by Bana Mwesige

I’m constantly amused and, to be honest, lowkey irritated  by the never-ending obsession some Ugandans online have with queer people’s lives. It’s like a national sport now: pry, poke, panic, and pretend it’s a concern. People who wouldn’t dare mind their own business in the real world suddenly become full-time queer culture analysts, body language detectives, and gender expression interpreters the moment they log ontoTikTok, Twitter (sorry, X  but we’re still calling it Twitter, fight me).

Of particular fascination is the subset of Ugandans who’ve suddenly turned into Oxford-trained linguists overnight. The “Pronoun Police” , if you will. One minute, you’re arguing about which Tiktoker stole who’s money, the next, you’re dissecting the ins and outs of someone’s gender identity like it’s a Physics Assignment.

A musician paints their nails; a very normal, very personal grooming choice and BOOM! They’re collectively given “she/her” pronouns by random TikTok or Twitter users, because gender expression is clearly now a democracy and everyone votes based on their feelings. But when someone dares say, “Hey, actually, I go by they/them,” the same crowd goes into a moral panic like they’ve just witnessed the Queen’s English being dragged through a downtown Kampala pothole.

You start hearing the classics:

“Eh! That’s grammatically wrong.”
“How can one person be ‘them’?”
“This is that white people madness!! Now you want us to refer to you differently than we’ve always known you!”

And let’s not forget the buzzwords thrown around like confetti: cancel culture! wokeness! moral decay! (Cue dramatic fainting and clutching of imaginary pearls.)

Here’s the kicker,  the irony is glaring. These are often the same people who spend entire threads ranting about how colonialism ruined Africa, how we need to decolonize our systems, our minds, our languages. But the moment someone says, “Hey, actually, these pronouns don’t sit right with me, can we use these instead?”,  suddenly, English becomes sacred scripture and using they/them is an unforgivable sin against His Majesty’s grammar book.
Pick a side, please! Are you fighting imperialism or preserving it through selective outrage?

And even if we park the English grammar bus for a minute and switch to our own languages : spoiler alert- we’ve had nonbinary-friendly terms this whole time.
In Luganda, for instance, if you don’t know someone’s gender, you don’t go around yelling “Ssebo!” or “Nyabo!” at them like you’re in a sitcom. You use their name. You say “ye,” or maybe you just go with “omuntu oyo” ( that person) :  and not in a shady way, either. Just… a literal statement. Chill.)

So all these mental gymnastics about how “they/them” doesn’t exist in African languages? Yeah, nice try. Our languages are more nuanced than we give them credit for. The problem isn’t the grammar,  it’s the refusal to listen when someone tells you how they want to be seen.

Because let’s be real: it’s not about the language. It’s about power, about control, about wanting to decide for others who they are and how they should live. And that’s the most colonial thing of all, isn’t it?

Anyway, as we celebrate Non-Binary Awareness Week, here’s a little reminder:
You don’t have to understand everything to respect it. You don’t need a degree in linguistics to use the pronouns someone asks you to.

And above all, minding your business is free, darling. Consider it your contribution to the national conversation.