Defying fear: Opportunities and challenges of digital technologies for sexual and gendered minorities in Cameroon

Abstract

abstract This article analyses the political significance of the diversity of digital practices that sexual minorities exploit for visibility in and from Cameroon. It is based on a field survey conducted in Yaoundé and Douala between 2017 and 2018, as well as on a digital ethnographic survey conducted on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok between 2021 and 2022. In a context hostile to same-sex sexual practices, more and more voices are being publicly raised on social media to affirm their homosexuality, queerness, and/or trans identities. The costs of this visibility are, however, considerable and function as serious warning. Are these modes of visibility enabled by new media technologies able to influence perceptions, attitudes and policies towards sexual and gendered minorities in Cameroon? Queer visibilities online are not only an alternative public space, but a political and spatial category that makes the space of and for queer Cameroonians transnational, and questions the digital territory of contested citizenship.