We have come a long way since our fellow heroes at Stonewall stood up against the New York police.
Most of us might have the feeling that it got better. But for many LGBT people around the world, it is not getting better. For the first time since its existence, European LGBTI rights is backsliding.
As the LGBTI community, we need to understand our accomplishments can be reversed. History teaches us that any movement can be stopped.
Therefore, I think it is time to be more bond in defending our freedoms.
That’s why I, as an expert in LGBTi in international relations, have come up with five demands. World leaders must listen.
1. Do not make deals with anti-LGBTI governments
Decision-makers must not to close their eyes when they meet. Don’t make deals with homophobic and transphobic governments across the world.
If President Trump is making arms deals with Saudi Arabia, he is giving legitimacy to a regime that hangs people for being gay.
2. Don’t give away LGBTI privacy
It is thoughtless to give away all our most private information to companies. The recent decision of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to force a Chinese company to sell their stake in Grindr is not a bad one.
In recent years, more stories have come out of governmental suppression of any LGBTI movement. We can’t allow our opposition to get access to our information.
3. Understand LGBTI rights are human rights
Understand the most basic values of our society are also inherently linked to what the LGBTI community demands.
Poland’s conservative government reformed the judiciary last year. Since then there’s much more political power over the courts. A few weeks ago, a Polish LGBTI activist was detained after spreading a picture of the Virgin Mary with a rainbow halo. She will be persecuted on the grounds of ‘offending religious sentiment’. This kind of political imprisonment is something you couldn’t imagine before the right wing-conservatives took over the power in Poland.
4. Support LGBTI people running for office
Support fellow LGBT+ people running for office. Just like men shouldn’t decide on women’s rights, straight people should also not solely decide on LGBTI issues. In all countries that have introduced LGBTI rights, it was not politicians that did it. It was the LGBTI community that advocated for several decades for those laws.
5. Be proud of the LGBTI community
Homophobic governments want to prevent us to be open about ourselves.
In 2013, Russia introduced an anti-propaganda law exactly for that reason. With this law, walking hand in hand with your boyfriend or girlfriend on the street can be perceived as a political act and can be persecuted. The grey, heterosexual and masculine political elite does everything to prevent us from becoming more visible. They are afraid to lose their power.
Stonewall hero Marsha P. Johnson once said: ‘History isn’t something you look back at and say it was inevitable’.
Let us not focus on the past. But start writing our own history – today!
Rémy Bonny is a political scientist and LGBT+ activist from Belgium. He is also a specialist in the LGBTI movement in international relations
The first openly gay rights organization in the United States was established in 1924 by a German immigrant, Henry Gerber.
The Society for Human Rights had a significant and prophetic name. Over two decades before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Gerber understood that sexuality was defined as a human right. It’s true, this did not represent a breakthrough for gay people in the US in the wider culture: police raids led to the Society’s disbanding in 1925.
Rather, it was the beginning of a struggle.
Ninety-five years later, the Stonewall rebellion. This act of resistance, considered to be the most important milestone in the progress towards gay liberation in the US, celebrates 50 years in a few days.
With more countries understanding the essential truth of that early Society of Human Rights, that LGBTI rights are human rights, and with equal marriage recognized to a greater degree than ever before, LGBTI people in some parts of the world are beginning to see the fruits of that long, hard struggle.
Openly gay organizations cannot operate in Uganda
From the perspective of my own country, Uganda, however, an openly gay organization cannot operate.
The Anti-Homosexuality Act was passed into law by Uganda’s president in 2014 but later annulled by the Constitutional Court of Uganda on grounds that it was passed without a quorum, as required.
The annulment was a great win but it did not stop the harassment of LGBTI communities by the Ugandan Police and media, by Simon Lokodo who serves as the Minister of State for Ethics and Integrity, and by homophobic citizens.
Homosexuality is criminalized in most African states. Only a few don’t have written laws criminalizing same-sex intimacy, and one or two have begun the process of throwing out what is principally colonial era legislation introduced by the British to control African sexuality.
Instead of Uganda learning from those few African countries that are decriminalizing homosexuality and trying to fight homophobia, it is taking steps backward. For example, Rebecca Kadaga, Speaker of Parliament in Uganda, threatened that Uganda would withdraw from the International Parliamentary Union (IPU) if they were to keep pushing for the rights of LGBTI people in a declaration on migrants and refugees.
Denying human rights to LGBTI citizens
It is perhaps the greatest human rights violation for a government to deny that any group of people can rely on universally recognised human rights, that they even have human rights at all, but that is what the Ugandan government has effectively tried to do to the LGBTI communities.
