The Invisibilities of Equatoguinean Queer Motherhood Revealed in Trifonia Melibea Obono’s Yo no quería ser madre (2019)

For queer women in Equatorial Guinea, already doubly marginalized as women and as queer individuals, motherhood can become another complicated identity marker, erasing queerness through the patriarchal perception of motherhood as heterosexual. In Yo no quería ser madre: Vidas forzadas de mujeres fuera de la norma (2019), Trifonia Melibea Obono gives voice to thirty Equatorial Guinean queer women through interviews in which they discuss their experiences of being forced into motherhood through rape, familial pressure, or lack of survival alternatives. Interviewees candidly discuss the difficulties of queer motherhood, touching on a range of topics including the physical pain of childbirth; the emotional distress of being rejected by families who view lesbianism as a disease, contagion, or form of witchcraft; and the necessity of leaving school after giving birth due to lack of family support. While many of these women affirm that they are unhappy in the maternal roles that were forced upon them, others report experiencing fulfilment or love for their children, establishing a multifaceted representation of motherhood throughout the interviews. For some queer Equatorial Guinean women, motherhood allows them to hide their queerness, making that aspect of their identities invisible and permitting them to pass as heterosexual in order to avoid negative familial, societal, and governmental repercussions associated with queerness in Equatorial Guinea. Yo no quería ser madre’s complex depictions of queer motherhood in Equatorial Guinea reveal the ways in which queer motherhood can simultaneously present a challenging burden for women and be employed as a survival tactic through an invisibility that attempts to shield queer women from homophobic discrimination.

Queerness in Equatorial Guinea

Although this collection of interviews was published by Egales in 2019, contextualizing Yo no quería ser madre within Equatorial Guinea’s sociohistorical background allows readers to better understand current societal attitudes toward queerness in contemporary Equatorial Guinean society. Equatorial Guinea is a country of staggering disparities of power and wealth, ruled by dictator Teodoro Obiang Nguema, who came to power after overthrowing his uncle, dictator Francisco Macías Nguema, in a 1979 coup. After discovering oil in Equatorial Guinea in the 1990s, the country became one of the richest in Africa, with “Equatorial Guinea’s GDP per capita . . . the highest in Africa and one of the highest in the world, yet the country also holds, by quite some distance, the depressing distinction of having the largest gap in the world between its per capita wealth and its human development score” (Allan 193). Life is difficult for most people in Equatorial Guinea who are not positively connected to dictator Teodoro Obiang Nguema’s regime, but women—both queer and heterosexual—are especially marginalized, often encouraged to engage in sexually exploitative relationships with men in positions of power and forced into a “‘system’ that submits girls and young women to ‘sociosexual slavery’” (Allan 148). Nine interviewees in Yo no quería ser madre describe their experiences with prostitution, a situation they are often pressured into by their families as a source of income for the family. One interviewee, a young woman of mixed Ndowé, Bisio, and Fang^[1] ethnic background who was married at eighteen, explains that, in her relationship with her family, she is “el cordón umbilical que lxs une a mi vagina, de la que esperaron dinero toda la vida. Me llaman por todo: falta comida en el congelador, falta arroz, falta . . . Falta de todo. Sacan dinero de mí, de mi pareja, de mis clientes. Es un chantaje constante” (41). A sentiment echoed in many interviews, this woman receives familial and societal messages that tie her worth to her anatomy, her ability to earn money from sexual relations, and her potential to contribute to the family’s growth by bearing children.

Roles for women, social constructions of motherhood, and attitudes toward queerness in Equatorial Guinea today are influenced by a complex mixture of cultural beliefs held by a variety of indigenous ethnic groups, including the Fang. As “Guinean society was (and is) far from homogenous” (Allan 67), in this article, I will not attempt to outline the complex ways in which various Guinean ethnic groups allowed for and limited agency for women, both before and after Spanish colonialism. I will, however, briefly mention Okenve-Martínez’s dissertation, Equatorial Guinea 1927-1979: A New African Tradition, which describes “patrilineal” (45) societies in Equatorial Guinea before Spanish colonialism, where social standing was determined by gender and age, with men and older community members enjoying higher status. While women could access pockets of power (such as women-only religious cults related to marriage and fertility issues [Okenve-Martínez 76]), their “high value was based on their role as food producers, but above all, as child bearers for the family group” (Okenve-Martínez 64–5). Motherhood was not viewed as a question of choice but rather as a role that all women were expected to undertake.

