cross-posted from: https://quokk.au/c/lgbtq_plus/p/1184160/why-niger-explicitly-criminalising-asexuality-is-significant-to-everyone-regardless-of-ident
To understand Nigers asexuality criminalisation, we should see this law as part of a bigger – and growing – global trend among conservatives about ‘traditional families’
We’re all making fun of Nige
lrTime to go to Niger to get my subsided sex coupon then.
Traditional family = more people to be exploited by religion and capitalists.
The fuck is the crime??
Being a virgin.
leans in
What’s the punishment?
Death. Sacrifice to the volcano god.
😏
I can understand why would someone want to criminalize homisexuality or transexuality. I think those reasons are utterly stupid and deeply immoral, but at least I can see the reasoning behind them. But asexuality?
Homosexuals and asexuals are functionally the same in that they don’t want to engage in reproductive sex. This creates a smaller tax base and must therefore be discouraged.
Niger has 7 children per woman.
That’s kinda a huge problem. So Africa much like the 1800s in first world countries, you’d have like 9 kids because maybe 3 would make it to 18+. When vaccines, antibiotics, ect were discovered suddenly only like 1 or 2 of these 9 kids died before 18. So we stopped having a ton of kids and had kike 1-3 typically.
In Africa while maybe being behind the are benifiting from medial advances and less kids are dying. But now because of that they’re still having 9 kids and they have no food or water because of overpopulation among other things.
Simple. They want to make it illegal for women not to have sex.
WHY ARE YU NOT GAE?
That’s crazy man. What if someone is a priest or something like that?
Religious exemptions are always popular with people who write these kinds of laws.
deleted by creator
What does that even mean, in practice? Mandatory government sex?
It seems, by itself, people within the target group need to have an opposite sex alibi. In practice, and if anyone can find out what the law says exactly, it’s probably targeting people over a certain age who are not married with kids.
The article links to an irrelevant source. What’s the actual law?
I would have to go looking too. But, the article makes it clear it’s an umbrella anti-gay law.
The actual answer to that question, is that they’re going to just ignore the parts that don’t make sense, because there’s no rule of law anyway. Written laws serve as something more like campaign promises, in an authoritarian state.
I think it’s just illegal to “be” asexual.
Under common law in the U.S. that type of law is illegal.
It’s a proxy for “why aren’t you married and having kids?” Niger usually has one of the highest fertility rates per woman, which is a troubling way to measure that.
Source: lived there for years. People take “be fruitful and multiply” very literally.
Neat, a first-hand source! What else should we know about Niger, beyond the statistics?
Rice and beans slap.
This checks out.
How do you guys pronounce Niger? Does it sound French, or is there an other pronounciation to it?
In Niger, everyone says “nee-zhair.” That’s how I’ve always said it. There’s a Niger state in Nigeria, and that one always pronounced “nay-jer”
FWIW, in Nigeria, shorthand for “Nigerian” is Naija, pronounced “nay-ja” as one would expect.
Can you do Nigeria? It’s basically the same without the ia. If not try, ni like bi in bisexual + ger like Germany.
Edit: y’all getting mixed up I’m out
Besides having nothing to do with Niger, which is a totally different situation, the first bit is understandable. A kid needs a house and stability much more than an adult does. Here, there’s not really council houses for kids, either.
And no, it’s not migrant’s fault. Stop reading the Sun or the Daily Mail or whatever.
Nobody mentioned migrants.
OP did, then edited it out.
And now edited the rest out, too.
But that’s not how you treat criminals. You’re describing a mix of positive and negative incentives, which are just policy effects. Criminalization means a particular action or belief has been made criminal, for which a person may be criminally suspect of having committed. There are consequences to be satisfied, such as prison time or community service, not passive burdens for not conforming. Is that not correct or am I overreading the word “criminalizing” here?
What, are they going to make it illegal to not have sex then? What?
Being outwardly celibate is a way lots of different people resist. That is now removed.
You can expect to be used against unmarried women, forcing them to get married. Likely also bound to stigmatize getting married at even a mildly later date than one might have.
It removes any protections LGBTQ folks may have had by staying “single” publicly.
Will likely also result in couples being unable to have children being otherwise persecuted.
Nigerian incels’ last hope.
Nigerien*
Nigerian would be someone from Nigeria
So incels are not somebodies? I don’t get it.
Niger being a different, fully islamic country, mostly in the Sahara instead of on the lush coast. Since a lot of people don’t know the difference
Ah, just like how we use “Americen.”
Americens are from Americ
Canadians are from Canadia.
I would not put it past the nutjobs (of any country) to pass a law that requires that each and every person* ensures their own replacement if not also surplus to that effect to make up for those that can’t. Or won’t.
