Thursday, March 28, 2013

Human Rights And The Trans-Person

I went to an interesting workshop this morning at the UConn School of Social Work on “Identity, Oppression and Human Rights Through a Social Work Lens.” The first speaker was Ms. Marton who talked about immigrants who are seeking asylum here. I couldn’t help but think of the trans-persons who have fled their native country, from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and Indonesia to name a few. Trans-people face the same discrimination and dangers as the people that the professor talked about in her speech.

The next person to speak was my former professor, Dr. Libal and her talk was the main reason why I attended the workshop. She spoke about “social inclusion” as a human right. That caught my attention… what is “social inclusion” and does it pertain to the trans-community were two of the questions that I asked myself. She talked about Australia’s definition of “social inclusion” and I found this on the web…
The Australian Government’s vision of a socially inclusive society is one in which all Australians feel valued and have the opportunity to participate fully in the life of our society.

Achieving this vision means that all Australians will have the resources, opportunities and capability to:
  •     Learn by participating in education and training;
  •     Work by participating in employment, in voluntary work and in family and caring;
  •     Engage by connecting with people and using their local community’s resources; and
  •     Have a voice so that they can influence decisions that affect them.
When you think about it this is a very important idea, not only do you have a right not to be discriminated again but you also have a right to be involved with the government and the community. When I look at this from a trans-perspective I see companies that have a non-discrimination policy but the employees socially isolate the trans-employee, such as the employee who never gets invited to have lunch “with the gang” because the other employees don’t want to be seen with the transgender employee. I see the trans-student who never gets call on by the teacher in class or never gets invited to classmates’ birthday parties.

Social inclusion might seem like a strange new idea, but actually for the rest of the world this is an old concept. The ground work was laid with the UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights back in 1966 which said,
Recognizing that, in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the ideal of free human beings enjoying freedom from fear and want can only be achieved if conditions are created whereby everyone may enjoy his economic, social and cultural rights, as well as his civil and political rights.
So back then they had an idea that there is such a thing as social rights. How social integrations get implemented I think remains to be determined, but it is a very interesting concept.

The next speaker Dr. Healy speech was a technical discussion on social work and human rights. The last speaker was Dr. Berthold who talked about “Political, Religion, Ethnic and Sexual Identity as a Risk Factor for State-Sponsored Torture,” she was the only speaker to include gender identity and sexual orientation in her speech. What caught my attention in her talk was what she said were factors in surviving torture; a sense of family (either actual or adopted family), a sense spirituality, a sense of justice and a belief in yourself or cause. If you look at the list, I think that the list include the same things that get you through your transition. She talked about the goal of state-sponsored torture, spread fear and to silence the opposition, and to oppress the population and to control society, when you think about it, hate crimes have the same goals. And she said those that survive torture come out of it stronger and I think you can also say the same thing about transition, transition make you stronger. I don’t mean to imply that torture and transitioning are the same, but when you go through times of stress the effects bear a similarity to each other.

All in all, it was an interesting morning. I’m glad that I went.

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