Women’s Day from the LGBTQI+ perspective: “Un-teach the discrimination”
32-yer-old, Hulisani Malaka is part of the LGBTQI community and spoke to Review about stigmas that plague lesbian women
POLOKWANE – Hulisani Malaka identifies herself as a lesbian and says she has been for as long as she remembers. “Even back in high school, it was almost obvious that I would be lesbian because when all the other girls were fawning over the hottest guys, I would not be even in the slightest bit interested.” She says that from her first relationship with a girl, she knew she would never be able to be with a man because she was attracted to girls.
Hulisani spoke to Review regarding a few stigmas that plague lesbian women, especially as we are currently celebrating Women’s Month. She says this holiday is one of the only holidays on the South African calendar that she actually celebrates because of its significance to honouring, teaching and becoming a woman. “It is important to me because of the high rate of domestic and gender-based violence.”
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Hulisani says being lesbian has actually shown her how much growth is still needed in the community, especially in Limpopo, as people still have the narrative that lesbian woman aspire to be men. She says being lesbian has nothing to do with masculinity and lesbians are women before they choose the sexuality they would like to associate with. She says more can be done in terms of exposure but it is up to women to accept and welcome lesbians into their circles.
“Individuals need to un-teach themselves the hate and discrimination they have been taught to have against women of different sexualities.” She says the stigma that lesbian women want to become men has to be scraped off, and relationships between two women do not mean one of them is the man. “If I or my girlfriend wanted to be with men, we simply would have been dating men.”
She says the only woman from the LGBTQI+ community who want to be men would be a transgender. “Transgender people are those that go through a sex change because they realize that they identify with the other gender. Sexuality and gender are two different things.” Hulisani says it is quite sad that till today, people are ridiculed for their sexuality by people who refuse to accept that preferences differ. She says she has never wanted to be a man and considers herself a proud woman, more especially with what she has gone through at the hands of those who do not believe in homosexuality.
