I’m so glad that Tom Daley, a British Olympic gold-medal winning diver, a gay man who bravely “came out” in 2013 (despite being under the threat of being thrown to his death from the top of buildings or of being anally penetrated with a rough-sawn stake and set out in the sun to die while it worked its way up from his anus to his throat and out the top of his head)–oh, wait, those things didn’t happen or weren’t threatened, silly me!–and who has since made his public pronouncements all about his gayness, has weighed in on the British Colonialist legacy of Homophobia,
As if such a thing were never a previous issue in any country subject to colonialist rule.
Why am I glad, you ask?
Because it gives me the opportunity to quote my father, a British Colonial Officer, on the history of Northern Nigeria (Daley mentions Nigeria as a country that suffered from the oppression of Colonialist attitudes to homosexuality, so, Win for me!)
Here’s Dad, recounting an experience from a witness to a 1903 atrocity:
The battle outside Sokoto was witnessed by a 12-year-old boy named Nagwamatse. That was not the only thing he witnessed, however, for two days earlier, after the Friday mosque — say about two o’clock in the afternoon — he had watched while a man convicted of hitsu (sodomy) had been held face down, stark naked and screaming, while a gora (bargepole), pared down to a sharp point for a foot or so at its thinner end, was driven up his anus by a man wielding a blacksmith’s masko (lump-hammer). He was then reared up, howling the more as the pole was dropped into a two-foot hole and propped upright with stones, leaving him writhing on his skewer six or seven feet off the ground. It went in further, Nagwamatse said, with a jolt. Such was the punishment of tsire (impalement) — a word closely related to that for ‘to spit’, as for a kebab.
According to Nagwamatse, the man was a long time dying, for he screamed far into the night, though by morning he was silent and the point of the stake had come out through his chest. He also said that, periodically, blood had gushed out kamar guguce (as if he were having an enema). They left him there till noon before pulling out the stake and burying him.
The full link is here, unfortunately behind the Spectator paywall. It’s worth the price of admission, even if only for the first free month, trust me.
To the point where, when Nigeria achieved its independence from British rule on October 1, 1960, it was expected to lead all of Africa into a fantastic new future of tolerance, political and religious freedom, and economic expansion.
Sadly, none of that was to be.
But if you (Tom Daley) think that has anything to do with Colonialism (which I hope you are smart enough to know is only a distraction) or with you (which you might not be smart enough to recognize you’re signalling with your “documentary” titled “Illegal to be Me”), then you are fair and far off.
It’s not all about you, you nitwit.
Before your next outburst, please read the Qu’ran. And some other history. And get your mind right.
If what you want to do is have an argument, I’m your girl! But I won’t engage with someone who won’t even bother to check the facts before he shoots off his mouth.
Are we clear?
