According to the propellents of Ghana’s contentious anti-gay bill, this passage of the law would eradicate the ‘perverseness’.
But Angel Maxine, Ghana’s first openly transgender musician, says that the LGBT community in Ghana is going nowhere.
Speaking to BBC, Angel Maxine shared the transition journey from birth to the present day, where she has accepted every part of herself regardless of what anyone thinks.
She revealed that she started displaying effeminate traits as early as birth when medical personnel were puzzled about her gender, although she had a penis.
“Even right at the hospital, they couldn’t tell my gender. They will be like, is this a male or this is female? They have to unwrap me and take me all around for them to see that oh, this one has a penis oo!”
Detailing her childhood days, Angel Maxine, born male, recounts the constant taunts targeted at her ‘queerness’.
“I always felt like I was living somebody else’s life. Kojo Besia… Obaaberima… It got to some point I owned it. So when you call me Kojo Besia, Obaa Berima, I’m like, ‘hello, hi’. I just owned it. I am popularly known as Angel Maxine, and I’m Ghana’s first openly transgender musician,” she stated.
Contrary to the popular belief that LGBT is an adopted practice foreign to the Ghanaian way of life, Angel Maxine discloses quite the opposite.
“Angel didn’t go and pick anybody’s lifestyle or anybody’s culture. I was effeminate from birth. Even though I had backlashes from family and other people, I was like, I was really tired, and this is me. So I started doing my music openly, wearing my short pants, my Santiago boots and all that. And that was where I really saw myself like, ‘Hey, this is me. This is the beautiful picture I’ve always been seeing, and this is what I want to show outside.
“We exist, and we are in Ghana. It’s this Ghana that we will stay,” she concluded.
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