This particular historic oppression of women found at the intersection of gender, sexuality, and maternal status is furthermore impacted by the colonial relationship between Equatorial Guinea and Spain.^[2] Spanish dictator Francisco Franco’s Sección Femenina, the women’s branch of the Falange (an extreme nationalist political group), played a major role in the Hispanicization of Equatorial Guinea upon their arrival in the country in 1954 (Stehrenberger 232). Their mission was to transmit Catholic conservative moral values of self-sacrifice and chastity to women, espousing the message that a woman’s main goal in life was to be a wife and mother, and that by serving husband and child, she was serving her country as a good citizen. In 1964, the Sección Femenina began to build “escuelas de hogar, [where] ‘native’ children were vaccinated, and indígenas were trained to become clean, obedient housewives. They also started to send girls and young women to Spain in order to teach them in albergues de Verano and Sección Femenina schools. . . . the Sección Femenina elite wanted colonized female subjects who were ‘almost the same, but not quite’” (Stehrenberger 240–1). The Sección Femenina’s curriculum included instruction on Spanish cooking, cleanliness, skills like house decorating and flower arranging, “the arts of conversing like a lady, laughing delicately” (Medina-Doménech 86), as well as the imposition of strict, Catholic sexual controls and gender roles. Although I have not found any evidence of the Sección Femenina explicitly speaking out against homosexuality, this stance is implied through their emphasis on the heteronormative family and their adherence to the teachings of the Catholic Church. During the colonial period, as Okenve-Martínez affirms, the Catholic Church in Equatorial Guinea was “especially concerned with everything that had to do with marriage” (192-3), following Francisco Franco’s mandate that “by making Catholics, the missionaries were also making Spaniards” (190). While homosexuality—particularly lesbianism—might have been officially overlooked and made invisible, indigenous Equatorial Guinean populations affected by Spanish colonization would have understood that homosexuality was not accepted by the Catholic Church or the Spanish colonizers.

While Obono’s interviewees are too young to have had direct contact with the Sección Femenina, they often express an internalized homophobia that can be linked in part to the aftermath of the Sección Femenina and the Catholic Church, combined with the traditional gender roles and expectations espoused by Fang and other indigenous communities. As Caroline Beard Colquhoun explains, when discussing societal constructions of gender and motherhood in Equatorial Guinea, “existe un solapamiento dinámico de múltiples opresiones” (217); to fully understand contemporary Equatorial Guinean cultural attitudes about these topics, Spain’s colonial presence in Equatorial Guinea must be taken into account, as well as the influence of indigenous ethnic cultures. Present-day Fang communities in Equatorial Guinea maintain strict roles and limitations for women, which continue to be closely tied to their reproductive capabilities. As author Trifonia Melibea Obono explains in an interview with Lawrence Schimel, the translator of the English version of La bastarda, “The sexuality of the Fang woman doesn’t exist. Not even the heterosexual woman has a right to her sexuality, the only thing expected of her is reproduction, that’s it. My novel advocates for this right for women: the right to have a sexuality.” While there is little space for heterosexual Fang women to express their sexuality, the situation is even more difficult for queer women in Equatorial Guinea. Interviewees in Yo no quería ser madre frequently discuss how they are oppressed due to their gender and sexual orientation, any sense of individual desire or identity contrasted against cultural and societal expectations that all women will become mothers.

Before entering into a detailed analysis of how motherhood is experienced by queer individuals in Yo no quería ser madre, I first wish to consider the nuances of the identity categories of queerness and womanhood within the Equatorial Guinean context. Queer identities are largely ignored within the Fang community, whose language does not have a word for “lesbian,” as Obono explains in the introduction to her novel La bastarda. Such a “lack of vocabulary culturally and socially marginalizes individuals that do not conform to communal ideas for sexuality” (Ellison 74), adding to the isolation of queer individuals in Equatorial Guinea who struggle to even put a name to their experience and compounding the sense of being an outsider. Ellison writes about the “peripheral linguistic existence that gay and lesbian individuals face in Fang culture” (75), described by Obono in her novels La bastarda and Las mujeres hablan mucho y mal. Using a language that has not developed any terms to discuss the complexities of sexual orientations creates challenges for discussing the lived realities of individuals whose identities are more complex than the language available to them.^[3] In the subtitle of Yo no quería ser madre, Obono describes her interviewees with the term “women”: “Vidas forzadas de mujeres fuera de la norma.” Given the way in which interviewees describe their lives and identities, some of these individuals could easily be labeled as bisexual, nonbinary, or trans when read through a Western lens; however, I do not wish to impose labels on these individuals with which they do not identify. As each culture creates its own understandings of sexual identities, as well as the languages and unique selections of words (with a range of implications) to define and discuss these sexual identities, I have opted to use the generic umbrella term of queer women when I refer to the interviewees.^[4] Although Obono herself uses the word women to describe her interviewees, throughout the interviews, Obono and her interviewees frequently employ the gender-neutral ending “x” (“amigxs” [34], “ellxs” [133], “hijxs” [227]) rather than “o” or “a,” endings that would denote masculinity or femininity. The use of the “x” is an intentional way of broadening the possibilities of gender identity and expression, perhaps more accessible than searching for a term to encapsulate identities that may be more complex that of woman or lesbian. These considerations of identity necessitate further thought about the label of mother. For those interviewees who might not fully identify as women, it is possible that motherhood is not the best way in which to categorize their experience of the parent/child relationship. As none of the interviewees specifically conceptualize a parental identity outside of the definitions of motherhood, I cannot explore this idea further, but it is worth noting that terms such as mother and woman may not fully encompass the experience of all interviewees in the collection.

