Research seminar in Cultural Anthropology with Laura Stark. Homosexual, transgender, third gender, or…? Dilemmas and insights from the Global South

In this lecture Professor Stark uses queer anthropology and a decolonialist approach to query Anglo-American concepts of gender and sexuality by examining geis in the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam. Despite the name, geis are not homosexuals in the Western sense of the word. Geis have in common that they were designated at birth as male and allow themselves to be penetrated by partners in anal sex. Some self-identify as transgender ‘women’, some as ‘in-between men and women’ (katikati), and some as men. She argues that Western concepts of gender and sexuality have been uncritically applied in the past to map and control the colonial and post-colonial populations. This misreading of intimate identities has prevented insights that could inform and transform gender and sexualities theory itself.