Weaponising Digital Architecture: Queer Nigerian Instagram Users and Digital Visual Activism

Abstract

The body and its portrayal are significant to the politics of gender identity and sexuality. As Instagram constitutes a public domain for self- and group-representation, I appropriate its affordances in the interrogation of queer visibility and digital visual activism within the Nigerian queer community. The central assumption is that the images and their accompanying texts are ideology-laden and consequently become entrenched in the battle for visibility against heteronormativity. I pay attention to six purposively selected queer Nigerian Instagram handles and cull ten representative images for analysis. I integrate the contextual affordances of hashtags and photo-tagging in my discussion of how Instagram contributes to and nourishes public queer discourses in a homophobic space like Nigeria. I conclude that these images as semiotic resources facilitate the decryption of queer marginality and mainstream queer narratives digitally.

1. Introduction

Within many creative ventures and spaces, art has been utilised as a vent for the expression of repressed feelings and opinions as well as for foregrounding the realities of marginalised communities who attempt to break the boundaries which dominant groups or ideologies have constructed against them [1]. These vents are mainly invigorated through protest art forms. Protest art of course has diverse manifestations, ranging from the visual, physical, musical or theatrical. Oftentimes too, beyond the intention or manipulation of the art creator, protest art may be ideologically motivated or political in view of their context of creation or execution. Thus, interpretations of the dimensions and implications of protest arts may emanate from the consumers or viewers or coalesce the intentions of the creator and those of the consumers. What is essential is that protest art provokes reactions and seek to draw attention to issues within the society. This aligns with the claim by renowned novelist and Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison that “All good art is political! And the ones that try hard not to be political are political by saying, ‘We love the status quo’” ([2]: 2). Regardless of the various possibilities of mediations in the interpretation of protest art however, the essence of their creations is for the contestation and protestation of social injustices. Consequently, in this article, I extend the manifestations of visual protest art to the digital space and contextualise digital visual representations as protest art within the context of queer visibility and the contestation of heteronormativity. Specifically, I interrogate queer positive images on Instagram as instantiated by Nigerian queer users, and this is geared towards examining the place of semiotic modes – images and text – in the affirmation of queer-positivity and in contesting the repression represented by heterosexuality.

Several studies have explored the place of protest art in queer activism. For instance, Tessa [3] identified that ‘queer visual artists and activists in South Africa are using their practice to counter and dismantle institutional racism, sexism and homophobia’. Chin [4] examined ‘the role of the arts in the relationship between urban governmental institutions and queer and transgender people of color (QTPOC) community organizations’. Chin’s study concluded that ‘the arts serve as the linchpin between QTPOC efforts to counter the intertwined mechanisms of racism, sexism, transphobia and homophobia, and municipal imperatives to promote economic growth and address the social exclusion of marginalized populations’ (ibid.: iv). Burk [5] engaged the diversity of LGBTQ art in the United States of America and submitted that ‘LGBTQ artists maintain a position of marginality in order to critique dominant social norms, and use art as a means to document marginalized communities and promote subversive messages’. Rosendahl [6] also considered the role of musical discourse in queer agency. More specifically, the study focused on the role of musical discourse at the annual Toronto pride festival in the negotiation of social power and identity within the queer community, and observed that ‘[g]endered and racialized groups used musical discourse to challenge power structures’ (xi). In these studies, there is an identification of the significance of protest art in queer advocacy particularly in combating the structures of heteronormativity which forcefully push queer existence on to the margins of societal visibility.

In Nigeria, studies on queer visibility are only now just becoming mainstream and gaining traction, with scholarly interventions spanning literary texts and movies, as well as others which come from the perspectives of sociology, psychology and education [7, 8, 9]. In the current study, I interrogate how Nigerian queer users use images as forms of protest art on their handles. Central to my interrogations is the question: How is visual activism negotiated as a strategy of resistance by Nigerian queer users of Instagram? A key assumption in this study is that queer-positive images by Nigerian queer Instagram users represent attempts to challenge societally-legitimised and dominant narratives around heteronormativity. In addition, their visual appeal help in asserting queer visibility within the liberating affordance of the digital space. Consequently, one can identity these ‘deviant’ users as recognising the influence of digital visual representations and perceive these representations as integral to contesting the marginalisation occasioned by gender ideology, sexism and homophobia. I further assert that these activist strains which currently manifest within the digital space are ultimately expected to trickle down to the physical space as the Nigerian queer community invigorates its advocacy for societal acceptance and legal acknowledgement.