Yo no quería ser madre, like the majority of Trifonia Melibea Obono’s work, is notable for addressing topics such as women’s rights and queerness in a country that is “among the most censored in the world” (Allan 135). Born in Equatorial Guinea in 1982, Obono is a journalist, political scientist, and professor who holds a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies and Equality Policies from the University of Salamanca in Spain (“Trifonia Melibea Obono”). She currently works as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany (“Strong Women”). In addition to her scholarly publications, Obono has published six novels and one collection of essays (Yo no quería ser madre).^[5] La bastarda (2016), Obono’s novel about a young Equatorial Guinean woman’s journey to understand and accept her homosexuality, has the distinction of being the first LGBTQIA+ novel in the Equatoguinean literary corpus (Figueroa-Vásquez 37), as well as the first Equatoguinean novel written by a woman to be translated to English (Schimel).^[6]

In Equatorial Guinea, homosexuality is not officially illegal, but it is “not tolerated by the regime, and there is no protection against discrimination based on sexuality or indeed on gender identity” (Allan 139). Until 2022, the Equatoguinean Penal Code was based on the “Ley de vagos y maleantes” from Francoist Spain, under which, the government could easily classify queer people as “dangerous and antisocial” groups (Valloni 5). According to a report published in 2024 by Somos Parte del Mundo (SPDM), an Equatoguinean LGBTQIA+ collective that fights for acknowledgement, acceptance, and increased rights and better living conditions for the queer demographic in Equatorial Guinea, the new Penal Code does not stop the government from following the antiquated and homophobic Spanish law (1). This allows the government to continue to control and punish queerness through non-official means that support and encourage homophobic stances in schools,^[7] detainments and torture of queer people by the Ministerio de Seguridad y de Defensa Nacional, conversion practices carried out by churches and curanderos, and violence perpetrated on the streets and within families. As a 2020 report by Somos Parte del Mundo explains, “La homofobia de Estado se practicaba a puertas cerradas” (“Informe de Homofobia …” 5). By not officially taking a stance against homophobic violence, the Equatoguinean government ensures that the country remains fraught with dangers for its queer citizens. Preceding the interviews in Yo no quería ser madre, Obono explains the state of human rights for queer people in Equatorial Guinea, stating, “Es verdad que las leyes guineanas no castigan la homosexualidad, una buena noticia; sin embargo, tampoco penalizan la homofobia. Por lo tanto, el vacío legal convierte al país en un paraíso delictivo para las prácticas de la homofobia, hoy respaldadas por las tradiciones bantúes y cristianas católicas, hegemónicas y dominantes en el país” (24).^[8] While on a superficial level, the absence of laws prohibiting homosexuality may appear to be positive or progressive, in reality, it means that no protections have been put in place for the vulnerable LGBTQIA+ population in Equatorial Guinea, making it easier to discriminate against this group.

The Equatorial Guinean government’s silence about queerness and refusal to establish policies to protect this demographic is an oppressive silence that results in a dangerous invisibility for queer Equatoguineans. The government has gone as far as to allege that homosexuality does not exist in Equatorial Guinea (“Informe de Homofobia …” 5), effectively shutting down any conversations about resources or protections for queer Equatoguineans. Through this assertion, the Equatoguinean government sustains the myth that queerness is an un-African colonial construct, which is a frequently perpetuated phenomenon throughout wider African culture.^[9] Silencing conversations about queerness within Equatorial Guinea also prevents the rest of the world from fully understanding the unique nature of queerness in Equatorial Guinea. In the preface to Yo no quería ser madre, Ignacio Elpidio Domínguez Ruiz states that sexual diversity in Equatorial Guinea comprises “una realidad que nos era desconocida” (14) and that this collection of interviews continues La bastarda’s mission of breaking through “la tradicional invisibilidad de las mujeres en los estudios y en el activismo por la diversidad sexual y de género” (14). Obono’s work has been instrumental in bringing visibility to the experiences, challenges, and joys of the queer community in a country that makes it difficult to acknowledge, much less make space for, these stories.

