# Epistemological lessons  
The stakes are, literally, life and death for Afrodescendent nonheteronormative and gender variant individuals - not only in the global South, which is often labelled a homophobic place out of sync with the so-called 'enlightened' North, but also in 'developed' States. In many nations of the world they face the criminalization of 'sodomy' and 'cross-dressing'. In extreme examples, rumour and innuendo - perhaps plastered on the front page of a newspaper - is enough to cause a person to be beaten, jailed or killed for being homosexual or gender variant. Nationalist rhetoric, which cast LGBT rights and recognition as 'foreign' attacks on 'tradition' or sovereignty resonate with fundamentalist religious rhetoric, both in the former colonial world and in the metropoles. Racist and transphobic disenfranchisement, employment discrimination, and the strategic silence of most nation States on the need for targeted public health interventions for LGBTQ individuals whose secondary and tertiary marginalization makes them more vulnerable, is widespread.  
Epistemologically, it is important to focus on black/queer studies not only because black people have been viewed through jaundiced lenses, but also because it is now clear that standard scholarly frameworks do not allow us to