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’
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.
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.
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 (edit: major) continent. You’re averaging over a lot of very different places, once you get to that scale.
that ok, i understand. but how do you explain that the Democratic Republic of the Congo has 48 pp/km²? that one is surely no desert.
these are all central africa, surely no sahara desert there.
again, germany, 230 pp/km² for comparison.
As you can see on your map, Germany is actually really dense, not typical. Europe has had an easy few centuries, and that, alongside the UK, is the densest part of Europe. If you pick a random patch of civilisation-friendly terrain, it has a greater than 50% chance to be yellow, which is like the empty central parts of Spain.
Looking over the list on Wikipedia, Germany is number 63 out of 245. What’s ahead of it is mostly island and city states, with a few other major nations in the mix.
CAR is pretty empty, and that might be down to jungle. Why the jungle would be hard to live in, once you cut down a few trees, is unclear to me as a Canadian (maybe poor soil?). Plus, there are populous jungle regions, like in SE Asia. But, there definitely is a pattern.
DRC south of it is mostly yellow, and to the south-east you hit the dense African Great Lakes region. The white patch in southern Africa is the Kalahari, another desert.
Thanks! Hopefully people can pick out the Sahara themselves, while the red blob in west Africa would be mostly Nigeria.
Same story in both of the Americas, at least. Few people live in the Canadian arctic or the Amazon, plenty live in the New York or Sao Paolo area.
Asia has those mega-population spots, but the empty part is also bigger. With it sitting in front of me the mega-population spots still probably win. Non-Russia Europe is the same size and rough shape as India, but as a “continent” it’s pretty dense. while Australia and of course Antarctica are emptier.