Human Rights

Sweden’s “Forcible sterilization” and Creating Change

Sweden: Transgender actress mourns her “forcible sterilization” – “Many countries typically seen as progressive on LGBT rights continue to mandate the practice.”

“’Forcible sterilization’ has been quietly practiced for decades in countries typically cast as progressive on LGBT rights: France, the Netherlands, Australia and a number of U.S. states still require it. Italy and Germany have just recently overturned similar legislation.”

Having just returned from Creating Change (3000 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender activists and allies, annually), I found this coverage of actress Aleksa Lundberg, a well-known Swedish transwoman, particularly ridiculous.

Although Swedish actress Aleksa Lundberg made her complete transition in her late teens, before her career, her birth gender just entered the public’s consciousness 4 years ago when she started telling her story to the press and on stage to take a stand against efforts to block the repeal of this heinous law.

Transwomen in Sweden cannot obtain their desired gender documentation (the completion and certification of their transition in the governments eyes) unless they undergo a full surgical removal of all male sex organs, while being prohibited from pre-freezing sperm for future use. These forced surgeries are a clear violation of human rights, something 50 Swedish transwomen, in a population of only 9 million, needlessly suffer every year.

This practice unfortunately harkens back to Sweden’s questionable medical research experiments on humans that didn’t officially end until the early 70s, as pointed out by Par Wiktorsson, president of the organizing committee for this year’s Stockholm Pride Festival.

“. . . the current law is reminiscent of eugenics programs that Swedish academics and doctors began to pursue in the 1930s and actually continued to practice until 1976.

“Supporters of the law don’t want the sterilization referred to as ‘forcible,’ but they didn’t want to call it that in the past either,” he says. “But . . . the state has always stood behind this demand with the threat of [withholding medical] treatment. It is shameful that we have forcible sterilization in the year 2011.”.

“Forcible sterilization” has been a practice for a century in America, notably in the southern states. Women and men, trans or not, are rightly seeking compensation as highlighted recently in North Carolina, where an intrusive state government shattered life aspirations of 1000s who were forced to undergo this despicable practice, by force and/or without informed consent. In the 60s, just being an unmarried teen mother was justification for sterilization.

‘They cut me open like I was a hog,” testified Eliane Riddick, who was sterilized by  North Carolina at age 14 under the premise that she was promiscuous and didn’t get along with others. “I couldn’t get along well with others because I was hungry. I was cold. I was a victim of rape.”

This is a practice that is disturbing especially to human rights defenders in this 21st century. I know that centuries ago, people didn’t have many choices in regard to rights and the governments were left largely unchecked. England exiled its own citizens, those deemed undesirable by the state, to primitive and barren lands 1000s of miles away. This business of creating a perfect world in places through erasure has been going on for a long time but civilization cannot stop banning practices like forced sterilization and others forms of disenfranchisement or it will stay in this modern dark ages.

“It infuriates me that a group of people think they have a right to tell another group of people what they can and cannot do,” Lundberg says.

As a human rights activist, I say, They don’t!”

It’s high time every lover of liberty and equality is coming together to denounce such heinous acts and continue to CREATE CHANGE.

 

Sign Our Petition to Stop Harmful Prostitution-Free Zones

Tomorrow in DC we will be delivering testimony, reprinted below, in opposition to  Bill 19-567, a proposed new law that would allow police to designate permanent Prostitution-Free Zones (PFZs), which have been dubbed by local activists as Trans Profiling Zones.

If you cannot attend tomorrow, you can watch online.

In any case, in the coming two weeks, please join us by signing the change.org petition. Each time someone signs, the DC Council gets email notice. We want to deluge these officials’ in boxes and make sure that this legislation is never passed, and that even our current temporary PFZs disappear in the waste bin of stupid ideas.

Prostitution is illegal, but PFZs, temporary as they are now or permanent, constitute legalized sex discrimination and a direct challenge to civil rights. Any discussion of PFZs is, therefore, part of a larger discourse on human rights.

As others will attest tomorrow, the establishment or continuation of PFZs is clearly unconstitutional, ignoring due process and equal protection clauses of the U.S. Constitution, so any law making them permanent will be subject to unending legal challenges costing our city hundreds of thousands of tax dollars defending a foolish law.

