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Article ID: CBB036150828

“Security begins with you”: compulsory heterosexuality, registers of gender and sexuality, and transgender women getting by in Kampala, Uganda (2021)

Austin Bryan (Author)

Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society
Volume: 4
Issue: 1
Publication date: 2021
Language: English

DOI: 10.1080/25729861.2021.1984640

URI: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/25729861.2021.1984640

Publication Date: 2021
Physical Details: Digital journal

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Gender Anthropology Critical security studies Science and technology studies (STS) Queer studies Human rights Women Homosexuality 21st century Uganda

This article examines how women getting by in Kampala, take up registers of gender and sexuality in a contemporary hybrid democratic-authoritarian state with compulsory heterosexuality. Sections 145–146 of Uganda’s fourth Constitution (1995–present) include language dating to the British colonial administration of the Uganda Protectorate (1950), which criminalizes “carnal knowledge of any person against the order of nature.” This has been regularly used by the Uganda Police Force, since the contemporary politicization of homosexuality in the early 2000s, to justify the harassment, incarceration, and torture of those who are identiﬁed as “homosexual.” In addition to the economic precarity most Ugandans already face, transgender women seeking social services are often instructed by Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) social workers that “security begins with you” and are encouraged to manage the way they performatively index their gender and sexuality. Drawing from interviews and participant observations in Kampala, Uganda from volunteer work at the NGO, Sexual Minorities Uganda (2015–2016), I ﬁnd that transgender women use various registers of gender and sexuality that do not fully conform with the norms for performativity inside the queer community and must reconcile their insecurity through privatized social services, security, and market activities that determine the insecurity of their daily life.

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Article Siri Lamoureaux; Richard Rottenburg (2021) Doing postcolonial gender: An approach to justifying rights, resources, and recognition. Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society. unapi

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