Sexual orientation

Around the world, gender-restrictive actors are organising to suppress gender-equality in schools. ALIGN’s review of the latest evidence reveals that anti-gender backlash in education is taking place from contexts as diverse as Afghanistan, Chile, Indonesia, Kenya, Pakistan, South Africa, Uganda, the US.

This ALIGN Report focuses on the activities of gender-restrictive actors and organisations who seek to promote a narrow vision of gender relations through the education system. The research shows that their influence is expanding efforts to entrench patriarchal social norms and a binary view of gender, and gaining ground across the globe.

Common aims and tactics include: to remove comprehensive sexuality education from schools, restrict girls access to learning, reinforce patriarchal gender stereotypes in textbooks and reject gender-inclusive policies in school environments. These groups are sustained by deep financial networks which drive effective strategies to amplify misinformation, provoke parental protests, and impose traditional family values.

To me, the lynchpin that enables the other problems listed here is that "LGBTIQ+ rights are [being] wedged into existing ‘culture-war’ narratives":

Media and political campaigns have positioned the rights of LGBTIQ+ people as negotiable and debatable. Some try to frame the human rights of transgender people as being at odds with women’s rights, even asserting that trans women do not face gender-based discrimination or that they pose a threat to the rights, spaces, and safety of cisgender women.

While they vary by cultural context, these campaigns often portray the push for LGBTIQ+ people’s rights as merely a generational dispute, part of a so-called “culture war”, or in some cases an imperialist agenda. 

Many such narratives position trans and non-binary gender identities as new or Western concepts, ignoring the rich history of diverse sexual orientations, gender identities, gender expressions, and sex characteristics across cultures and within the global South in particular.  

Falsely portraying the rights of LGBTIQ+ people, and particularly of trans people, as competing with women’s rights only widens divisions in the broader gender equality movement. This has given anti-rights actors space to advance rollbacks on sexual and reproductive health and rights, comprehensive sexuality education, and other critical issues.
 

Phew. Comprehensive.

Attempts to delegitimize transgender lives and experiences often rely on overly simplistic claims about “biological sex.” Drawing on my previous writings and background as a biologist, here I challenge these common presumptions and instead present a more holistic understanding of sex, gender, and trans people.