“Discrimination from the LGBT community. They think we are indecisive. From the community, they’re like: ‘Ah, it’s a phase.’ From your parents, they’re like: ‘Oh, a phase.’ Or if you had an aware parent, ok, they’re accepting. Or for others, from mental health practitioners and interventionists, they’re like: ‘You have trauma. You politically have trauma.’ And they want to assess: ‘You can’t decide whether you’re into men or women. Something must have happened.’ So, the message is: It’s a phase; from the LGBTQIA+ [community], you do not want to decide; from mental health people, you have trauma; something is making you do this, because if you’re basically enjoying sex from men–meaning, as a community, obviously we are conditioned to be heterosexual—so, you, your homosexuality with women, comes from trauma. So, please tell us about it. Sign up for therapy, for free therapy services. Come and find out why.”

“Well, so, in high school they explained what bisexuality is, in the health courses. They explained how it was different, how it can affect your health differently, like, sexual health, and what information and precautions you needed to take differently than if you were straight, but, I mean, there was pretty much nothing on pansexuality in the formal setting.”

“Ok. So, in terms of bisexuality, I think that people still only see it as two, right? Bi equals two, right? The definition that we now use of two or more is one that is really affecting it, and I think that using bisexuality to prove that there’s only two genders isn’t correct and something that people use to … weaponize against the idea of people who are non-binary or people who have another queer identity.”

“Here in Nigeria, homosexuality is illegal. So, I mean, people talk about it, yeah, but it’s more, it’s still questioned and in informal circles. It’s taboo. I mean, what you hear from your peers is negative; what you hear from your church is negative; what you hear from family is negative. So, I mean, [I get accurate information] just from my interactions with my friends and the internet, and Western media.”

“I think in the UK, we’ve seen a massive failure to, even among the organized left and organized queer spaces, to properly recon with bodily autonomy and freedom of one’s body and ability to understand it and whatever; it’s like an organizing principle. I can’t speak to anywhere else, but I certainly feel that that’s failed over here.”

“We had a sub-meeting in Ghana, for LGBTI persons, and we had absolutely no one identify as bisexual. I don’t know if it’s the education that is not enough for them to really know how to identify themselves, or it’s just that they don’t exist here in Ghana. But for Ghana, I don’t know of any bisexuals. It’s so unfortunate.”

“When I exercise my commitment to explicitly include or center bi/pan folks, bi/pan youth, I’m going to get it from multiple sides. I’m going to get it from the sex-negative folks, period. And I’m going to get it from the monosexist and biphobic folks who are sex-positive but are biphobic and monosexist or homonormative, particularly when they’re unconscious about that. So, that also becomes the challenge.”

“If I say that I’m more into men, then I’m categorized as gay instead of bi or pansexual.”

“Right now, from what I have experienced and what I’ve seen in my environment, there isn’t inclusion at all. Basically, homosexuality… you are left to your own imagination, and, for you, if you fall in that category, it’s now go and explore and do your own research, because there is no space for you at all.”

“Some people want to draw a line and some people want to basically put up a wall, but you can’t exactly stand on the wall. You can cross through the wall; you just can’t stand on the wall. And I feel like a fair amount of bisexual people stand on the wall or stand really close to the wall. And it’s just, like ‘Yeah, you’re not supposed to be there.’”

“My mom said: ‘Ok, I can respect that you’re bisexual, but don’t tell your father because I don’t know what he would do to you, if he would beat you or, I don’t know, try to kill you, or something like that.’ So, it’s very difficult.”

“[Pansexuality] almost never really comes up. Or even if it does come up, it’s kind of wrapped up in the bisexual umbrella, if you will.

“I was, like, very much the most vocally bi person at my school, which was… kind of lonely and … since I know [nothing] about bi sex education, nobody else did either, you know?”

“There is very little financial support to do work that includes explicitly or that centers bi and pan youth. There is resistance and hostility toward programs that either explicitly include or center bi and pan youth from LGBTQIA+organizations and mainstream LGBTQIA+advocates in the field.”

“[G]etting a [coalition] partner that understands the objectives, understands the vision of the project, has been hard.”

“In the last elections, Bolsonaro went on national TV… and said that schools were forcing children to learn about how to become gay, and he lied about a program from the previous government that intended to abolish homophobia in schools, but he said that it was a gay kit that intended to change children [into] homosexuals or other kinds of LGBTQIA+ children.”

“Right now, I would say it’s coming from a mix of government officials who are using the church as a cover or a windscreen, or morality as a windscreen to get their desires. They are being funded by right-wing organizations in the U.S. And they’re using morality as a false sense of rightness to just advance their agenda. But I feel like recently, because of all this, you find a lot more political figures who are involved in the attack, as opposed to before. Before it was mainly the religious leaders.”

“The member of parliament behind the anti-LGBTQIA+ bill in Ghana, Sam George, met with some … LGBT people and said that there are hospitals, hospitals meant for society, where LGBT people cannot go… So, you better identify as a heterosexual, if you really need proper care and services.”

“There is a local law here on LGBTQIA+ that says that if someone in public spaces is dressing or expresses like women, they will get detained and will be sent to rehabilitation. Although it is not anymore in public discussion, it still creates fears for the community.”