The Police Asked Doctors to Test if We Were Really ‘Gei’ – Four Stories from Sub-Saharan Africa
In one country in Sub-Saharan Africa we studied, there is fortunately little religious hostility against geis (persons born male who feel they are women or ‘in between’ male and female). Yet local authorities at the street level – police, judges, local government officials or local security guards – seem unsure whether geis are themselves ‘illegal’. In this country, there is silence surrounding the law, and there are no NGOs that could discuss these issues with local authorities, unlike in a neighbouring African country that we also studied.
In an NGO vacuum, many local authorities are left not knowing what to do with the geis in their custody or area of administration. This uncertainty produces ambivalent reactions toward geis: helpful and harmful in turns. For example, if police find out about weddings between men and geis, they can either arrest the whole family involved, or they may agree to be security guards for such a wedding. Sometimes police beat geis if they catch them offering sex (their only source of income) along the roads at night. They make them pay ‘bail’ before their case is ever taken to court. It should be noted that the police are underpaid and demand ‘bail’ from straight persons in jail as well to supplement their meagre salaries. On the other hand, police usually do not write the reports that would put geis in prison.
Police stations could be a refuge of safety from urban predators such as sex work clients and the violent vigilante gangs. Michael,* who self-identified as ‘in between’, was chased by a gang of male vigilantes and strangers hid Michael in their home. After the hoodlums gave up the chase and left, Michael recalled:
The women and men in the house directed me to the police station which was nearby. The police treated me well and told me that in this area people don’t like geis so you are not the first one who came here to ask for help, so the police gave me their phone to make the call.
Once, when transwoman Lady J. was caught selling sex along the road dressed as a woman, she was taken to the police station. There was no one who could bail her out, so she was sent to prison. Before she entered her cell, the guards asked if she was gei.
I admitted it – said Lady J. – Then the prison officers told me to put on the women’s clothing and wig that I was wearing when caught, and then one of the guards took pictures of me. Then I was taken to the “geis’ cell” where there were three other geis. It is better if you admit you are gei, otherwise you end up in the men’s cell, and if the other men in the cell find out you are gei, the men will penetrate you sexually and try to do bad things to you. So I stayed there 15 days, but I was not treated badly.
After this, the four gei cellmates were taken to court for sentencing, but the judge freed them and sent them home. Lady J. explained: whether you are kept in prison for longer depends on which police officer caught you. She added that if the officer makes no statement, gei prisoners are freed.
Yet only a few years later, the police caught Lady J. again and this time beat her at the police station and let her go. Beatings in this society are often thought of as a way to ‘teach’ the person to stop their ‘bad behavior’.
Police sometimes just shrug their shoulders and treat geis as women when they felt the situation called for it. Adriana, a transwoman, lived in a house with her male lover, and this male lover also had a wife and children living somewhere else. When his wife found out about her husband’s relationship with Adriana, she decided to take a housemaid’s job in Dubai. On the morning of her plane flight, she brought her three small children, all under five years old, to Adriana’s doorstep and told Adriana she was leaving the children for Adriana to care for. Adriana told what happened next:
I had no way out, and [my lover] blamed me for accepting the children because the wife would be gone for two years. Then after that, I had to take the children to the local government office and police station to tell about it. They all just said, you should take care of these children because you are living with someone else’s husband. […] The wife stayed away for two years, I stayed with the children for six months until the wife’s relatives came to take the children.
The confusion created by police having to make judgement calls ‘on the ground’ can be seen from the story told in 2024 by Berenice, another transwoman:
One night, several policemen caught me and friend walking home from a concert along the road and arrested us, thinking we were loitering. Both me and my friend admitted to the police we were ‘gei’. The police locked us in jail and the next day took us to a hospital so the doctors could test if we ‘were really gei’. The doctors were confused and asked what test they could do, since we had already said we were ‘gei’. The policemen didn’t know what kind of tests they wanted the doctors to run but persisted that the doctors must test us for ‘geiness’. The doctors then told the police they would test us and pretended to do so after the police left, sending a report at the end of the day to the police confirming that we were indeed ‘gei’. The police then locked us up again and demanded a hefty ‘bail’ for our release. Once released by our friends, I and my friend were told to report back to the police station later. Why? I had no idea.
These stories are not so much about homophobia as they are about the fact that in this environment – without NGOs to discuss and open up what gender and sexual orientation really mean – the police involved did not have a clear idea of who geis were or what to do with geis they encountered. This sometimes led to better outcomes for geis, sometimes worse, but it meant that geis never felt safe: they were dependent on the whims of local authorities and did not feel themselves to be full citizens in society.
*All names used in this post are pseudonyms to protect the identities of the study participants.
See also other blog posts from the ACACIA Project:
11.2.2025: USAID Cuts May End the Dream of Non-Violent Future for LGBTQI+ People in Africa
12.2.2025: When Being LGBTQI+ is Illegal - The Worst Wardships Came from Police and Self-Styled Vigilante Gangs