Motherhood in Equatorial Guinea

While the queer women whom Obono interviews describe various aspects of their lives, the complex topic of motherhood is the common thread running through each conversation. From the way in which interviewees discuss the topic, it is clear that their definitions of motherhood are closely tied to definitions of womanhood. As women, they are consistently pressured by family and society to have children, as an oft-repeated societal belief is that a woman “no es considerada como tal hasta que da a luz” (33). In addition to solidifying a woman’s identity in the eyes of family and society, motherhood is constructed as a patriotic duty. Dictator Teodoro Obiang Nguema has given speeches on Equatoguinean women’s responsibility to give birth “porque Guinea debe crecer en población y embarazarse es un deber por la patria” (95), which leads one queer woman interviewed to remark sarcastically that her “vientre es propiedad del Jefe de Estado” (96). The pervasiveness of compulsory heterosexuality (the assumption that everyone is heterosexual)^[10] and other patriarchal beliefs make it difficult for queer women to speak out against the rapes and forced marriages to which they are subjugated. The collective nature of Fang culture increases the pressure on women to have children in order to continue bloodlines and add to generational legacies. One interviewee explains, “Si eres homosexual y eres madre, te dicen, al menos tienes hijxs; tú puedes seguir siendo una desgraciada, pero has dejado herencia” (70). This is a story repeated in many interviews, of families compelling their queer daughters to have children as a form of replacement, casting these women out and considering them “lost” to the family due to their sexual identities. Several interviewees describe how their families have taken their children away from them, so they won’t be “contaminated” by their mothers’ queerness, seen as “una enfermedad incurable” (46). The idea that queerness is an illness connects to the myth of queerness as un-African, as it is often described by interviewees or their families as a “European disease” (Currier 124) that can be “cured” through religion and the “corrective” rape of heterosexual marriage.^[11] Even though queer women’s family members demand they have children to contribute to the familial generational legacy, the children birthed by queer women and taken by their extended families are often mistreated or neglected, as the social stigma of being connected to an “impure” mother remains tied to her children. One woman, whose son was taken from her by her family, indicates that the concept of familial care and generational connectedness only exists for heterosexual individuals. She laments, “Siempre que hablamos de mi hijo sale la frase ‘por el bien de la tribu’; ¿yo a qué tribu pertenezco entonces?” (46). Seen as a child-bearing tool for her family, once she completed this role, she was abandoned by her family and community. In other cases, families disown their queer daughters and the children to whom they have been forced to give birth, leaving these women to care for unwanted (or at the very least, unplanned for) children without the economic or emotional support network of family.

Although queer women are often coerced into forced marriages and pregnancies by societal and familial pressure, queer mothers in Equatorial Guinea face societal stigma, hardships, and violence even when they attempt to meet their families’ demands. In Yo no quería ser madre, the following depressing themes emerge as part of the experience of being a queer woman in Equatorial Guinea: rape, forced prostitution, children taken by family members, being forced to leave school, and beatings and jail sentences because of their sexual orientation. Fourteen interviewees describe in explicit detail the beatings and physical abuse they have suffered at the hands of law enforcement, family members, and strangers, making it clear that Equatorial Guinea is not a safe place for queer individuals. Over half of the interviewees repeat language they have heard from their families or society that describes lesbianism as a potentially contagious disease or form of witchcraft. One woman had her children taken away by the Ministerio de Asuntos Sociales, with the justification that she would infect her children with “mi mal espíritu lésbico, mi brujería y costumbres poco africanas” (39), this final phrase a reference to the myth that queerness is un-African. Another interviewee who was married with four children by age twenty four still could not meet her family’s expectations. After her husband left her and stopped contributing economically to the family, her mother told her that “lesbianas como yo [la entrevistada] no valen para nada. No son personas. Son putas todas” (117). Many families of interviewees reinforce the patriarchal message that women’s worth is tied completely to their relationships with men.

