Queer liberation was supposed to free us from shame.So why are we recreating purity culture inside our own spaces?In this episode of By The Fireside, I examine the rise of puritan morality within LGBTQ+ communities — and how sexual policing, racial scrutiny, and digital visibility reshape what freedom looks like.This episode explores:• The return of moral hierarchy inside queer spaces• Asexual discourse and sexual superiority politics• Porn shaming and gendered double standards• Racialised scrutiny of Black queer bodies• Sexual health speculation and entitlement• Grooming vs mentorship in visible queer spaces• NGO respectability politics• Dating apps as sites of informal surveillance• Safety vs. community controlThis is not about attacking identities.This is about examining behaviours.Queer liberation cannot mean:“You are free — but only if your sexuality is respectable.”If we are not careful, we will repaint puritan frameworks in rainbow colours and call it progress.By The Fireside is a living archive documenting Black, queer, Ghanaian and Global South perspectives on power, love, visibility, and survival.The Podcast Includes: Puritan Queer Culture, sexual policing in LGBTQ spaces, queer purity culture, porn shaming discourse, Black queer visibility, African LGBTQ voices, racial surveillance queer spaces, dating apps and queer community, NGO respectability politics, queer liberation critique, LGBTQ politics Africa, queer moral hierarchy, Black queer podcast, decolonial queer thought, Scorpio energy#ByTheFireside#QueerCulture#AfricanQueerness#BlackQueerVoices#QueerPolitics#SexualLiberation#DecolonialQueer#ScorpioEnergy

In every classroom, there was brilliance.Effeminate boys.Tomboy girls.Gender-nonconforming children.Queer minds before we had the language.And yet by adulthood, many disappear.In this episode of By The Fireside, I explore the darker layers of queer community that we rarely name:• The full spectrum of elderhood• Survival elders vs. protective elders• Silence as alignment• Grooming disguised as mentorship• Conditional visibility• NGO influence and access politics• The scapegoat mechanism• The cost of refusing to shrinkThis is not character assassination.This is structural examination rooted in lived experience.Elderhood is not age.It is not proximity to power.It is responsibility.If community cannot protect its most visible and most vulnerable members, we must ask what we are really building.By The Fireside is a living archive for Black, queer, Ghanaian and Global South voices navigating love, power, survival, and self-definition.This Podcast includes: The Dark Side of Queer Community, queer elders, elder failure in queer spaces, queer mentorship, African LGBTQ voices, Black queer podcast, silence in queer community, queer grooming culture, NGO influence Africa, queer politics Ghana, decolonial queer thought, queer activism Africa, queer visibility politics, scapegoat in community, Scorpio energy#queerpodcast #ByTheFireside #africanculture #queercommunity #blackqueer #elderly #Decolonialqueer #ScorpioEnergy

Love is not real if it does not recognise who you understand yourself to be.

In this episode of By The Fireside, I explore what it means to say “Love me the gay way” — beyond attraction, beyond performance, and beyond depoliticised ideas of queerness.

This is a fireside reflection on:
• why identity becomes central in queer love
• the difference between being loved and being misrecognised
• queer as an umbrella versus queer as political positioning
• how white liberal queerness conditions relationships and communities
• African queerness, NGO culture, and the management of visibility
• what happens when love, support, or allyship demands containment
• why refusing to shrink is not cruelty, but self-respect

This episode speaks to the quiet harm of being loved only as a softened version of yourself — and the cost of insisting on being whole.

Love that requires disappearance is not love.
Support that depends on obedience is not care.

By The Fireside is a living archive for Black, queer, Ghanaian and global-south people navigating love, power, and selfhood on their own terms.

#ByTheFireside

#QueerLove

#AfricanQueerness

#BlackQueerVoices

#QueerPolitics

#LoveAndPower

#GlobalSouth

#ScorpioEnergy