Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

conix, Forced? Is that really your peoples' latest anti-trans talking point. You have never heard of a struggle for minority/marginalized rights? Never?

The struggle of trans and gender-diverse persons

Independent Expert on sexual orientation and gender identity

Definitions

Gender identity refers to each person's deeply felt internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond with the sex assigned at birth including the personal sense of the body (which may involve, if freely chosen, modification of bodily appearance or function by medical, surgical or other means) and other expressions of gender, including dress, speech and mannerisms.1 The term "gender-diverse" is used to refer to persons whose gender identity, including their gender expression, is at odds with what is perceived as being the gender norm in a particular context at a particular point in time, including those who do not place themselves in the male/female binary; the more specific term "trans" is used to describe persons who identify with a different sex than the one assigned to them at birth.

A spiral of exclusion and marginalisation

Gender-diverse and trans people around the world are subjected to levels of violence and discrimination that offend the human conscience:

* they are caught in a spiral of exclusion and marginalisation: often bullied at school, rejected by their family, pushed out onto the streets, and denied access to employment;

* when they are persons of colour, belong to ethnic minorities or are migrants, living with HIV, or sex workers, they are particularly at risk of violence, including of killing, beatings, mutilation, rape and other forms of abuse and maltreatment; and

* in order to practice their right to recognition before the law, gender-diverse and trans persons are often victim to violence in health-care settings such as forced psychiatric evaluations, unwanted surgeries, sterilization or other coercive medical procedures, often justified by discriminatory medical classifications.

Trans persons are particularly vulnerable to human rights violations when their name and sex details in official documents do not match their gender identity or expression. Today, however, the vast majority of trans and gender-diverse persons in the world do not have access to gender recognition by the State. That scenario creates a legal vacuum and a climate that tacitly fosters stigma and prejudice against them.

At the root of the acts of violence and discrimination lies the intent to punish based on preconceived notions of what the victim's gender identity should be, with a binary understanding of what constitutes a male and a female, or the masculine and the feminine. These acts are invariably the manifestation of deeply entrenched stigma and prejudice, irrational hatred and a form of gender-based violence, driven by an intention to punish those seen as defying gender norms.

A beacon of hope: depathologization of trans identities

For years, mental health diagnoses have been misused to pathologize identities and other diversities. In 2017, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health stated that reducing trans identities to diseases aggravated stigma and discrimination.

In 2019, the World Health Assembly adopted the eleventh revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), which removed trans-related categories from the chapter on mental and behavioural disorders. The revision depathologizes trans identities and is considered an important step forward to ensure trans persons can live free from violence and discrimination.

It is important to note that for a long time, pathologization has had a deep impact on public policy, legislation and jurisprudence, thus permeating in all realms of State action around the world and the collective conscience. Eradicating the conception of some forms of gender as a pathology from everyday life will be a longer process that will require further measures to that end.

States are advised to:

* review their medical classifications based on ICD-11;

* adopt strong proactive measures, including education and sensitisation campaigns to eliminate the social stigma associated with gender diversity;

* give access to good-quality health-care services and health-related information to trans persons and consider establishing the provision of gender-affirming care as a State obligation not dependent on a diagnosis; and

* take strong measures to end so-called "conversion therapy", involuntary treatment, forced or otherwise involuntary psychiatric evaluations, forced or coerced surgery, sterilization and other coercive medical procedures imposed on trans and gender-diverse persons.

Read the statement by UN experts welcoming the revision and consult the updated International Classification of Diseases issued by the World Health Organization.

Legal gender recognition, still a distant dream for many

https://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/ie-sexual-orientation-and-gender-identity/struggle-trans-and-gender-diverse-persons

"Spare me your ill-informed opinions anchored by your authoritarian tendencies to dictate to others what they must believe. You have the right to have the opinion--but do not need to support the suppression of free speech when someone who does not believe what you do should lose their jobs."

Cough cough. The denial of any individual's non-threatening free expression. The book banning.
Authoritarian. Remind us again which side of politics has taken more of an authoritarian direction.