This is Pride Month and Gay Pride is considered one of the most precious moments in the gay communities’ year because that is when everyone gets together to celebrate who we are and where we have come from. People from all communities, including LGBTI communities and heterosexual allies, attend Gay Pride. It’s all about being happy and being yourself.
This is the time when openly gay activists and non-activists meet as well. The Ugandan government does not have a problem robbing us of such precious moments. Our events beyond pride, such as conferences, meetings, and educational workshops are always disrupted or banned; illegal arrests of LGBTI people are not uncommon. So it’s no surprise that Pride itself has consistently been crushed, often brutally.
Why do they hate us?
Where has all this hate come from?
Evangelical Christians, particularly from the U.S., have found a way of taking advantage of Ugandans. They lie to them and say homosexuality is imported, un-African.
As I have always said, homophobia is not African. Homophobia was imported along with the laws the British gave us.
Homosexuality is not new in Africa because it’s not something that can be invented or started. It breaks my heart to see minorities suffer the wrath of marginalization just because they’re not the majority. I don’t know why people think because a few people are doing something the rest don’t, it must be wrong or unnatural.
Why do those who hate us hate us? I don’t know. But here is what I do know, the LGBTI communities in Uganda, myself as an openly Ugandan gay man included, will stop at nothing in order to spread warm love, kindness, and the generosity that everyone deserves.
I believe we must spread love to receive love. I understand we still have a lot of work to do as Ugandans to achieve gay rights. That is why we can’t stop fighting even with the current harassment and injustice we face in Uganda.
Back in 1924 Henry Gerber and his colleagues in the US didn’t give up. They knew that LGBTI rights are human rights. A few African countries that have recognized this too and have rejected the importation of homophobia motivate us to keep moving and fighting. This is not a battle that can be won in a day, month or year, but we are hopeful. If others can do it, so can we.
Frank Mugisha is the director of Sexual Minorities Uganda. Follow him on Twitter.
The New Year rang in little cheer for transgender women in Malaysia. On January 1, a trans woman was killed in Klang, a Kuala Lumpur suburb, the third such killing in Malaysia in fewer than two months. Her death remains under police investigation. Like so many trans women in Malaysia excluded from the formal employment sector, this woman was a sex worker. She died falling—or was possibly thrown—from a moving vehicle. The driver, presumably her client, was arrested in connection with the death. He told police she jumped from the car after stealing his mobile phone. Trans sex workers in Klang, however, are convinced she was murdered.
Just three weeks earlier, also in Klang, another trans sex worker was beaten to death. While police have opened investigations into both cases, they hastily determined that the killings were not hate crimes. Rights advocates are skeptical, but as one trans activist put it, “the deceased can’t speak for herself.”
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in Malaysia face violence from both state authorities and civilian actors. In September 2018, a Sharia court sentenced two women to caning for purportedly attempting to engage in homosexual relations. State religious officials and police officers have also physically and sexually assaulted transgender women arrested during raids to enforce Sharia laws that prohibit “a male posing as a female.”
Several Malaysian trans women have reported abusive arrests have diminished since an appeals court struck down as unconstitutional a state “cross-dressing” law in 2014. Malaysia’s highest court overturned the ruling on a technicality, but trans women say advocacy and awareness-raising have restrained officials. Now, trans women primarily fear violence from ordinary people: clients, partners, or strangers, including vigilante groups seeking to rid the streets of trans women. But even when state agents are not the culprits of violence, they bear responsibility for propagating discriminatory beliefs that may lead to hate crimes and for failing to denounce violence when it takes place.
Malaysia held a historic election in May 2018, in which the United Malay National Organization (UMNO) party, in power since independence in 1957, was massively defeated. Fed up with abuses of power, voters cast their ballots for change. The new coalition government, led by the Pakatan Harapan party, has delivered to a certain extent, dropping politically motivated charges against many activists and investigating corrupt officials. Yet, it has pointedly refused to embrace LGBT equality. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has described “LGBT” as among “things we cannot accept,” while Pakatan Harapan leader Anwar Ibrahim has called for mobilization against “LGBT tendencies and their ideas.” Furthermore, the deputy home minister has condemned LGBT “culture,” and religious affairs minister Mujahid Yusof Rawa has promoted the scientifically discredited idea that LGBT people should and could “change” their sexual orientation or gender identity and return to the “right path.”
