People of ‘hermaphroditic instincts‘ among the Teso
The Teso can be found in Uganda and Kenya, two countries where they are a very small minority. But the Teso also recognized what historian Jeremey Lawrence in 1958 called “hermaphroditic instincts” among some of their people.
Lawrence wrote in The Iteso: Fifty Years of Change in a Nilo-Hamitic Tribe of Uganda:
People of hermaphroditic instincts are very numerous …. The men are impotent and have the instincts of women and become women to all intents and purposes; their voices are feminine and their manner of walking and of speech is feminine. They shave their heads like a woman and wear women’s ornaments and clothing. They do women’s work and take women’s names.
Lawrence has however been challenged on the assertion that the social permission granted to these men was because they were impotent.
