When the homo deamon went digital: writing Africa’s transgender refugee diaspora

Abstract

Abstract From an online African lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) news and information website, launched in 2000, called Behind the Mask (BtM) to Sokari Ekine’s foundational 2004 blog Blacklooks, the digital has been crucial to queer African studies and, indeed, queer Africa. In this brief exploration, I navigate through the realms of queer African studies, African digital humanities, and African literary studies, using them as my guiding framework to uncover the digital emergence of an African transgender refugee diaspora. I suggest that this diaspora is producing content explicitly aimed back at the African continent to shape and deploy the reality of what it means to be transgender and African. In so doing, they are actively authoring themselves into existence.