Don’t Tell Us Where We Can’t Go

Queer Travel Should Be As Diverse As Our Community

Selfi Kweks
Sep 8, 2018 · 7 min read

I get to my desk an hour early every day, thanks to a lack of trains connecting the seaside town where I live to the village where I work. Fortunately this gives me time to work through the 150 or so tabs I’ve ammased on my phone’s browser over the last year — quotes I frantically typed down to look up later, articles, story ideas and novelty T-shirts I can’t afford.

Today I read one of those articles: 10 Places LGBT Travelers Should Never Visit and it was total trash which ruined my morning decaf latte.


I should emphasise that safety is a key factor in picking travel destinations, particularly when you’re going as a person of colour, LGBTQ+, less able-bodied, a woman or non-binary person, or any other identity which might mark you out as a second class citizen. That being said, articles like this are, basically, racist as fuck.

They begin with a diverse and global list of “places [they] love (New Orleans, Philadelphia, Cuba)”, then present a list of 10 countries we should “avoid at all costs”. The countries — Nigeria, Honduras, Zimbabwe, Jamaica, Senegal, Lithuania, Sudan, Egypt, Russia and Uganda — read kind of like Trump’s no fly zone (with one obvious exception): they’re generally “far-away” places that seem a little bit icky.


First up is Nigeria (a country, coincedentally, I visited for three months), where the author makes their first unforced error by calling it a central African country. Maybe visiting was out of the question but the quickest of searches, or a basic understanding of Africa, would tell you it’s West African (a denomination of political, historical, social and economic significance). But whatever, it’s only the first line of the first country of your ten country listicle right? Maybe they only had Bing as their default search engine.

They outline the horrible issue of ubiquitous homophobia on a national scale as well as the legal ramifications for being gay as reasons you shouldn’t “desire to visit”, before asking rhetorically in a pithy parenthesis “why would you?”. Because, of course, a country like Nigeria would have nothing to offer a traveller (or rather, a yuppie, listicle-reading Insta “travel photographer”).

Sadly, it’s mostly downhill from there. The pictures add some balance — maybe the editor was a bit more woke — because the slides accompanying Nigeria, Honduras, Egypt and Russia show visibly queer people and allies protesting with rainbow flags, dragged up Putins, and direct action at sports events and in the street. This is something completely missed in the text, undermining the resistance and fought-for visibility so characteristic of our LGBTQ+ history in the West and abroad.

It’s hard to pinpoint my favourite bit, but it’s easy to find the most racist. That would have to go to the disembodied image of a pair of bare, black shackled feet as the photo of choice for Sudan because… why exactly? Literally what were the search terms for the stock photo archive here and how were they relevant.


In my ignorance (or masochism) I did what Thou Shalt Never Do — read the comments section. Unfortunately it shows exactly the kind of smallminded foolishness that this content feeds.

From one reader bemoaning the listing of “such obscure” places (???), to another calling them “shitty” (shoutout to Trump v Haiti) we see a complete dismissal of entire countries, and even continents — one Kerry Smith saying she “wouldn’t go anywhere near Africa, the Middle East, Jamaica or parts of Eastern Europe”. Tl;dr — y’all were racist already and just wanted another reason to hate on Africa.

Ironically, Ruth Trewhella unwittingly captured the core sentiment exactly: “As always people find unity by sharing a commen hatred towards a group who are differnt [sic] from themselves in some way.... Sad and disturbing.” In this case our common hatred is towards the black, brown, and mostly poor bodies of our fellow humans across the ocean.

I’m sure if I said I’d avoid America at all costs because it’s a racist country where state sanctioned violence against people of colour occurs daily, where armed terrorists roam the street, where civil liberties of free organisation and protest are marred by militarised police, where in some places, as a queer black man I would have a 1 in 2 chance of being HIV positive, and where transphobic violence is skyrocketing, they might argue that there’s great culture and beauty there, and that’s not the whole story (though I won’t do the same to them cos I dont want thier racist asses anywhere near these places).


