Brenda Biya's Coming out and Classism in Anti-LGBTQ Laws

Speaking to French newspaper Le Parisien, Biya says her coming out was “an opportunity to send a strong message.” She says she hadn’t come out to her family prior to the Instagram post, and had been contacted by her family members to delete the post. Although the post can no longer be seen on her Instagram page, she feels it’s a statement of her identity that can help spark change away from the homophobic laws in Cameroon.

“There are plenty of people in the same situation as me who suffer because of who they are. If I can give them hope, help them feel less alone, if I can send love, I’m happy,” she says in the interview.

Same sex relations are punishable by up to five years in prison under the Cameroonian penal code. Biya hopes that her proximity to power can be a catalyst for change, even if it takes time. “It may be too soon for it to disappear completely but it could be less strict. We could first eliminate the prison sentence,” she says, adding that the laws were put in place in 1972, a decade before her father became Cameroon’s long-term ruler.

Cameroon’s presidency has yet to release a statement and it’s not expected that Biya or First Lady Chantal Biya will address Brenda’s coming out anytime soon. To some, it’s reflective of the insulation that can be afforded by queer individuals privileged by social and economic class.

“Anti-LGBT laws in Cameroon disproportionately target the poor,” Cameroonian LGBT activist Bandy Kiki wrote in a Facebook and an X post shortly after Biya’s coming out post on Instagram. “Wealth and connections create a shield for some, while others face severe consequences.” Kiki’s post was met with a lot of agreeing nods, particularly on Facebook, with one Bibowoh Rudolf stating, “I swear laws are applied only to the poor masses and those who lack connection.”

It’s highly unlikely that Biya is prosecuted for being lesbian in Cameroon, especially as she lives outside the central African country. She isn’t an entirely unique position also. During the elections season in Nigeria last year, it became public that the New York-based, British-Nigerian model, singer and queer rights activist Oyinda is President Bola Tinubu’s daughter.

In Nigeria, same sex relations are punishable by up to 14 years in prison. However, there’s a thriving, underground queer community, no doubt helped by financial class privilege. With Nigeria’s laws and overtly homophobic, deeply conservative society eliminating widespread inclusivity for LGBT folks, the spaces where queer people can simply exist without censoring themselves are limited, highly curated, and often take place in high brow areas.

It’s known that financial wellbeing and proximity to power help circumvent the law in Nigeria and across Africa, where about 30 countries have anti-gay laws. For queer Africans, being privileged does help with not being targeted, to certain degrees depending on who you are.

Earlier this year, Idris Okuneye, the internet personality popularly known as Bobrisky, was sentenced to six months in prison for mutilating the naira. The conviction was handed down without the option of the ₦50,000 ($44) fine stipulated by the law, and it prompted speculation as to whether Bobrisky, who’s referred to herself as a woman several times, was a ploy at queer erasure.

“The naira mutilation charge is obviously a flimsy one, because other visible Nigerians have been captured on camera spraying money, and they haven’t been arrested,” feminist activist Ololade Faniyitold OkayAfrica shortly after Bobrisky’s conviction.

Writing in The Republic, Timinipre Cole uses the seeming targeting of Bobrisky to explore the fallacy of class insulating queer people. “The acceptance enjoyed by queer individuals who wield significant financial power in society comes with a caveat: it is conditional upon their ability to maintain a carefully curated image of respectability.”

For someone with her social standing, one would expect that Biya’s daughter navigates being queer with the conditional insulation that she’s the daughter of a president who’s helped set her up in the upper echelon of financial safety. Notwithstanding, her move might bring some hope or succour to thos who suffer under these oppressive laws, even though there's a strong argument that this is unlikely.