As most of the interviewees have been forced into motherhood, these women (not surprisingly) present an overwhelmingly negative vision of motherhood. In Yo no quería ser madre, fourteen out of thirty interviewees speak of the pressure from their families, often most intensely from their mothers, to have children. Seven interviewees speak of the trauma caused by the physical pain of childbirth, amplified by the fact that the interviewees describe giving birth as young as eleven years old. One woman shares how she gave birth via c-section, only to have the surgeon leave some cotton inside her, leading to another painful surgery without anesthesia, which is difficult to come by in Bata (38). Seven interviewees who were forced into pregnancy report hating their babies or being unable to feel an emotional connection to them. One interviewee describes her aversion to seeing her baby for the first time after giving birth, saying, “Lo trajo mi madre a mis brazos y dijo: ‘Se parece a su padre, qué bien’. Menos mal que no me lo entregó. Se lo hubiera tirado o echado al suelo. No me gustan lxs niñxs y sigo sin hacerme a la idea de que son míxs. Lxs veo amontonadxs, qué horror” (120). These women share about their extreme lack of reproductive choices. A Bubi woman explains how her traumatic experience of repeated rape and lack of agency over her body, all sanctioned by her family whose goal was to get her pregnant, made it impossible for her to feel any positive emotion toward the child to whom she gave birth, stating, “No te quise nunca. Vete con tus abuelxs. Ellxs decidieron traerte. Yo solo aporté una vagina, nueve meses de violaciones y nueve meses de intentos de suicidio” (88). Being treated as less than human, a machine to be used for her reproductive organs, leads her to suicidal ideation and other mental health struggles. Not only do these queer women speak about the pain of childbirth and the lack of emotional connection with their babies, but they also acknowledge the limitations to their lives caused by these forced pregnancies. Many interviewees describe having to leave school after multiple pregnancies due to childcare responsibilities. One queer mother laments, “Con lxs hijxs no soy libre. No puedo salir. Ya no voy a la escuela. No tengo vida. Por culpa de lxs hijxs no tengo libertad. No lxs pedí” (121). Not only have many of the women interviewed lost their agency to make decisions for their own bodies, but motherhood further excludes them from educational opportunities and extends their social invisibility.

In addition to the possibility of being trapped in unwanted heterosexual relationships, many women in Equatorial Guinea have internalized extremely patriarchal, misogynist gender roles that they repeat in their queer relationships. Several interviewees insist that in their lesbian relationships, one individual plays the role of “la hombre” and the other of “la mujer,” describing how “la hombre” can sexually touch their partner’s vagina, but “la hombre” never permits sexual touching of their vagina, reminiscent of stone butch culture in the 1950s and 1960s in the U.S. (144). Within the context of the United States, the term “stone butch” refers to a particular type of female masculinity in same-sex relationships between women, wherein the stone butch individual “is defined as not being treated sexually as a female” (“Stone Butch”). Stone butches in the 1950s and 1960s had no desire to be men (a common misconception), but rather they were empowered through subverting gender expectations, presenting in masculine clothing as “masculine, as non-men” (Rylan).^[12] Stone butches could touch their partners (often described as femmes) sexually, but they received sexual pleasure from “other forms of contact, often through friction and wearing dildos” (“Stone Butch”). While the stone butch identity has evolved, in the 1950s and 60s, this identity category represented a masculine, lesbian expression characterized by stoicism, emotional unavailability, and at times, aggression. In various interviews in Yo no quería ser madre, interviewees talk about their partners or themselves using language very similar to that of stone butch culture, particularly in the division of gender roles between a more stereotypically masculine partner and a more stereotypically feminine partner. While some of the relationships described in Yo no quería ser madre are reminiscent of butch/femme culture, this does not mean that they are exactly the same, or that they can necessarily be categorized as positive. While stone butch culture in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s was a revolutionary way to break with gender stereotypes, the relationships described by Obono’s interviewees often highlight the negative aspects of these relationships for the more stereotypically feminine partner and the ways in which queer women continue to be oppressed by misogynistic gender expectations. Interviewees describe how the “hombre” generally refuses to help around the house with domestic chores and may physically abuse their partner. One woman in such a relationship explains that, “Aquí, en Guinea, las parejas homosexuales se componen de dos figuras: la hombre y la mujer. No lo entiendo. No es lo que veo en la televisión. Y, si haces el papel de mujer—como yo—en una relación, tu pareja te carga los hijxs que la han obligado a parir. Eres la madre; ella hace de padre, padre que solo ellas mismas entienden” (40). Even within lesbian relationships, then, some queer women are forced into motherhood and maternal roles where they are unsupported and oppressed, while other queer women invest in gender stereotypes that benefit them at their partners’ expense.

While most interviewees in Yo no quería ser madre resent or even hate the maternal role that they have been forced into, or their children, a few have a more positive reaction to motherhood, including those who had always wanted children and those who come to love them with time. The last interview in the collection is titled “Quiero ser madre”; the woman interviewed here speaks of her future children with desire, saying, “Quiero tener un bebé. Quiero ser madre. Necesito darle mi amor a alguien. Dos bebés estarían bien. Son mi futuro. Son lxs que me van a cuidar el día de mañana” (293). This woman expresses both the emotional and practical importance of children. In a society where many queer women are rejected by their biological families, a baby represents the potential for a positive emotional connection. Thinking of the future, children have the potential to replace the larger family as a care network for aging parents. In her article, “Equatorial Guinean Women’s Roles After Migration to Spain,” Yolanda Aixelà Cabré writes about some of the potential positives of motherhood in contemporary Equatorial Guinean society, which can be “a strategy for women to weave sociofamilial networks and to gain spaces of visibility, authority and respect” (20), reinforcing a woman’s status in the family and community after giving birth. In a society where women’s means of gaining power and status are limited, and their well-being often depends on “forming the type of relationship in which men take responsibility for supporting them” (Aixelà Cabré 2), motherhood can be a form of empowerment. Motherhood is not a guarantee of status, of course, and it should be noted that the inability to bear children often elicits scorn from communities, as in many West African societies, childless women are seen as “the ultimate betrayal” (Montuori 49), making this a precarious strategy for gaining and maintaining societal status and protection.

