Organizing under pressure: authoritarianism, respectability politics, and LGBT advocacy in Rwanda
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In 2009, following several countries including Burundi and Nigeria, a proposal was introduced in Rwanda to criminalize same-sex sex and lgbt activism. However, unlike the other countries, Rwanda’s Article 217 criminalization proposal was eliminated within months of its introduction. While this result can be understood as a success story, it also can elide the obstacles Rwandan activists experience when organizing for lgbt people. The cross-movement coalition that formed to oppose Article 217 specifically adopted a nonconfrontational strategy designed to work within the authoritarian political system in Rwanda. While activists framed the removal of Article 217 as aligned with existing government priorities, the dialogue strategy has clear limits when activists’ goals are to make further changes in Rwanda, particularly when government officials do not see further changes as aligned with their priorities. A combination of the authoritarian system and the government’s focus on economic development and individual advancement narrowly circumscribe what types of activism the government will accept. This imperative to conform to government expectations means activists adopt rhetoric and encourage lgbt people to engage in activities that are focused on how they appear as individuals. This focus on the individual elides the wider structural problems that exist in Rwanda that perpetuate discrimination againstlgbt people, particularly those who experience multiple marginalizations. Lgbt activism is circumscribed so it can occur in Rwanda, but this has consequences for how much change is advocated for and who benefits from this activism.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.013 | 0.018 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".