Putting the question of constitutionality aside for the moment, however, these PFZs are a menace to public safety by creating “papers please” profiling zones threatening people in the neighborhoods where they wish to live and work in peace. Police haven’t curbed prostitution or decreased crime that is imagined to be associated with prostitution, just relocated most of these activities to outlying neighborhoods away from downtown.

All residents and visitors to our nation’s capital have the right to be free from unwelcomed, coerced encounters with police, and the harassment that ensues during such forced encounters. Because most if not all of these coercive encounters have been shown to be biased, based entirely on the personal judgments and viewpoints of the police officer/s, rather than extant police procedures and special orders and human rights laws in the District of Columbia. Many of these unsolicited encounters with cross-purposes result in unwarranted arrests, further harassment, mistreatment by the police while incarcerated, and sometimes injury or even death.

DC government has the opportunity to step back and consider that the path of the PFZs is not only a losing proposition, it goes against the very principles of existing local laws and the very integrity of those who serve the Council. Rather then roiling ‘red meat’ for a small group of noisy busybodies in select neighborhoods, so as not to ‘appear’ as favoring prostitution, lawmakers should instead focus their attention on finding systemic and sustainable solutions that offer better employment options to this most vulnerable class of people, often forced through economic necessity to seek sex work for their very survival.

VenusPlusX’s testimony, prepared by Dan Massey, points to a future where sex workers are not victims of police overreach such as these PFZs. Here it is:

A Statement Opposing Establishment of Permanent Prostitution-Free Zones in the District of Columbia

You are today considering legislation that would create permanent “prostitution- free zones” (PPFZs) in certain areas of the city. I strongly urge that the Council table this matter for the time being and instead initiate a combined government and community-based effort, emphasizing transparency and harmony, to effectively address the real underlying problem which the PPFZ proposal fails to address.

There is little to gain in enacting laws that sound responsible to a vocal minority in the community, but which depend solely on the government to deploy violence against fellow citizens. Such laws deserve only ridicule when examined in the light of reason.

Sex workers provide an important function in society by filling a market need that cannot be eliminated, since it comes about through the choices and desires of the individual members of the population as a whole.

Criminalization of sex work simply forces sex workers to practice their profession at times and places where they can be free from police observation, while remaining accessible to their clientele.

Unfortunately, this means the solicitation and delivery of services will most often occur at times and in areas of the city where the participants will necessarily be more vulnerable to crimes of violence because of reduced police oversight.

At this time, I am not suggesting that the Council immediately de-criminalize and regulate sex work. Rather, I want each of you to honestly examine how much better it would be for the city to establish “Prostitution Zones” (PZs), under police protection. in which sex work is legal, licensed, and medically supervised.

Such zones would become havens for legal, socially beneficial sexual healing, and create opportunities for sex worker cooperatives to emerge, owning real estate and paying license fees and property taxes.

At the same time, with the establishment of such centers of expertise, open sex trade would be drawn away from unaccepting areas of the community, to everyone’s satisfaction.

At the moment, such a change in the underlying approach to prostitution in the city would be misunderstood and misinterpreted by many who hold strong opinions, simply because they have not yet actually been engaged in a rational discussion of alternatives and choices.

The Council can show it supports a rational approach by providing a public forum charged to find systemic and sustainable solutions for the District’s challenges in this area. Its current course in considering establishment of PPFZs will only complicate matters further, since court challenges based on considerable precedents in other locales are inevitable.

This forum should be established with a view towards providing the same respect, rights, and safety that all District residents desire from our society and our government, and should draw on community resources advocating every possible viewpoint and attitude, while providing full transparency in the decision-making process.

The outcome of such a discussion would be broad public education on the challenges of governing a modern city, the emergence of agreement on common goals and purposes, and anticipation of the benefits of agreed changes.

Such results would be visible through the reduction in crimes of violence, especially those motivated by racial and sexual hatred, as well as improvements in the health of all District residents.

At present, many people find themselves trapped into sex work by economic situations, many of which arise directly from social prejudice, hiring biases, and unfounded presumptions.

In this respect, I applaud the work of Project Empowement, which is demonstrating the fallacy of social prejudice. The ongoing effort to help our local LGBT youth gang find a constructive outlet for their commitment and energy also deserves recognition.

To summarize, I am advocating that the Council, working with MPD and the Mayor’s Office, begin to support and listen to an emerging discussion that would educate the entire DC community in wholesome ways to address the serious social problem created by public misunderstanding of legitimate, morally responsible services.

