China: For Gay Chinese, getting married means getting creative

Every time Benjamin Zhang talks about marriage, he uses the following words in abundance: "job," "duty," "my parents," "problem," and "urgent".

"The most urgent matter for me now is to find a spouse. I'm not young anymore. I see my peers getting married one by one and having kids, and I have nothing. I just feel very dejected," said the 31-year-old native of the northeastern city of Harbin -- who also admits he loves children and hopes to have his own one day. "When I'm married and have a child, I'd have done my job as a son. That's most important for me."

Benjamin shares the anxiety of millions other bachelors in China, where it's almost a given that people of a marriageable age set off to start a family.

But unlike most of them, Benjamin is looking for a lesbian wife. Benjamin is gay, and he's trying to obtain a xinghun - a new Chinese term coined to describe a "cooperative marriage" between a gay man and a lesbian woman. The marriage, essentially, is a sham: both the husband and wife continue to have their own same-sex partners and may not even live together. Read more via the Atlantic 

Sweden: Government to pay compensation to trans people who were ‘forcibly sterilized’

The Swedish government will shell out compensation to transgender people who were victims of forced sterilization, the country’s public health minister has confirmed.

Until 2013, Swedish law specified that people who wanted to change legal gender had to be “lacking the ability to procreate”. This meant that hundreds of transgender people were forced to undergo surgery to prevent them from ever having children.
More than 160 victims of the policy brought a claim against the government over the practice – and after a long political battle lasting years, the Swedish government confirmed it would settle the case and pay out compensation.

In a statement, Public Health minister Gabriel Wikström confirmed that the government will develop legislation in order to allow compensation to be paid. Read more via PinkNews

Malaysia: Learn from Filipino counterparts and engage with LGBT community, local police told

A transgender rights group told local police today to engage with the LGBTQ community here, highlighting the Philippines police force that has undergone sensitisation training with such groups.

Justice for Sisters expressed concern that Deputy Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Datuk Seri Noor Rashid Ibrahim’s statement about not allowing openly LGBT people into the force, even if they are qualified, would further perpetuate homophobia and transphobia among police officers.

The group highlighted a report by international rights group Human Rights Watch that documented claims of police actions against trans people, such as sexual violence, arbitrary arrests based on gender identity, arbitrary urine tests, extortion of money or sexual avours, and lack of urgency and bias in investigating police reports lodged by transgender people. Read more via Malay Mail Online

Beyond Binary across the world

In communities around the globe, non-binary people are rejecting the categories of ‘male’ and ‘female’, and attempting to redefine gender identity. Queer, gender-queer, gender-fluid, gender-variant, third gender – these are all terms non-binary people use to describe themselves.

In Beyond Binary, for the Identity Season on the BBC World Service, Linda Pressly hears stories from activists who are part of this contemporary movement, and from those simply trying to live free from the constraints of the expectations of gender. And she travels to Thailand and Canada to find out more about gender non-conformers in ancient cultures. Read/Watch more

India: Why terms like ‘transgender’ don’t work for #India’s ‘third-gender’ communities

Indian society, if we can momentarily suppose such a monolithic entity, is far older than the post-Victorian, normative society that defines the modern cultures of the West. People we might consider transgender have existed across societies for as long as they themselves have existed, but in South Asia they have formed distinct communities with histories and mythologies that go back hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Age-old texts such as the "Mahabharata" and the "Kama Sutra" refer to eunuchs, and there are tales of gods — even the most powerful of them — who change genders on a whim.

That is partly why the term "transgender" is seldom used in the Indian context. In Indian legalese, the term most commonly employed is "third gender" — as when, two Aprils ago, India's "third gender" was acknowledged by the country's Supreme Court, which stated that "it is the right of every human being to choose their gender." Those wishing to can now indicate that status on government-issued identification and other formal documents, but, more importantly, Indian states were directed to afford special considerations through affirmative action and welfare programs.

In everyday usage, however, terms such as "hijra," "kothi," "kinnar," "shiv-shakti" and "aravani" are more common, depending on which region of the country one is in.  Read more via Washington Post

Greece: Civil Partnership Rights, LGBT claims and human rights agenda in times of crisis

Stella Belia is a Greek activist for LGBT rights. She is the President of Rainbow Families organization, which represents Greek families of same sex parents and their children and strives for equal opportunity policies. She works as a kindergarten teacher in Athens and raises five children with her partner.
 
The introduction of a civil partnership law in Greece (December 2015) brought to the forefront  the question of  LGBT rights in the Greek society, and it is in this framework that Rethinking Greece* asked Stella Belia to answer questions on the current status of LGBT people in Greece, the human rights agenda in times of pauperization and crisis, the perception of homosexuality in Greek public opinion as well as possible conflicts between more traditional values and the liberal mindset that permeates the international LGBT agenda.
 
