cross-posted from: https://quokk.au/c/lgbtq_plus/p/1184160/why-niger-explicitly-criminalising-asexuality-is-significant-to-everyone-regardless-of-ident
To understand Nigers asexuality criminalisation, we should see this law as part of a bigger – and growing – global trend among conservatives about ‘traditional families’
It’s becoming increasing obvious how desperate the elites are getting, now that every woman isn’t churning out 5+ children for the meat grinder.
This is Niger, where the mean women has like 7, meaning many have more. IIRC it’s the highest rate in the world. Niger is also one of the poorest countries, so there’s no real reason they’d want more.
Isn’t Africa rather thinly populated in general, or do i remember that wrong?
Edit: just checked, Niger has 23 people/km², while germany has 230 pp/km².
Yeah, Niger is desert, basically. There’s a bit of sahel at one end, and of course oases, but it’s not a populous place, because of course it isn’t.
1/10 of German density is actually impressive as hell, and probably why they’re poor even by African standards. Australia might be a better geographic parallel, at 3.7.
If you look at Nigeria, the story is different, and some of the small West African states are going to be even more crowded. Africa as a whole is probably comparable to the next continent. You’re averaging over a lot of very different places, once you get to that scale.
Okay, but how many do the nice women have?
(sorry, couldn’t resist. The article is horrifying, so i’m escaping into humour)
Mild conspiracy alert time, but:
Increased diplomatic ties with Russia + Russia is desperate for more soldiers = keep churning out those future military contractors
Also much of that region of Africa (Niger included) is highly unstable; there’s always the possibility of more localized geopolitical concerns promoting a population arms race.
Going more by Occam’s razor, and a bit of Hanlon’s: They copy-pasted every queer term they could find, and dumped it into the gay-bad bill. The junta may or may not have known what asexual even is.
It’s an islamic country, which also has evangelical missionary influence, and positions itself as anti-Western (when tolerance is highly associated with the West), so that’s a great way to win political points. Now, poorly written laws like that would be a problem… if they had rule of law and working courts in the first place, which they don’t.
This is also highly likely. Anti-LGBTQIA+ folks aren’t exactly known for being well-versed in their queer terminology, and I can totally see the “A” (hell, probably the “I” too) getting swept up in general anti-queer measures, even when it’s nonsensical.