On a closely related subject:

Law enforcement management is maturing technically in many US cities. In 2009, the National Institute of Justice funded a Phase 1 trial of Predictive Policing in seven cities, including Washington, DC. I have seen no published report from this work; however, Shreveport and Chicago have received grants of $0.5M and $1.5M, respectively, to implement Phase 2 of their plans.

Building on earlier successes in Los Angeles, Memphis, and Richmond, Predictive Policing involves the collection and analysis of large bodies of data about crime times, locations, conditions, victims, methods, etc., as well as detailed environmental data about the organization of the city and its infrastructure.

Results help identify and pinpoint places, times, and conditions conducive to crime. Often, they identify environment, infrastructure, and organization that leads to the emergence of these “hot spots.” In Memphis, for example, the incidence of public rape, assault, and theft was significantly reduced simply by shifting the locations of public pay phones that were shown to be “hot spots” from street locations to the interiors of businesses open 24×7.

It is clear that legislation that criminalizes prostitution and then, having given up on fair enforcement of the original law, seeks to occasionally apply it more forcefully and arbitrarily in specific areas, is itself responsible for the formation of “hot spots” for serious criminal activity.

Making these zones permanent is merely another step backwards into a system of regulation that, like the proverbial ostrich, hides its head in the sand.

I urge Council members concerned about crime prevention in DC to examine some of the reference material on Preventive Policing cited in the attached References.

I firmly believe that, if the city will openly and honestly examine these issues, free from unreasoned prejudice, it will be possible to reform our practices in a way that can be a light to the entire nation.

The time has come for our city to take steps that will surely lead to the achievement of full civil liberty and freedom under a system of laws that fully represents to the nation and the world our highest ideals of excellence in law and government.

Let us again proclaim to the world that the District of Columbia aspires to be a shining example of full liberty and freedom for all, as was demonstrated in the establishment of Civil Marriage Equality in 2010 and many prior victories for human rights.

REFERENCES

The Deparment of Pre-Crime. James Vlahos in Scientific American, Vol. 306, No. 1, pages 62-67, January 2012.

Self-Exciting Point Processes Modeling of Crime. G. O. Mohler, M. B. Short. P. J. Brantingham, F. P. Schoenberg, and G. E. Tita in Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. 106, No. 473, pages 100-108, 2011.

How New York Beat Crime. Franklin E. Zimring in Scientific American, Vol. 305, No. 2, pages 74-79, August 2011.

Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Reports:     www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr.

Scientific American Online:     www.ScientificAmrican.com/jan2012/precrime

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Human Rights Day 2011 – Part II

December 10, Saturday, was Human Rights Day 2011, and I reported on its origns, history, and background, noted the important role Eleanor Roosevelt played in drafting The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and delved into the direct connections between human rights and sexual freedom contained in the Declaration.

Last week, on December 6, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton surprised a lot of people all around the globe when she made an historic address to international diplomats gathered at The United Nations Office at Geneva (Switzerland) about the specific intersection between lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights and human rights. The Secretary said, “Like being a woman, like being a racial, religious, tribal, or ethnic minority, being LGBT does not make you less human. And that is why gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.”

Secretary Clinton gave a powerful and moving address, in which she put the world on notice that:

It is a violation of human rights when people are beaten or killed because of their sexual orientation, or because they do not conform to cultural norms about how men and women should look or behave. It is a violation of human rights when governments declare it illegal to be gay, or allow those who harm gay people to go unpunished. It is a violation of human rights when lesbian or transgendered women are subjected to so-called corrective rape, or forcibly subjected to hormone treatments, or when people are murdered after public calls for violence toward gays, or when they are forced to flee their nations and seek asylum in other lands to save their lives. And it is a violation of human rights when life-saving care is withheld from people because they are gay, or equal access to justice is denied to people because they are gay, or public spaces are out of bounds to people because they are gay. No matter what we look like, where we come from, or who we are, we are all equally entitled to our human rights and dignity.

In response to Secretary Clinton’s statements, as well as a coordinated proclamation from President Obama on the same day, religious bigots and certain Republicans gave the expected outcry, claiming this amounted to the United States using tax-payer dollars to forward what they call “a homosexual agenda.” But her comments are already making a difference in the international community: the country of Malawi has already announced that they will re-examine their laws as they relate to the LGBT community.