2. Being queer in Nigeria

Representation is critical to marginalised communities, including those who identify as queer. Halperin [10] perhaps best captures this use of ‘queer’ when he states that:

Queer is by definition whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant. There is nothing in particular to which it necessarily refers. It is an identity without an essence. ‘Queer’ then demarcates not a positivity but a positionality vis-à-vis the normative – a positionality that is not restricted to lesbians and gay men.

Although Dreger [11] affirms that “anatomy is not going to tell us for sure what sex is all about” especially in view of the identification of the fluidity of sexual categories, in most contemporary Nigerian societies and cultures, male and female exist as the recognised gender dichotomies while heterosexuality is represented as the normative sexual identity. Consequently, gender categories and sexual identities that extend those earlier identified are regarded as ‘abhorrent’ ([12]: 128), unacceptable and non-normative. The marginalisation stems from the need to control the performance of sexuality since it is regarded as a ‘highly value laden terrain’ ([13]:36). This identification is in line with the above excerpt from Halperin on the definition of queerness. The consequence of this definition and typecasting is that such queer individuals are disempowered and their identities are made illegitimate since they are repressed by the dominant groups.

While the identification of marginalisation and repression of people who present as queer is not restricted to the Nigerian socio-cultural space, advocacies have contributed to the recognition of these alternative gender and sexual identities and to the legalisation of queer existence in many hitherto queer-phobic spaces abroad. In Nigeria however, the noose of queer-phobia continues to be tightened as legislation through the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act (SSMPA) of 2014 [14] as well as through the opposition posed by socio-cultural and religious tropes which are weaved into the public discourses around queerness [15, 16]. Unsurprisingly therefore, Nigeria is categorised among the most homophobic nations and continues to be a hot spot for queer silencing and invisibility.

Contemporarily – and by this I mean the last ten years – many studies have engaged queerness in Nigeria [17, 18]. While some of these studies toe the line of the traditional by moralising against queer identities [19], many of the studies have indeed drawn attention to the plight of the Nigerian gay and lesbian community [20, 21, 22]. Many of these studies have been sociological in orientation, drawing attention to the social attitudes, health outcomes and psychological effects of the prevailing societal orientation on the wellbeing of Nigerian queers. In addition, there have been interrogation of queerness from the literary and filmic angles [23, 24, 25]. This viewpoint has also been richly explored as more creative ventures continue to engage the reality of queerness in Nigeria. From the linguistic perspective however, more needs to be done. This is because language is critical to representation. Language is also a tool for the propagation and fossilisation of identities and ideologies, largely determining social attitudes and behaviours. For instance, Adegbola’s [26] study indicates that Nigerian gay people are negatively evaluated and ideologically portrayed as criminals and dangerous in media reports. These findings emanated from a discourse analysis of news reports from ‘three popular Nigerian newspapers (Vanguard, Nigerian Tribune and The Punch) within three years (2013–2015, being the period of intense debate on the legalisation of the anti-gay bill in Nigeria’ ([26]: 80). Onanuga [27] also engaged language use within queer-oriented tweets by Nigerians. The study focused on the #ArewaAgainstLGBTQ hashtag and evaluated the ideological contestations (pro- and anti-) expressed in the digital platform, Twitter. A critical identification from the study is that the digital space provides robust participation and interaction among Nigerians on the potentially combustible topic of queerness. This realisation could however be hinged on the provision of anonymity owing to the level of self-disclosure by participants, which in turn nurtures a lessening of perceived risk online [28]. It is from the springboard of digital affordance that the current study interrogates visuality on Instagram as an activist tool in Nigerian queer narratives.

3. Concretising digital visual activism: instagram as site for queer visibility

Instagram is a visually-driven social media application. The platform allows users to share photos, videos, and other multimodal materials – all of which are attuned to the propagation of human sociality. Unlike Twitter and most other social media platforms which heavily rely on text, Instagram’s niche is its image and video sharing affordance. Indeed, the creator’s description of the application give credence to this viz.:

Instagram is a simple way to capture and share the world’s moments. Follow your friends and family to see what they are up to, and discover accounts from all over the world that are sharing things you love. Join the community of over 500 million people and express yourself by sharing all the moments of your day—the highlights and everything in between, too [29].

