The Emergence of a Grassroots African Trans Archive

Abstract

This paper demonstrates the enthusiasm of the young trans movement in sub-Saharan Africa. The rich history of the struggles and successes of various trans-related events and work in the African continent has not been documented. With this first publication, which forms part of the larger collection of an African trans archive, the authors provide a credible reference source to those doing research on, working with, or interested in knowing some of the history of African trans and gender-nonconforming persons, communities, and movements. A brief reflection into apartheid South Africa and the lives of trans people before democracy leads to a short description how Gender DynamiX, while only in its emerging stage, embarked in archiving and documenting material and history of trans people throughout the country. This placed Gender DynamiX as the key witness of the emergence of the first trans movement in sub-Saharan Africa.

Stigma and HIV service access among transfeminine and gender diverse women in South Africa – a narrative analysis of longitudinal qualitative data from the HPTN 071 (PopART) trial

“…With more recent studies in South Africa with black men who have sex with men [39], we found that gender identity and sexual orientation are not mutually exclusive, but rather intimately connected. For a large part of the recent history of Africa, homosexuality, as well as transgender identity, has been construed as a Western concept brought by colonialisation [40]. Conflation of gender and sexuality is common in the African context, where religious and political conservatism often limit expression of gender to a binary level [39,40].…”

How do you wish to be cited? Citation practices and a scholarly community of care in trans studies research articles

“…Her journey to be a woman elicited positive feedback from the public at large, most arguably owing to her aspirations of marriage. (Theron & Kgositau, 2015) 10. Liesl Theron, a cisgender woman, and her trans man partner Lex Kirsten were the founders of Gender DynamiX in 2005.…”

“…Liesl Theron, a cisgender woman, and her trans man partner Lex Kirsten were the founders of Gender DynamiX in 2005. (Theron & Kgositau, 2015) 11. Tshepo Kgositau is a trans woman, originally from Botswana who now resides in South Africa.…”

“…Tshepo Kgositau is a trans woman, originally from Botswana who now resides in South Africa. (Theron & Kgositau, 2015) 12. Audrey Mbugua, a trans woman who extensively advocates and writes about the views of the misinformed public.…”

“…Audrey Mbugua, a trans woman who extensively advocates and writes about the views of the misinformed public. (Theron & Kgositau, 2015) Of the 12 instances where authors are identified as trans, 9 are references to authors who have written extensively about their own experiences as trans persons. In some examples, there is a strong implication that cited authors' knowledge claims stem from experience of transness: in Example 2, Crawford only implies that Stryker is trans ("for Stryker, transsexuality …"), but this is located within an in-depth discussion of Stryker's intensely autoethnographic article "Dungeon Intimacies: The Poetics of Transsexual Sadomasochism" (Stryker, 2008) where Stryker's own transness is explicit; in Example 4, while "trans theorist" is a somewhat ambiguous modifierdit can describe a theorist who is either trans or studies transness (or both)dit comes immediately after a sentence that introduces the term transgender as "a particular self-defined category of personhood," thus strongly implying that Stone is bothdwhich she isda trans woman and a theorist of trans studies.…”