Transgender Invisibility in Namibian and South African LGBT Organizing

The meanings of transgender invisibility in Namibian and South African lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movements differ from those in LGBT movements in the United States. LGBT activists in Namibia and South Africa voluntarily included transgender rights and persons in the movement beginning in the mid-1990s, yet few constituents identified as transgender. Transgender invisibility in these movements indicates the discrepancy between collective and lived personal identities. Drawing on ethnographic observation of Namibian and South African LGBT activist organizations in 2005–06 and fifty-six interviews with LGBT activists, the article analyzes the contours of transgender invisibility within the Namibian and South African LGBT movements. A focus on transgender invisibility in LGBT movement organizations in Namibia and South Africa illuminates the uneven reception of identity terms and the identity work that LGBT activists in southern Africa perform to encourage constituents to align personal identities with prevailing collective-identity terms.