwin Chiloba’s death, it was assumed that he was murdered because of his activism, an almost common-to-the-point-of-sanctioned end of life experience for individuals that ask for a recognition of the natural diversity of human experience and desire we have in our communities.
It was soon revealed that the individuals that executed his demise were more closely aligned with him ideologically than was initially inferred and that some of their relationships were familiar to the point of intimate partnership. And now we are dealt with a situation where the existence of abuse and maltreatment in queer relationships is highlighted in the public consciousness of communities already hostile to their queer neighbors and kin.
Scrolling through Twitter, I saw an individual say, queer folk need to apologize to the ‘straights’ because there was an assumption that Edwin was killed by bigoted heterosexual individuals. It takes us back to the black-on-black talking point in the US, or the women exploiting women due to their participation in sex trafficking. The attempts to invalidate the dissatisfaction with communal stressors by highlighting that harm can come from anywhere, even from the grip of an ally, are made every time there is a tragedy involving individuals known for speaking up against violence and harm.
When we talk about how homophobia fuels tense-to-violent domestic situations, we talk about secrecy. It isn’t uncommon to hear of the individual murdered because their lover feared they would be outed as gay, or as cheaters, or as both. And in the most bizarre of those cases, we have the folks that swear that they were even unaware that they had been with a member of the same sex and that in the panic of their realization, they committed unspeakable acts.
When we have public discourse about gay relationships in hostile (and even soft) environments; we often stick to the relationship hindered by the burden of secrecy and guilt, or we hover over the relationship that is angelic and free of kink.
If it is violent, it is excruciating; and if it is sweet, it is nauseating. The depictions that frame queer relationships as complex, deriving the bulk of its complexity from the individuality of the people involved and how they complement or antagonize each other, are not emphasized with enough force.
A while ago, a story found itself in the Nigerian internet space and all of a sudden, an abusive lesbian polyamorous relationship was on everybody’s mind to the point that it trended for days. This was during my Clubhouse moment, and I spent hours listening to people, both queer and not queer, talk about what that relationship meant and what an appropriate response looks like.
There were people that off the bat, made it known the queer relationships and even queerness itself was illegal in Nigeria and that this was a nonissue to begin with. Then there were the folks that used the opportunity to feed into the local belief that queer folks are associated with occult symbols. “See how wicked they are, see what they are doing, this is how they are.”
The public response to spotlighted cases of domestic violence in queer relationships is to whip out their moral anger and start to question the existence of queer people in their community. Queer folk are never just required to reconcile the trauma of the hurt or violence they have experienced, they are also required to prove why they deserve empathy, despite being gay.
This isn’t something contained to violence in romantic or intimate relationships. Any time we all (here ‘we all’ represents the voice of a community that claims to love all its children, but also prefers if they are straight) become aware of targeted harm towards or within queer communities, we try to decide if the unfortunate event was a karmic response to their queerness. Whether it is a shooting in a nightclub, an arbitrary arrest at a party, or an encounter with a cannibalistic serial killer; we are afforded a moment of skepticism before we finally find it within ourselves to offer help, sympathy, love, or support.
When monkeypox made its way into the public eye by way of worrying infection rates in major cities, there was almost an audible sigh of relief when it was reported that it was spreading quicker in men that have sex with men (MSM) communities.
It wasn’t long before the ‘it makes sense, have you seen how promiscuous they are’ comments made their debut and finally, I encountered individuals saying that they had to lie that their boyfriend was bi to get the monkeypox vaccine. Almost like a game where your proximity to queerness, but specifically, gay men, means that you are more open to disease.
Usually, I just find it all strange and frustrating. But with Edwin Chiloba, I am upset.
Learning That the internet could be a tragic place
I think that we might one day find ourselves with an internet where in-real-life violent and deadly situations don’t need to be pushed online daily because there is trust that the physical institutions in charge of the resolution of violent scenarios would do their work with integrity and efficiency. But until then, we continue to exist in a space where clips of executions can go viral in a matter of moments, and you are left with a taste in your mouth to help and a competing awareness that you have no influence over the situation (at least in real time).
I was introduced to this feeling during the early Black Lives Matter years. Those days I would share every graphic that popped up on my page, my feed, my whatever. Going to protests, debating everybody and they mama. Watching the videos from beginning to end, looking at all the pictures, learning the names and nicknames of the lost ones. What I didn’t have then, that I have now is a deep-seated understanding that this world is not a rosy world and that if I was willing, I would always find a reason to cloak myself in misery and bad faith.
What I didn’t know then was that my reaction to an event, any event, is mine to determine completely and that I can in fact choose to participate in activism or advocacy in ways that feel right for me even if it might look to others that I am not as dedicated.
There are several high-profile death cases or announcements that shook me either on the spot or as I learnt of the details of the case. Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Toyin Salau, Kobe Byrant, Chadwick Boseman, Anthony Bourdain, Virgil Abloh, Shanquella Robinson and now Edwin Chiloba.
