“The pen is my activism’s first weapon” - Emma Onekekou (Burkina Faso/Côte d’Ivoire) 3/4

This is the third part of our thought-provoking interview with Emma Onekekou. Emma is a feminist from Burkina Faso & Côte d’Ivoire doing work on the human rights of women and the LGBTQ+ community.

In the previous parts, she gave us the context around her upbringing (Part 1) and how she started questioning what was around her (Part 2). In this part, we talk about her self-expression and activism through writing. 

Emma was interviewed by Françoise Moudouthe in late 2019, as part of a global project documenting girls’ resistance. The conversation was also edited into this four-part interview by Françoise. You can learn more about the series here.

Trigger warning: this conversation contains mentions of violence and abuse which may be triggering for readers. Kindly take a moment to decide if you want to keep reading. If you do proceed, we encourage you to centre your wellbeing and stop reading at any point, as you need. 

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If I’m following what you told me, your path of resistance started with a questioning phase followed by an experimenting phase. Let’s talk about where you are now. Can we call it an activism phase? 

Before, my resistance was about shaking things and building my vision of things. Today, I’m more in a phase of accepting who I am, but also a phase where I express my vision and share it with the world.

OK, let’s start with acceptance. Can you tell me more?

Today, I accept myself as a queer woman. I fought it for a long time. Even after changing religions, it remained a problem for a while, until I accepted myself completely. 

Yet, I was very young when I found out I was attracted to other girls. I remember it well. I must have been in the third grade when I found out. Before I turned 17, I dated here and there, but nothing serious. I didn’t want to explore this. I knew that my religion was against it and that my destiny was to get married and have kids or to become a nun. So, it’s something that I repeatedly repressed. 

Today, I’m more in a phase of accepting who I am, but also a phase where I express my vision and share it with the world.

When did you know that you couldn’t anymore? 

The infamous midlife crisis at 17. Everything came out when I was 17. I felt it all in a more intimate and urging way. I couldn’t keep it to myself anymore. I felt the need to be with a woman. And even after I allowed myself to do that, I kept the secret, until it came out during a conversation with my sisters. It just came out: “Yeah, I like women”. That was five or six years ago. From that moment on, I told myself: “OK, I accept myself and I demand that others do too”. 

My sister was extremely shocked. She wanted to put me back on track with religion-based arguments. Others did the same, later on. However, it couldn’t work because I didn’t share these values anymore. That’s why I told you earlier that my first act of rebellion, this break with religion, opened the door to my other acts of rebellion. Today, I’m very comfortable talking about it. It's true that it still shocks some people, but I’m in a space where I’ve accepted myself, so I’m fine.

Did it happen because you stopped giving a damn about what people thought about you, or because your opinion of yourself changed? 

The first opinion I had of myself as a girl was not my own. It was the one that my family, the church, and society had given me. It was a vision of the woman I was supposed to become: submissive, perfect...virtuous. Today, I'm not in that dynamic anymore. I am just a woman, and I accept that it is not virtue that defines a woman. 

This applies to me and others. Today, I have completely broadened my definition of a woman. The definition is broader, so nothing shocks me anymore. I respect every woman. I am in the optics of sisterhood unless we are talking about an anti-feminist, who gets on my nerves, who wants to question my values and my principles because she lives in her unreal world. That gets on my nerves. But I still try to keep the principles of sisterhood. I tell her what I think.

Besides acceptance, you also mentioned self-expression and your vision of the world. Can you tell me more about that? 

Once I was able to accept myself as a queer woman, I was able to begin the third phase of my resistance, which is activism. And when I started to advocate in LGBT organizations, I could see the discrepancies within this movement. I saw the absence, the under-representation of queer women. We hardly spoke about their problems, but above all, we didn't hear about them. It is this observation that directed me towards a form of activism that I express through my writing.

By the way, when I asked you to prepare for this interview by bringing an item that symbolizes your resistance, you brought the picture of a fountain pen.

The pen is my activism’s first weapon. I have written novels, short stories, and blogs. I like writing. For me, it is the best form of expression. It is what has helped me express my anger, express my ambitions, express my desires, for a long time. I think I started writing in the seventh grade. I used to write to truly express what I was feeling, my problems, my desires, and everything. But now, in activism, I write to give visibility to queer women. 

There is no space for us. Especially in Africa, where no piece expresses how we love each other or talks about our stories, our experiences, or our feelings. Writing has become a militant act.

That’s the heart of your website, EmmaLInfos. What can you say about it?

It's a platform that gives queer women (lesbian, bi, trans) from all over French-speaking West Africa an opportunity to express themselves and tell their stories.

My goal is to make our voices and our experiences heard, to make us visible.

Would you say that you created the platform you needed when you were a teenager?

Yes, definitely. When you're young and you find yourself alone in your resistance, with no movement to support you, no ears to listen to you...you find yourself so lonely that you want to give up. Or you resort to talking to the people who are oppressing you - just because they are the only ears that are there for you. And of course, they keep oppressing you, even if it's gentle. 

There was a time when I needed space to ask questions about my sexuality. I ended up finding those spaces on Facebook. It wasn't much info, but at least it was done by people who came from the same country, who understood my environment. But it lacked content and depth, that’s why I wanted to create EmmaLInfos, an accessible and safe space.

Emma tells us more about the impact of her resistance and her hopes for the world in the last part. Click here to read the fourth and final part.