All posts tagged LGBTQ

Spanish Language: Unlikely Battleground for Gender Inclusion

By Juliana Martínez*

Spanish-speaking communities have become one of the most significant battlegrounds in the push for gender-inclusive language. Often associated with traditional gender norms and anti-LGBT sentiment, Spanish-speakers in general and in Latin America in particular are discussing gender in language, causing as much ire and excitement as use of they as a non-binary singular pronoun has in the United States and beyond. In the English-speaking world, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s recognition of they as “word of the year” in 2019 signaled this shift. Many young Spanish speakers are also increasingly unwilling to accept gender hierarchies in any social, political, or cultural realm as natural, innocuous, or unchangeable; and they find the gender binary limiting and exclusionary for themselves or for society more broadly.

  • In the last 15 years few regions have made larger strides in LGBT recognition than Latin America. During this period, some of the most advanced legislation and policies in the world – such as gender identity laws, same-sex marriage, adoption rights for same-sex partners, and non-discrimination statutes – have been passed in Latin America, the great majority in Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries.

There are two main issues at the heart of inclusive language efforts: to challenge androcentric conventions, and to expand the gender binary by incorporating gender-expansive options for speakers. In many languages, Spanish included, masculine forms constitute the linguistic and social norm. In society and grammar alike, masculinity, heterosexuality, and gender-conformance have been taken as the unmarked norm through which human experience is measured and communicated. However, just as the mere presence of a gender system in a language does not make it sexist or cis-normative, the push for inclusive language does not put the integrity of the language at risk and does not seek to dismantle its grammatical gender system.

  • As my colleague Salvador Vidal-Ortiz and I note in a recent article, substituting an e for a gender-specific o or a in a noun does not challenge the assigned gender of nouns that do not refer to specific populations. No one is suggesting that carro (the masculine noun in Spanish for “car”) should be “carre” instead. That is a caricature and, more importantly, would suggest denying speakers the right and means to name themselves by claiming that their lives are a grammatical – and also a biological, social, and legal – error or impossibility.
  • These efforts have been around for a while both in Latin America and the U.S as exemplified by the shifts in the term Latino. First came Latina/o, then the “@” in Latin@, then Latinx, and now Latine. All these forms have been (and continue to be) used as gender-neutral and expansive options to the masculine o or the feminine a. The e in particular has been getting traction and considerable (not always positive) attention. Argentina has been a trailblazer. Nowadays, it is practically impossible to attend a political rally or march in the country without hearing words like bienvenides (welcome) alongside or instead of the traditional bienvenidos or bienvenidas, or to see words like todes (instead of todas or todos) written on signs. Last year two events marked the widening spread of these shifts in the country. President Alberto Fernández made history when he used the word chiques (the gender-expansive alternative to the binary chicos or chicas) during a student rally – drawing a standing ovation; and last December Argentina made international headlines when a judge ruled in favor of including “non-binary” as the sex marker of a person’s national identification document

Despite this progress, opposition to gender-inclusive language has been fierce and is unlikely to fade quickly. La Real Academia de la Lengua (RAE), the governing body that presides over Spanish grammar, syntax, and morphology, has resisted it sternly – not surprising for an institution that has accepted only 11 women in 300 years of existence. History has shown, however, that calls for language purity and grammar correctness tend to be covers for social anxieties about upholding gender and sexual hierarchies. What upsets many speakers – particularly those used to being at the center of discourse and accustomed to holding cultural, social, economic, and political power – is not the language; it is the changing worldview that it names and advances. Inclusive language is neither a threat to the language nor a sign of its decline. Rather, it signals plasticity and health, as it illustrates its ability to adapt to shifting cultural and social norms.

February 25, 2020

* Juliana Martínez is Assistant Professor in the Department of World Languages and Cultures at American University. Parts of this post were previously published, with Salvador Vidal-Ortiz, in Latinx thoughts: Latinidad with an X in Latino Studies in October 2018.

