The current wave of anti-homosexuality campaigns that has gathered momentum in the continent of Africa over the last decade largely relies on humiliation as a tactic against alleged homosexuals. From public denunciations to attempted lynchings; from verbal and physical abuse at the hands of law enforcement agencies to demonization and sensationalization by religious leaders and the media; from being denied housing or facing arbitrary evictions to being denied healthcare services or being subjected to homophobic medical testing, the goal is to publicly name and shame the alleged perpetrators, presumably as a deterrent to others yet to be caught in the crosshairs of virulent state-sponsored homophobia.
Central in the arsenal of humiliation that not only goes against continental and international conventions of human rights but also violates the personal autonomy of its victims, is the use of routine coercive anal examinations. Many suspected of same-sex acts in various countries across Africa are subjected to the coercive and invasive procedure conducted purportedly to find physical evidence of anal penetration associated with same-sex activities.
Beyond being rooted in an erroneous belief that all gay men engage in anal sex, the practice has been discounted as having no medical or scientific basis, as anal examinations cannot prove whether a subject has had penetrative sex frequently, if at all. Moreover, there is no standard methodology used, as a report by the Human Rights Watch (HRW) published in 2016 found, with some doctors conducting mere visual examinations while others perform invasive examinations by inserting digits and other foreign objects into the subject’s rectum for signs of diminished anal sphincter tone and to ascertain the supposed strength of the anal sphincters. One doctor in a case from Cameroon was reported to have sniffed the subjects’ feces and gave “her commentary on the odor of each man’s feces as if this constituted evidence of homosexual conduct.”
A UN Special Rapporteur report on Torture released in January 2016 states: “In States where homosexuality is criminalized, men suspected of same-sex conduct are subject to non-consensual examinations intended to obtain physical evidence of homosexuality, a practice that is medically worthless and amounts to torture or ill-treatment.” Those who are subjected to the procedure are unable to give informed consent as they may fear being subjected to physical violence or their refusal to undergo the procedure may be taken as an admission of guilt.
It is in line with the definition of lack of consent offered in the Independent Forensic Expert Group Statement on Virginity Testing (2015) when such examinations are “forcibly conducted… committed by force, or by threat of force or coercion, such as caused by fear of violence, duress, detention, psychological oppression, or abuse of power, against such [a] person incapable of giving genuine consent.”
While such examinations are often mandated by prosecutors and courts, in some countries they are also ordered by law enforcement, or even by a suspected homosexual’s own family. The HRW shares the experience of Louis* from Cameroon, who at 18, was forced to undergo the procedure after his parents suspected him of homosexuality. His uncle, a police officer, threatened Louis* with arrest if he refused to undergo the test.
Of importance, the HRW report found, is that often, medical reports generated from these invasive procedures are the only form of evidence entered against a suspect, and have often been enough to lead to a conviction. Even in cases where said tests were inconclusive or negative, “Doctors routinely add a caveat in medical reports that concealment of signs of anal intercourse is possible through the use of lubricants and cosmetics…” leading to a possible conviction the on grounds of homosexual acts.
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International human rights activist and former director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights Program at HRW, Scott Long, conducted extensive 2-year-long research in Egypt from 2002 to 2004, a country where the use of anal examinations against suspected homosexuals is de rigueur. In the resulting report titled When Doctors Torture: The Anus and the State in Egypt and Beyond, Long foreshadowed the current continent-wide homosexual hysteria and the slew of anti-homosexuality laws by noting that “[the laws] redefine[d] the crime as an assault on the society itself, and the criminal virtually as a liminal character, a walking boundary zone where private acts and public exigencies met and came into conflict.”