MacDowall and Budge [30] assert that Instagram’s popularity and widespread use extends beyond its affordability of digital photography, videography and image-sharing, affirming that the architecture of Instagram represents a new relationship to the image and to visual experience, a way of shaping ocular habits and social relations. The authors foreground the contributions of the structure of Instagram – remarked as the tactile world of affiliation (‘follows’), aesthetics (‘likes’) and attention (‘comments’) – and submit that the platform significantly contributes art spaces, audiences and aesthetics. These qualities, when aggregated, align with what Kristeva’s ([31]: 163) remarks as ‘semiotic language’ and are fundamental to the appropriation of the platform for queer visibility and agency. The multimodal ensemble which Instagram avails implies that the ‘verbal, visual and rhythmic aspects of semiotic compositions’ ([32]: 209) on the platform become valuable resources in understanding the relationship that these semiotic materials can proffer within the narratives on gender and sexuality.

Images and words complement each other in different ways to create meaning, with such meanings critical to and reliant on the context of realisation. Consequently, like other social media sites, Instagram has been appropriated for activist purposes, especially as it provides multimodal affordances to its users. For instance, it has been used in the engagement and promotion of political movements like Black Lives Matter and Marriage Equality [33]. It has also been a contributor to queer rhetoric and discourses, allowing users to ventilate their perceptions and attitudes to issues around their sexuality and identities. Thus while physical visual arts for queer advocacy may be subjected to censorship and official restraints [5], the digital space circumvents some of such hindrances in the users’ activist drive. The novelty of the manipulation of the digital enablement has motivated the upsurge of multimodal approaches to online engagements [34, 35]. This has in turn manifested within queer discourses [36, 37] where the analysis of non-heteronormative representations have been examined in multimodal data.

In view of the foregoing, I extend the application of multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA) to images shared by Nigerian queer individuals on Instagram. MCDA is adequate and useful in the investigation of the identifiable issues of language use, power and inequitable relations construed in and through discourse by a combination of modes in a wide range of contexts, particularly in online spaces as in this study. I submit that the queer images constitute ways of promoting queer visibility and courting social acceptance. Underlying these representations however is the activist orientation of challenging existing social structures which militate against queer existence. I operationalise visual digital activism in consort with Tessa [3] submission that this implies ‘using the visual as a form of activism, or to catalyse or support other forms of activism’. One can contextualise this in view of the inhibitive reality of the physical space for queer-identifying Nigerians. Owing to this oppressive corporeality, the digital space has therefore grown to becoming a safe space for “the affirmation of gay identity and the validation of many forms of relationships” ([38]: 1098). For instance, on Twitter, many queer Nigerians have handles from where they represent their identities and do queer advocacies. Some others use these online ecologies to out themselves and seek queer communality. The use of images for positive queer representation and visual activism on Instagram also inscribes the space as critical to the framing of not only individual identities, but also to the constructed narratives around queering.

As Carnes ([39]: 1) avers, when queer people represent themselves, they attempt to reclaim the narratives around their identities ‘in a world that continues to marginalize and oppress … sexually and gender fluid and non-normative people’. This sentiment is shared by Southerton et al. [40] and Opara et al. [41] as they adjudge that marginalised LGBTQ communities turn to the shared online communities in the contestation of gender hegemonies. These studies thus serve as motivation for the aim of my current inquiry.

4. Methods

Regarding the roles of scholars in unravelling the invisibility which has been accorded to queerness, I envision the appropriation of Instagram by Nigerian non-heterosexual communities as being peculiar ‘specific techniques and methods to reveal invisible, silenced and repressed knowledge’ of their sexual identities ([42]: 17). Therefore, data for the study are harvested through purposively selected Instagram pages – @queer_nigeria, @queeeringnigeria, @lgbtqnaija, @lgbtq_nja, @lgtb.ng, and @queerasylum. These are queer positive handles that are owned by Nigerian users, although some of their posts are obviously transnational in outlook and advocacy. Because Instagram is mainly visual or graphic in orientation, ten (10) representative images are identified, extracted and subjected to analysis. I apply the tenets of Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis to the data since these images represent ‘one of the semiotic systems that constitute a culture [one that is understood] by reference to its place in the social process [and] modelled as a resource for making meaning that has evolved’ ([43]; cited in [44]: 3).

Ledin and Machin [45] affirm the value of subjecting the intersection of multimodality and critical discourse analysis as they attest to the need for ‘clear, robust concepts [in multimodality] that can be used as part of CDA with its emphasis on digging out the discourses buried in texts to reveal (…) power relations and ideologies’. The noteworthiness of this blend of theoretical orientations is also identified by Kress and van Leeuwen [46] who draw attention to the necessity of integrating the diversity of communicative modes in linguistic analysis as they state that ‘language always has to be realized through, and comes in the company of other semiotic modes’, therefore ‘any form of text analysis which ignores this will not be able to account for all the meanings expressing in texts’. They further submit that images “can ‘say’ the same things as language – in very different ways” ([47]: 50). Since the images are still, they are regarded as complete meaning-making semiotic resources alongside the texts that accompany them. This is unlike moving images that enable motion, editing, and the integration of other modes such as music.