Malaysia’s federal penal code, which dates back to British colonialism, punishes “carnal knowledge against the order of nature” with up to twenty years in prison. The country’s thirteen states and federal territories each have their own Sharia criminal enactment, applicable to Muslims. Almost all such state laws prohibit same-sex relations. They also prohibit “posing” as someone of a different sex, making Malaysia one of the few countries in the world that locks people up simply for being transgender.
When religious authorities in Terengganu state, which is run by the opposition Malaysia Islamic Party (PAS), caned two women for lesbian acts, some ruling party officials voiced objections regarding the nature of the punishment, and PH leader Anwar Ibrahim suggested that same-sex relations should be decriminalized. Anwar should know: as the most famous casualty of Malaysia’s “unnatural offenses” law, he was twice imprisoned between 1999 and 2018 on politically-motivated sodomy charges. However, his party has taken no steps toward decriminalizing sodomy, nor toward persuading states to repeal anti-LGBT provisions in their Sharia enactments.
Instead, the current administration continues its predecessor’s anti-LGBT policies, focusing on “rehabilitation” and prohibition of so-called “promotion of LGBT culture” (any form of LGBT visibility), while maintaining the threat of sanction through state and federal laws. The ethnically and religiously diverse Pakatan Harapan coalition appears determined to legitimize its Islamic credentials to bolster support among Malay Muslims, many of whom voted in favor of the long-ruling UMNO party or Islamist opposition parties in 2018. This battle for the Malay heartland, presumed to be socially and religiously conservative, causes politicians from across the political spectrum to emphatically adopt anti-LGBT positions. Activists argue that Pakatan Harapan’s unwillingness to ally itself with LGBT people’s struggle for equal rights and its silence in the face of hate crimes renders it complicit in those crimes, and that jockeying by politicians to avoid being seen as pro-LGBT fuels hate. One clear battleground is online. Multiple LGBT people and rights activists have reported a spike in anti-LGBT hate speech on the Internet since the elections. In August, one trans-led group filed a police complaint about social media posts promoting anti-LGBT violence. Six months later, they had still not received a response
In this context, when eight men in Seremban assaulted a trans woman known as Suki in August 2018, beating her so severely that doctors had to remove her spleen, police who interviewed her in the hospital asked her why she thought she had been attacked. She responded with outrage: “They’re in the police station. Shouldn’t you be asking them instead of me?” In December, attackers pulled two men from a car in Kuala Lumpur and beat them for allegedly engaging in same-sex intimacy, then circulated a video of the assault on social media.
Police have made arrests in some of the recent hate-crimes cases. Two killings from 2017—one of a trans woman named Sameera Krishnan, stabbed and shot to death in Kuantan, and another of 18-year-old student T. Nhaveen in Penang, beaten to death by high school classmates who had bullied him for being “effeminate”—have resulted in ongoing prosecutions. Yet, when police refuse to acknowledge that acts of violence might be bias-motivated crimes, as they have with the killings of trans women in Klang, and when the authorities fail to condemn attacks, LGBT people are left feeling that the state does not support them. Even if perpetrators are brought to justice, a strictly punitive approach without a prevention strategy or meaningful change in political leaders’ approach to LGBT rights are all unlikely to stem the violence. A punitive approach also raises its own human rights concerns; a murder conviction, for instance, carries the death penalty in Malaysia. Many of the alleged assailants in these cases are young people who have been molded by societal and state-sponsored homophobia and transphobia. As long as authorities shut down positive portrayals of LGBT people while promoting a harmful “change” narrative, school textbooks portray LGBT people as deviant, and Malaysian law considers them criminals, impressionable young Malaysians may choose to take the law into their own hands.
Pakatan Harapan’s campaign manifesto promised to “make [Malaysia’s] human rights record respected by the world.” Malaysia must prioritize the right to life and the right to be free from violence—rights which currently elude many LGBT people. If Malaysia’s government wishes to address anti-LGBT violence, it must condemn the attacks and recognize that many of them are hate crimes. It should roll out a multi-pronged prevention plan, to include promoting public discussion of LGBT rights, removing harmful stereotypes from textbooks, discontinuing anti-LGBT state programs, and initiating legal reforms to advance LGBT equality. The police should undergo training in recognizing and investigating anti-LGBT hate crimes. Denial may be politically expedient, but lives are at stake. The deceased demand to be heard.
*Thilaga Sulathireh is with Justice for Sisters, an advocacy group working on human rights of trans and LGBTIQ+ persons in Malaysia.
Though old enough to have had firsthand knowledge of Stonewall (I was 22 when the riots occurred) my understanding of Stonewall came from hearing about it from friends and reading about it many years later. Though I grew up in upper Manhattan, anything having to do with gay life was something out of my experience.
