Moving beyond lip service in human rights

Although I am of the view that I and every other woman alive today owes a massive debt to the feminists (i.e., pro-women s rights activists, some of whom were male) from the 60s, I also consider that steps such as removing courtesy titles (i.e., Ms, Miss, Mrs) was a disservice in the long term.

It was undoubtedly a tactical gain, as it enabled a short term way of getting around sexist discrimination, but that was exactly why it was a long term (strategic) loss: it got around the problems of sexism, it didn't change it.

There is a valid argument that gaining experience working alongside women would further erode that sexism, but I consider any such decision around actions in support of human rights should be fully informed - i.e., there should have been a discussion about the fact that there was a long term issues not being addressed fr the sake of short term gain.

And such short term gains can be more important - for instance, when lives are at stake.

The issue of short term vs. long term also crops up, however, in relation to the opposition to human rights.

As a couple of examples from the 1960s women's rights movement:

• women initially asked for an equal share of power, but men said "oh no, we think around 30% would be enough" - and THAT is why the "all power to women" saying started; 
• people who didn't like using "Ms" could use the argument that titles were being removed to avoid addressing their discomfort over not knowing if women were in an official, state and religion sanctioned relationship.

These days, the bigotry of that second example would probably be termed "unconscious bias", but I argue it probably wasn't unconscious at all.

Also, the first example needs to kept in mind, along with the resistance to giving women the vote that led to the shift from the suffragist movement to the at times violent suffragette movement. There is always resistance to change because it is change, and that is even stronger when it involves ceding rights to others - even though that does NOT diminish anyone else's rights ever. (Feeling less privileged is not a diminishment of human rights.)

Decisions about whether to make life for a discriminated against group more survivable or bearable as opposed to changing the bigotry that causes the problem ideally should be subject to an informed discussion.

On that, there have been a number of reflections on increased discussions (for instance, see here), and that is often good.

As a first step, it can be important, although challenging, to call out instances of lip service.

I recently had the opportunity to do that on a matter that related to trans and gender diverse (TGD) rights, and have decided to post the relevant part of that here. Please read and consider.

•  Transition (not necessarily with GRS [gender realignment surgery] ) is supported by medical professionals on the basis that it is necessary for the wellbeing of TGD people; 
• After years of agitating, medical professional finally realised one of the biggest problems post-transition is discrimination (although I am still seeing surveys constructed with insufficient awareness of this);
• Now that much of the government documentation has been fixed (this does not cover all documentation, and this is referring to my home state), the biggest problem is most commonly misgendering (i.e., wrong pronouns) – to the extent that some of us consider it tantamount to attempted murder or manslaughter; 
• Getting official recognition of the problem of misgendering has been slow – in my opinion, because it means people have to go beyond paying lip service to not discriminating against TGD people, to being genuine about it. There has slowly been some movement on this – for instance, the former EOCV guidelines removed mention of misgendering at the insistence of others in 2000/01, and the EOCV only put it back in around 5 years or so ago; 
• Deadnaming is referring to pre-transition names. It is nearly equally as deadly as misgendering. The desire of some people to insist on previous names being made known highlights a point that some have often talked about, which is some people’s fear of being “tricked” into what they wrongly classify as a same sex encounter on the basis of pre-transition, assigned gender. Again, avoiding deadnaming also obliges people to move beyond lip service / begrudging acceptance to genuine. 

There are many, many, many examples of this problem of lip service.

Be aware of it, and please call it out when you come across it.