Decolonizing Trans Ghanaian Genders

***We use the phrases "Black Trans" and "Afro-Trans" to denote African-descended individuals who live their day to the day lives beyond the cisgender binary - as Black Trans Womxn, Black Trans Mxn, Black Trans Non-Binary folks, Two-Spirit, and all the other multitudes of names we give and have yet to give to our fluid Black genders.***

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Hosts

This series is a collaboration between Liberation Medicine School and Alliance for Dynamics Initiative

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What is the Context for This Circle?

In an ongoing cycle of oppression, the socio-political machinery in both Ghana and the United States continue to enact policies that call for the genocide of Black Trans people. In Ghana, this looks like the constant threat of the passing of a sweeping anti-LGBTQI bill that would place an already vulnerable community under formalized state-sanctioned harm. In the United States, this looks like city, state, and national-level policies, presidential executive orders, and laws that criminalize Blackness, transness, queerness, and migration. Trans Ghanaians — either as residents of Ghana or as 1st/2nd generation immigrants/asylum seekers in the United States — find ourselves trapped in these in-between spaces where neither side bodes well for our safety.

 

Within LMS, we recognize that across the two countries of Ghana and the U.S., a tactic of oppression used by our oppressors is narrative and epistemic erasure and genocide . Trans Ghanaians (and other Trans Africans/other Black Trans peoples) are decentered from our knowledge of self, our knowledge of our histories, and our ability to build new knowledge about who we are. This process of erasure then allows for the dehumanization and systemic murder of Black Trans folks, forcing us to always defend our existence so we are not erased along with our histories.This type of narrative and epistemic genocide further prevents Trans Ghanaians from engaging in revolutionary dreaming work, i.e. from visioning and strategizing collectively towards a liberatory future. Another tactic of oppression is isolation, where communal-togetherness can increase the risk of arrests and incidents of physical violence. In this fear space seeded by the transphobic system, community building between each other becomes difficult. Trans Ghanaians in the U.S./Ghana are thus limited in creating bonds of interdependency and in building mutual support systems necessary to keep each other safe. Each of these tactics and their downstream impacts lead to a third tool of oppression: the erosion of our community’s mental health.

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This Freedom School Intervention

This freedom school — fully titled Fighting Back, Healing Forward: Decolonizing, (Re)Naming, (Re)Defining, and (Re)Claiming Gender Expansivity from a Ghanaian Perspective — is part of a larger political campaign by LMS & ADI to push back against the erasure of Trans Ghanaian identities. This work situates itself in solidarity with mobilization efforts by other collectives, organizations, activists, and creatives to abolish violence against Trans Ghanaian/Trans African communities. It is also part of LMS’s mission to challenge U.S. Imperialism and its detrimental impacts upon Afro-LGBTQI peoples.

 

Through a blend of popular education, storytelling, community building, and collective witnessing, this freedom school aims to address these three root causes/tactics of oppression. Via 10 circles spread across 2025, Trans Ghanaians around the diaspora will be invited into a virtual space to draw upon our individual lived experiences to create collective knowledge about our historical origins while building the collective power to intervene against systemic erasure. Instead of “teaching at” each other, this project seeks to draw upon the stories that we each carry to build historical patterns and political analyses that speak to our relationships with the colonial matrix. Using LMS’s principle of “Each One Teach One, Each One Heal One”, and ADI’s principle of "ADI Konnect”, our goal is to honour the varying knowledge and skills of care embodied by each participant.

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Facilitate A Circle for Decolonizing Trans Ghanaian Genders!

We are seeking facilitation proposals from Ghanaian trans folks and would love to hear from you! We are actively welcoming Circle keepers with a broad range of experience. We truly believe that every Afro-trans person has a medicine to share

For this role, our ask is for you to boldly harness and share your own medicines - as a healer, creative, scholar, educator, artist, organizer, dream worker, tarot reader, diviner, witch, griot, body worker, mental health worker, spirit/soul worker, sex worker, gender expansivist, hair care specialist, hxstorian, alchemist, scientist, earth worker, herbalist, astrologist, musician, seer, dula, sound artist, visionary, any and all names/identities you may give to practices of yours that allow you and others in your community to live in wellness - within an interactive circle of other Black Trans individuals. If you are interested in facilitating a circle in the Decolonizing Trans Ghanaian Genders series, we invite you to contact us at liberationmedicineschool@gmail.com. 

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