Sex workers, transgender men and women, people who use drugs and gay men lost livelihoods, faced violence and often are scapegoated as the transmitters of COVID-19. In the last year, COVID-19 lockdowns had a big effect on women and girls and key populations. I have noticed that social media is strong for advocacy,” she says. “I am starting to use my Instagram page to advocate and sensitize people on transgender and health issues.
Ms Black’s Facebook page is mix of speaking about contemporary Ugandan issues, advocating for transgender people and fashion.ĭespite her success on Facebook, Ms Black is turning to other social media platforms. That campaign grew from about 100 followers on Facebook to 50 000 followers today. “I was like, “Okay, I have to start a campaign on social media” because people only knew about lesbians and gays,” Ms Black says. Her friend was classified as a gay man, resulting in her not accessing health care that could have saved her life. When Ms Black lost an HIV-positive transgender friend to medical negligence in 2013, it was the final straw. They’ll say it’s against their religion,” says Ms Black.
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“You tell a doctor, “I have anal gonorrhoea” and they will all be shocked. The stigma and discrimination often follows transgender people to consulting rooms at health facilities, where, while seeking treatment, they can be degraded and shamed. You might end up getting arrested,” she says. “Sex work is illegal and our kind of sex is very, very illegal. However, while she believes that violence against transgender women needs to be addressed, the criminalization of LGBT people and sex work in Uganda stops survivors from speaking out. She adds that transgender sex workers also meet the same fate at the hands of clients. “Our boyfriends really violate us,” Ms Black says. It is not only sexual violence that Ms Black relates, but also intimate partner violence.
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The 2020 Global AIDS Update reports that in eight sub-Saharan countries nearly one in three transgender women said they had been physically attacked and 28% had been raped.
HIV disproportionately affects female sex workers and transgender women. “I have been persistent on social media because I wanted to tell the world about transgender issues,” she says. The marginalization has created a myriad of issues for transgender people in the country. The online abuse mirrors the violence most transgender women experience in Uganda at the hands of their partners and even health-care providers. She runs Trans Positives Uganda, a community organization that cares for transgender women sex workers and refugees who are living with HIV. Trolling is one motivation for Ms Black’s social media activism. “There is a lot of cyberbullying,” Ms Black says for example, people often attack her for posting pictures of her in dresses and makeup. “If you want to know that is a man, just snatch away his phone and run,” taunted an Internet troll under Keem Love Black’s new profile picture on Facebook.Īs a transgender woman living in Uganda, Ms Black is no stranger to the homophobia and transphobia that the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community receives in the east African country.