When the Stonewall Riots began on June 28, 1969, I had just graduated from college and was on my way across the country. I was living a deeply closeted life. Even after going to work for gay rights advocate Bella S. Abzug (D-N.Y.) in 1972 it would be nearly 12 more years until I came out. So it was much later that I learned how much I owed those who took part in the riots and how the repercussions were to impact my life.
When I did come out in the early 1980s, I met and got to know Frank Kameny learning he demonstrated for gay rights before Stonewall. A little research confirmed that with a few others Kameny led a picket line protesting government treatment of gays and lesbians in front of the White House on April 17, 1965 — four years before Stonewall.
After coming out, I joined the fight for equality for the LGBTQ+ movement meeting many who were there before me to whom I owed much. Our community must recognize the very fast pace of change that has occurred for us compared to other minority groups and women. Until the Trump administration things were going at lightning speed for our equality movement compared to the hundreds of years it took for African Americans and knowing women still can’t get the Equal Rights Amendment passed by states that was first introduced in Congress in 1923. So while some think things have moved slowly, I hope when Democrats once again take the Senate and the presidency we will be able to pass the Equality Act first introduced in Congress by Bella in 1974.
We have gained recognition by society in some ways just as important if not more so than legislation. We have gained the right to marry even though in 37 states we can marry on Sunday and be fired from our jobs or thrown out of our homes on Monday.
I think the debate in our community as represented by the two competing parades being held in New York to celebrate 50 years since Stonewall are in some ways emblematic of our success. This year there is a counter march to the New York Pride parade called the “Reclaim Pride” march honoring Stonewall. It is a back-to-basics march without any outside participation from the corporate or government communities. While I can respect the views of the leaders of this march and wish them success, I think our success has been that government and the corporate communities want to march with us.
To me a celebration of those who took part in Stonewall and others like Kameny would include corporate floats, the police and military in uniform. We fought for broad-based acceptance and recognition for members of our community. Why is it a bad thing if a corporation is proud to have its gay employees march openly under their banner in a pride parade? Why should we not celebrate police departments proud to have their LGBTQ members and other officers who support them march openly? Then there is the military who some object to having participate. We fought long and hard to have members of the LGBTQ community be able to serve openly in the military. Why would we now not want them to march proudly in the uniforms they worked so long and hard to wear?
I am not blind to how far we have to go. There is discrimination in our society, even in our own community, especially toward people of color and women. We must demand our police be appropriately trained and diversify. We must rid police departments of those who allow their racial biases to influence their actions.
We honor those who were at Stonewall when we let corporations celebrate with us after 50 years of our activists fighting for this to happen.
When we needed help fighting anti-gay laws in North Carolina and Indiana among other places the business community stood with us. Those of us who are out need to live our pride every day of the year. We need to urge more and more people to come out and it’s so much easier if they know their neighbors and their employers say “you are welcome here and we support you.” We honor Stonewall when we are inclusive.
Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBT rights and Democratic Party activist. He writes regularly for the Blade.
Twitter getting you down? Fed up with Facebook? Irate with Insta? You’re not the only one who thinks social media can be a real pain.
One leading expert says social media has changed what it means to be a young person struggling with sexual identity.
Best selling author, philosopher and historian, Yuval Noah Harari, has been talking about this very modern issue the first National Conference for Israel’s LGBTI Community, on Tuesday in Tel Aviv.
The conference comes ahead of the Middle East’s largest gay pride parade in the city this Friday.
Harari noted that social media can be an essential lifeline for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people who live outside of liberal bubbles like Tel Aviv, the Times of Israel reported.
Dark Side
But the bestselling author of Sapiens warned there is also a dark side to social media. He said it can be used for government surveillance, manipulation, and control.
‘All of the online world has done some wonderful things, like enabling people who have no immediate community to be part of something,’ Harari said after the panel session with musician Ivri Lider and journalist Ilana Dayan.
‘When I grew up [in Kiryat Ata, near Haifa], there was nowhere I could go, no one I could meet.’
Harari, met his husband of 17 years on one of the first gay online dating websites, called CheckMeOut. This was a long-defunct website that predated the popular gay meet-up app Grindr, the paper said.
Fight for gay rights different
The fight for gay rights is different from other social struggles, such as black activists fighting against racism, Harari said.
Because LGBT people are usually not born into gay families, they must first overcome a sense of isolation, Harari said. They also must make a community for themselves and win family support, before joining the public struggle.
Social media helps diminish this isolation by providing a tool for people on their personal journeys to start reaching out and finding allies and like-minded people, he said.
