Games and Sports As Socialization Pathways to Being LGBTQ+ in East Africa?

This paper examines queer childhoods and youth from two countries: Tanzania and Malawi, based on over 103 ethnographic interviews with male-assigned-at-birth geis (transgender women and ‘in between’ genders) in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (2020–2022) and approx. 25 interviews with female-assigned-at-birth lesbians and transmen in Lilongwe, Malawi, in 2024. Geis in Tanzania recalled that even if there were no other geis when growing up, they experienced being anally penetrated in hide-and-seek and games and in competitive games (if they lost, and younger children lost frequently). Many adult men who later paid to have sex with geis also presumably (although I was not able to access them) learned that they enjoyed anal penetration of male-born persons through these games and contests. In Lilongwe, Malawi, female-assigned-at-birth lesbians and transmen told in 2024 how they had ’learned’ and practiced intimacy with girls and women at female football camps and boarding schools because others did it, and it was expected of them. These queer football players also told that the majority of their team members were lesbian or transmen. What these games and contests in a low-income urban area of Tanzania, and football camps and boarding schools in a mixed/middle-income urban area of Malawi indicate is that some children learned same-sex practices not from adult ‘folk devil’ sexual predators (Hopkins 2013), as is feared in these societies, but from older children. It is not adults but older children whom younger children often wish to emulate, it is older children who possess knowledge of immediate relevance to their younger peers’ aims of having fun, exploring and feeling secure. These findings challenge current Western assumptions about non-conforming genders and sexualities as solely innate in individuals (‘born that way’), and expand our understanding towards what may be ‘taught’ or internalized through group socialization.