2 Comments
by clalsstaff on February 25, 2020  •  Permalink
Posted in Regional Snapshot
Tagged , ,

Posted by clalsstaff on February 25, 2020

https://aulablog.net/2020/02/25/spanish-language-unlikely-battleground-for-gender-inclusion/

Seeking Rights from the Left

By Elisabeth Jay Friedman and Constanza Tabbush*

Image of colorful mural with diverse images of women. Text in the mural says: "It is time to act, no more sexual violence. No more impunity"

#TimeToAct Mural in La Paz, Bolivia, by artist Knorke Leaf/ ph: Shawnna Mullenax

The “Pink Tide” of left-leaning governments that came to power in Latin America at the beginning of the 21st century made a significant difference in the lives of women and LGBT people in the region, but its reliance on traditional gendered relations of power and strategic trade-offs among gender and sexual rights reduced its impact.  In a collaborative study we conducted with 12 other scholars from South and North America, we examined the issues of social welfare, political representation, violence against women, women’s bodily autonomy, and LGBT relationship and identity recognition across eight case studies – Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

  • We found significant progress under the Pink Tide. Most governments improved the basic economic conditions of poor women and their families, often through providing cash transfers.  In many cases, women’s representation in national legislatures advanced to some of the highest global ranks.  Some countries legalized same-sex relationships and enabled their citizens to claim their own gender identity.  They also opened up opportunities for feminist and queer movements to engage state actors and press forward their demands.

At the same time, many of these governments relied on heteropatriarchal relations of power – ones that privilege heterosexual men – thus ignoring, rejecting, or sidelining the more transformative elements of feminist, women’s, and LGBT advocates’ demands.  They also made strategic trade-offs among gender and sexual rights, such as promoting the rights of LGBT people or women’s political representation while denying reproductive health rights for women.  Moreover, the left’s more general political and economic projects have been profoundly, if at times unintentionally, informed by traditional understandings of gender and sexuality.  As a central example across most cases, not only did poor women’s unpaid care work fuel the much-celebrated social programs that reduced extreme poverty, but their unpaid community work undergirded the left political project as a whole.

  • The possibilities for gender and sexual justice seem to depend on institutional contexts as well as the organization and actions of collective actors seeking rights from the left. The degree of state institutionalization, particularly the effectiveness of checks on executive power, is critical in determining the ultimate impact of the left in power.  Moreover, the largely under-analyzed alliances that progressive political forces struck up with conservative religious ones in order to gain or hold onto power play a central role in determining the fate of policy issues – such as abortion – that touch traditional or cultural norms in Latin America.

As the pendulum swings back towards the right, the relationships among political and religious authorities which undergirded some of the challenges to gender and sexual justice under left governance appear likely to continue strengthening.  Indeed, insofar as right-wing nationalists and populists seek to redefine a national project as a counter to the ideals of the Pink Tide, they are deliberately targeting the ideas and people who seek to transform fundamental inequalities, such as those based on gender, sexuality, class, race, and ethnicity.  However, experiences under both the Pink Tide and the rise of the Right have led to alliances among those who continue to seek more just and equitable societies.  For example, consider the broad-based coalitions that undergirded massive mobilizations for legal abortion in Argentina and against Bolsonaro’s election in Brazil. 

February 4, 2019

*  Elisabeth Jay Friedman is professor of politics and Latin American studies at the University of San Francisco (on leave) and visiting scholar at the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change, University of Minnesota.  Constanza Tabbush is research associate at Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas and the Interdisciplinary Institute of Gender Studies, University of Buenos Aires (on leave) and research specialist at UN Women.  Dr. Friedman edited and co-wrote the introduction of Seeking Rights from the Left: Gender, Sexuality, and the Latin American Pink Tide, published by Duke University Press and available here.  Dr. Tabbush co-wrote the introduction and the chapter on Argentina.

Leave a comment
by clalsstaff on February 4, 2019  •  Permalink
Posted in South America
Tagged , ,

Posted by clalsstaff on February 4, 2019

https://aulablog.net/2019/02/04/seeking-rights-from-the-left/

Historic August for LGBT Rights in Colombia

By Juliana Martínez

Colombia Diversa / Flickr / Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Colombia has again shown itself to be a country of contrasts – a society ostensibly ruled by Catholic and conservative morals with one of the hemisphere’s most progressive Constitutional Courts – with two important legal decisions on LGBT rights.  The Court has defended the democratic, pluralistic, and inclusive spirit of the Colombian Constitution against powerful authoritarian and conservative forces for years.  In 2007 and 2008, it granted pension, social security, and property rights to registered same-sex couples, and it ruled that same-sex couples “constitute a family” in 2011.  In spite of some recent rulings tarnishing its liberal record, last month the Court made two decisions that, though limited, have historic implications.

