For some reason I don’t pretend to understand, I have a lot of African bisexuals following me on Twitter that I didn’t ask for and reading what they have to say and what they’re doing is interesting and more so when, as I’ve said a thousand times, there’s always been this perception that all Blacks are homophobic and one that remains “true” today despite the obvious evidence that contradicts this perception.
Someone had made a statement that homosexuality in Africans – and that includes African-Americans – doesn’t really exist and someone responded by telling them to read a paper written by Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe entitled, “Boy-wives and Female Husbands – Studies in African Homosexualities.
I wanted to read this, and they sent me the link to where the paper is located: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Boy-Wives-and-Female-Husbands-Murray-Roscoe/7a41ad22483180a5367b239e825f14b3ff148fdd
So far, it’s making for some interesting reading and despite quite a few typos. A lot of what I’ve read so far wasn’t unknown to me because of the stuff I had been researching and from all the sources that were available – before the WWW and better search engines came to be. I had to wave my fingers over it to open the provided link in Safari (since I was doing all of this on my iPad) and once that was done, send it to the Apple Books app and, voila – I don’t have to read it from a web browser. The one thing that stood out right away was that this perception and assumption came about when very early Europeans “stumbled” upon the African continent and declared that homosexuality didn’t exist in Africa.
You’d have to read it to really get this gist of things. A lot of this early “research” seemed to have been done by anthropologists who, um, didn’t do a good job of reporting things, to put it like that. The only thing I thought that got them off the hook was a statement that said that anthropologists weren’t being sent there to dig into African sexual behaviors so in some cases, when they saw homosexuality at work and in some forms, they didn’t “write it down” or, if they did, they glossed over things and it is to note that many of them were tasked to find out specific things so a lot of them were seeing this but because it wasn’t what their employers asked for, nothing was said.
What I’m reading about how African across the continent were dealing with this is… fucking fascinating. In most of the situations I’ve read so far, while Europeans were losing their shit over the “barbaric and unnatural sexual behaviors” they were seeing between and involving men, quite a few tribes or areas didn’t see it as them doing anything wrong since they didn’t “subscribe” to Judeo-Christian beliefs… and some still don’t.
I’ve got a ways to go before I finish it but I had to get this out there before it fell through the cracks due to me doing other stuff. If you’re interested, read it and, if not, okay.
This has got to be one of the shortest TBTs that I’ve written in a while…
Kdaddy23's Blog 
LarryArcher
12 January 2023 at 18:08
I don’t how anyone can write anything on a tablet. I’m on my third tablet and have disliked all of them. I keep buying a newer, “better” one and thinking I’ve been wrong all this time, but every time I end up asking myself why I did that. Like shiny objects and short skirts, they always grab my attention and my credit card.
I just got a new Samsung Ultra tablet and love the large display but now realize that it’s too big to type on. Even with a split keyboard, it is awkward to use and I know will end up being something to watch Netflix on and not to write on. So far I’ve only been happy with a Macbook Air as a balance between something to carry around and actually useful.
And finally, I agree this is one of your shorter posts. I am forever amazed at how you can write a long daily post, day in and day out.
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kdaddy23
12 January 2023 at 19:37
I try to avoid using my iPad to write things, which is why I bought the laptop I’m using to write this. I have get to find a virtual keyboard that can keep up with how fast I can type and, yeah, split keyboards are awkward – my Samsung tablet has this feature by default and it’s pain in the ass.
I can write the way I do because I don’t have anything else to do (or I want to do) but to sit and write to my heart’s content. If someone has a bad case of TL:DR, that’s not my problem and my blog is about what’s in my head… and I have a lot of shit in my head.
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LarryArcher
12 January 2023 at 20:49
I’ve found two laptops that I like. For the Lenovo business laptop, I have a T450S and the Macbook Air and Pro. The Air is perfect as it has long battery life and is only a couple of pounds with a full-size keyboard. Like you, I’m a 90-100 WPM typist, and the Mac keyboards feel perfect in my hands. My T450S is nice because it has an older style keyboard and decent battery life, plus the fact they are only around $300 used on Amazon with Windows 10 Pro. I put about $300 in mine with a 1Tb SSD, new batteries, and more memory. It has an i7 processor and is pretty fast, except it would never win a beauty contest. I bought a MacBook Pro and like it, except it’s about twice as heavy as an Air. I’m tempted to sell it and move back to the Air but not sufficiently motivated.
