{"id":4630,"date":"1998-01-01T12:43:00","date_gmt":"1998-01-01T10:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/transintersexhistory.africa\/?p=4630"},"modified":"2025-12-01T16:31:02","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T14:31:02","slug":"1998-documentary-focused-on-gender-diversity-woubi-cheri-featured-at-international-film-festivals-ivory-coast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/transintersexhistory.africa\/1998-documentary-focused-on-gender-diversity-woubi-cheri-featured-at-international-film-festivals-ivory-coast\/","title":{"rendered":"1998 \u2014 Documentary Focused on Gender Diversity, \u00ab\u00a0Woubi Ch\u00e9ri\u00a0\u00bb, Featured at International Film Festivals, C\u00f4te d’Ivoire \/ Ivory Coast"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Featured in international film festivals in 1998, the documentary, <\/em>Woubi Ch\u00e9ri<\/em><\/a>, directed by Laurent Bocahut and Philip Brooks, focused on the lives of Woubis<\/em>*, Yossis<\/em>**, and other members of the Branch\u00e9<\/em>*** community in Ivory Coast. The award-winning documentary was featured globally in various film festivals and on a number of documentary platforms.\u00a0The film won Best Documentary awards<\/a> at the\u00a0New York Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Film Festival, the\u00a0Turin International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, and the Transgender Festival in\u00a0London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Shortly after Woubi Ch\u00e9ri\u2019<\/em>s release, Barbara (full name withheld for safety reasons) from L\u2019Association des Travestis de C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire (Ivory Coast Transvestites Association)<\/strong><\/em>, who was one of the people interviewed in the film, emigrated to France. Slowly the energetic drive for the Association decreased and no more signs of their militant activism were seen. It is speculated that the reason for this is the nonprofit industrial complex, which saw funding for activism increasingly moving towards HIV\/AIDS in the context of MSM (men who have sex with men), which erased all the efforts made by the Woubis<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Woubis (and cross-dressers or transvestites\/travestis) cannot automatically be assumed to be transgender or to specifically claim Western terminology. Woubis existed long before any information about gender diversity or gender nonconformity was available on the internet and social media. Through research and the documentary Woubi Ch\u00e9ri,<\/em> it became quite evident and very clear that the Branch\u00e9 community and the Woubi community have a much wider and larger range of genders and sexualities than the Western binary system. They are gender outlaws<\/a>, so to speak.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to an academic article entitled \u00ab\u00a0Violence, Exclusion and Resilience among Ivoirian Travestis\u00a0\u00bb<\/a> by Matthew Thomann\u00a0and\u00a0Robbie Corey-Boulet,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u00ab\u00a0Among sexual and gender minorities in C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire,\u00a0travestis\u00a0are defined as individuals born anatomically male who live as women on a full- or part-time basis. Travestis encounter harsher stigmatization and violence than sexual minorities whose gender normativity allows them to avoid unwanted attention. Moreover, they have traditionally been underserved by Ivoirian sexual minority rights groups, who have worked to distance themselves from travestis, framing them as recklessly indiscreet. In this paper, we examine the extent to which travestis\u2019 isolation has lessened in the wake of the post-election violence that followed C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire\u2019s 2010 presidential election. We trace how Ivoirian travestis became increasingly vulnerable following the installation of a new national army that proved more hostile to them. And we show how, as a result of anti-travesti abuses committed by the army, non-travesti sexual minority activists became increasingly aware of the plight of travestis, and took steps to include them in their programming. These activists may have also been motivated by an increasing interest in transgender issues on the part of international donors. Finally, we explore the extent to which emerging human rights and HIV\/AIDS programming has resulted in newly embodied positions for travestis as they confront identifications reflecting Western trans-spectrum identities.\u00a0\u00bb<\/em><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Read here about the Miss Woubi beauty pageant<\/a> and for more about the travestis and woubis.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

* Woubis are effeminate boys who play the role of women or wife in the relationship.<\/em>
** Yossis are the men or the husbands in the relationship. They can be bisexual and\/or married with a family while in a relationship with a Woubi.
** Branch\u00e9 is a local term whose meaning is not widely understood by heterosexual and cisgender people in Ivory Coast and is used by sexual and gender minorities to describe themselves and one another.
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Featured in international film festivals in 1998, the documentary, Woubi Ch\u00e9ri, directed by Laurent Bocahut and Philip Brooks, focused on the lives of Woubis*, Yossis**, and other members of the Branch\u00e9*** community in Ivory Coast. The award-winning documentary was featured globally in various film festivals and on a number of documentary platforms.\u00a0The film won Best […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":4156,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[335,261,39,320,35,235,32],"tags":[323,461,44,43,318,321,322],"class_list":["post-4630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all","category-art","category-community","category-cross-dressing","category-lgbtqia","category-non-binary","category-trans","tag-branche","tag-cote-divoire","tag-ivory-coast","tag-travestis","tag-woubi-cheri","tag-woubis","tag-yossis"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/transintersexhistory.africa\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/transintersexhistory.africa\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/transintersexhistory.africa\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transintersexhistory.africa\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transintersexhistory.africa\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4630"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/transintersexhistory.africa\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4980,"href":"https:\/\/transintersexhistory.africa\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4630\/revisions\/4980"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transintersexhistory.africa\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/transintersexhistory.africa\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transintersexhistory.africa\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transintersexhistory.africa\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}