Human rights and legal aspects of gender identity

Abstract

In this panel we want to focus on the human rights aspects in the state-citizen relations of trans*, non-binary, intersex and genderqueer people. Many efforts by NGOs, international organisations and agencies seek to change the conception of binary gender at the level of legislation, to increase the visibility of the group, to reduce the exclusion to which this group is subjected in terms of civil rights and to eliminate the binary construction of gender as a legal category (see Yogyakarta Principles, see https://yogyakartaprinciples.org/).However, providing legal discourse, deconstructing the gender binary, being a crucial step for improving lives of queer citizens, seems to be not enough, to provide for bettering the practices of the state-citizen relations and the adaptation of the legal frames. Discursive opening towards queer rights might even result in invisibility of severe problems, emerging out of the incompatibility of the systematic logics or the legal system, system of the state citizenship, state-citizen and authority-citizens relations, medical systems and the human rights aspects in all these areas. The intersection of – or clash of – human rights issues with regard to the queer community, gender registration, gender identity, the right of self- identification, the respective opening towards gender fluidity in (some) countries and the binary-gendered legal regulations and practices in different nation-states contexts becomes structurally visible especially in the interdisciplinary perspective. Legal aspects of gender identity are a complex field, embracing gender registration, movement, laws on marriage, adoption, health issues, but also the topics of detention, border crossings, policing, (un)compatibilities of gender conception between nation states etc. However, what might feel as trans*- and non-binary phobic policies when taken from the perspective of the queer community, human rights activists or queer and feminist theories, might suddenly appear rather pragmatic ways of “pushing” gender fluidity into the binary due to e.g. limited resources (continuing binary detention facilities despite the acceptance of gender fluidity on the level of human right and law would be an example). The panel entitled “Human rights and legal aspects of gender identity” seeks to demonstrate the complexity of the problem, of the clashes between different aspects of gender identity, when looked at from different disciplinary angles. The contributions within the panel seek to look at conflicting/ logics of the different systems and their necessities; to open up the interdisciplinary framework to point out to the incompatibilities and conflicts, when addressing human rights and gender identity.

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