Joelle and Aurelie

Joelle walks through the world fully aware of who she is — and she refuses to apologize for it.

A Black Belgo-Congolese woman, a lesbian, an Afrofeminist activist — her identity is complex, powerful, and often misunderstood. Society is quick to reduce her to labels, sometimes violent ones. “Black dyke” — a slur she’s heard far too often. But Joelle knows that visibility comes with a cost. And still, she shows up. Loudly. Freely. Unafraid.

She is in love with Aurélie, a white woman born and raised in France. Their relationship doesn’t seek validation; it breathes on its own terms. There is joy, laughter, learning. There is mutual care — a kind of tenderness that’s both radical and grounded. Aurélie knows what it means to stand beside Joelle, not in front of her. She understands the privilege her whiteness affords her and chooses, actively, to be an ally — not just in words, but in the everyday actions that matter.

For Joelle, loving out loud is not a performance. It’s resistance. It’s healing. It’s survival.

She doesn’t measure her love against the discomfort of others — not of her family, not of strangers, not of a society that still struggles to accept her existence. Instead, she wears her love like she wears her convictions: firmly, with pride.

But Joelle’s vision stretches beyond borders. Deeply attached to Congo, to Kinshasa, she knows that queer love in Africa often faces harsher realities. She believes in action. In creating space for dialogue. In pushing the needle forward — not just here, but back home, where voices like hers are needed, urgently.

“To love, and to be loved, while Black, queer, and Congolese — that’s not just personal. That’s political.”

Joelle reminds us that living truthfully is already a form of resistance. And that sometimes, love is the most revolutionary act of all.

Brussels, 2022