Queer Difference in Ghana's Cultural Publics: Gender, Sexuality, and Historical Memory

This paper examines how sex and gender are distinguished or conflated, how gender nonconformity is recognized and negotiated, and what oral histories and spiritual narratives reveal about locally situated understandings of gender and sexual difference in Ghana. We draw on African feminist, queer, and intersectional approaches and use ethnographic interviews, informal group discussions, oral histories, archival materials, and cultural artifacts collected between August and December 2023. Findings show that local languages and social practices distinguish bodily sex, gendered expectations, gender expression, and sexuality in uneven and context-dependent ways. Gender-nonconforming practices are named, sanctioned, accommodated, and negotiated across families, religious communities, political institutions, and other cultural publics. Oral histories and spiritual narratives reveal culturally specific ways of remembering and interpreting gender and sexual difference that do not map neatly onto contemporary LGBTQI+ categories. Local expressions alongside historical accounts of male-male intimacy and spiritual embodiment, demonstrate the importance of attending to indigenous vocabularies and social relations rather than translating past practices into contemporary identities. We argue that Ghanaian sexuality debates cannot be reduced to a heterosexual African past versus a Western queer present, but must be understood through changing cultural publics where gender, identity, relationships, and belonging are negotiated.