* of course, by that point they might have created propaganda if not also a law about who or what counts as a person, because they only want more of those, not anyone who might be classified as less than one.
“We’re in this for the species, boys and girls!”
It’s more about not being able to be open about it.
Somehow that’s even more stupid than criminalizing homosexuality.
It’s becoming increasing obvious how desperate the elites are getting, now that every woman isn’t churning out 5+ children for the meat grinder.
This is Niger, where the mean women has like 7, meaning many have more. IIRC it’s the highest rate in the world. Niger is also one of the poorest countries, so there’s no real reason they’d want more.
Isn’t Africa rather thinly populated in general, or do i remember that wrong?
Edit: just checked, Niger has 23 people/km², while germany has 230 pp/km².
Yeah, Niger is desert, basically. There’s a bit of sahel at one end, and of course oases, but it’s not a populous place, because of course it isn’t.
1/10 of German density is actually impressive as hell, and probably why they’re poor even by African standards. Australia might be a better geographic parallel, at 3.7.
If you look at Nigeria, the story is different, and some of the small West African states are going to be even more crowded. Africa as a whole is probably comparable to the next continent. You’re averaging over a lot of very different places, once you get to that scale.
Okay, but how many do the nice women have?
(sorry, couldn’t resist. The article is horrifying, so i’m escaping into humour)
Mild conspiracy alert time, but:
Increased diplomatic ties with Russia + Russia is desperate for more soldiers = keep churning out those future military contractors
Also much of that region of Africa (Niger included) is highly unstable; there’s always the possibility of more localized geopolitical concerns promoting a population arms race.
Going more by Occam’s razor, and a bit of Hanlon’s: They copy-pasted every queer term they could find, and dumped it into the gay-bad bill. The junta may or may not have known what asexual even is.
It’s an islamic country, which also has evangelical missionary influence, and positions itself as anti-Western (when tolerance is highly associated with the West), so that’s a great way to win political points. Now, poorly written laws like that would be a problem… if they had rule of law and working courts in the first place, which they don’t.
This is also highly likely. Anti-LGBTQIA+ folks aren’t exactly known for being well-versed in their queer terminology, and I can totally see the “A” (hell, probably the “I” too) getting swept up in general anti-queer measures, even when it’s nonsensical.
This is also about censorship. Can’t discuss or teach about these things, since they’re “criminal”. Engineering sexual ignorance.
In June 2026, the nation of Niger became the first nation in the world ++to criminalise asexuality++, as part of a wider crackdown on the LGBTQIA+ community. The country, currently run by a military junta, broadened its anti-LGBTQIA+ laws, increasing the criminalisation of LGBTQIA+ ‘practices’ to include anyone who ‘attempts to’ participate.
The ILGA database says the newly passed laws, Article 25 and 390, are already having life-threatening implications on LGBTQIA+ people in Niger.
Ace people in Niger, alongside people of all LGBTQIA+ identities, can now face 5-10 years in prison and fines worth up to £130K.
The change was significant as it makes Niger the first country to name the asexual community in its law books. However, it begs the question: how does one ban an asexual “practice”, other than to punish people who are not married and those who don’t have babies? To understand, we should see this law as part of a bigger – and growing – global trend among conservatives.
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Niger’s crackdown on asexual “practices” is not isolated to the West African nation; it’s part of a greater trend of anti-LGBTQIA+ rhetoric, enforced monogamy and anti-abortion movements worldwide.
In ++2026++, Niger (alongside Burkina Faso and Mali) has strengthened diplomatic ties with Russia, while their military juntas are at war with insurgent groups. This move comes at a time when Russia instituted a ban on “++propaganda++” that promotes childfree lifestyles. But this rhetoric is not isolated to countries we tend to associate with deep-rooted conservative laws.
Meanwhile, conservatives in the U.S. have been shaming childfree women as ++“childless cat ladies”.++ This builds on previous campaigns from the religious right in America, which stated the Respect for Marriage Act ++would lead to asexual marriages++, which they believed would lead to a marriage “inferno”. Groups like the Heritage Foundation equated asexual marriages to “selfishness”.
Zoom out a little, and it’s easy to see the hypocrisy of conservative religious people demonising asexuality, considering how much abstinence was preached to me growing up in a conservatively religious home.
Asexuality stands in direct contrast to the religious right’s shaming of ‘childfree’ people, which also often ignores other routes to having children like adoption, and ++family models that show you can be asexual and a parent++. Instead, the decreasing birth rate has been a talking point of right-wing politics for years.
And yet, conservatives do not care to address the many concerns related to raising a child – such as rising costs of childcare, affordable housing, and lack of reproductive justice. They only seem to care about making everyone become a parent.
[…]
The fuck… ?
Didn’t have that one on my bingo card.