In my analysis, I integrate Machin and Mayr [48] submission that it is only through intensive descriptive evaluation and analysis of what has been represented through semiotic values that one can reach informed conclusions about the symbolic meanings that the representation conveys. This implies that while the images are themselves directly denotative, they are imbricated with more extensive interpretations – connotation – which come from an acknowledgement of the contextual peculiarities from which they are produced. As a consequence, I embed my familiarity with the LGBTQ ecology in Nigeria in my analysis and discussion of the semiotic resources that constitute my data. I further incorporate the peculiarity of Instagram’s architecture as well as the contextual realities in the Nigerian environment in subsequent discussions.

5. Weaponising Instagram: the politics of ‘likes’ and post dissemination

Zappavigna [49] uses the term ‘social photography’ to draw attention to the production and proliferation of social media images on various digital platforms [50]. These images have potentials for becoming viralised when they are circulated across Web 2.0 platforms on the digital space. This reality also suggests that more public engagement, a digital affordance which Chugh et al. [51] attribute to the manifestations of likes, shares and comments, become not only measurable; they also become critical to evaluating the implications of such online discursive contents. Schoendienst and Dang-Xuan [52] share the same perception as they submit that commenting and liking contribute to and help strengthen social relationships especially as the online interactions are simulations of real face-to-face relationships. It is thus unsurprising that users engage in self-disclosure online as a way of cultivating group affinity and aligning with the convictions of the larger public or members of their community. Critical to these public engagements are visuality and representation, especially when they are performed to draw attention and stimulate change in perception. In line with this orientation, Schoonover and Galt [53] submit that:

LGBT political movements have long insisted on publicity as a mode of activism: from Pride marches to anti-homophobic violence actions, to everyday forms of gender expression and even public sex, the street forms a necessary political space for queer representation. What it might mean to be queer – and to perform queerness – on the street varies enormously in different national contexts.

It is in this wise that Ifekandu [54] regards social media spaces as ‘safe spaces’ for the exertion and assertion of queerness since such spaces afford queer individuals the possibilities of assuming a “surviving mode” Buyantueva [55] away from the inhibitions of non-virtual milieus. This viewpoint is operationalised in Figure 1 which proclaims the humanity of queer-identifying individuals.

Figure 1.

We are all the same inside.

The textual message in the image – We are all the same inside – constitutes both a lamentation against homophobia in Nigeria as well as an advocacy for the acknowledgement and acceptance of queerness. By capitalising the texts and placing each word on a line, the creator foregrounds the message and gives it salience and prominence. The word ‘same’ contrasts the othering experiences which queer-identifying people are constantly subjected to in Nigeria. By drawing attention to sameness, queer advocates attempt to crush the deprecative constructs which encumber queer performativity. The linguistic choice of ‘we all’ further encodes an inclusivist ideology which attempts to reconcile the identitarian notions of ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ that manifests in queer discourses. While heteronormativity perceives queerness as a ‘becoming’ identity, queer rights proponents assert their identities as ‘being’. Therefore the realisation of ‘we all’ breaks the barriers of dichotomies and instead propagates an inclusivist orientation, one which embraces the diversity of sexual and gender identities. The image therefore lends itself to challenging the ‘normative silencing’ ([36]: 9) and othering to which non-heteronormative identities are subjected. Furthermore, the promotion of a homonormative space is visually stimulated by the background of the text – in the use of the queer rainbow (more discussions on this semiotic resource in a subsequent heading).

Within the examination of ‘likes’ and virality of post dissemination, Instagram has a peculiarity. While on Facebook and Twitter, the number of likes which a post garners are clearly stated, on Instagram, one has to click on the likes to see its ‘likers’. It is therefore more difficult to measure the engagement of posts shared within the context of the propagation and promotion of queerness. According to Ghaisani et al. [56], likes and shares on social media show the impressions of users on the subject of a post. They may also provide insight into user behaviour [57]. An examination of user engagement with Figure 1 shows that the post was liked by 13 users. However the politics of maintaining visibility or staying in the shadows is brought into better context in relation to Figure 2.

Figure 2.

No likes.

