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

Abstract

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.

Keywords

• security studies
• anthropology
• gender and sexuality studies
• critical human rights
• science and technology studies (sts)