Katlego Kai Kolanyane-Kesupile (born January 1988, also known as Kat Kai Kol-Kes) is a performance artist, musician, writer and LGBT activist from Botswana. She is known for being the first public figure from the country to openly identify as a transgender person. She is also the first person from Botswana to be named a TED Fellow.
Kolanyane-Kesupile was born in January 1988 in Francistown. [1] [2] She is the first transgender person to come out openly in Botswana, which she did in 2013. [3] [4] [5] Kolanyane-Kesupile attended Clifton Primary School. [2] She went to a boarding school in Durban when she was eighteen. [5] Kolanyane-Kesupile received a bachelor's degree in theater from the University of the Witwatersrand and earned a master's degree in Human Rights, Culture and Social Justice from Goldsmiths, University of London. [6] [3] She became a Chevening Scholar in 2016. [3]
Kolanyane-Kesupile is the founder of the Queer Shorts Showcase Festival, [7] which is the first and only LGBT themed theater festival in Botswana. [8] [9] She has written for Peolwane Magazine, The Kalahari Review, The Washington Blade and AfroPUNK.com. [10] Kolanyane-Kesupile also plays with a band, Chasing Jakyb. [11] She writes songs for the group in both English and Setswana. [11] The group released an album, Bongo Country, in 2015. [12]
Kolanyane-Kesupile was a 2013/2014 Best of Botswana honoree in the Performing Arts category. [10] She was named a Highly Commended Runner Up for the 2015 Queen's Young Leaders Awards. [13] She was named a TED Global Fellow in 2017 and was the first Motswana to earn this distinction. [14] [15] In 2018, she was featured in the OkayAfrica 100 Women list. [15]
The Tswana are a Bantu-speaking ethnic group native to Southern Africa. The Tswana language is a principal member of the Sotho–Tswana languages. Ethnic Tswana made up approximately 85% of the population of Botswana in 2011.
The Chevening Scholarship is an international scholarship, funded by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, that lets foreign students with leadership qualities study at universities in the United Kingdom.
New Zealand society is generally accepting of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) peoples. The LGBT-friendly environment is epitomised by the fact that there are several members of Parliament who belong to the LGBT community, LGBT rights are protected by the Human Rights Act, and same-sex couples are able to marry as of 2013. Sex between men was decriminalised in 1986. New Zealand has an active LGBT community, with well-attended annual gay pride festivals in most cities.
Julia Michelle Serano is an American writer, musician, spoken-word performer, trans–bi activist, and biologist. She is known for her transfeminist books Whipping Girl (2007), Excluded (2013), and Outspoken (2016). She is also a prolific public speaker who has given many talks at universities and conferences. Her writing is frequently featured in queer, feminist, and popular culture magazines.
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The following is a timeline of transgender history. Transgender history dates back to the first recorded instances of transgender individuals in ancient civilizations. However, the word transgender did not exist until 1965 when coined by psychiatrist John F. Oliven of Columbia University in his 1965 reference work Sexual Hygiene and Pathology; the timeline includes events and personalities that may be viewed as transgender in the broadest sense, including third gender and other gender-variant behavior, including ancient or modern precursors from the historical record.
Tshepo Ricki Kgositau-Kanzaa, is trans-rights activist from Botswana who lives in South Africa.
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