If ‘likes’, ‘comments’ and ‘shares’ connote digital engagement of posts on a platform like Instagram, it is thus ironical that the post from @queerasylum in Figure 2 expressly deters users and members of the Nigerian queer community from overtly revealing their identities or directly engaging the post. The deterrence is however necessary based on the focus of the post: it is to help queer-identifying Nigerians flee the country and gain asylum in queer-enabling spaces. The post acknowledges the toxicity and threats which follow queer visibility in the Nigerian context and attempts to counteract this by protecting the identities of prospective asylum seekers. This it does by directing interested parties to send direct messages to signify their interests. This realisation contrasts the usual or normal expectations where wholesome engagement is rated by the number of views, likes, comments and shares which a post garners (Figure 3).

Figure 3.

Definition of love.

Visuality is also critical to queer advocacy on Instagram. In negotiating the activist thread, one identifies critical engagements of what can be termed ‘normative’ social perceptions. Using symbols that are mutually meaningful and representative of heterosexuality, the activist handler of @lgbt.ng draws an equation with gender representations coated in the LGBT colours. Through a breakdown which indicates: male + male, male + female; and female + female, the poster asserts that all of these are manifestations of love and are acceptable forms of human identities and relationships. ‘Love’ is textually realised thrice and also symbolically identifiable thrice. The submission at the end: ‘Love knows no limit’ suggests that the limitations to the expression of love, one which has criminalised same-sex relations, are merely human creations.

The quest for acceptance and legalisation of queerness is central to queer advocacies in queerphobic spaces. Of course, Nigeria is very anti-queer, an archetype of what Rahul Rao [58] regarded as ‘a contemporary gay heart of darkness’, and the situation has been worsened with the promulgation of the same-sex marriage prohibition act in 2014. While many of the protestations against the restrictions of the law have mostly been orchestrated online [27], there have been documented low-key physical protests especially since 2020, with queer protesters physically and vocally joining the #EndSARS protests of October, 2020. Indeed, on May 1, 2022, there was what is considered the ‘first open queer protest in Nigeria’. The protesters expressed their opposition to the discriminatory legislations like the crossdressers’ bill which was being considered in the nation’s legislative houses at the period as well as called for the repeal of the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act. Through their physical activism, they drew attention to the plight of Nigerian ‘othered’ sexual and gender identities and sought for ‘queer liberation now’. This physical assertion of the necessity of queer agency and visibility manifests in Figure 4 from the Queerasylum handle. Although @queerasylum is not a Nigerian queer handle, the persona behind the handle travels around queer-stifling places and gives publicity to the lived realities of shackled queer existence. In Figure 4, one encounters the manifestation of transnational advocacy in queer narratives. Thus while the poster announces that: ‘Finally we are in Nigeria. Nigerian’s get set’, we see a Kenyan flag raised by one of the protesters in recognition of the challenges faced by queer people in different parts of the continent. Indeed, in April, 2022, a young Kenyan queer, Sheila Lumumba, was gang-raped by six men and murdered in her house in Karatina, Kenya. Such targeted attacks and killings are also rife in Nigeria. This also contextualises the use of full face masks by many of the protesters who, being conscious of the need for protection and safety, hide their faces. However, by providing visibility to the foregrounded placard with the expression: ‘Nigeria: LGBT We are together’, the queer protesters marshal an ideology of communality. They therefore decry all manifestations of discrimination, rejection and violence against queer-identifying individuals while also expressing a unity of purpose regardless of national affiliations. Through their activist actions and movement digitally and physical, these nascent Nigerian vocal queer protests constitute a decentralised nodal advocacy that ‘links the nation across borders and oceans’ and instrumentalise a ‘new ecumene that enables many of the communicative, cultural and socioeconomic exchanges, which, in the previous 150 years, could only have existed within the structure of a nation-state’ [59].

Figure 4.

Projecting Nigerian queer protest.

6. Handle-tagging and hashtagging for activism and advocacy

According to Thomas [60], the social media landscape ‘shows how the underlying material-semiotic operations of social media now crucially define what it means to be social in a networked age’. This implies that one must engage and contextualise digital practices and online engagements, especially on social media platforms, as ‘computational processes of collective individuation that produce, rather than presume, forms of subjectivity and sociality’ ([60]: backpage). With specific attention to the affordances and specificities of Instagram, Giannoulakis and Tsapatsoulis [61] aver that image-tagging through the use of photo-hashtags serve as ‘annotation metadata’ which act as descriptive resource for the ‘visual content of an image’. They submit that ‘Instagram hashtags, and especially those provided by the photo owner/creator, express more accurately the content of a photo’ ([61]: 114). Their observations resonate within the context of the present study as the Instagram handlers integrate hashtags as well as photo-tags in their posts, in recognition of the possibilities available on Instagram as a subset of the digital media ecology.

