Dress Codes and Other Sorry Excuses for Policing Identity

@HuffPostGay

Last month, the fifth grade parent group at my daughter's school had the first of many conversations about how to mark our children's transition to junior high. Unfortunately, the issue we discussed -- whether the kids would be wearing caps and gowns at the end-of-year celebration -- sidelined a much more important issue: what the kids would be wearing under these gowns. (My daughter's school had sent out a notice to parents that boys must wear one thing and girls another.)

For many children, a gendered dress code may be just another imposition by adults, and to some it may seem small compared with decisions related to bedtime, computer usage, and the precise meaning of the phrase "clean up your room." But to others it is a big deal. Indeed, clothing is such an essential expression of who we are that international law recognizes it as a human right to wear what we want, barring reasonable restrictions for the purposes of safety or to protect the rights of others.

And it is precisely because clothing can project our identity so concisely that the clothing associated with particularly stigmatized populations is vigorously policed around the world. For example, several European countries and some North American jurisdictions place restrictions on head coverings. These restrictions are closely linked to discomfort with Islam and are based on the negative and erroneous stereotype that Muslim women are "oppressed" and "submissive." In fact, even where headscarves are not explicitly prohibited by law, women can be fired for wearing them, and many are discriminated against even before landing a job.

Likewise, many jurisdictions enforce strictly gendered dress codes in public by eitherrequiring specific attire or criminalizing cross dressing. These restrictions are tied to stereotypes about sexuality and sex. Cross dressing is conflated with transgenderism, which again is conflated with an insatiable, predatory, or "perverted" sex drive. A good example of this is the comment reportedly made by a lawyer who was arguing against a 6-year-old trans girl's right to use the girl's bathroom at her school. "How do you know if someone is really thinking this way or not?" the lawyer is quoted as saying. "How do you know if someone just wants to go in the restroom and be a peeping Tom?"

The suspicion directed at trans people, cross dressers, or anyone whose gender expression is not traditional finds its most extreme expression in violent crimes committed against individuals who visibly do not conform to gender norms. But it is fueled by the little injustices in our daily lives. Being forced to wear clothing associated with an identity that we do not share or cannot align with is a powerful reminder that our true sense of self must be hidden to be safe.

Moreover, dress codes facilitate abuse, first by enforcing the notion that there is a "right" and a "wrong" way to dress, and that transgressers can and should be punished, and secondly by normalizing the punishment. Where we face sanctions and exclusion for being who we are (such as being thrown out of a public bathroom, being expelled from school, or being fired, for example), it is hard to avoid the basic feeling of being somehow "wrong." Over time, this feeling of "wrongness" can contribute to depression and the conviction that violence and discrimination is inevitable.

But it is not.

There is no legitimate reason for gendered dress codes, or for dress codes that enforce or prohibit a specific faith. The European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly noted that gender identity, including the right to dress according to who we feel we are, is one of the most basic essentials of self-determination. In the Americas, this sentiment finds legal expression in the adoption of several new laws that seek to protect everyone against discrimination, regardless of their gender identity.

We, the adults, need these laws because many of us have internalized gendered dress codes, which we have to unlearn. Not so for our children: They learn dress codes from us. So I, for one, will be telling my daughter that she can wear whatever keeps her warm, comfortable, and happy under her graduation gown (if she chooses to wear one).

Why Is El Salvador Letting A Woman Die?

@RHRealityCheck

This past month, the world has been watching a 22-year-old pregnant woman in El Salvador die, little by little. I want to say it is like watching an accident happen in slow motion, but this situation is no accident. El Salvador’s government is deliberately denying lifesaving treatment to the woman, for no reason other than that she is pregnant.

At first I couldn’t understand why.

I am not trying to be naive. I know that abortion is criminalized in all circumstances in El Salvador, and that the government therefore can hide behind the law to justify denying Beatriz (a pseudonym) medical treatment. I also know that El Salvador is a predominantly Catholic country, and that church officials are very active in the country’s political life, in particular on this issue.

But this same constellation of facts has not prevented select women in similar situations from getting access to the services they need in other countries in the region. Over the years, I have interviewed a small handful of women in Latin America who needed abortions to protect their health and lives. In most cases, after an initial negotiation with the public health ministry or prosecutor, the intervention went through on the dual condition that it got registered as “appendicitis” in the woman’s medical record, and that the women didn’t tell anyone about it. It didn’t much matter if abortion was legal or illegal in the countries where each case happened—the main motivation for allowing the intervention for the prosecutors and other public officials involved was to avoid negative publicity.

Because it doesn’t look good for El Salvador’s government officials. Sure, they are following the law. But they are also watching a woman die. And for what? The fetus Beatriz is carrying does not have a forebrain, and is likely to survive only scant hours after birth, if that. Human rights officials from the United Nations have publicly called out the situation as counter to El Salvador’s international obligations, and international media are portraying the government as “not moving a finger.”

The only reasonable explanation for the public stand-off is that Beatriz and other resource-poor women are politically expendable, and that crossing the Catholic Church is seen as worse than being hung out in the press as inhumane.