The fact that six out of ten of these countries are in Africa, and that a seventh — Jamaica — is a majority black former colony is notable. Particularly when there’s no recongition of the fact that legally codified homophobia is a legacy of Western colonial era laws. And by presenting such a homogeneously negative view of these countries they are just repeating tired colonial tropes of the “third world” and ignoring the many reasons people would visit these places — family, work, banging culture, natural beauty, music, food, language, sick beaches, school, and the literal pyramids.

Obviously, visiting these places poses significant danger to members of the LGBTQ+ community, particularly to those unable or unwilling to “pass” as cis and straight. At this point I acknowledge my privilage in being able to do so and stress that noone should if it makes them too uncomfortable. But this sort of chat collapses the diversity of our community into a single entity — queer or not — ignoring the many identies we have which are made up of ethnicity, class, education, jobs, hobbies and whatever else. It fails Intersectionality 101. Fortunately or unfortunately, our community is full of chamelions and we are capable of adaptation to all kinds of circumstances, and this doesn’t make you less queer. You can be gay and an international health worker, trans and want to surf in Senegal, interesex and want to visit the literal fucking pyramids.

Importantly, you can be queer and black, or Hispanic, or even Russian too, something which an article like this ignores. The total erasure of the hundreds of millions of black and brown people in the diaspora who might, you know, want to visit grandma at Christmas, just continues the age-old whitewashing of our history. For some, to stay away from these countries means suppressing thier ethinic, national or familial identities, something many if us know too well even living in the West. By writing off entire countries or continents all we do is marginalise members of our own community, both here and abroad.


Travelling while black comes with its own problems, though. My antidote to this fear is the Insta feed of a friend of mine who recently uploaded a video of herself hella carefree in Krakow. Or more recently, her and another friend posted up on a Croatian beach serving all-black bald headed/kinky afro’d full bikini-bodied realness east of the iron curtain (incidentally, this same friend spent 6 months in Paris and found the racism there almost unbearable — maybe we should sack that off too?). Another friend studied Italian evening classes and heads out there whenever she can to gorge on fine art and pasta at a time where the refugee crisis is creating an acutely anti-black political environment. Members of my own family have emigrated from Italy after having lived there for years because it was just to hard exist as a black person there.

These black women teach me that that my queerness and blackness aren’t my only identities. And they remind me that as someone with the privilage of being able to afford travel the world, with easy access to visas and a body that can handle it, it’d be damned foolish not to.


From what I can tell, this article was a reprint of an identical version published back in 2015. But these total travel bans are still being published in 2018. We still need advice about visibility, passing, safety, and activism. We need encouragement to develop ourselves as diverse individuals within a diverse community, in spite of shitty homophobic policies. We don’t need limitations on who we can be as LGBTQ+ people in the form of super racist listicles.

So here’s my contribution, with a great reason to visit each of the banned countries (though remember, safety first!):

Nigeria — The Calabar Carnival, or “Africa’s Biggest Street Party”. Nigerians know how to get down, so come prepared . Every December, for the whole of December.

Honduras — Copán, one of the most important excavated ruins of the Mayan civilisation is, apparently, dope. Note there’s a long and documented history of queerness in Mayan culture.

Senegal — Le Village des Arts, a four-hectare arts complex comprising studios, a gallery, open spaces and which runs talks and events. Note pre-colonial Wolof culture had a tradition of gor-digen, a culturally acceptible form of queerness.

Egypt — The. Fucking. Pyramids. Maybe check out the tomb of Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep, two totally homo ancient Egyptians.

Lithuania — It’s £1.20 a pint… and if you go during June you’ll get to down them during Baltic Pride.

Russia — Take the Trans-Siberian railway from Moscow to Beijing. If you’re up for it you can catch a drag show at Central Station club in Moscow (or go for a cheeky sauna in VODA next door).

Sudan — There are actually more pyramids here than in Egypt. Head to the ancient city of Meroë for an overdose.

Jamaica — Check out Centrestage Theatre for some homegrown plays, written and acted by Jamaicans.

Zimbabwe — Great Zimbabwe is a 900 year old stone city. It’s so banging that the Europeans refused to believe it was built by black people, obviously.

Uganda — Kibale National Park has the biggest population of chimps on earth, apparently. And as we all know, bonobos are the gayest of them all.

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