Thus in Figure 5, we encounter the front-page celebration of the popular African-American media personality, Niecy Nash and her spouse, Jessica Betts. Apart from lauding the use of the couple’s image on Essence, as the first queer couple on the cover of the well-regarded magazine, one can also frame with celebration as an acknowledgement of Niecy Nash’s peculiar side story: she used to be in a heterosexual relationship. Consequently her coming out – in which she exposed her attempts at ignoring her sexuality and conforming to heteronormative structures – and embrace of her closeted lesbianism become useful narratives for queer advocacy. Fittingly, the text accompanying the Image closes with ‘Black Love Wins’ as well as the love emoji and the queer rainbow flag. These textual representations remark the multiple marginalisation and minoritisation which the couple must have faced (and be facing) – they are queer and black. The realisations are transposed to the Nigerian context where being queer automatically translates to invisibility, violent victimisation and government-aided criminalization.

Figure 5.

Celebrating celebrity visibility.

According to Rambukkana [62], hashtags perform three significant functions in digital discourse; they may perform as ‘an affective amplifier (sometimes); useful in linking or constituting particular publics (sometimes); and even able to subtend communities’. The accompanying hashtags as shown in Figure 6 fulfil these functions. Although the image in the post is not of the account handler, its use, alongside the deeply emotive hashtags, is critical to and crucial for queer activism in Nigeria. This becomes striking when one connects it to the larger context of queerness and queer visibility. Subsequently, one can interrogate the visual realisation as a node ‘in the becoming of distributed discussions in which their very materiality as performative utterances is deeply implicated’ ([62]: 3). This is because having celebrities come out and visually acknowledge their sexualities and gender identities serves as motivation to the disadvantaged masses and defuse queerphobic reactions. Consequently one can assert that visual social media practices offer an important perspective on how photography both shapes and is shaped by mass practices. Notwithstanding the resort to elitism and the publicity accorded to an individual with celebrity status as a ways of acknowledging queer visibility, the digital visuality of queerness ‘highlights how social media is modulating the relations possible between the self, the viewer, ambient audiences, and the ambient publics’ [50]. This reality occasions the celebration of Niecy Nash’s and Jessica Betts’ front page appearance as a lesbian couple on the highly-rated celebrity magazine, Essence (Figure 7).

Figure 6.

Accompanying hashtags.

Figure 7.

Publicising opportunities for Nigerian queers.

Considering the widespread systemic oppression which is visited upon Nigerian queer people, they are also subjected to significant discrimination in terms of economic and social opportunities. To combat the recurrent marginalisation and attempts at rendering them invisible in view of their sexual orientation and gender identities, members of the Nigerian queer community make available liberating programmes and opportunities to help less fortunate members. In this, Bisi Alimi is a household name within Nigerian queer advocacy and outreach circles. Indeed he is recognised as the first Nigerian to out himself on a national platform. While he eventually had to flee from the country in view of threats to his personal safety, he has sustained his support for queer livability and visibility in Nigeria. A main front for his activities has been through the Bisi Alimi Foundation.

Across the images discussed in this section, it is obvious that the handlers and users as post-creators recognise the affordances of Instagram and use those to their information dissemination. Handle-tagging and image-hashtagging facilitate dialogic exchange and social bonding which, within the context of queer visibility and advocacy, constitute vital resources for digital visual activism especially in line with the potentialities available on Instagram.

7. Decrypting marginality and mainstreaming queerness in Instagram narratives

A recurring trope in the othering of queer identities is the assertion that they are non-natural and depraved expressions of sexuality and gender. This viewpoint seems to have its roots in British Colonial antigay laws in Nigeria between the 1860s and mid-1950s which regarded non-heterosexual orientation as unnatural offences against the order of nature [63]. Consequently, one witnesses cultural and religious moralisations against as well as psychiatrisation/medicalisation of queer identities, ideological perspectives that eventually culminated in the Nigerian anti-queer legislation (Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act of 2014). These negative expressions manifest in the deprecative rendition of queer portrayal, and represent societal weapons harnessed by the Nigerian community against non-heteronormative identities. For queer-identifying individuals, the need to counter such claims and perceptions are critical to queer agency, especially as they have immediate implications on their survival [64]. This is because public narratives on identity feed into and influence the perception of and attitudes to minority sexual and gender identities. The queer Instagram users whose public posts are engaged in this study have therefore taken up the gauntlet as they are often ready and charged to counter oppositional narratives and to push queer-positive advocacies. Some of such visual activist renditions are presented and discussed below:

