How Women's and LGBT Rights Are Intertwined

In August, Michael Jones reported on Change.org's Gay Rights blog on the disturbing practice of "corrective rape" -- also known as trying to rape a queer person, most often a lesbian, straight. Because all a woman really needs is a real man between her legs to realize what she's missing out on, the reasoning goes.

In South Africa, it has been an epidemic, with hundreds of queer women reporting corrective rape every year -- and many more silent in the shadows. The rapes are fed by a deadly cocktail of misogyny and homophobia; as this phenomenon makes all too clear, women's and LGBT rights are intertwined.

Yesterday, Abbie Kopf blogged on the Gay Rights blog, "Why Every Gay Rights Advocate Should Be a Feminist." And the sentiment goes both ways.

As Abbie points out, both women and queer people not only suffer from high levels as violence, they suffer from a rigid sense of gender roles. There's the "man-hating lesbian feminazi" trope, which simultaneously equates a woman loving other women with a man-hating agenda (because it's all about them), and makes judgments -- meant as an insult -- about a feminist woman's sexuality. And as long as a gay man can be insulted for being too "effeminate" or a "nancy," or a "butch" woman is considered not a "real" woman, we're reinforcing disparagement against the female sex.

And, the post further notes, for many right-wing groups (like Focus on the Family, which has been going so much attention of late), it is women's rights and LGBT rights that will destroy the world! Don't forget what led to 9/11, according to Jerry Falwell: "I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle ... 'I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'"

My one major point of disagreement with the post is that it upholds a recent article's distinction between the right to same-sex marriage and abortion, saying one is about fairness and the other is about privacy and morality. I believe that is inaccurate and devalues both issues. Both are about human rights, and confront what is presented as a moral opposition, but has its roots in sexist and homophobic beliefs.

At their core, feminism and queer rights are both a matter of fundamental human rights, of gender justice, of bodily integrity. Nobody has the right to violate your body or inflict violence because of your gender, sex, or sexuality. Nobody has the right to control what you do consensually in the bedroom with your body, or what decisions you make in your doctor's office about your body. Nobody has the right to deny you employment, marriage, life, liberty, or the pursuit of individual happiness because you're female or queer. It's a fatal flaw of our society, and societies around the world, that we pretend otherwise.

Photo credit: bobster855