‘If you dig only Black guys, don’t bother going to East Africa:’ gay American tourists in Kenya, 1970–1978
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Ongoing discrimination towards LGBTQ persons in Kenya has long made it difficult to conduct research into postcolonial LGBTQ history. The growth of LGBTQ literature in America due to the increased visibility of LGBTQ individuals and movements in the 1960s and 1970s contributed to an expansion of gay travel and lifestyle writing. Narrative details taken from American gay periodicals and guides help layer a history of intimate and sexual activities undertaken by American tourists in Kenya. These sources offer insights into postcolonial LGBTQ histories in Kenya, which has had limited research due to the taboo nature of the topic to this day. These texts reveal the importance of hotels for gay men to perform neo-colonial fantasies during intimate and sexual experiences in Kenya. Where colonial settlers had used hotels as sites for performing colonial and aristocratic fantasies, the postcolonial hotel offered opportunities for the rising influx of tourists to Kenya to create new erotic and emotional meanings in these spaces. This research therefore helps historicise the contemporary anthropological and sociological work in Kenya on sexual economies and sex tourism, situating gay histories into these well-known narratives.
Source: Rethinking History
Author: Daniel Heathcote
Institution: University of Edinburgh
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4410040540