The recent enactment, with a broad parliamentary majority, of the of same-sex partnership law is regarded as an important milestone in the history of LGBT claims in Greece. How do you assess this development? Read more via Greek News Agenda 

Why LGBT and sex worker rights go hand-in-handsex worker rights go hand-in-hand

The fact that many LGBT people end up in sex work is an issue often overlooked rather conveniently by many activists and charities. Sex work is still talked about in moralizing terms, and the LGBT community has sought to paint the picture of LGBT identities as being respectable as a way to win rights such as marriage.

The image of the LGBT world in recent campaigns has been that of white cisgender gay people in long term relationships, often with children. It’s a one dimensional idea that aims to show queer people as heteronormative and matching the moral virtues of conservative bigots. That kind of tactic does little to recognize the humanity of LGBT identities and it also leaves a lot of people behind.  Read more via Huffington Post

China: Gay people pledge not to enter into sham marriages

A social media campaign has taken off among China's LGBT community which sees members pledging not to enter into sham marriages with straight people. Since last week, a number of users on popular microblogging network Sina Weibo have been posting selfies of themselves with the hashtag #I'm gay and won't marry a straight person#.

Several parents of LGBT people have also posted pictures of themselves with signs declaring they would not pressure their children into marriage.

The campaign was started by LGBT rights group Pflag China. Spokesman Zhou Ying told the BBC they had come up with the idea after noticing greater discussion in the media and online on gay rights and the issue of marriages in recent weeks.  Read more via BBC

Philippines: Why call centers might be the most radical workplaces

You may not realize it, but the person on the other side of your customer service phone call might be transgender. On calls, Filipino workers can safely adopt women’s voices, names, and clothing, all while earning a decent wage. But their success at work doesn’t protect them from the discrimination they face outside of it.

In the Philippines, call centers have become havens for gender-nonconforming people, a place where they can experiment with their gender presentation and identity. Since most of the labor takes place over the phone, employees assigned male at birth may adopt traditionally feminine names, take on a “female voice,” or wear women’s clothing while talking to customers, a freedom that would be impossible in most other industries in the country.

For decades, beauty parlors were a rare refuge where gender-variant Filipinas could openly work, at the expense of low wages. But today “call centers are the new beauty parlor,” said Naomi Fontanos, the head of a major Philippine transgender organization and herself a former call center worker.  Read more via Buzzfeed

US: New ‘Don’t Be Mean To People’ Beer Is Fighting Bigotry In North Carolina

Craft beer breweries in North Carolina are rallying together against anti-queer House Bill 2 (HB2) by creating a special beer, the proceeds of which will benefit pro-LGBT organizations in the state.

The beer, called “Don’t Be Mean To People: A Golden Rule Saison,” is the subject of an online fundraiser that has already passed $20,000. More than 30 craft breweries have committed to supporting the special brew with many “directly involved in creating the beer“ and others donating “ingredients, supplies, and time or are helping spread the word.” All profits from the beer and any funds raised beyond those needed to help create the beverage will be donated to Equality North Carolina and QORDS summer camp for LGBT youth. Read more via HuffingtonPost

US: The long, winding road to marriage equality

Excerpted with permission from "Engines of Liberty: The Power of Citizen Activists to Make Constitutional Law,"
The path to marriage equality did not begin, of course, with Evan Wolfson’s Harvard Law School paper. The very fact that Wolfson could conceive of such a paper was itself testament to the efforts of countless gay and lesbian advocates before him, operating in far more difficult circumstances.

A good place to start in assessing the prehistory of the marriage equality movement is the Mattachine Society, one of the first gay organizations in the United States. Founded in Los Angeles in 1950, the Mattachine Society ultimately included chapters around the country, and in the 1950s and 1960s was the nation’s leading gay organization. It took its name from masked critics of ruling monarchs in medieval France. At its inception, the very idea of a gay organization was so radical that the group met only in secret.

The invisibility of the “closet” made mobilizing for lesbian and gay rights all but impossible. Thus, the first strategic step toward achieving equality was, as gay rights scholar and advocate Bill Eskridge  has called it, a “politics of protection.” The aim was to create space for gays and lesbians to come together without fear of official harassment. Read more via Salon

US Op-ed: LGBT hate is actually losing

The Christian right can no longer directly demonize gays and transgender people, so it has to lie and even the lies are backfiring. In the wake of last year’s loss on same-sex marriage, the Christian Right has begun to act tactically, attacking what it perceives to be the LGBT equality movement’s weakest links. And yet amazingly, this strategy is backfiring. Not only is the right failing to make their easiest cases, they are hardening opposition in those very cases, losing key battles in the areas of transgender rights and religious freedom.

Consider the strategy in North Carolina. North Carolina’s Republican legislature and governor used what they thought would be their best tactic to repeal anti-discrimination ordinances, one that that worked in Houston and elsewhere: that pro-LGBT laws would let men use women’s restrooms.

And notice what North Carolina didn’t do. They didn’t mount a frontal attack on Charlotte’s anti-discrimination law. They didn’t argue that gay people shouldn’t get “special rights.” They sneaked in under the cover of a lie, and still lost, first in the court of public opinion and next, probably, in courts of law. Read more via the Daily Beast