Equatoguinean Queer Motherhood as Invisibility

In Equatorial Guinea, living as a queer woman provides a certain visibility that can often be tied to danger. In her interview, one woman recounts how a lesbian couple was detained and punished in Añisok, commenting that “Guinea no puede cambiar” (62). After years of living together, a neighbor reported the two women. The couple was paraded through town, made to carry a banner stating they were witchcraft-practicing lesbians. Their photos were taken and displayed throughout the town, and during the day, the women were tied up in the entrance of the police station, where citizens came to “distraerse mirando, riéndose” (62). This example clearly shows how, in a society that punishes queerness, visibility can be a powerful tactic of control. By distributing photos of the women around the city, the police ensured that homophobic citizens would continue to engage in the work of harassing these women through insults, humiliations, and perhaps even violence. Visibility implies risk in a society that offers no protection or acceptance of queer people. For queer Equatoguinean women, motherhood can serve as an attempt to make their sexual orientation invisible, as motherhood as viewed through the lens of compulsory heterosexuality is coded as a heterosexual role. In her 2004 book, The Cultural Politics of Emotion, Sara Ahmed writes about the “everydayness of compulsory heterosexuality” (147), how it has permeated societies and cultures so completely that it is difficult for us to conceptualize “moments of ceremony (birth, marriage, death)” (147) outside of this framework. In this way, when queer Equatorial Guinean mothers are interpreted by wider society as heterosexual by default, compulsory heterosexuality simultaneously shields them from the dangers of being out as queer and perpetuates the violence of silencing an important part of their identities (queerness) in order to highlight another (motherhood).

In Equatorial Guinea, as in many places around the world, queer people receive the message that they must remain hidden so that others can continue to enjoy the comfort of their world view of compulsory heterosexuality unchallenged. Sara Ahmed uses the metaphor of a comfortable chair to explain the pervasiveness of compulsory heterosexuality, explaining, “Say you are sinking into a comfortable chair. . . . comfort is about the fit between body and object: my comfortable chair may be awkward for you, with your differently-shaped body. . . . To be comfortable is to be so at ease with one’s environment that it is hard to distinguish where one’s body ends and the world begins” (148). Compulsory heterosexuality, therefore, demands that society make heterosexual individuals comfortable by making invisible all those who are not heterosexual, who must attempt to fit themselves into a chair that was not built for them. Of course, in Equatorial Guinea, the stakes of not conforming to the guidelines of compulsory heterosexuality are higher than in some other places, and those queer individuals who do not abide their discomfort in silence face a range of negative repercussions, including physical violence, incarceration,^[13] and even death.

The ways in which queer women in Equatorial Guinea are made invisible or choose invisibility are as diverse as the interviewees themselves. Their invisibility often has negative implications, leading to a severe lack of queer representation in the country, both hindering conversations about the topic and facilitating the government’s ability to remain silent and offer no legal protections for the queer community. For other individuals, the ability to hide their queer identities through motherhood implies a reprieve from persecution and is sometimes a necessary means of survival. On a governmental and societal level, the silencing or erasure of queer lives often traps this demographic into an invisible, forgotten, unprotected, and undereducated group. The Equatoguinean government systematically dismantles queerness by not creating policies to protect queer citizens, not establishing any language with which to talk about queerness, and actively ostracizing queer students from the educational system that might have helped them to become integrated into society as adults. Many social and religious beliefs in Equatorial Guinea sustain that coerced motherhood through rape and forced marriages “quitaría el lesbianismo si [la mujer] daba a luz” (76), erasing queer identities from society. If these tactics do not “work,” the next step for many families is to submit their queer daughters to emotionally and physically painful religious rituals in an attempt to make them heterosexual. Several of Obono’s interviewees describe the religious rituals to which they have been subjected at the request or imposition of their families. Sometimes the women themselves internalize this homophobic message, hoping that religion will change their sexual orientation. One interviewee from Annobón claims that this process worked for her, asserting that the “iglesia me ayudó a dejar de ser pecadora. Me curó de ser lesbiana” (67). Her language, calling herself a “pecadora” and later “una mancillada” (68), a stain on the Church and her family, clearly shows that she has been conditioned to think of her queer identity as something that must be cleaned and erased, made invisible.

