WORDS ROXY BOURDILLON

PRISCILLA PHILIPS SHARES HER EXPERIENCE OF BEING QUEER AND NIGERIAN DURING THE FESTIVE SEASON

Christmas is traditionally a time to spend with family, but what happens when your sexual identity is illegal in your home country? When you can’t speak to your relatives about who you really are for fear of a 14 year prison sentence? We spoke to fashion PR, media consultant, blogger and poet Priscilla Philips to find out.

DIVA: When did you realise you were a lesbian?

PRISCILLA PHILIPS: Aged five I remember having this funny dream of me in a village filled with women and I was like the King-Queen with access to all the women. In the dream, being attracted to a woman was normal so I grew into my early adulthood thinking it was normal. My first kiss with a girl was with Blessing, aged seven. Her lips were red and inviting, her skin was dark and shining. I remember her stares. And of course, we went beyond just kissing. My second experience was when I was 13, with Seyi. Playing mummies and daddies was boring, but it got fun when Seyi and I played “mummy and mummy” in the bathroom every night during long summer holidays. Believe me, it was exciting, emotional and beautiful. As a teenager, I became more introverted. I didn’t dress like a girl. I hated myself for a long while for being female, and I didn’t understand why girls were so thrilled about boys. As I grew into adulthood, I found out that it was a taboo in Nigeria to be called a lesbian and this deepened my distance from myself. I lived life thinking I wasn’t supposed to be happy, or to give love. Embracing my sexuality at the beginning was slow and burdensome. Life for me has been an exhibit of hidden desires, mostly after I became aware of my sexuality as a queer woman.