The recent report of the Ugandan gay rights activist, whose severed head was discovered in a latrine, and his dismembered torso in a field, has now been reported as a hoax.
This discovery inflamed the international Pink Community because - well, hoaxes
are more than just trickery and lies, they are damaging to our cause of
GLBT human rights. Yes, at first those perpetrating such hoaxes seem to
generate lots of sympathy and support - but when people realize they
have been "played" they become very bitter and angry, and who can blame them? They also tend to evoke that common childhood parable of "crying wolf".
With much of Africa (and including South Africa) currently a hot-spot of homophobia and transphobia, we see a future in which a Pink genocide looms over the horizon - and in more than one country.
These days, our worldwide communications are so good, reliable and quick, that reports like this can span the globe almost instantaneously - making timeous verification virtually impossible. Often, by the time what seems to be a very credible report turns into a hoax, it is far too late.
This gives very poignant credence to the Twain-ism “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.”
Unfortunately, this is a tactic all too familiar to me - last year, the Rachel Roo hoax made world news, in which it was claimed - by an anonymous individual pretending to have been the victim herself - a young trans-woman, was brutally murdered in the US. Thousands of people, gay, trans and straight, posted angry, outraged, compassionate messages on forums and activist websites all over the world, to protest a brutal hate crime... that, as it turned out, never happened - and the murder of a transwoman who apparently never existed.
The year before that, there was another similar hoax. In fact, there have been more - and the list is probably quite extensive.
However, more importantly, inter-spaced with these malicious and damaging false reports, are real, genuine hate crimes and real murders, such as that of Angie Zappata - whose murderer last year got life in prison for her brutal murder, and the two much publicized trans murders in the UK, as well as all the other GLBTI murders that were reported around the world - the ones that really did happen, and continue to happen every single year, often increasingly.
If memory serves, earlier this year there was another, similar hoax here in SA on Facebook, in which a young gay man - rejected by his family, left a suicide note on his Facebook page, and vanished. A supposed relative claimed he'd committed suicide - it was later revealed that the profile was fake and nobody really knew who this person was.
Naturally, there was at first a huge outpouring of sympathy, condolences and anger about homophobia and intolerance, and people talking about the real dangers of hate-mongering and of hate-mongers being given media platforms to incite hate against people like the victim.
Of course, once the hoax was exposed, people sat back and commented that "There, you see? Things really aren't that bad - gay people are just exaggerating about intolerance". And of course, they were even more angry that they had been made fools of, and understandably so.
Let me tell you , it stings when you find out you cried for someone who never existed, or who may have concocted an elaborate scheme to get sympathy out of you for their own pleasure, or for who knows what other reasons.
Who knows what goes on in the minds of people who perpetrate hoaxes like this?
One has to wonder whether they really thought things through, whether they deliberately planned things out that way, of if it was simply spontaneous, or if they realized the damage their actions would do to the community, or whether they intended to invoke this massive, public emotional reaction by activists and the community from the very beginning.
Regardless of the absent behind the scenes detail, which may forever remain a mystery - one thing is clear: hoaxes are damaging to any cause - because their effects break down the credibility of the community and the bodies and individuals which represent and speak for that cause.
Hoaxes discourage bloggers and activists from posting on these matters - and reporting on them, just in case they may be - you guessed it, hoaxes.
They also force activist bodies to hold back in case every story of this sort that comes across their desks may be a hoax, and they don't want to get burned later in the backlash, for spreading false information or not verifying their sources. They also cause the public and the supporters of these causes to doubt them, and to doubt whether every similar story is in fact true at all, or another hoax. It is what the intelligence community refers to as "disinformation".
The religious right will also make use of our impassioned reactions to demonstrate "how we manipulate and misreport news" to "advance the gay agenda" which they are so convinced exists - likely without mentioning the outrage and shock displayed after we find out it was a hoax and that we've been played. There will be articles about this hoax in right wing sympathetic media too. We've seen it happen like this before.
Many activists are sometimes discouraged and even quit activism because of such deliberate manipulation, they feel foolish and embarrassed - they feel betrayed, because it feels like these hoaxes are perpetrated from within the community they serve and advocate for. Whether that may be true - or if those perpetrating such hoaxes actually do so from outside our community, in support of some sort of elaborate, Machiavellian scheme, the ultimate effect is the same: activists lose faith in the community, the community and its associated identities and everyone associated to it are made to look bad - and doubt is cast on the credibility and legitimacy of any claims we make about how and when we are being persecuted.
Regardless, we cannot allow such a setback to discourage us from our task. The community needs us, and hoaxes such as this one will only be another molehill our enemies will try to make into a mountain, another way to break down our effectiveness.
The fight for human rights and equality is a war of sorts - our enemies have made it very clear that is how they view it - and in every war, information and the media of information is a very effective weapon.
Our enemies will always use our impassioned reactions to hoaxes against us to try and break down our credibility. It's damaging, especially when we start to second-guess ourselves. We need to file it under lessons learned and carry on the fight, business as usual. Letting it slow us down or distract us is exactly what the enemies of human rights, freedom and equality want - and giving them what they want is bad, bad business.
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If you would like to know more about Christina Engela and her writing, please feel free to browse her website.
If you’d like to send Christina Engela a question about her life as a writer or transactivist, please send an email to christinaengela@gmail.com or use the Contact form.
All material copyright © Christina Engela, 2019.
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