“On a eu chaud”: Digital resistance and community solidarity during the 2024 anti-Woubi crisis in Côte d’Ivoire

Abstract

This article examines the 2024 anti-Woubi (a locally used term for gender non-conforming gay men) crisis in Côte d’Ivoire, a period of intensified hostility directed at sexual and gender minorities following the circulation of inflammatory digital content. Drawing on 10 months of ethnographic research combining digital ethnography with interviews conducted across multiple cities, the study analyses how violence was anticipated, unevenly distributed, and collectively managed by members of the Woubi and broader LGBTIQ community. Rather than focusing solely on enacted violence, the analysis foregrounds fear and anticipation as structuring forces that reshaped everyday life, mobility, and economic activity before large-scale attacks occurred. The findings show that exposure to harm was highly uneven, particularly for transgender women and visibly gender non-conforming individuals whose embodied visibility and economic precarity heightened vulnerability. In the absence of immediate institutional protection, community responses prioritised harm containment through collective care, emergency displacement, and discreet digital coordination, highlighting care and discretion as central to queer survival during moments of acute risk.