Victor Madrigal-Borloz is the UN independent expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, a position he has held since January 2018. He is the Eleanor Roosevelt fellow and a senior visiting researcher at the human rights program of Harvard University’s faculty of law
As the United Nations independent expert on preventing violence and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, I have the privilege of working alongside LGBT communities and activists all over the world.
In every country I visit as part of my mandate, I am consistently moved by the courage and perseverance of local trans communities who face daily attempts of negation or vilification of their identities.
As I find this community all too often excluded in policy decision-making and discourse, I always strive to give the utmost consideration to the voices of trans people.
I believe that when the magnificent Argentinian trans activist Lohana Berkins said
We must continue to bear the audacity of our bodies, to display them to a society that fails to understand the fragility of our lives,
she captured well the dilemmas of a community which in the past few decades has made extraordinary progress in the furtherance of its human rights, but whose members maintain a reported life expectancy of just 35 years in some parts of the world.
This is why in light of recent attempts in the Australian media and public debate to paint transgender youth – and the doctors who serve them – as part of a new “social fad” or “ideology”, I wish to state in the strongest terms possible that such narratives are not only profoundly incorrect, but also perpetuate harmful stereotypes which delegitimise the identities of trans people and ultimately impede access to their human rights.
I sincerely hope that all persons interested in this issue would listen to the voices of trans persons and their families. If they listen to only a fraction of the stories that I have heard, they would no doubt recognise the struggle that is their everyday life, and that is worthy of respect and solidarity.
Gender diversity has existed at all times and across all societies. Trans people are by no means part of some new “idea” or “ideology” being brought to Australia.
Countries, including Australia, and which together comprise a quarter of the world’s population, recognise in both law and cultural traditions ways of being male or female with a different gender history and of course myriad identities of being neither male or female. Read more via The Guardian