But using technology to build these bridges also has a dark side.
“[Social media and the internet] also means that LGBTI people are extremely vulnerable to surveillance and abuse,” Harari said.
‘I just read an article about Christian fundamentalist groups who are targeting LGBTI teenagers with advertisements for conversion therapies, which basically play on their insecurities.
‘They target people using the Facebook algorithm, so you don’t even have to identify as gay, it’s enough if you clicked on some gay related news issues or stories and they target you.’
Life threatening impact
Beyond manipulative advertising, social media surveillance of LGBT people can also be life threatening, the Times reported.
‘In Egypt, there was a case where the police used Grindr to arrest people’, Harari said.
‘You have more and more regimes today around the world which target LGBT people. With the new technologies coming along, the danger is that as the political climate worsens, there is no way you can even hide.’
‘The option that once existed, to hide yourself in the closet, had some terrible consequences, because it meant that people did not fight against the oppressive system, but at least it was a survival mechanism on a personal level,’ Harari added.
‘In the future, there might not be any option of going back to the closet because the technology makes the closet completely transparent.’
Tel Aviv is in the midst of its 2019 Pride Week celebrations. This Friday’s parade is expected to attracted 200,000 people, the Times said.
Friday’s march will wind through the streets and on to a beach and party, complete with party floats and DJs.
U.S. embassies and consulates around the world aren’t allowed to raise LGBTQ pride flags on their flagpoles this month, the result of a policy change from the Trump administration. This decision, while perhaps not surprising given Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s stance on LGBTQ equality, sends exactly the wrong message about America at a time when the world is already questioning our moral and political leadership.
In countries struggling with discrimination and oppression, a U.S. embassy is seen as a beacon — not of perfection, but of the continuing fight toward greater equality and opportunity. That shouldn’t stop in June, when countries around the world come together to celebrate the LGBTQ community and remember the advocates who fought and continue to fight for equality. Prior to joining NBC, I was a civil servant at the State Department and in 2016, when posted in Frankfurt, Germany, I was responsible for raising the pride flag in front of the consulate during Pride Month.
In countries struggling with discrimination and oppression, a U.S. embassy is seen as a beacon — not of perfection, but of the continuing fight toward greater equality and opportunity.
Earlier that summer, in the days after the Pulse nightclub attack in Orlando, several German towns planned vigils to honor the victims, and I attended as a symbol of gratitude for their solidarity. Together, we pledged that Germany and America would always fight back against the hatred that fueled the attack. A month later, raising the flag at the consulate was a continuation of that message.
United States embassies have been flying the distinctive rainbow flags and engaging in Pride activities for years, but Washington didn’t dictate how it should be done. As with almost all public outreach abroad, experienced American diplomats and staff from the host country determine how to best convey our policies and values in a way that will resonate with communities in that country. They do this knowing that public support from the U.S. embassy can often move the needle on many issues overseas.
In other words, when an embassy makes the decision to raise the pride flag, it’s because the diplomats posted there believe doing so could have a genuine impact on the LGBTQ dialogue in their host country. The opposite is also true: A decision to stop flying the flag, after years of doing so, sends a clear and troubling signal to local communities. I trust our diplomats to know what’s best. And I would hope State Department officials in Washington would allow them to do their jobs.
As NBC News first reported, although the embassies can’t raise pride flags on their flagpoles, they can still be hung in other places — on the building’s walls or inside. But diplomacy is all about symbolism and messaging, and no longer allowing pride flags on the U.S. flagpoles is sending the world the wrong message about our values.View image on Twitter
In some countries, American diplomats are able to engage freely and actively in the local community. In others, our embassies are surrounded by tall walls, and security concerns severely limit what diplomats can do and where they can go. Yet in all of these countries, even above the walls, the U.S. flag is instantly recognizable for the many things it stands for. When the pride flag appears below it, the message of American values and LGBTQ tolerance are unmistakably intertwined.
In Trump’s tweets to honor Pride, he said we must “stand in solidarity with the many LGBTQ people who live in dozens of countries worldwide that punish, imprison, or even execute individuals…on the basis of their sexual orientation.” What better way to stand with people in those countries than by visibly showing it at our embassies? Not all American ideals can be clearly communicated in a flag. But when we have one that works — and that’s been working for years — why not use it?
