DEAR UNITED NATIONS, LGBT IDENTITIES ARE NOT SO UNIVERSAL

I wrote this essay in response to a question for my application for MA in Gender, Sexuality & Culture at Birkbeck College, London. "Please select a short image or article that has appeared in the media during the last week.  Write a commentary of about 500 words on the piece you have selected exploring the ideas/ideologies of gender or sexuality that it reproduces or challenges." It is supposed to be a short essay, so there isn't much room for providing more illustrations to the dense exposition, or making it sound less wanky – though I have since spurted out a few extra drops of thoughts here and there to clarify things. Even if I don't get in, at least I could say I enjoyed this bit of academic masturbation.

The limitations of UN Human Rights Council’s protection of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals

ESSAY for Birkbeck College, London

by Pang Khee Teik

4 April 2012

“To those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, let me say: You are not alone. Your struggle for an end to violence and discrimination is a shared struggle. Any attack on you is an attack on the universal values of the United Nations that I have sworn to defend and uphold. Today, I stand with you and I call upon all countries and people to stand with you, too.” – UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon, 7 Mar 2012

The UN route may have worked in shaming many mature democracies towards amendment of laws and policies to improve legal systems which already protect human rights within their constitutions. But what effect has it on regimes built upon cultural justifications for systemic disregard of human rights? Shaming of non-compliant nations has only resulted in a heightened sense of persecution from the governments of those countries. And unfortunately, this sense of persecution from outsiders is often acted out with further persecution upon vulnerable citizens within those countries.

In addressing lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) worldwide, the UN is in danger of being perceived to reproduce LGBT identities as universal and uniform identities (reference attached below). What does UN mean when it says lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender?

Are these biological categories of human beings? Are these defined based on performative roles of individuals when they express their sexual orientation and gender identity? Who is left out? And most importantly, how can LGBTs, whether they identify as such or not, use this human rights instrument?

In many cultures, individuals who may have been in same-sex relations but who eventually conform to socially sanctioned roles – marriage to opposite sex – cease to identify as LGBTs and can become themselves agents in homophobic campaigns. Does the UN protect and oppose them at the same time? Or, more to the point, protect them from themselves? (Have we come to that again?)

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, when seen as biologically deterministic terms are perhaps too essentialist. Calling these identities “gay” and “lesbian” as opposed to “homosexuals” may be a move to dissociate from early medical nomenclatures of identities based on sexual behaviour, ie, biological determinism, towards one of identitarian politics, empowered with personal agency.

“Gay” and “lesbian”, burdened as such with political and cultural import, then become vulnerable to rejection from locales where political structures are premised upon cultural purity rhetoric. I am interested to see if performances of gayness, lesbianness, bisexuality and transgenderism within each locality include both expressions (for eg. fashion, language, ways of coming out, etc) that are part of the gay lingua franca as well as localised expressions, and whether these points of syncretisation are instructive in how they produce both the source of conflict as well as resolution.

Another problem is the sharing of sexual orientation and gender identity within the same human rights platform. Separating sexual orientation and gender identity into two sets of categories has astutely revealed both terms to be mutually exclusive to a degree: gender identity does not determine sexual orientation. Placing gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender under the same political platform then is merely a convenient way to combat patriarchy and heteronormativity. And this has limitations.

Homophobia and transphobia too, like LGBT experiences and identities, manifest in culturally specific ways. And patriarchy and heteronormativity have embedded cultural performativity which likewise have also syncretised global and local influences. In many countries, where greater tolerance for gender diversity thrived for centuries, homophobia and transphobia intensified upon the advent of European colonialism, Christian missionary zeal, trade with the Middle East or the codification of Syariah. Whatever its genesis, homophobic and transphobic policies can be further codified as weapons for eliminating local political competition or as a post-colonial reflex towards a display of xenophobic nationalism and cultural purity.

Homophobic and transphobic discrimination in many societies often emerge from a patriarchal view of sex in which women are expected to play submissive roles to men. Homosexuality and transgenderism therefore both challenge the roles of men as the dominant power. Any externalised expression of liberated sexuality and gender threaten not only patriarchy, but the political will of such systems that use patriarchy as a tool for maintaining a feudalistic regime.

In many of the countries found within the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, which opposes UN’s resolution on sexual orientation and gender identity, the problem is not simply a lack of protection of LGBT persons. In these countries, homophobia and transphobia are only among the symptoms of larger systemic oppression and are therefore tools of control – and the control is not exercised only over LGBTs, but even heterosexuals.

The state's exercise of its power over the individual’s body doesn’t stop at procribing what he does with his genitals or regulating how she covers hers up. It is an exercise of power over the whole body, as well as thoughts, actions, and symbols of the body. The body becomes its own prison. And its own police.

LGBT individuals who face persecution are often those who are also discriminated within many other contexts, such as sex, age, class, statelessness, etc. Sexual orientation and gender identity should therefore not be seen as a divisible aspect of an individual’s identity divorced from his or her social and political agency. The resistance to oppression begins when individuals take back their bodies from the state. We need to claim full ownership and responsibility over our bodies, our thoughts, our actions and our symbols of our bodies. National autonomy is meaningless without bodily autonomy. And thus with the realisation of the power of their own bodies, citizens can lead their countries towards a fuller realisation of independence and democracy.

Can individuals partake in the definition and production of their local culture through – and beyond – performances of their sexuality and gender identity? And can individuals partake in the definition and production of their sexuality and gender identity through – and beyond – performances of their local culture? Finally, can individuals in these systems be empowered towards a social and political agency that may include but is not limited to their sexual orientation and gender identity?

The variety of excuses for maintaining homophobic and transphobic practices, and any law that denies the basic rights of citizens perhaps require specific, diverse and localised strategies in countering them. In the end, who better to negotiate these strategies than the affected communities themselves and their local allies?