It is the end of June, a month marked annually in some parts of the world as Pride month, when LGBTIQ movements and people are celebrated, when inequality is protested, and the continuing struggle for equality has a global media megaphone.
While the spotlight shines specifically on LGBTIQ people and the challenges they continue to face, the month, and the issues it spotlights, are pertinent for women too.
Why?
Because plenty of women identify as LGBTIQ.
Because the forces which drive our discrimination and exclusion, also drive marginalization of LGBTIQ people.
Because fundamental to feminism and the struggle for greater gender equality is the rejection of the definition of gender as the sum of our body parts. Gender is a personal experience shaped by social, economic, and cultural forces.
Because to achieve true, lasting, and inclusive change, we have to see, recognize and act on the intersections of our movements.
Women and LGBTIQ people face a multitude of barriers in societies around the world - discrimination, pay gaps, harassment, violence, barriers to accessing property rights, achieving leadership and participating in political processes, to name a few. The root causes of this marginalization are the same – outdated, deeply ingrained patriarchal expectations of gender roles and appearances, perceptions of how things “should be”, and efforts to hold on to a world order which no longer exists. Anyone who does not adhere to these norms, or, worse still, dares to challenge them as feminist and LGBTIQ movements do, is a target of gender-based violence, of discrimination, and exclusion.
The World Health Organization estimates that 1 in 3 women and girls worldwide experience physical and/or sexual violence at least once in their life. The Center for Survivor Advocacy and Justice has documented that the number increases to 1 in 2 and higher for women and girls marginalized by race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, or other factors.
In times of conflict, women face particular challenges. Those include increased risk of sexual and gender-based violence as a weapon of war, invisibility, and exclusion from decision-making processes. LGBTIQ people face those same challenges, and more (including exclusion from humanitarian support, which tends to be organized in traditional ways, or inability of trans people to flee due to their documentation often not matching their gender expression).
OutRight International, a global LGBTIQ organization, reports sexual assault and humiliation of LGBTIQ people in Russian occupied territories of Ukraine, summary executions of LGBTIQ people by ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and systemic rape of LGBTIQ people by FARC guerrillas in Colombia. Women have faced the same awful treatment, in the same places, for the same reasons: to instil fear, to ensure adherence to being a “real woman” or “real man”, to achieve subjugation and control.
In addition to facing similar challenges in societies, and in times of war and conflict, progress for women’s rights and LGBTIQ equality are also often opposed together. For example, restrictions on access to sexual and reproductive health have soared in places such as Poland, the USA, Brazil and elsewhere. The same places have seen a corresponding rise in anti-LGBTIQ, and especially anti-trans, sentiment. Forces opposing the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence, better known as the Istanbul Convention, do so by zeroing in on the word “gender”, and by drumming up fear that ratifying the convention designed to protect women from violence will lead to more LGBTIQ people.
There are many other examples. The root causes of discrimination, of gender-based violence, harassment and exclusion of women and LGBTIQ people are the same. Those fighting against recognition of our rights see us as part of the same threat. In order to overcome the opposition, to achieve and maintain progress, we have to be united. Not just during Pride month – all year round.