Hello and welcome to season seven, episode three of Bad Gays, a podcast all about evil and complicated queer people in history.

My name's Hugh Lemmy. I'm a writer, author, artist.

And I'm Ben Miller, a writer and researcher and member of the board of the Shulis Museum in Berlin.

Last week, we were talking about the lovers, the playwrights, authors, artists, Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell.

Who are we talking about this week, Ben? artists, Joe Orton, and Kenneth Halliwell. Who are we talking about

this week, Ben? Well, today's subject was an initially uneducated woman who was born in about

1880, and in her nearly 70 years of life, this woman rose from enslavement to being a sex

worker, to being a female king.

Both a leader of her community of Enugu Ezek in present-day Nigeria and a collaborator

with British colonialism in the region, she, like other kings, had multiple wives.

Finally, removed from power by British officials and local elders

because she participated in a ritual in a way that only men were supposed to, the complex life of

Ahibi Uqbabe helps tell the story of the colonization of Nigeria and of the similarities and

differences between the sex gender systems we're used to in the contemporary West,

possibilities in those sex gender systems throughout different human societies and human history.

Well, this sounds like it's going to be a really interesting story.

But we know as much as we do about the life of this extraordinary person thanks to the historical work of Nwondo Achebe.

And if that last name Achebe sounds familiar, it's because she's the daughter of Chinoa Achebe,

who is the world-famous Nigerian writer.

His first novel, Things Fall Apart, is one of the most widely read and assigned African novels.

Chebe was also an influential critic of Orientalism and racism in Western writing about Africa.

Right, he writes an amazing essay about Conrad.

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