Malawi gay couple misidentified in press
by Hannah Clay Wareham
Associate Editor
Thursday Jun 3, 2010
http://www.baywindows.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=glbt&sc2=news&sc3=&id=106496 (http://www.baywindows.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=glbt&sc2=news&sc3=&id=106496)
Tiwonge Chimbalanga's gender identity ignored.
The Malawi couple arrested for hosting a same-sex engagement ceremony may have been misidentified in media reports.
snip
According to a February 13 New York Times article ("Same-Sex Couple Stir Fears of a 'Gay Agenda'"), however, Chimbalanga, 20, identifies as transgender. "I have male genitals, but inside I am a complete woman," Chimbalanga told the NYT. "Maybe I cannot give birth to a child, but I menstruate every month -- or most months -- and I can do any household chores a woman can do."
Bah, even the "corrections" keep getting it wrong.
She does not identify as transgender. She identifies as a woman. It is completely inappropriate to apply the Western understanding of "transgender" to people outside Western culture. Yes, we need to acknowledge her identity; no, that identity is not "transgender." As near as I can tell, it's "woman with male genitalia," but it could be something more along the lines of "woman-identified intersex."
And as far as the menstruation, they still don't get it. We don't know exactly what she's claiming - she could literally be asserting that she has a vagina that bleeds each month, or she could simply be saying that she goes through the ritual practices that accompany (and may overshadow) the physical act of bleeding from the vagina. The context of the claim - talking about doing women's houseshold chores, etc - strongly implies that she believes menstruation (if that is in fact the correct translation of the term she used) is something that one does, not something that happens to one's body.
I know someone who claims to bleed every month but does not have the physical parts of a woman. I never figured out what was meant or how that could be. This is in the US so maybe imagination does strange things.
Frankly, the fuss being made over which details are acceptable or not seems silly.
These two people simply wanted to live accoding to their personal wishes.
Individualism has a long way to come in Africa, much more so than in Europe. This is a step in the right direction, but there's a long way to go yet.