Gerald Hayo

Gerald

Kenya, CAHR, Autumn 2017

My name is Gerald Hayo. I am a 29-year-old human rights defender from Kenya, a feminist and a proud masculine, religious lesbian woman. Faced with harassment and having been disowned by my family and friends, as well as suffering from the stigma associated with being a masculine woman, I have not always been in a position to understand how sexuality and gender identity can really affect a community.

My sexuality has affected me in many different ways; it has prevented me from completing my education, from engaging fully in social life, and it has even stopped me from securing jobs. When I was a young girl, it forced me to fight for my own survival, which has given me a passion as an adult to fight for women's basic needs, especially to provide women with sanitary products and to offer good grooming lessons to young girls.

I work with a community based organisation, Rainbow Woman of Kenya, that champions health and legal rights for lesbians, bisexual and other queer women (LBQ) in the coastal region of Kenya. As part of the organisation, I initiated and developed a programme known as "GIRLS PRIDE", in which LBQ women visit schools to talk with young girls and to provide them with sanitary products. In order to raise money for the sanitary products, a group of some twenty LBQ women have come together, sharing their own experiences, to make beaded bracelets, sandals and necklaces in rainbow colors. These are then sold and the profits are used both to support the women and to purchase sanitary products for the school girls. The school visits have had a huge impact on our work, because it has given our organisation visibility and has allowed us to be easily recognised.

My human rights work is my passion and this has made me face a lot of challenges because I find it hard to see women (LBQ but also women more generally) suffer when I believe that something can be done. I have been faced with eviction, unemployment, sexual harassment and other forms of discrimination, and this has forced me to move far away from my family and friends, people I should be able to turn to for support when I need help.

I came to York to explore ways in which LBQ women can be recognised as a "key population" in Kenya (as gay or MSM men already are) in order to make it possible for them to be included in the National Health Programming. LBQ women are faced with specific health related issues that cannot be lumped together with mainstream women. Being a sexual minority, they suffer in silence. Sexually transmitted diseases that are specific with the sexual practices of LBQ women are unique to them. For example oral gonorrhea is unspoken of in mainstream health programming. Most LBQ women are not even aware when they suffer from it. This is attributing to lack of information both to the LBQ and health service providers who often assume that LBQ are risk free from STIs.

I hope for a time when gender identity and sexual orientation will not be a barrier to a full enjoyment of life in society in Kenya and in the world at large.