It is one thing to learn of a tragic death, it is another thing to feel the need to defend their memory from tarnish at the hand of fellow witnesses. The initial belief that he was murdered a cause his activism might have been premature, but the claim that this case of intimate partner murder that occurred in a country with tense-to-harmful attitudes towards queerness is unaffected by widespread homophobia is to lie.
how i have seen homophobia interacting with queer relationships (more specifically, gay ones)
The night I arrived in Bordeaux, my ex-partner’s mother accosted us on our way to his apartment. She had been waiting for her child to return home from wherever he was (she hadn’t known he had come to Paris to pick me up). It had been an incredibly loud conversation that ended with her threatening to get rid of the apartment we were going to stay in. Even then, I took that scene as a foreshadowing of how difficult the experience would be, but the thing about anticipated experiences is that the way we feel when it finally occurs is either vastly better than what we expected or unimaginably bad. Of course, because equilibrium has aesthetic value in contemporary discourse, I have to say that some anticipated experiences hold up to their expectation, but my short stint in Bordeaux did not make the cut.
I had seen red flags from the first day I met him. I had found it hard to get my points across completely, i.e., he listened to respond in the moment, but he never paid attention to the deeper, more complex messages I was sending. I remember inviting him over to my room and having to repeat over and over again that I would like him to leave before the guards left for the evening. “But I am not tired, but it isn’t late, but I don’t want to go home yet,” and before I knew it, he had fallen asleep. Because I am not an unnecessarily mean person, I let it slide and I placed myself delicately beside him on the small twin that came with the room.
The next day, he would give me a mini rundown of his life history and I would conclude that I wasn’t really interested in developing a relationship but maybe acquaintanceship might be sufficient.
Weeks would pass and we would speak once in a while. He would comment on my IG stories, send me TikTok videos and when I told him offhandedly that I would need to find a place for when I returned to France from my monthlong trip to Senegal, he told me that I could be able to stay with him.
It would take living with him and then leaving him, before I knew why I had ignored our incompatibility for so long. When on the day of my departure, he fumed all the way from the apartment to the train station (despite the return being framed a necessary trip home for the holidays), I knew not to ever discount my hunches about the character and attitude of a person I want to build a relationship with.
When I was pondering the forces that led me to a cold apartment on the outskirts of Bordeaux with a man that often-used drunkenness as an excuse to act in deeply problematic ways, I realized that, based on the theory of opportunity cost, I was with him because I wasn’t somewhere else; and I wasn’t somewhere else because:
at that time, I was still avoiding my parent’s house because of numerous experiences of harm I had endured in the past due to reactions to my sexuality, my beliefs, and my personal and professional choices as an independent human being
the frequent moving around from early childhood to that moment made it so that I didn’t have a lot of close friends or non-nuclear family that could hold me down when I needed to lay on a spare bed
the housing market, for both renters and buyers, is incredibly exclusionary and it is absolutely hideous if one is poor, and/or from a marginalized background
finding employment that pays reasonably, utilizes skills I love to develop/hone and fills me with a drop of genuine satisfaction is almost impossible
and this is just a snippet of what could be a longer list.
Thinking of Chiloba and trying to understand how we all ended up with a metal box on the side of the road, I wonder if there were structures that responded to cases of domestic violence and if those structures also received individuals escaping from queer relationships. I wonder if they lived together and moved through the world together because they didn’t have sturdy or understanding community in origin family. I wonder if we would be here if we lived in a world where queerness wasn’t seen as a pariah in need of over policing or condemnation.
It is unfortunate that it is almost mandatory to put out a notice on how insidious homophobia can be even in relationships between queer folk, but it is even worse to let people believe that it is completely unrelated.
Death is inevitable, but many human communities, if not all, prefer for it to come later in life. Edwin Chiloba deserved to live long. Activists also deserve to live long. Gay men, queer individuals deserve to live long as well.
Let me close by acknowledging that we might never really know what occurred. We might not know if there were signs that this would occur. Or if it matters that they were the same gender, or that they lived in their particular state of residence. In fact, after all the investigations, it might be discovered that the only cause of this unfortunate event was the bad intent of close partners. No matter what is revealed or discovered, we need to remember that we don’t need to know every detail of a situation to know that things are bad or serious or in need of special care and regard. We need to distinguish between searching for clarity so that justice can be served and searching for clarity to avoid self-reflection and critical analysis of how our collective behavior allows things like this to happen.
If you have read this and you know of ways people are supporting Edwin Chiloba’s memory, please let me know and I will create an update post with actionable items that can be undertaken to support from near and afar.
My condolences to those close to Chiloba’s heart and I hope he finds rest in communion with the ancestors and guardian angels. May he rest in perfect peace.