HUMAN RIGHTS QUESTIONED A Queer Perspective

The focus of this paper is from the perspective of a progressive queer lens regarding the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, transgender, 2-spirit, queer, questioning, and intersex (LGBTQI) people, based on a history of human rights abuses against people who identify as, or are perceived to be, LGBTQI (Adam, 1987; Smith, 1999; Warner, 2002). This focus and lens need not be limited to gender and sexual diversity but can be extended to anyone concerned about human rights. Intersectionality of social locations has always run through gender and sexually diverse people, and as such, the human rights issues raised herein are applicable to society in general. In this paper the importance of human rights will be discussed while simultaneously looking at its limitations and the dialectical implications this has. The erosive position human rights are currently in will be examined from a socio-political perspective that captures those who promote human rights and those who question them. Canada likes to present itself as being on a solid ground of human rights legislation, but there is no denying the numerous imbalances that continue to exist and the challenges they create not only for those directly affected, but for Canadian society and the very notion that human rights are a tool of recognition and protection. Such imbalances and the challenges they pose will be decontextualized. I propose a more liberating response, one that albeit includes human rights but is not constrained by its limitations. Human rights and advocacy hold an important place in social work ethos as outlined by various Social Work Codes of Ethics and Principles of Practice (IASSW, n.d.; IFSW, 2012a, 2012b; CASW, 2005). Hence, social work has a history of social reform advocating social justice for the marginalized, disenfranchised and oppressed (Hutchinson Crocker, 1992). This now includes sexual orientation and gender identity and expression (IFSW, 2012). In Canada, the battle to get LGBTQIs included in formal human rights legislation has happened incrementally over time and is an ongoing initiative of the LGBTQI movement (Mulé, Forthcoming). For example, human rights recognition of LGBTQIs was initially advocated for and achieved by the movement for enumerated characteristic of sexual orientation (Warner, 2002). It has only been in the last number of years that provinces and territories, and eventually the federal government, included gender identity (and expression) in human rights legislation (Canadian Bar Association, 2016; Equaldex, 2017). Yet, recognition still eludes these populations, such as the Employment Equity Act and the omission of intersex people in formal legislative human rights. Beyond incrementalism, a problem that underscores the concept of human rights is the premise of equality over equity. Too often human rights are fought for and designed to achieve equality in the eyes of the law. This in turn creates a limitation in formal human rights by constructing a form of legal justice that falls short of substantive material human rights, the latter of which, is only achievable via social justice. Formal human rights legislation, achieved through the conservatizing legal justice process, sets equality measures based on the status quo, which inevitably tends to be white, middle class, heterosexual, and cisgendered. For many who fall outside this normative realm (including many LGBTQIs), legal justice is out of reach. It is in the broader scope of social justice that those marginalized by human rights hope to be taken up. If an underscoring tenet of human rights is to be based on equality, has this been achieved? Groups who have traditionally sought human rights recognition and protections (i.e. characteristics based on race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity/expression, age, accessibility, sexual orientation, class, creed, among others) have …