That Time quote dates back to 2006, and though strides have been made in the past decade to advance LGBTQ rights (here’s a recent Slate piece chronicling progress), Jamaica remains a place with a strong undercurrent of bigotry: a devoutly Christian nation with sodomy laws still on the books, where influential dancehall stars peddle antigay sentiment, major newspaper cartoonists mock homosexuals, and the national refrain of “One Love” blithely ignores those whose identity exists outside of the heteronormative/cisgender framework. As a 2014 Human Rights Watch report asserted, “Physical and sexual violence, including severe beatings and even murder, are part of the lived reality of many LGBT people in Jamaica. The level of brutality leads many to fear what could happen if their sexual orientation or gender identity is disclosed.”

In the U.S., the LGBTQ community represents the population most likely to experience hate crimes, but it’s specifically transgender women of color who endure the highest rates of violence, suicide, and poverty. In Jamaica, trans people, particularly those of low socioeconomic status, also count as the most vulnerable of the vulnerable. The Gully Queens—named for the sewers where they find shelter and refuge from police harassment and marauding thugs alike—are unwilling or unable to live in the closet. Both Mindy and Shadiamond, the two women with whom I spoke by phone, were outed against their will as teenagers. They separately told very similar stories of attending a party in drag, and then later discovering that they’d been photographed and those pictures had been disseminated within their communities. “I want to be comfortable and not hide in my life story, but be the person that I am,” Mindy, who is 24 and has been on the streets since she was in her late teens, told me. “I think I have the right to lead a life that I love.”

Doing so costs them dearly: They live in exile from their families and communities, unable to find work or landlords willing to rent them apartments. It’s likely that some make money through prostitution (HIV infection rates, I’m told, are high); others steal or beg. Homeless, isolated, and faced with the constant threat of violence, they are without recourse to better their circumstances. When I spoke to Mindy, she said of life in the gully: “It’s like being in hell.”





1 / 10 Chevron Chevron Photo: Savannah Baker Mindy

RAY BLK has no connection to Jamaica, aside from a love for its music, but last February she saw a documentary made by Vice News about the Gully Queens. She found it moving and disturbingly relatable. Now 23, the singer was born in Nigeria and moved at age 4 to England with her family, to an area in Southeast London that she affectionately referred to by Skype as “the hood.” She couldn’t help but notice parallels between Jamaican attitudes toward gay people and the homophobic machismo she’s seen in both England and Nigeria. The black community, she told me, is “not yet receptive to homosexuality” (see Moonlight for more on that), and in Nigeria, being gay or trans is “more than frowned upon. People lose their lives for being who they are.”