The advancement of the rights of trans persons before the CJEU

Trans, nonbinary, and intersex persons are—and have always been—an integral part of humankind. However, these communities are under attack. We live in a time of growing state repression and the normalization of political violence against trans, nonbinary, and intersex persons throughout much of the world, and we have a responsibility to understand these conditions and consider their implications for science education. In this commentary, we briefly outline the growing state repression of trans, nonbinary, and intersex persons, illustrating this repression with examples primarily drawn from the U.S. context, while acknowledging similar forms of repression happening in many countries. We discuss the ways that scientific discourses and ideologies are being co‐opted to rationalize these attacks, explain the responsibility this creates for science educators, and examine the important work that has already been done to understand and dismantle oppression and to celebrate the lives and accomplishments of these communities within and beyond science education. Finally, we offer recommendations for specific actions that science educators and researchers can take to uphold the human rights of trans, nonbinary, and intersex persons and communities.

Although there is considerable evidence that trans persons are victims of discrimination, social psychologists have rarely explored prejudice against this minority group. We extrapolated from models of heterosexism to test hypotheses about support for and opposition to trans persons' civil fights. Opposition to trans persons civil rights among 151 participants was correlated with heterosexism, authoritarianism, a belief that there are only two sexes, beliefs that gender is biologically based and several demographic variables. Linear regression showed that heterosexism, authoritarianism, contact with sexual minorities and beliefs in biological gender predicted unique variance in opposition to trans persons' civil fights. Differences and similarities between prejudice towards sexual and gender minorities are discussed. Copyright (c) 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This chapter presents the basic legal framework for the recognition of the rights of trans persons in the Republic of Croatia. It explains how the Constitutional Court and Health bureaucracies have developed tools to facilitate access to gender confirming treatments and surgeries, as well as the registration of changes of name and sex. It also explains, however, that the main issue concerning trans persons in Croatia today is the lack of doctors trained in the surgical and emotional aspects of gender transitions.KeywordsCivil statusTrans personsSexGender fluidityGender binarySelf-determinationTrans identityRepublic of Croatia

This chapter addresses the legislative, judicial and state policies aimed at trans persons, seeking to critically reflect, from an interdisciplinary approach, on the current Brazilian panorama. As is well known, the violence suffered by the trans population in Brazil is serious; constant violations of trans rights remain unsanctioned. The particularities of the Brazilian legislation are also taken up cursorily here, such as the regulation of the right to name and gender identity; the absence of the “third sex/gender” in registrations; the relationship between the rights of trans persons and of gay, lesbian and intersex persons in the country; and broader discussions about how sex/gender can be viewed as legal categories in the Brazilian context.KeywordsCivil statusTrans personsSexGender fluidityGender binarySelf-determinationTrans identityBrazil

The Caribbean Court of Justice was conceived to further the Anglophone Caribbean’s decolonization process. Decolonization included not just transitions from colony to independent statehood but also the repudiation of imperial formations. The Court’s capacity to do this is evident in the McEwan Case. Using bold approaches to interpretation, the CCJ effectively erased the general savings law clause (which was previously treated as effective in immunizing colonial laws from inconsistency with the Bill of Rights) and affirmed the fundamental rights of trans persons. Since those clauses tethered post-independence constitutionalism to colonial era legal arrangements, erasure has the effect of bringing the Constitution forward and home. I argue that erasure is the result of proper methods of interpretation and not overreach since savings clauses are now functionally obsolete. The CCJ also signalled its decolonising capacity by articulating Caribbean identity in inclusive terms. It rightly affirmed that trans persons are entitled to full membership in the political community, in circumstances where its position is likely an anti-majoritarian one. The CCJ is demonstrating its decolonizing capacity in a context where, it is argued, the Privy Council cannot. It is hoped that other Caribbean States will be encouraged to accede to the CCJ’s appellate jurisdiction.

This article examines varieties of human rights appropriation in the context of sexuality politics in Africa. Noting how contested the landscape of human rights has been in Africa, it demonstrates how the human rights of lesbians, gays, bisexual, trans, queer, and intersex persons or sexual and gender minorities (LGBTQI+) are excluded from protection as a result of what are described as three interconnected predispositions. These predispositions are postcolonial, cultural, and religious tendencies within many African countries which adopt “othering” narratives that justify, and even sacralize, discrimination or violence based on gender identity and sexual orientation. The article analyzes the rights-based arguments—the appropriation of human rights language—used by anti-gay advocates in Africa, which emphasize rights to religion, culture, and family and exclude or deny the rights of LGBTQI+ people. This presentation of a human rights corpus and discourse which excludes LGBTQI+ rights, and which circulates both within and outside Africa, relies on alliances with the US Christian Right, and with the Vatican and Islamic leaders, to oppose sexual rights, and is often deployed by African politicians to retain political power. The article concludes by exploring the concept of ubuntu as a potential alternative to or as an accompaniment to human rights language, as a way of vernacularizing and Africanizing LGBTQI+ rights.

