Anti-Gender Mobilizations in the UN

• In Event: 50451 - Right-Wing Misappropriations of Feminism

Abstract

In this paper, I draw from an analysis of more than a dozen interviews with UN officials, minutes from General Assembly meetings, speeches given by UN officials, and reports written by UN Independent Experts and Special Rapporteurs, to show the rhetorical strategies deployed by country officials in debates over the expansion of the human rights framework to include LGBT Rights. While promoted by proponents as a clear next step, opponents rejected the attempt to expand the human rights framework. Opponents rationalized their objections in two ways. Demanding their right to national and cultural autonomy, opponents evoked colonial histories of political and cultural imposition. Opponents were also acutely aware of the attempts to introduce new global categories and rejected the inclusion of gender/sexuality by claiming that gender identity and sexual orientation were undefined. Reflecting the availability and legitimacy of postcolonial critiques, universalization was central to their critique: opponents explicitly rejected the idea that these categories were globally meaningful. Rather than pointing to substantive variation in the meaning of gender and sexuality, opponents described the problem as one of “universalization,” “lack of universal consensus,” “lack of clear definition,” and “no agreed upon, universal definition.”

Author

• Tara Marie Gonsalves, Columbia University