Figure 8 employs a short narrative to contest the perception that people who identify as queer were either influenced by some depraved experiences or are products of some unnatural tendencies. In the narrative, the poster equates, through the use of a simile, the reality of being left-handed to being queer – some people are, most people aren’t and nobody really knows why. The poster thus draws attention to the fact that the presence of left-handed people has not led to their minoritisation; instead, other people only acknowledge their difference without any resultant discrimination. There is an equivalence sought through the post – that the same reaction should be extended to queer-identifying people since their ‘difference’ is also a natural one. The frustration with the largely homophobic leaning of the Nigerian public further manifests in the comment that follows the post: Fuck homophobic (sic) do not bring that disease to me…. Through this, the poster-commenter rejects the estrangement which is visited upon queer Nigerians as a result of their sexual and gender identities. Interestingly however, the comment also falls into the prejudicial rut which it seeks to reject. This is embedded in the reference to homophobes whose perceptions and attitudes are also regarded as a disease. By regarding homophobic attitudes as ‘disease’, the commenter upturns the balance of representation which has been in favour of heteronormativity and latches on the affordance of power as they maximise the social media space as well as their Instagram page as a domain for the exercise of agency.

Figure 8.

The naturalness of queerness.

Building on the narrative which seeks to shift queerness and queer identities from the margins, Figure 9 asserts through the simple sentence – It’s not a phase – that identifying as queer is a form of being and that it is not an unstable identity. Through the submission, the poster makes an interventionist venture which counters widely-held perceptions that queer-identifying people are only pushed by a fleeting desire to explore. Such viewpoints reject the possibilities of the naturalness and intrinsicality of queerness, positing instead that queer tendencies are deviant signals of depravity and moral decadence. The recrimination in Figure 9 thus constitutes a rebuttal of heterosexual propaganda, one which deprecates and ‘others’ queer identity.

Figure 9.

Being queer is not a phase.

In addition, Figure 9 can be perceived as exhortative to members of the queer community who may not be confident about their sexual identities or who may have doubts in accepting their orientations. Existing literature indicates that, because of the suffusing influences of heteronormativity, many closet queers vilify themselves for being ‘different’, with some hoping that they may be able to repress their closet identities and ultimately conform to societal expectations [65, 66, 67]. Figure 9 is therefore an importunate expression for closeted queer people to be accepting of their ‘difference’ and embrace their identities. Within the overall landscape of queer advocacy and activism in Nigeria, ensuring self-acceptance, communality and unity of purpose within the queer community is seen as a precursor to the ability to challenge the normative structures which continue to minoritise and render their lived realities invisible.

Consciously embedded in these figures (Figures 8 and 9) is the queer rainbow flag, the colours of which are semiotically used to convey inclusivism and togetherness. According to Anderson [68], the rainbow flag within queer discourses is used to stimulate an ‘imagined community’, one which transcends the discrimination of heteronormativity to invoke and mobilise following among people who identify as non-heterosexual. Chasin [69] also acknowledges that ‘the rainbow flag stands as an emblem of gay nationalism, simply because flags are a standard symbol of nationhood’. Thus in the data analysed, the contexts of realisation and invocation of the rainbow flag determine the ideological strain that is being cultured and dispersed. Whereas in Figure 8, the queer rainbow is represented through the love shape – as a way of preaching self-love to queer-identifying Nigerians –, in Figure 9, the queer colours appear twice: first in the fonts of the text which are thus foregrounded, and again in the comment accompanying the post. To cultivate positive feedback within the queer community, the poster encourages other users to signal support by dropping ‘a rainbow if you agree’ that being queer is not a phase.

However, beyond engendering self-love and stimulating psychological communality online, these Instagram users are also very pragmatic. Queer-identifying individuals are subjected to and contend with discriminatory practices that span healthcare, job and career opportunities, and wholesome representation in the public space [70, 71, 72]. Within these spaces, these individuals are denied their agency as opportunities which normally should be publicly available are denied them based on their (oftentimes perceived) sexual identities. The social media scape thus becomes a veritable locale where queer individuals can challenge the punitive realities of their physical existence and also provide valuable and worthwhile functional opportunities to remediate their plights. Queer-identifying Nigerian users of Instagram therefore seek as well as extend valuable information as a collaborative way of strengthening in-group affinity. This in-group sustenance forms the crux of Figure 10:

Figure 10.

Rendering assistance as queer support.

The @lgbtqnaija handler shares a direct message sent by a follower. The follower makes an inquiry on the possibilities of getting a job in view of the prevailing demanding economic situation. The follower is probably a student who needs additional income and thus sees the need to work during weekends. By sending the message to the handler who subsequently posts the message, one identifies an in-group synergy aimed at enabling other in-groupers with opportunities that are ordinarily denied them by the largely homophobic Nigerian society. The @lgbtqnaija handler sustains the advocacy with the text: kindly assist him if you can. The text is accompanied by the semiotic resources: the love emoji and the queer flag, which connote the kind of positive relationship encouraged on the platform and sustains an in-group camaraderie which is expected to be nurtured even beyond the digital space.