For those queer Equatoguinean women who actively seek out queer communities, or for those who are questioning and attempting to understand their own identities, the lack of queer visibility in Equatorial Guinea creates a shrunken, limited world. One woman speaks of the isolation of trying to keep herself out of the public eye, for her own protection. She says:

Mi cuarto era mi casa. Allí comía, cagaba, respiraba. Después de clase—estudiaba en el turno de la mañana—, esperaba la noche en algún lugar. A las once y doce, cuando la gente ya dormía y estaba segura de que no me vería nadie, regresaba al barrio como una rata a su agujero. Porque, si me veía la gente, se encendían las alarmas. (61)

For her own safety, she felt that she could not be seen in public, as others would easily identify her as queer. As many queer people feel the need to hide, either by confining themselves to limited physical spaces or by escaping into heterosexual relationships, there is little open representation of queerness in Equatorial Guinea. Another interviewee contrasts the smaller town she lives in to the larger city of Malabo, where she was excited to see other queer women out in public, saying, “Me vine a Malabo y, ¡Dios!, las vi. A todas. A las lesbianas. Me di cuenta de que Añonman no era la única. Había más gente” (58). Her animated and emotional reaction to merely seeing other queer women shows the power of representation, which is crucial for identity formation but also a dangerous form of expression for queer people in Equatorial Guinea in many spaces.

For those queer women for whom the safest way forward is to pass in heterosexual relationships, the need to negate their queer identities often leads to sexual exploitation and situations that are mentally and physically harmful for them. To maintain invisibility, it is difficult for queer women to speak out against the rapes and forced marriages to which they are subjugated. One queer woman entered into a heterosexual relationship with a male friend of hers to relieve pressure from her family. Although the friend knew she was not romantically or sexually interested in him, he began to rape her, and she found herself trapped in a situation where it was difficult to speak out. As she explains, “La gente decía que, cuando tu novio te tocaba, te gustaba, no te molestabas. Para eso se llamaba novio. Si éramos novios, no entenderían por qué me molestaba que me metiera cosas. Hasta entonces, en mi vagina solo habían entrado los dedos y las lenguas de otras niñas, nunca un pene” (34). This woman, and others in similar situations, are often left with very limited or nonexistent social support networks; even those that they hope will be on their side (close friends or family members) can turn on them and abuse them, due to their socially vulnerable status. Many women interviewed report the need to use drugs in order to have sex with men, as well as having severe adverse physical reactions after sex, including the need to vomit (66). For those queer women who are more masculine in appearance, they may choose marriage and maternity as the only form of survival, as their appearance does not allow them to pass as heterosexual in public. One masculine-presenting woman explains, “Estoy con este hombre, mi marido, por necesidad. Estoy con él para que la gente me respete, para tener un hijo, por dinero. Ahora tengo un hogar. . . . Mira mi cuerpo: soy muy masculina . . . así que no tengo otra opción de encontrar trabajo. Me echan de todos lados, hasta de los trabajos de hogar” (66-7). A more masculine-presenting appearance means that this woman is othered even more by society, making the outward markers of heterosexuality of a husband and child crucial in order to not disrupt the comfort of her heteropatriarchal society.

The pressure that many queer women in Equatorial Guinea feel to make themselves invisible often leaves space for internalized homophobia to negate their queer identities even to themselves. Much like the woman who hopefully asserted that religious rituals “cured” her homosexuality, many queer women have internalized the message that, to be a “real” (heterosexual) woman, you must have children. One interviewee explains her fervent desire to be a mother, stating that her pregnancy, “me ayudó mucho. Desde el fondo de mi corazón, quería un reflejo mío. Quería hacer el papel de la mujer en la tierra. No quería mancillar el honor de la Virgen María” (68). This explanation espouses the societal and religious message that a woman’s worth is tied to her reproductive capabilities. Some queer Equatoguinean women initially hide their identities from society as a form of protection, only to truly lose themselves to internalized homophobia and an invisibility that becomes very real.