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kdaddy23
13 January 2023 at 15:54
I picked a suitable HP lappy with a touchscreen and my only “complaint” about it is the smoothness of the keys on the keyboard and my own “fault” of having big hands that like to come in contact with the touchpad and makes weird shit happen.
It’s a backup in case my Dell desktop goes tits up but it makes me happy to not find myself typing a whole lot on my iPad because, again, it can’t keep up even with me typing with two fingers and… that damned autocorrect and PC internal dictionary that always wants to replace “dick” with “duck” and “pussy” with “pussyfoot.”
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kdaddy23
13 January 2023 at 16:03
Almost forgot. The HP I got is really light but a non-issue because I don’t plan on it ever leaving home – my days of having to lug laptops everywhere I went are long gone; battery life isn’t an issue because it’s only been unplugged twice since I had it and then just long enough for me to take it from one room to another. I understand the Pro being heavy but is that a good reason to get rid of it? I had considered biting the bullet and getting the Mac Air but I couldn’t justify the cost versus my plans for using it…
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LarryArcher
13 January 2023 at 16:35
I’ve got an HP myself and I just don’t like the touchpads on everyone I’ve owned except for the Lenovo. Battery life is a big thing with my laptops as I typically only use the laptop when I’m away from my desktop.
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kdaddy23
13 January 2023 at 18:28
The HP touchpads are too big; the Lenovo pads are smaller and out of the way – and they used to be IBM Thinkpads and what I loved about them was the cursor button in the middle of the keyboard and I didn’t have to use the touchpad at all.
I learned to type on manual typewriters like the old but reliable Remingtons. Typing, I would learn, is different from playing piano and it’s all in the wrist – wrists up when playing piano, wrists down when typing and it’s all good… unless the touchpad under your wrists is forcing you to type like you’d play a piano… and not everyone knows how to play a piano. That touchpad is so… in my way that I prefer to use a mouse with the laptop… which “defeats” the touchpad’s purpose and functionality.
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Marlapaige
13 January 2023 at 22:05
It’s unfortunate that much of the world’s knowledge was either not written down or was lost with time or war. But even so, we can try to figure it out now, right? And this is an intereting topic
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kdaddy23
14 January 2023 at 01:51
We can, indeed, try to figure it out if we can set aside the biases that exist so we can look at this for what it really is and not what we think it is. It is very interesting, too, and more so when I’m seeing that some of those those who were observing this weren’t able to set aside their biases all that much.
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Marlapaige
14 January 2023 at 15:17
Bias is, unfortunately, par for the course in many things. Too many things. I almost always take everythign with a grain of salt because even the best studies, done with plenty of ways to omit said biases have the bias of the researchers confirmed. If you don’t control for a given factor, your findings will ultimately support the bias more than the facts, or have the pendulum swing the other way. Either way, the findings are faulty.
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kdaddy23
14 January 2023 at 15:31
See? You understand this like I do! Like, I admit that I’m biased toward bisexuality, but I had to learn how to set that bias aside so that I could tell people that, um, based upon what you’ve said (not you), you might not want to go there and here’s why you shouldn’t. Still, the biases people have against anything not heterosexual does tend to produced flawed results and finding because, as I learned, you have to learn how to suspend your beliefs so that you can, ideally and objectively, look at this for what it is… and not how you think it should be.
I see “experts” talking about this and I’m asking myself, “What are they talking about?” Or, sometimes, “Um, that’s not quite right…” and I know it isn’t because I’ve been there, done that, and seen some stuff.
It’s not that difficult, Marla. We just make it harder than it has to be when it comes to understanding it.
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Marlapaige
14 January 2023 at 16:06
It is that difficult though. The idea that it’s not that difficult is far from reality. Humans seem to have a need to be right. Always. Especially when we’re wrong. Why should our research ultimately be any different?
That’s why I like the scientific method. It’s basic components attempt to mitigate bias, and by properly documenting what steps you took to ensure removal of the biases are important. The next curious group goes and retests to see if their results are the same. If they are, good. If they’re not, then your theory is just that – a theory, and a poorly constructed one.
I have heard people say that a study is full of biases and should be ignored. Excellent. I’m curious and listening. Well, I dunno, it just isn’t right, that’s all. The results are the results, your understanding of the world around you at large is limited in scope, the study is not. You can’t disregard a whole study and say it is not accurate just because. But people’s biases do cause this to be the reality. Just as it can seep into the findings, it can seep into the acceptance of it.
It’s the sad truth of humanity. We don’t like what we can’t understand, and we refuse to understand anything outside of what we consider normal, and normal is anything that we want to do.
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