UCLA Center for the Study of Women

Usingethnographic and archival data from Malawi, a small, heavily aid dependent country and former British colony, this paper examines Malawians’ attitudes toward homosexuality vis-à-vis the country’s history of colonization and the realities of Malawi’s economic dependence on donor governments. I demonstrate that Malawians’ understandings of same-sex sexuality go beyond homosexuality as a moral affront to conservative religious ideas. Rather, the framing of sexual diversity as a neocolonialist project has gained substantial traction among Malawians, providing a foundation for the development of an anti-Western and anti-gay Malawian national identity.