The colonial construction of transphobia and the continued enforcement of the gender hegemony, have created an environment in which transgender people have to conform to idealised depictions of femininity and masculinity to find a sense of community and safety.
Why is the disregard of a person’s human right always greeted with a call to humanize that person? As if it is ever possible to bestow humanity on an individual and as though queer people are not already human enough merely by being? Writes Lucretia, a trans woman from Kenya’s Kakuma refugee camp.
When Christian missionaries established schools in different parts of East Africa, they constructed the narrative that Black hair was unsightly, ungodly and untameable.