We Know Where: Musings during the Drama Queens' 'Where Them Girls At?' speakeasy

When a pan-Africanist, intersectional feminist organisation says they’re having a conversation on outspoken women in Ghana and where they are now, I’m going. I’ve had my (un)fair share of “feminist” conversations with women who are so devastatingly conservative it makes me wonder whether they know what it means to be feminist. “Feminists” who only speak for classed, Christian, modest, and cisgender heterosexual women. Never again. 

On 28th March, Drama Queens held a speakeasy titled ‘Where Them Girls At?’. It was a conversation on radical women in Ghana’s socio-cultural space. In their Instagram post, they asked, How does society use these tools of filial guilt, shame, and purity culture to instruct how high and how loud we can be? 

Flyer for the Drama Queens 'Where Them Girls At?' event

The first thing I noticed when I arrived was that there were men in attendance. I’m noticing more queer men attending and contributing to feminist conversations on- and offline. I strongly feel the reason non-feminist queer people do not engage with feminism is not just because they lack empathy, but because they lack the awareness that they too are a marginalised group who will later be met with bigotry. The patriarchy that gives them male privilege is the same patriarchy that views them as ‘not man enough’ because of their romantic and sexual orientation to men. 

Anyway, one of the first things we did at the event was define the term “bad bitch,” and to be honest, I winced throughout that part of the conversation. That B word is so sharp. Yes, marginalised people tend to reclaim and put a positive spin on slurs once used against them, but this one? This one is beyond me. There’s a difference between reclaiming a word like “queer,” which originally meant odd/strange, and reclaiming “bitch,” which originally meant and still means “female dog.” The dehumanisation is too clear for me to move past, but thankfully, I wasn’t uncomfortable for long.

Eventually we started using the term “radical women” instead of bad bitch. It helped a lot - not just because I don’t like the B word but because it allowed us to think of more women than we were able to at first. Why, you ask? Let’s be honest, there’s a certain aesthetic, body, and personality type we think of when we hear the term “bad bitch.” You have to look the part. It’s one of the things we talked about, the strictness of the definition. A woman who kills it in her professional life is a bad bitch, but you don’t hear that, someone shared. Exactly. 

So, who is a radical woman? We agreed ‘radical’ depends on the society you’re in. For example, Ebony was radical for not wearing a bra in a time when Ghanaian women would never show up in public and on film clearly not wearing one. It was serious for them. Professor Audrey Gadzekpo is radical for saying she’ll challenge the anti-LGBTQ+ bill in the Ghanaian Supreme Court. In certain societies in Ghana, it’s radical to say it isn’t a woman’s job to cook for a man. Patriarchal societies want women to dress modestly, let a man lead, speak when they’re spoken to… to be almost invisible, basically. So any woman who does the opposite is radical. That very much includes the mini skirt wearers. My girls 🫶🏾 

But what is the price of being a radical woman? Sigh, this part. As someone rightfully mentioned, the stakes get higher as you get older; it’s why people become more conservative with age. The price of being a radical woman is the price of being radical + some more misogyny. It generally costs a lot to be outspoken. The price is reduced income and reduced visibility if you work in the media, verbal and physical harassment, and ostracism. Now imagine all that in addition to an extra serving of misogyny because clearly, as a woman, you don't know "your place.”

One of the things I’ve always known to be a price of being a radical woman or girl is having few or no advocates when faced with violence. When I was in SHS, the girls who were often slut-shamed were never believed when they reported any kind of unfair or inappropriate behaviour directed at them. When they complained about being unreasonably punished by teachers, no one cared; when they complained about being sexually harassed by boys or their teachers, they were ignored. People either didn’t believe the things they said, or they felt the girls got what they deserved.

At that point, I thought of Ama Governor, an openly queer Ghanaian YouTuber and lawyer. The price she paid for being and stating who she is was heavy. Her queerness, her nose piercing, and her tattoo erased any chance of advocacy by mainstream pressure groups, because mainstream groups in Ghana, regardless of what they say, are conservative. If her queerness and her body modifications didn’t exist, there would have been movement from lawyers and popular feminist-like groups; they would have cared enough to protest in some way. But no conservative Ghanaian wants to be associated with LGBTQ+ people, and no ‘wholesome’ woman wants to tarnish her image by speaking for a ‘bad girl.’

Despite being qualified, Ama’s career was put on hold for two years because she’s queer. She shared at the Speakeasy that when she was finally called to the bar and ready to work, she received more rejections than she could count from multiple law firms in the country. Last year, she was physically assaulted and arrested by a police officer during the #StopGalamseyNow protests in Accra. You can’t tell me her queerness didn’t have anything to do with it. 

Up until the end of the conversation, I thought about radical queer women. Their queerness already makes them radical, and it means they’re facing misogyny and queerphobia. They are also less likely to be advocated for because we live in a queerphobic country. What does anyone stand to lose by admitting this? Resources? Attention? I’m thinking of Pepper Dem Ministries, J.K. Rowling, the owner of the vagina owners only gym, and the spineless transphobes who had me arguing in the comment section of that one feminist zoom meeting… Any and every feminist who has so much as implied they either cannot see or do not care about the oppression queer women face. Being a feminist should mean you stand against oppression.You can’t claim to be against the oppression of marginalised groups (which is what women are in most societies - a marginalised group) but not care about the specific ways in which they are oppressed. I wish homophobes and TERFs would stop wasting everyone’s time calling themselves what they’re not. They won’t, though. So queer feminists, let’s not waste our time with them. 

Shoutout to Drama Queens for truly doing the feminism.

We split into groups at the end of the discussion to envision a radical woman. This was my group's submission. Our radical woman is every radical woman.