As we celebrate LGBT Pride Month and recognize the outstanding contributions LGBT people have made to our great Nation, let us also stand in solidarity with the many LGBT people who live in dozens of countries worldwide that punish, imprison, or even execute individuals….140K12:12 PM – May 31, 2019Twitter Ads info and privacy73.1K people are talking about this
The U.S. is not an equal society, and it has a long way to go before it can truly call itself one. But one of the things that sets us apart from other countries is our ability and willingness to have hard conversations when we need to — conversations that honor how far we’ve come, while talking openly about what we still have yet to do. LGBTQ equality is a perfect example of this ongoing process, and even the pride flag itself is symbolic of the LGBTQ community’s continuing need to be more inclusive of people of color.
The U.S. evolution on LGBTQ equality is rocky and ongoing, but our discussion of it is also honest. We have the potential to lead many countries by example — but only if we continue our tradition of starting the conversation. Embassies should be allowed to use the position of American leadership for good. They should be able to raise the pride flag.
GLAAD, the world’s largest LGBTQ media advocacy organization, today called on President Donald Trump and his administration to honor the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots by declaring June as National Pride Month. The riots at the Stonewall Inn back on June 28,1969 sparked the creation of the LGBTQ movement and the beginning fight toward LGBTQ acceptance across the nation.
“In just fifty years, LGBTQ Americans have become indispensable to the United States of America thanks to the hard work of countless LGBTQ leaders who bravely called out injustice and hate. Yet, as LGBTQ acceptance around the U.S. spreads, President Trump has made anti-LGBTQ actions his hallmark and only addresses the community when it serves his political gain,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, President and CEO of GLAAD. “If the President truly believes in his administration’s campaigns to end global LGBTQ criminalization and stop HIV transmissions by 2030, then he should recognize those LGBTQ Americans who fought and died for these ideas to even be possible during Pride month and throughout the year.”
A statement from the White House would support the administration’s two policy campaigns announced earlier this year. In January, President Trump released a plan to end HIV transmissions by 2030, and this spring, U.S. Ambassador Richard Grenell announced a promise by the Trump Administration to help decriminalize being LGBTQ across the globe. Further, news reports found that the 2020 Trump Campaign began selling “LGBTQ for Trump” t-shirts ahead of Pride Month.
However, LGBTQ acceptance has been threatened by the most anti-LGBTQ government in recent memory, the Trump Administration. Not only has President Trump failed to recognize June as National Pride Month since becoming president, but his administration has issued more than 110 attacks on the LGBTQ community since the beginning of 2017. This includes the President’s ban on allowing transgender servicemembers from serving in the nation’s armed forces and opposition to the Equality Act, a bill which would provide across-the-board protections for LGBTQ Americans at home, at work, and in their communities.
The entire list of the Trump Administration’s anti-LGBTQ actions can be found by going to GLAAD’s Trump Accountability Project.
Caster Semenya will be allowed to run in races of all distances without taking testosterone-reducing medication until at least June 25, a Swiss court has ruled.
Semenya, 28, is appealing an International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) decision that required her to take medication to suppress her hormone levels for races between 400m and a mile, according to her lawyer.
As part of her appeal, her legal team asked for a suspension of the IAAF ruling while they appeal it.
The Swiss Federal Supreme Court granted this request and has temporarily suspended the IAFF regulation made on 1 May 2019 that limited the testosterone levels of female athletes. The suspension will remain in place until Semenya’s appeal has been finalised.
The Swiss court, in a statement to BBC Sport, said it had “super-provisionally instructed the IAAF to suspend the application of the ‘Eligibility Regulations for the Female Classification for athletes with differences of sex development’ with respect to the claimant, until the decision on the request for issuance of provisional measures.”
It added: “At present, it is not known when the Swiss Federal Supreme Courts will issue an interlocutory order concerning these provisional measures.”
Semenya’s lawyer, Dorothee Schramm, said, “The court has granted welcome temporary protection to Caster Semenya.”
“This is an important case that will have fundamental implications for the human rights of female athletes,” she said.
The IAAF now has until June 25 to respond to Semenya’s case.
Imposing testosterone treatment on Semenya is ‘humiliating,’ says UN
The landmark ruling on May 1 that said female athletes would have to undergo testosterone restrictions if their natural testosterone levels were higher than “female levels.”
The Olympic 800m champion had been challenging the implementation of rules that would limit the testosterone levels of female athletes.
An IAAF statement in February explained the proposals: “If a DSD athlete has testes and male levels of testosterone, they get the same increases in bone and muscle size and strength and increases in haemoglobin that a male gets when they go through puberty, which is what gives men such a performance advantage over women.
“Therefore, to preserve fair competition in the female category, it is necessary to require DSD athletes to reduce their testosterone down to female levels before they compete at international level.”