While most of the women interviewed in Yo no quería ser madre are unhappy with the motherhood roles into which they have been forced, for some, the queer invisibility produced by motherhood provides a way forward, a reprieve from discrimination, and the opportunity to survive and potentially resist compulsory heteronormativity in the future. I must be careful to reiterate that, while motherhood may allow these queer women to survive by passing as heterosexual, sheltering them from discrimination and providing small opportunities for self-expression or perhaps resistance, I do not wish to overstate the small amount of agency these women have in a society that doubly oppresses them. In her insightful analysis of Yo no quería ser madre and La bastarda, Caroline Beard Colquhoun affirms that “la maternidad decididamente no es ningún sitio de poder sino un gesto de rendición [que] representa un sacrificio personal en nombre de la supervivencia” (228). As a tactic of survival, motherhood does seem to lighten social pressure enough for moments of reprieve or happiness. Several queer women interviewed describe how being in a socially recognized relationship with a man, or having a baby, decreases societal scrutiny. One queer woman’s marriage to a man lessened the gossip “sobre mis acompañantes femeninas. Me tuve que esconder en una relación con esto que vive aquí conmigo, mi marido” (65). The physical changes to the body during pregnancy can also serve as a form of protection, especially for queer Equatorial Guinean women who do not present in stereotypically feminine ways. One interviewee chose to get pregnant “para no alarmar. Todo el mundo hablaba de mi cuerpo como algo feo y de varón. Cuando me quedaba embarazada, entonces decían que era normal” (58). A pregnant body is an outward marker that reads of heterosexuality, of a body conforming to patriarchal expectations of womanhood. As Sara Ahmed explains, societies permeated by compulsory heterosexuality often demand that queer individuals do not reveal their queerness in social spaces, as the “availability of comfort for some bodies may depend on the labour of others, and the burden of concealment” (149). As the queer women interviewed have learned, if they present a heterosexual appearance to the world, they may be granted enough space to pursue their authentic queer identities in private, or at the very least, they will not suffer discrimination and violence.

Although this analysis has focused on the many ways in which queer women choose to (or are made to become) invisible through heterosexual relationships and motherhood, Trifonia Melibea Obono’s work provides a glimpse of queer visibility and the hope for a different future that such visibility might provide. Both in Yo no quería ser madre and La bastarda, described by Isaac Veysey-White as a “depiction of feminine and queer escape made reality” (69), Trifonia Melibea Obono engages in the important work of making queer lives in Equatorial Guinea visible on an international scale, presenting a multifaceted representation of the complex lived realities of this demographic. In Yo no quería ser madre, some of the interviewees demonstrate small ways in which they claim their identities and visibility, at times with the help of supportive family members. One interviewee remembers how, as a child, her mother would buy clothing for her siblings but give her money to buy her own clothes, viewing this as “su forma de respetar mi identidad” (135). Another interviewee casually mentions that her grandmother lived openly as a lesbian. Yet another speaks to the hope of the internet for finding communities: “Me busqué un ordenador y me enamoré de las nuevas tecnologías. Yo existo en las redes sociales” (61). Although Equatorial Guinea provides few physical spaces of acceptance and visibility, some queer women find community in virtual spaces or in the quiet acknowledgements of those around them.

Finally, in these interviews, the women who refuse to idealize or even accept their roles as mothers present a message of resistance to compulsory heterosexuality and an alternative representation of what life could be like for Equatorial Guinean women, queer or not. To begin to separate the identity categories of woman and mother is a challenge to a patriarchal structure that seeks to keep women oppressed in narrow roles and definitions. Sara Ahmed writes about the function of pleasure for queer individuals in patriarchal societies, questioning “how the enjoyment of social and sexual relations that are designated as ‘non-(re)productive’ can function as forms of political disturbance in an affective economy organized around the principle that pleasure is only ethical as an incentive or reward for good conduct” (146). For queer mothers to assert that they do not want their children or that they do not feel fulfilled by the experience of motherhood is a form of resistance to social and religious narratives that attempt to confine them in narrow definitions of identity. As one Equatoguinean woman, who is not in a heterosexual relationship, shares, “Yo soy libre, puedo salir a pasear. Una mujer casada con un hombre o de novia de un hombre no tiene ese derecho. Puedo elegir no parir. Una mujer guineana heterosexual y casada no tiene esta libertad. Menos mal que soy homosexual” (100). While some queer Equatorial Guinean women can find the trappings of heterosexuality necessary for survival, there are others who find ways to live outside of these structures, offering crucial representation and hope for a future wherein Equatoguinean women truly could decide if and when motherhood was the right choice for them.

This essay collection provides a complex portrait of what it means to be a queer woman and mother in a country that doesn’t have the words to begin to name or understand queerness, adding much needed nuance to the conversation about connections between motherhood and sexual identity. Interviewees often describe motherhood as an unsought burden that was foisted upon them, making their queer identities invisible. This invisibility can provide benefits, as queer mothers (interpreted as heterosexual by society) are protected from homophobic violence, but this invisibility enacts a different form of violence by erasing a crucial aspect of these individuals’ identities. When queer women are forced into motherhood, they are furthermore robbed of their agency, making it difficult to foster any meaningful positive relationships with their children and extended families who have condoned the forced pregnancies. While large sociocultural changes are needed in Equatorial Guinea to improve the lived experiences of all Equatoguinean women, the voices of dissent in Yo no quería ser madre stake their claim, a small marker of visibility in a society that systematically works to make queer women invisible.