Unfortunately, the condition of human rights as they relate to LGBT rights in Secretary Clinton’s own United States is pretty deplorable. In most states, LGBT citizens are not protected from discrimination in housing, employment, or public accommodations. Same-sex couples are prohibited from marrying in most states, and even in the few states where they are allow to marry, there is no federal recognition of such marriages due to the misnamed “Defense of Marriage Act” (ironically, signed into law by a President who was cheating on his wife at the time). This law is a blatant violation of the “full faith and credit” clause of the U.S. Constitution, and as a direct result of this single law, same-sex couples are discriminated against under at least 1,138 separate Federal laws that cover everything from taxes to immigration and beyond.

What do you think can be done to bring the United States more into compliance with the kinds of LGBT protections Secretary Clinton called for in the rest of the world? America likes to think of itself as “the land of the free,” but when it comes to sexual freedom for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender citizens, is this a hollow and hypocritical promise?

Studies show that the younger people are, the more likely they are to support the kinds of changes that Secretary Clinton has called for in her historic speech. What does this mean in terms of how soon the LGBT community can hope to achieve full equality under the laws of the United States, and in other countries around the world?

Let us know what you think. Make a video, write a poem, song, or an essay — or even create an original work of art — and express your thoughts on these topics. If we feature your contribution on the site, we will send you a free VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you.

Flag image by Julyo, used pursuant to Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Human Rights Day 2011 – Part I

Today is Human Rights Day 2011. To mark the occasion, this video is from Navanethem Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was drafted by a committee chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, and was adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 10, 1948.

This Declaration contains a number of Articles that directly relate to sexual freedom, and that apply to issues around human trafficking, marriage equality, and being lesbian, gay, bisexual or trans (LGBT). There is a prohibition of the slave trade in Article 4 that directly relates to human trafficking, when it states “No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.” Regarding marriage equality (also known as “gay marriage,” a term that does not adequately describe the issue), Article 16, Section 1 says, “Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.” Clearly, the United States is in violation of this article, as are most countries around the world.

Whether we point to the right-wing religious zealots (such as “The Family”), including American congressmen, who are helping to pass laws that would imprison for life or execute LGBT citizens in Uganda and other countries, or to the police who harass and unfairly prosecute trans people here in America, our world is filled with rampant violations of Article 7, which states unequivocally “All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.”

What does the concept of “human rights” mean to you? Do you believe that sexual freedom is a human right? Does your country respect your human rights, and if not, how could they do better? What role can we play in improving human rights in other countries, including those relating to sexual freedom? How can we ensure that sexual freedom is considered and included as a priority in discussions about human rights around the world today? Have you ever felt that your human rights were being denied? If so, how did you feel, and what did you do to respond? What have you personally done to help promote human rights here and/or abroad?

Let us know what you think. Make a video, write a poem, song, or an essay — or even create an original work of art — and express your thoughts on these topics. If we feature your contribution on the site, we will send you a free VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you.

Coming in Part II, on Wednesday: Obama and Clinton’s historic efforts confirming LGBT rights as human rights

The Sexual Freedom Project: Human Trafficking

Today’s video comes to us from the Demi & Ashton Foundation (DNA Foundation) and is about human trafficking: the illegal trade of human beings for the purposes of reproductive slavery, commercial sexual exploitation, forced labor, or a modern-day form of slavery. Some important facts from their website:

Today, more than twelve million people worldwide are enslaved.[1] An estimated two million children are bought and sold in the global commercial sex trade.[2] The sex slavery industry has become an increasingly important revenue source for organized crime because each young girl can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars each year for her pimp.

While this is a problem in many countries, many Americans don’t realize that it happens here at home as well. Thousands of children are forced into domestic sex slavery each year and that the average age of entry is 13 years old.[3] The majority of American victims of commercial sexual exploitation tend to be runaway youth who live on the street, often who have left homes where they were abused or abandoned. Pimps prey on their vulnerability. These girls are our neighbors, our friends, our sisters and our daughters. [Footnotes on their site.]

The DNA Foundation website includes a comprehensive list of important organizations that are working on this issue. How much have you heard about this important subject? Has it personally affected anyone you know, a neighbor, a friend, a relative? Do you think the topic is getting the public discussion and the media attention that it needs and deserves? Do you think people may be uncomfortable talking about it? What can we do to make it okay to talk about this subject, and what can we as individuals do to stop this practice?

Let us know what you think. Make a video, write a poem, song, or an essay — or even create an original work of art — and express your thoughts on these topics. If we feature your contribution on the site, we will send you a free VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you.