Long also discovered the extent to which virtual medical malpractice is lauded as sound medical practice in the performance of anal exams by Egypt’s National Forensic Medical Authority. “The naked, humiliated subject is made to bend, while multiple doctors pursuing ‘marks’ of ‘sodomy’ dilate, peer into, and in some cases insert objects into his anal cavity,” Long writes. Unsurprisingly, the outmoded methods used by Egyptian forensic doctors in anal examinations come from a Frenchman – Auguste Ambroise Tardieu, a forensic doctor, who in his 1857 medical text Forensic Study of Assaults against Decency, provided a detailed protocol to recognize a “habitual pederast.”
“[The director of the Forensic Medical Authority] walks in. ‘Strip, kneel.’ Oh, he talked to me like a dog. The lowest form of address possible. I got down on all fours. I’d taken my pants off. I assumed the position. He said, ‘No, no, no, this won’t do. Get your chest down and your ass up.’”
A man Arrested during the Queen boat case in Egypt in 2001 – Dignity Debased
Forced Anal Examinations in Homosexuality Prosecutions
Tardieu’s alleged aim was “to establish through positive facts and multiple observations that the vice of pedestary leaves material traces on the forms of organs which are much more numerous and much more significant than has been believed until now, and the knowledge of which will permit the forensic doctor, in the great majority of cases to direct with sureness the pursuits which involve public morality to such a degree.” Tardieu’s theories made their way into Egypt’s medical textbooks by 1876, with authors receiving financial support from Tardieu, further cementing the theory in Egypt’s medical establishment.
It is safe to assume that Tardieu’s extensive work in investigating the ill-treatment of children, including the sexual assault and abuse of minors, may have played a large part in inspiring his anti-homosexuality work. Cases investigated for his medical text included 632 females who were mostly minors, and 302 males, among other forms of physical and psychological abuse. Like many on the anti-homosexuality bandwagon who claim its necessity for the protection of minors against pedophilic characters, Tardieu likely conflated the actions of sexual predators with those of consenting adults, who would have been described as licentious at worst, according to 19th-century standards. Ironically, it was his work that advanced the understanding of the extent of child abuse, especially at home, that was not accepted by the international medical community, and would be nearly a century before such a possibility would even be considered by physicians and society at large.
There was no respect. They can’t say that. They hit out at us with their words. I cried at their words. “How long have you been used? What have you stuck up your ass? How many men have [in English] slept with you?” That wasn’t what they said. It was worse. I found myself crying. And when they saw me crying, they said, “That’s enough, little girl.” . . . It was a sort of sofa. You bend over and raise your bottom; they massage and spread your cheeks. Then he put something inside. It was cold. And he said, “Get up, you’re OK.”
a man recounts his experience at the hands of dr. Fakhry Saleh, director of the forensic medical authority – When Doctors Torture: The anus and the state in Egypt and Beyond
Six “characteristic signs” were to be evident in a habitual passive pederast: The excessive development of the buttocks, funnel-shaped deformation of the anus; relaxation of the sphincter; the effacement of the folds, the crests, and the wattles at the circumference of the anus; extreme dilation of the anal orifice; and ulceration, hemorrhoids, and fistulas. But among them, anal funneling was considered the definitive sign of repeated and frequent penetration. “Active pederasts” were not to escape scrutiny either, as they were said to have deformed penises to match the anal cone that was slim, attenuated, or had tapered glands like “the snout of certain animals.”
Tardieu’s medical assertions were disproven within a generation after they were made public, while many of the “characteristic signs” of anal intercourse could be symptomatic of other medical conditions. The Statement on Anal Examination in Cases of Alleged Homosexuality report states: “… decreased anal sphincter pressure may be caused by a wide range of conditions, including mechanical trauma, increasing age, hemorrhoids, chronic constipation, irritable bowel syndrome, neurologic conditions such as pudendal neuropathy from constant straining, cauda equine syndrome, diabetic neuropathy, multiple sclerosis, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), Parkinson’s Disease, Guillain-Barre syndrome, iatrogenic causes (caused by physicians) such as surgical sphincterotomy for the treatment of anal fissures and other anal/rectal surgeries, benign prostatic hypertrophy, and side effects from medications.”