At present, the subject of transgender rights – particularly where they concern the safeguarding of transgender reproduction – has represented a fiercely fought political battleground. The inflammatory debates have inevitably bled into the legal landscape, and trepidation regarding transgender procreation has influenced the way European jurisdictions legally recognise gender. Through AP, Garcon and Nicot v France, the ECtHR has undoubtedly made a watershed ruling in declaring that compulsory sterilisation requirements infringed Article 8 Convention Rights. The Courts ultimately ruled on the side of the reproductive rights of trans persons. However, we must remain vigilant of prematurely celebrating its decision. In doing away with sterilisation requirements, the Court effectively ensured that legal gender recognition remained firmly within the remit of trans-medicalism, placing significant power in the hands of medical providers as gatekeepers to gender recognition. This article critiques the decision of AP Garcon and Nicot. It utilises the theoretical framework of Reproductive Justice to scrutinise the enduring pathologisation of trans bodies, and its effect on the ability for trans individuals to reproduce and parent freely. This article ultimately argues that despite the merits of the case, the long sought-after state of reproductive justice is yet to be served.

Constitutions around the world have overwhelmingly been the creation of men, but this book asks how far constitutions have affirmed the equal citizenship status of women or failed to do so. Using a wealth of examples from around the world, Ruth Rubio-Marín considers constitutionalism from its inception to the present day and places current debates in their vital historical context. Rubio-Marín adopts an inclusive concept of gender and sexuality, and discusses the constitutional gender order as it has been shaped by debates such those around same-sex marriage and the rights of trans persons. Covering a wide range of themes, from reproductive rights to political gender quotas and violence against women, this book offers a comprehensive feminist account of constitutional law. Truly international in scope and ambitious in subject matter, this is an invaluable resource for students and scholars working on gender within multiple disciplines.

This chapter traces the development of the status and legal rights of trans persons under Israeli law, which in certain ways has been dependent upon, influenced as well as limited by Israeli statehood.

In a recent judgment, the German Federal Constitutional Court held that it was unconstitutional to require every person's sex to be entered on the birth register, without providing for a third option for intersex persons. This article examines the intersex judgment in view of the Court's earlier jurisprudence on the rights of trans persons. It argues that this judgment was enabled, to a significant extent, by the fluid understanding of sex and gender identity shown in those judgments, and by the elaboration in those cases of the relationship between sexual freedom, human dignity and equality. It also comments on the possible relevance of the intersex judgment for South Africa, in view of some of the parallels and differences between German and South African constitutional jurisprudence.
 

The topic of LGBTQ rights has sparked fierce debate both at national and global level for a long time. While the country has undoubtedly progressed toward greater inclusivity because of the expansion of certain legal protections for the LGBTQ community and rising societal acceptance of and engagement in LGBTQ-inclusive discourse, the LGBTQ community continues to face discrimination in the workplace, in education, and in healthcare. In recent years, discrimination against LGBTQ people has been more obvious in the hospital setting. Patients reported a variety of experiences with prejudice, including being-denied reproductive treatment, counselling, regular screening, and even paediatric care for their children. For transgender people, transgender health care involves the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of physical and mental illnesses, as well as sex reassignment procedures. Gender variation, sex reassignment therapy, health hazards particularly in connection to violence and mental health and access to healthcare for Trans persons in various nations throughout the world are all topics covered in transgender health care. Many governmental health care programmes and commercial insurance plans continue to specifically to exclude transition-related health care. Even once these restrictions are gone, one must fight to ensure that Trans individuals have meaningful, complete access to transition-related care, free of costly and needless preconditions and limitations on the sorts of care that can be delivered. The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019 enacted to provide for protection of rights of transgender persons and their welfare and for matters.

<i>A Duty to Resist: When Disobedience Should Be Uncivil</i>

This paper argues, first, that the legal construction of transsexualism is a matter of interest, not only to members of the trans community, but to all students of gender, including feminists. The paper then proceeds to explain and analyse, using feminist perspectives, key aspects of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 in the light of the recent caselaw concerning the rights of trans persons. The 2004 Act, it is argued, is a conservative move, which attempts to deny the threat transsexualism poses to the binary system of gender, by instigating a system to formally ‘recognise’ only men and or women. However, the way in which the Act constructs the public/private divide and the mind/body relation carries potential for legal recognition of subject positions which may in a variety of ways be ‘beyond’ the binary system that is currently orthodox. The paper can as such be read as a case study in the legal (re)construction of gender, the gender/sex relation, and the widespread tendency to construct gender conservatively.