It wouldn’t be the first time poor women pay with their health and lives for politics. In Nicaragua, a mere ten days before the 2006 presidential election, the parliament voted to eliminate the possibility for legal abortion when a woman’s life is threatened by her pregnancy. Members of the Sandinista party were reportedly told to vote for the change, with the promise that it would be “fixed” after their candidate had won the election. And during the Pope’s 2007 visit to Brazil, then-President Lula publicly announced his opposition to abortion.

Let us be clear: the Catholic Church, and any other religious group or civil society organization, has the right to try and influence policies and further its agenda within the limits of the law. But governments owe everyone the same rights, regardless of faith, sex, family status, or ability to pay for votes or medical treatment. In the recent ruling, the Inter-American Court on Human Rights stated that governments cannot implement laws in a manner that reflects only one particular religion, as this would infringe on the rights of those who do not share that faith.

Nowhere is this more obvious than when it comes to the laws that criminalize abortion, even where the pregnant woman’s health or life is compromised. Not all visions of Catholicism require a woman to die for the sake of her pregnancy. And even if they did, it is Beatriz’s faith, wishes, and life the law must uphold.

I don’t understand what El Salvador’s government has to gain from watching this young woman die a preventable death. And I don’t understand how we can continue to allow this to happen.

How Do You Prove That Discrimination No Longer Exists?

@RHRealityCheck

This week, the U.S. House of Representatives finally passed the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which reauthorizes funding for the fight against domestic violence in the United States. The bill passed after a prolonged partisan fight over specific protections for Native-American women and lesbian, bisexual, and trans women. Also this week, the conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court questioned the need for the promotion of equal voting rights, and, in particular, the continued need for oversight of equal rights in states that historically have discriminated against African Americans.

Each story elicited a pundit storm of outrage over the partisan divide on discrimination on the basis of sex, race, or sexual orientation. Many politicians and justices quoted in the press perpetuated the notion that liberals care about discrimination while conservatives do not.

But that would be an oversimplification.

At the heart of the discussion about the need for both VAWA and the Voting Rights Act is a fundamental disagreement about what governments should do about discrimination, and, even more so, what they shouldn’t do.

That difference of opinion is what led Justice Antonin Scalia to refer to the Voting Rights Act—a law that was conceived of as a tool to overcome racial entitlement among whites—as perpetuating a sense of racial entitlement among non-whites. By portraying people of color as receiving, or rather demanding, special treatment, Scalia converted the legal protection of equal rights into a situation of enforced discrimination.

It is also why some Republicans cited “inclusiveness” as the reason they supported explicit benefits for generally underserved populations in VAWA, while other Republicans claimed to vote against these benefits for the very same reason. While the former acknowledge that some women need to be explicitly named in order to be visible to policymakers and service providers, the latter promote the notion that by treating everyone the same, we will somehow magically be equal.

Simply put, the difference is not so much whether someone cares about discrimination but rather if they choose to see the full range of its reach. With some notable exceptions, most people across the political spectrum recognize flagrant forms of racism, sexism, and homophobia. The real divide is on how much we believe can and should be done to overcome historical disadvantage and internalized prejudice. Should the government allow quotas in universities to promote race and gender equality? Should states actively promote a diverse workforce?

International human rights standards are clear that affirmative action can only be legitimate while it serves a purpose; when a situation of historical disadvantage has been overcome—that is, when those who were meant to benefit from affirmative action genuinely are equal—the special measures must go.

The question, of course, is how to determine the exact moment when everyone truly has equal opportunities. This is a question that necessarily will have different answers for different people. Recent studies suggest that discrimination is still a reality for many of the subgroups that benefit the most from both the new incarnation of VAWA and the Voting Rights Act: Blacks, Latinos, working women, and Native Americans. Still, the American public just reelected a Black president, and the minority leader of the House of Representatives is a woman. In other words, systemic inequalities persist even though some people manage to escape their consequences. In this situation, perhaps the best test of whether temporary special measures are still warranted is conversational. When we stop talking about how strange it is that President Obama and Representative Pelosi got to where they are, there will be equal opportunity for all.

Of course, the courts cannot use conversation as a legal test to determine when to mandate an end to temporary special measures. Conversation can, however, be a rule of thumb for the rest of us until such time where it is no longer remarkable to find African Americans or women in positions of power.

In the meantime, the onus should be on the government, including members of Congress and justices of the Supreme Court, to prove when affirmative action has run its course, both when it comes to the prevention of domestic violence and voting rights.

From Saudi Arabia to the United States, the Human Rights of Domestic Workers Must Be Recognized

@RHRealityCheck

Wednesday morning this week, news broke that Saudi Arabia’s authorities had gone ahead with the public beheading of Rizana Nafeek, a young woman accused of killing a baby in her care in 2005 when she was 17 years old. Nafeek insisted the baby had died in a choking accident.