  • It ruled in favor of step-child adoptions by gay couples.  After much political, legal, and even religious debate, the Court broke a four-year silence on the highly contested issue, ruling 6 to 3 that Verónica Botero could legally adopt the biological children of her wife, Anna Leiderman.  The ruling does not explicitly allow joint adoption by gay couples, but the decision cites ample scientific evidence and declares that parental homosexuality cannot be considered a risk factor for children, thus leaving the door open for further LGBT-friendly jurisprudence in the matter.
  • The court recognized the gender identity of trans women by declaring that they do not have to comply with the compulsory military service required of all Colombian males.  The case centered on Gracy Kelly Bermúdez, a transgender woman who filed a lawsuit against the mayor’s office in Bogotá when she was denied a job for failing to provide proof of her military service.  Bermudez had not entered the military because she identifies as a woman, and therefore did not have the Military Service Registration Certificate (libreta militar) required when applying for jobs, studying at the university level or accessing health care services.  She would have been exempted if she had undergone an official sex change – the right to change one’s sex has been protected in Colombia since 1993 – but this can only be legally done after undergoing sex realignment surgery, a procedure that most trans women do not have access to, cannot afford, or do not want.  Therefore, despite their gender identity and expression, the legal sex of the majority of trans women continues to be “male.”  The Court decided in favor of Bermúdez and ordered the mayor’s office to hire her immediately.

These decisions are far-reaching.  In the Bermúdez case, the Court was essentially prioritizing gender identity over assigned sex at birth.  It declared that asking trans women for the Military Service Registration Certificate when hiring them is unconstitutional because it violates their right to define their own gender.  Furthermore, the Court told Congress to draft a bill that regulates the rights of transgender people in Colombia, paving the way for a much-needed Gender Identity Law.  The ruling also has deep regional implications.  Since Argentina passed a groundbreaking Gender Identity Law in 2012, many countries have been struggling to achieve similar results – and the Colombian legal precedent can become a viable alternative for impact litigation.  Currently, at least ten countries in Latin America have compulsory military service with different levels of enforcement attached to non-compliance.  But as the Bermúdez case illustrates, military conscription mandates can turn into strange, yet effective platforms to denounce how the state routinely imposes gender identity on its citizens, often against their own will, and to catalyze legal reform that advances LGBT rights in the Americas.

* Dr. Juliana Martínez teaches gender and sexuality and Latin American Literature in the Department of World Languages and Cultures at American University.

September 25, 2014

Leave a comment
by clalsstaff on September 25, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in Colombia
Tagged , ,

Posted by clalsstaff on September 25, 2014

https://aulablog.net/2014/09/25/historic-august-for-lgbt-rights-in-colombia/

Transgender Rights: Signs of Progress in Latin America

By Emily McGranachan

Marcha de Orgullo, Buenos Aires, Argentina / Photo credit: blmurch / Foter.com / CC BY

Marcha de Orgullo, Buenos Aires, Argentina / Photo credit: blmurch / Foter.com / CC BY

Social and structural discrimination limit the economic, health, and social prospects of transgender individuals, often leading to precarious lives fraught with human rights violations.  According to Argentine psychologist Graciela Balestra, transgender people around the world have an average life expectancy of only 30 years.  In Latin America, they have the highest rate of HIV infection (35 percent) and frequently face violence and insecurity.  According to the 2012 Trans Murder Monitoring Project report, of the total reported murders of transgender people in the world between 2008 and 2011, 79 percent took place in Latin America.  International HIV/AIDS Alliance and Red Latinoamericano y del Caribe de Personas Trans (REDLACTRANS) published similarly startling statistics in a 2012 report titled “The Night is Another Country.”  While the report focused on the experiences of transgender women, it also reveals that transgender men also experience high rates of discrimination and violence throughout Latin America.  Of the transgender women interviewed in the study, about 80 percent reported experiencing violence or threats by police and other officials.  Throughout Latin America the prevalence of transphobia – defined as the fear or hatred of transgender people – has led to impunity for violence and discrimination against transgender people, and these crimes, including murder, are seldom prosecuted.  The transgender community also faces challenges of social discrimination and the lack of access to health care and jobs, marginalizing transgendered people in society.