We are living in interesting times. We have a disgusting pig in the White House who constantly denigrates women as well as just about everyone else except white men. Then from all I am reading the press is currently swooning over a 37-year-old gay white mayor from South Bend, Ind., suggesting he could be elected president possibly before the many qualified women running. So you have to wonder: Do misogyny and sexism still rule the media and the Democratic political establishment? Are we mired in the past? It seems we just might be.
I want to be clear for the first time in decades I have no favorite candidate as we head into the Democratic primaries. I either was with the incumbent or in 1980 wanted Ted Kennedy to win. In 1984, Walter Mondale; in 1988, Gary Hart. In 1992, after Mario Cuomo decided not to run, and in 1996 it was Bill Clinton; in 2000, Al Gore and in 2004 Wesley Clark. Then in 2008, it was Hillary Clinton; in 2012 Barack Obama was the incumbent and in 2016 Hillary Clinton. Clearly my past choices show I am not always good at picking a winner.
Other women besides Hillary Clinton have run for the nomination including Shirley Chisholm and Pat Schroeder. None achieved what Hillary did becoming the candidate of the party and actually getting 66 million votes; nearly three million more than Trump but losing the Electoral College vote. One important question was answered — yes a woman can win the popular vote.
I grew up in a time when white men were running everything and it seems we have not moved all that far from those times. While polls at this time don’t mean much they show three white men leading for the Democratic nomination: Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Beto O’Rourke. Two tired old men and one who is interesting but has a long way to go to show the nation he has what it takes to be president.
I worked for a leader in the women’s movement, Bella S. Abzug. I marched with her and fought for the ideas of feminism along with Gloria Steinem and Bella in the ‘70s. I fought to pass the Equal Rights Amendment and nearly 50 years later we still can’t pass this simple amendment to the Constitution that reads: Section 1: Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. Section 2: The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. Section 3: This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.
Since we still can’t pass the ERA we are forced to look around and ask how far we have really come. The reaction to and the press coverage of Hillary Clinton’s campaign was a prime example of the misogyny and sexism that still exists in our country. I write this as an acknowledged cisgender gay white male of privilege and can only wonder what women must be thinking. I am dumbstruck when some don’t seem to care. How can they not care we elected an African-American man as president and are now talking about a gay white man as president and still no woman. Women are the majority in our country. For years they made up the volunteer forces that elected all the men. Don’t get me wrong, I have the greatest respect for Barack Obama and think he made a really good president. As a gay man my respect for Pete Buttigieg and his intelligence and drive is boundless. He represents my community well. Yet I have to question why the women in the race who are smart, with longer, more impressive careers, aren’t gaining the fawning press he is.
I haven’t endorsed a candidate and my only criteria is no one over 70 should be on the ticket. We must take the time to look at all the candidates over the next year. We are 10 months out from the first primary in Iowa. Much can happen between now and then and it seems we don’t even have the full field announced yet. But there are women like Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar who deserve real consideration.
Will misogyny and sexism rule like in 2016? Will we choose a candidate because in some people’s minds a woman has been ruled out as the head of the ticket? Will the comment, “I want a woman, just not this one” rule the day once again? We can only hope the answer to that is a resounding no.
The first time JayCee Cooper walked out onto the platform at a women’s powerlifting competition, everything else fell away: her years-long internal struggle over her gender identity, her decision to leave men’s sports when she began transitioning, her doubts that she would ever feel safe if she returned to competitions.
When she stepped out in front of a hundred people in the gym in Fort Collins, Colorado, last September, all she focused on was the barbell, which she hoisted off the ground. And then she heard the cheers of the crowd: “Come on JayCee!” She had found not only a sport, but also a home.
“In a world that wants to take away our power and strength,” Cooper, 31, said recently by phone from her home in Minneapolis, “powerlifting is a way to gain that strength back and feel powerful and feel ownership of our own lives. It helps us find strength within ourselves and helps us find strength within our bodies.”
Cooper signed up for more competitions, but, to her astonishment, USA Powerlifting, the sport’s biggest federation, told her that she could not compete in the women’s division because of her gender identity.
In an email, USA Powerlifting said she was denied because she had a “direct competitive advantage” over the other women who were competing.
“It took me aback,” Cooper said. “I didn’t want to put myself into a situation where I obviously wasn’t welcome.”
Cooper says powerlifting makes her feel connected to her strength. Caroline Yang / for NBC News
It was just the latest in a growing number of battles over the place of transgender women athletes in competitive sports.