The case had long been the concern of the international community, not only because the death penalty is inherently cruel and inhumane and should be abolished, but also because there are reasons to believe Nafeek had been forced into making a confession—which she later retracted—and that the trial against her was anything but fair. In addition, the young woman was a Sri Lankan migrant domestic worker in Saudi Arabia, had limited access to legal counsel, and is likely to have understood little of the legal proceedings, making the situation even more inhumane.

Rizana Nafeek, was among the approximately 1.5 million women, predominantly from Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Philippines, working in private homes in Saudi Arabia. While some are treated well, domestic workers in Saudi Arabia enjoy fewer legal protections than any other type of workers, and human rights groups have documented horrific abuses against them, including physical brutality and deprivation of food, rest, and water. 

But ill-treatment of domestic workers happens closer to home too. In the New York metro area there are an estimated 200,000 domestic workers, 99 percent of whom are immigrants. The abuse suffered by these workers was highlighted in a documentary in 2010, which also brought to light the lack of legal protection. Later that year, New York State became the first jurisdiction in the United States to pass a law to protect the rights of domestic workers. 

In fact, most everywhere, domestic workers are subject to lesser legal protection than others, sometimes justified by reference to the difficulty in carrying out workplace inspections in private homes or the trite notion that domestic workers are treated as “part of the family.”  In mid 2011, the International Labour Organization adopted the first international treaty on the rights of domestic workers, providing hope for scores of women who are, even now, working without legal protection. 

This is not a niche issue either. Across the world, an estimated 53 to 100 million persons—most of them women and girls—currently work as domestic workers. Some travel from rural areas to the city, others cross borders with or without permission. Their main motivation is to improve the situation for themselves and their families. 

And it is perhaps this, the most human of conditions, that is lost in the back-and-forth over how and why some people “deserve” rights and other don’t: the search for survival and dignity through work.

This week’s execution in Saudi Arabia and the successful fight for legal protections for domestic workers in New York State highlight the central concept of humanity in the struggle for human rights.  Abuse is possible where domestic workers remain “other”—a foreigner, poor, a woman—and alone—isolated from their community and trapped in the workplace that doubles as “home.”  Change happens when we start seeing each other as humans, deserving of dignity and respect.

Myths About Homosexuality Fuel Uganda's "Kill the Gays" Bill

This week, as we are waiting for the Ugandan parliament to debate whether or not homosexuality should be punishable by death (or at the very least life in jail) it might be helpful to review whatever could make anyone reach such a murderous conclusion.

The short answer is: lack of awareness, sometimes wilful. Lack of awareness about what it means to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (no, it is not a lifestyle choice). Lack of awareness about the link between sexual orientation and sexually predatory tendencies (there is none). And lack of awareness about how to adequately address actual harm (for starters, it would make sense not to target those already marginalized for more abuse).

The draft legislation on the table in Uganda is not new. A version of the bill—which ups penalties for homosexuality and allegedly creates new provisions to criminalize the “promotion” of homosexuality—was already circulating last year. Moreover, the belligerent rhetoric directed at anyone who does not look or seem straight is neither innovative nor specific to Uganda. For years, politicians and pundits from the United States to Malawi have spread the notion that gay people “recruit” children and others into homosexuality and that paedophilia and homosexuality are intimately linked.

While these claims have been repeatedly refuted with facts, they stubbornly persist. There are any number of reasons for this, two of the most prominent being that 1) blaming gays for all society’s wrongs is easy and helps to divert attention from any real problems; and 2) that stereotypes about sexual attraction and gender roles—persistent in all societies everywhere—fuel fear of homosexuality. And it is only by tackling the latter that enough people will see through the former and identify it as wrong.

It is with this in mind that I invite you to identify the most harmful gender or LGBT-related stereotype in your society or immediate circle of friends, and to commit to calling it out as damaging whenever it comes up.

Here is mine: gay men and lesbian women are attracted to (literally) everyone of their own gender. I cannot count the number of times I have heard someone say that they are OK with someone being gay, as long as that person doesn't hit on them personally. Or that they feel uncomfortable in a locker room or sports club with someone who is gay or lesbian. Or similar variations on this theme.

Apart from the obvious delusional aspect of these comments (really, I always want to say, you are not that attractive), they just don't make any sense. If this proposition were accurate, it would mean that all straight men and all lesbian and bisexual women are attracted to me, a notion which I can personally attest to being false.

More to the point, this myth can be countered by inviting people to reflect on their own patterns of attraction. Everyone has sexual preferences and most of the time we can't say specifically why we want to have sex with one person and not the other. What we can say—gay, lesbian, bisexual, and straight alike—is that the vast majority of us don't want to jump everyone we see given they simply have the appropriate genitalia.

The bill which is likely to be discussed in Uganda is fuelled, partially, by the extreme version of this myth: not only do all gay men want to have sex with all men, they also want to have sex all the time. I want to believe that anyone who thinks through this logic for just a moment will find it ridiculous and even humorous in its absurdity. Yet, for the thousands of gay, bisexual, and transgender men and women living in Uganda it is not funny.

Myths can kill. And the only way to prevent that from happening is to kill the myths themselves.