While the current situation is stark, some societies have shown greater openness to transgender people.  Whereas Brazil and Colombia allow identity card changes only after surgery and board evaluation, Argentina in 2012 became the first country in Latin America to pass a progressive law easing the rules with regard to gender identity and identification.  Now a person in Argentina can change the name and sex on their identity card without having to go through the long and discriminatory process of sex reassignment surgery or going before a judicial review board.  In 2009, Uruguay slightly loosened its controls when it began requiring only board approval for identity card changes.  Government initiatives, like that of Argentina, have direct impacts on the lives of transgender people, who are able to access jobs and other securities, according to Balestra.  Greater inclusion in society and stronger legal protections by the government can signify or signal a change in social values within the broader society.

The Obama Administration has been a vocal supporter of LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) rights as part of a broader human rights agenda in international diplomacy.  Among its initiatives are the Global Equality Fund to support local LGBT organizations and advocates, a greater recognition of refugee rights for LGBT people, and a general promotion of rights abroad through working with NGOs and states.  Recognizing the situation in Latin America, the State Department highlights its work trying to establish a special rapporteur for LGBT human rights within the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights.  As some aspects of LGBT rights progress in the United States (the U.S. still has a high rate of violence against transgender people as well), it is expanding its understanding and definition of human rights.  While the right to security, health care, employment and dignity have long been international human rights, only recently has the discrimination and violence transgender people face become an important part of the human rights platform.  The incorporation of LGBT human rights into U.S. foreign policy, backed by a strong U.S. example of justice and security for transgender citizens, will encourage other countries to follow suit. 

Leave a comment
by clalsstaff on June 24, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Regional Snapshot, South America
Tagged ,

Posted by clalsstaff on June 24, 2013

https://aulablog.net/2013/06/24/transgender-rights-signs-of-progress-in-latin-america/

Gay Rights Amidst Uneven Cultural Change

The lower chamber of Uruguay’s legislature passed a bill legalizing gay marriage on December 12 that is expected to sail through the Senate. The law, which polls show is supported by a majority of Uruguayans, comes just two months after the country legalized abortion.  Even for Uruguay, long seen as among Latin America’s most progressive and democratic countries, these measures represent a major shift in social attitudes.

MUMS Movimiento de la Diversidad Sexual | Flickr | Creative Commons

MUMS Movimiento de la Diversidad Sexual | Flickr | Creative Commons

Writing in the Journal of Democracy, Bard College political scientist Omar Encarnación argues that the 2005 legalization of gay marriage by Spain’s socialist government was a model for activists and legislators across Latin America. Transnational networks with ties in these cities have led the charge, using human rights language and gaining support from human rights organizations. Evidence in support of his argument is growing:  the city of Buenos Aires and later all of Argentina legalized gay marriage in 2002 and 2010 respectively, as did Mexico City, in 2012.  Where legislatures have not acted because of opposition from religious or other groups, activists have appealed to courts, earning recognition of important civil rights for gay couples in Brazil and Colombia. Progress in the ALBA countries, Chile, and Central America has been more limited still.  Honduras banned gay marriage in 2005. Discrimination, both legal and de facto, remains an issue.

The changes in Uruguay and elsewhere indicate the need for an updated map of Latin America that reflects widely differing approaches to social issues.  Secularism is an emergent force in global metropolises such as Mexico City, Buenos Aires, and São Paulo, and the Catholic Church’s dominant role in the region’s social policy and politics has diminished considerably.  But the decline in the Catholic Church’s power to block gay rights does not mean a continued shift in social norms is inevitable.  Evangelical faiths have exploded in parts of the continent, many of them even more conservative than the Catholic Church in opposing gay rights. Moreover, in countries that lack the strong transnational human rights networks of Argentina and Colombia, activists have fewer tools at their disposal.

Leave a comment
by clalsstaff on January 3, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Uruguay
Tagged ,

Posted by clalsstaff on January 3, 2013

https://aulablog.net/2013/01/03/diverse-approaches-to-gay-rights-and-other-social-issues/