Trans Research, Education, Advocacy, and Training (TREAT) Director Sam Ndlovu said discrimination also exists within the LGBTI community.
LGBTI is an acronym for ‘lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex persons. It is also used to refer to persons of diverse sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expressions, or sex characteristics.
The community has experienced attacks for their sexual orientation in societies and on a political basis. The late former President Robert Mugabe once described the community as worse than ‘dogs and pigs’.
“Discrimination does not only exist with the people who are not part of the LGBTI community but also amongst ourselves, sometimes within there is discrimination that we inflict on each other. There are those who might want to portray themselves as better than the other. Charity begins at home so we should do the groundwork with the phobias amongst ourselves and I’m sure this is when we can tackle phobias externally,” he said.
TREAT was founded after the famous Rikki Nathanson case. Nathanson is a Zimbabwean transgender activist who founded TREAT after an arrest for entering a women’s bathroom in Bulawayo in 2014, she filed a civil lawsuit for damages which she won in 2019.