8. Instagramming Nigerian queerness: linking the knots

While the platform may not be the most popular among Nigerian social media users, for the Nigerian queer community, Instagram has grown from just being a platform for photo and video sharing. This is because these users understand the wider social and ideological implications of representation which underlie the images projected by individual handles. As consequence, the six queer handles explored in this study manipulate the interface of the platform in the transmission of their queer-positive ideologies as well as for visual activism purposes.

Dewan [73] and Provvidenza et al. [74] reinforce the potency of visual communication over words, and this seems to be a critical awareness in Instagram-domiciled queer narratives. The image-text interplay identifiable across the images subjected to analysis illustrate the multiplicative nature of meaning in the verbal-visual orchestration and uncovers that attitudinal meanings can be implicitly conveyed through image-text interaction and contextualising information [75]. Since images tend to assist in facilitating the synthesising and sharing of information, they further facilitate the construction of specific ideologies – and in the case of the context of this study, they help in creating queer-positive awareness and visibility. Thus, while Alichei [76] draws attention to the persistence of homophobic rhetoric even online in Nigeria despite the liberalisation of identities which the digital space has enabled, Nigerian queer people inscribe their presence on the platforms as a way of marking territories. The implication is that in spite of the enhanced visibility and opportunity to challenge extant normative structures which digital platforms have provided, queer-identifying individuals still navigate treacherous on- and offline existence, as evoked in their digital submissions.

The peculiarity of Instagram also manifests in the user engagement metrics – likes and hashtagging. While these are weaponised to ensure wider engagement, one also recognises the manifestation of gender and identity politics as these determine the context where such metrics and engagement evaluation become integral to queer normativity. Thus, where a positive outlook is envisioned for queer advocacy, in-group users and allies are encouraged to boldly make themselves visible. However, in other scenarios where there are fears of homophobia or compromised identity, likes are either suspended or discouraged.

Furthermore, there is an identification of an ideology which is embracing of all sexual and gender identities. While there are identifiable contexts where heterophobia is expressed, the images mostly attempt a resolution to the gender wars perceptively stoked by heteronormativity. Through these public stance of ameliorating the provocative narratives of heteronormativity, these Instagram discursive engagements constitute a platform for positive digital activism, which are expected to spill over to the creation of an enabling physical space. The digital narratives also constitute platforms for the centring of queerness within Nigerian digital and post-digital discourses.

More critically however, through the Instagram posts and comments, one recognises an in-group vitality which hinges on an ideology of sustenance and assistance. Predicated by and built on the gender identity hierarchies and alterity which the Nigerian society had created, members of the queer community in Nigeria assist one another through opportunities that can facilitate economic power. This lies on the recognition that strong economic power can strengthen queer agency and in turn assist in queer visibility and legalisation [77, 78].

9. Conclusion

This article has studied the use of queer-positive images on Instagram as bookmarking and embodying visual digital activism. A standout observation in the visual representations across the Instagram handles examined in this study is the absence of personal photographs by the handlers. Undoubtedly, this is related to the Nigerian space which constantly attempts to invalidate queer existence as well as the violent outcomes which have followed accusations of queerness in the country. However, by using the images which engender queer visibility – either through celebrity images or images from protest contexts – these graphic representations have been shown to indeed constitute activist semiotic resources for the contestation of the deprivation and invalidation which homophobia has for long sustained within the Nigerian society. Furthermore, the integration of an in-group ideology in the narratives help to foster a sense of communality – preserved by a ‘we’ vs. ‘them’ perception. These viewpoints become vital in providing reassurance for queer-identifying individuals who find it difficult to navigate the homophobic suffusion of the Nigerian physical and digital spaces. Through the visual advocacies too, opportunities for economic growth and empowerment are nurtured since these are deemed vital to surmounting the challenges of queer-phobia. Consequently, it can be concluded that, like other social media platforms, Instagram has provided a vent for the dissipation of hitherto repressed expressions of queer identities in Nigeria. Unsurprisingly, the queer Instagram post handlers and the commenters have mastered the opportunities availed by the platform and have indigenised their activism to both fit Instagram’s enablement and the peculiarities of the Nigerian gender and sexual identities ecology.

Acknowledgments

This study was made possible with the support of the Africa Humanities Program (AHP)/American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS).