Onni Gust

Author: Onni Gust

Mau Mau, anti-colonialism and "female genital mutilation"

By Onni Gust November 20, 2014 African Sexualities 2 comments

Female genital mutilation and postcolonial struggles are in fact intimately and historically linked.

“Cow protection or Gay protection?” LGBT rights, “Hindu” tradition and the Indian elections

By Onni Gust May 13, 2014 LGBTQ 5 comments

Onni Gust with Radhika Govindrajan Elections in India are drawing to a close with results pending. Amongst the 814 million eligible to vote are 28 000 gender non-conforming people, many of whom are hijra, who can now register as “third gender.” The competition for seats in the Lok Sabha, India’s lower house of Parliament, […]

India’s Section 377: India, Britain and the ongoing legacies of imperialism

By Onni Gust February 26, 2014 LGBTQ 0 comments

Onni Gust On 11th November, 2013, the Indian Supreme Court upheld section 377 of the Indian Penal code, which declares “carnal intercourse against the order of nature against any man, woman or animal” to be a crime. The ruling came as a shock to LGBT rights activists. In 2009, following […]

What should LGBT History Month say about Empire?

By Onni Gust February 10, 2014 LGBTQ, United Kingdom 0 comments

Onni Gust Robert Baden-Powell, Cecil Rhodes and Lawrence of Arabia have three things in common: 1) They are all white and male- assigned; 2) They are all suspected to have harbored homosexual desires, and, in the case of Rhodes, to have had a male lover and partner; 3) They all […]

"Call me Kuchu": history, homophobia and the burden of the past

By Onni Gust February 7, 2014 African Sexualities, LGBTQ 0 comments

Sunday 26th January 2014 marked three years since the murder of David Kato.

Hyperbole and horror: hijras and the British imperial state in India

By Onni Gust January 6, 2014 LGBTQ 8 comments

Onni Gust Nineteenth-century British travel writers and colonial officials rarely passed on the opportunity to prefix some derogatory hyperbole to the word ‘eunuch.’ Frequently they offered extensive defamation, referring to eunuchs as “the vilest and most polluted beings” and commenting on the “revolting” practices that they imagined, but could rarely […]