Despite this, medics who perform anal exams from Egypt to Uganda, stand by the efficacy of the humiliating procedure. In the HRW report, a Ugandan medic is quoted as saying, “If someone has had [receptive] anal intercourse for two years or more, depending on the regularity, you find funneling. This is a loss of subcutaneous fat around the peri-anal areas. It becomes the shape of a funnel. …There’s a tendency after time to lose control of their bowels. I have seen cases where people have to wear diapers.” He employs an unsubstantiated rumor popular especially in East Africa, about the destructive effects of anal sex, the result of which is permanent anal incontinence.
However, beyond having to undergo such coercive and often physically painful procedures, is having to live with the psychological aftereffects. Medical experts interviewed by HRW for the report noted that anal examinations induce the same psychological reaction as rape. “It’s a form of post-rape trauma. [Forcing someone to undergo an anal exam] has the same effect as raping people,” said Genwa Samhat, director of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights group, Helem, in Lebanon.
Samhat interviewed several victims of forced anal exams and found the same trauma responses also shown by those interviewed by HRC and Scott Long for his 2004 report. Widespread mobilization and a campaign led by Legal Agenda against anal exams dubbed “Tests of Shame” led to mounting pressure, which compelled the country’s Ministry of Justice to implement a ban on the practice in 2012.
Both the HRW and Scott Long reports note that while interviewees are able to recount brutal treatment, including beatings and insults suffered at the hands of authorities, they find it nearly impossible to detail the anal examination, even years after the event. “I still have nightmares about that examination. Sometimes it keeps me up at night when I think about it. I never thought a doctor could do something like that to me,” said Louis*, nine years after he was forced to undergo an anal exam. Then 22-year-old Tunisian student, Marwen, detailed how he was threatened with outright rape by police in the course of a murder investigation. “They started slapping me in the face, several of them. They said, ‘If you don’t talk, we’ll use other methods. We’ll make you sit on a glass bottle of Fanta.’ They threatened, ‘We will abuse you, we will rape you.’”
“I was the first to enter to the room where the doctor was. I asked the doctor, ‘What is the test?’ He said, ‘A test like a woman’—meaning a virginity test.
Tunisian Student Amir recounts what happened when he refused to submit to the test – Dignity Debased Forced Anal Examinations in Homosexuality Prosecutions
“I said, ‘No, I will not do that test.’ The policeman screamed at me, ‘Respect the doctor!’ I said, ‘I am respecting the doctor, but I refuse the test. ‘The policeman told me to write that I refuse the test, so I wrote it.
“Then the policeman took me outside to a small garden. He hit me. He slapped me on the face and punched me on the shoulder and said, ‘You will do the test.’ The doctor was not watching, but he knew I was being beaten. The policeman pushed me back into the room and said to the doctor, ‘He will do the test.’ The doctor saw him push me.”
In the effort to pursue a homophobic political and cultural agenda spurred on by homosexual hysteria across the continent, the anti-homosexual movement has and will continue to victimize unwitting and unintended victims. Anyone suspected of homosexual acts is likely to be denounced under the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality law, as well as Ghana’s latest anti-homosexuality legislation recently passed by the country’s legislative assembly and calls on the public to report suspects to the police “for further action.” Many of those interviewed by HRW for the report were virgins or had never engaged in anal sex. Nevertheless, they were swept up by the trolling net of moral panic.
Likewise, doctors who participate in this practice are abandoning their oath to service provision and are doing a disservice to the profession of medicine as a whole. According to the Statement on Anal Examinations in Cases of Alleged Homosexuality, such physicians “are knowingly or unknowingly playing a critical role in State-sponsored policing and punishing of individuals on the basis of their sexual identity and orientation,” and “should understand that by forcibly conducting anal examinations or other tests targeting ‘homosexuals,’ they are serving to perpetuate social customs that are in conflict with respect for the rights and dignity of individuals and ultimately facilitating and participating in cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment and possibly torture.”
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