As transgender women have become more visible and sought to participate in women’s sports, athletic organizing bodies have grappled with how to respond, and critics of their inclusion have grown increasingly vocal, as well.
In March, tennis legend Martina Navratilova apologized for calling trans women “cheats” in a Sunday Times op-ed in which she wrote that “letting men compete as women simply if they change their name and take hormones is unfair.” Weeks later, marathoner Paula Radcliffe told BBC Sport that it would be “naive” not to institute rules. In an interview with Sky News in April, Radcliffe said that if trans people were permitted to compete without regulations, it would be “the death of women’s sport.”
For transgender people watching this issue play out, the debate — often based more in bias and assumptions than in science — is dehumanizing. Those who seek to exclude transgender women from sports sometimes imply that the athletes are adopting their identity to gain an edge in competition, a suggestion many find offensive.
“They don’t understand what it means to be a trans person,” Chris Mosier, a competitive runner and cycler and the first known transgender athlete to make a men’s U.S. national team, said.
“The folks who are improperly reporting on this are making it seem like cis men are pretending to be women to dominate sports,” he added, referring to people who are assigned male at birth and identify as men. “I can say that the amount of discrimination, harassment and challenges trans people face in their everyday lives would never be offset by glory.”
‘IT’S BEEN A ROLLER-COASTER’
Before becoming a powerlifter, Cooper lifted weights as part of her training for other sports. As a teenager growing up in Clarkston, Michigan, she was on the U.S. junior national curling team, competed in track and field in high school and rowed in college.
But she never felt fully comfortable on those all-boys teams.
“It’s been a roller-coaster,” Cooper said. “One of the reasons I stepped away from curling was that I wasn’t being my authentic self, and I was super depressed, and I needed some time away to figure out what that meant for me.”
Four years ago, she began hormone replacement therapy as part of her transition. She now identifies as transfeminine, which she sees as a more expansive identity than simply female.
Cooper first came across powerlifting in high school, but didn’t decide to compete until last year while recuperating from a broken ankle, and she was struck by the sport’s simplicity and supportive atmosphere. In powerlifting, athletes are divided into categories by sex, age and weight, and they compete in three types of lifts: squat, bench press and deadlift. Each movement is a test of static strength, force and focus.
Cooper holds a lifting medal. Caroline Yang / for NBC News
“The barbell for me has been a very empowering way to be in my body, which is politicized every waking second, connect with it, and feel like I’m achieving something,” Cooper said.
“It’s a very almost spiritual feeling in the sense that I’m carrying all of this trauma with me and I’m literally focusing all of that into the barbell. In that moment, I get to control what’s going on.”
To lower her testosterone levels, Cooper takes spironolactone, a drug that is also used to treat high blood pressure and can mask steroid use.
USA Powerlifting, which follows rules set by the World Anti-Doping Agency, requires athletes to apply for an exemption to compete while taking the drug. The group has granted exemptions to powerlifters who have taken spironolactone to treat acne or polycystic ovary syndrome, Larry Maile, USA Powerlifting’s president, said.
As part of her medication exemption application, Cooper provided documentation that her testosterone levels have remained under the International Olympic Committee’s accepted limit for two years. (USA Powerlifting falls under the International Powerlifting Federation, which adopted the IOC’s guidelines that allow transgender women to compete in women’s divisions provided their testosterone is below 10 nmol/L for at least 12 months.)
But in December, Cooper’s exemption request was denied. She was told she could not compete in the women’s division of powerlifting because she had a “competitive advantage” as a transgender woman, according to an email exchange obtained by NBC News between Cooper and Dr. Kristopher Hunt, the chair of USA Powerlifting’s committee that reviews applications for medical exemptions.
“Male-to-female transgenders are not allowed to compete as females in our static strength sport as it is a direct competitive advantage,” Hunt said in one email to Cooper.
Pressed for clarification, he wrote a follow-up. “The fact that transgender male to female individuals having gone through male puberty confer an unfair competitive advantage over non-transgender females,” he said.
Cooper hopes to someday compete in powerlifting again. Caroline Yang / for NBC News
In a phone interview, Maile defended the decision and said the organization’s policy of barring transgender women — as well as transgender men who take testosterone — was not new, though it was not posted on USA Powerlifting’s website until this winter after Cooper applied for the exemption. Maile said that the IOC’s guidelines ultimately give organizations the discretion to make their own decisions about fair play. To reach the decision, he said USA Powerlifting researched the physical differences between men and women in terms of muscle density, connective tissue and frame shape.
“We’ve been referred to as bigoted and transphobic and a whole lot of less kind things, but it’s not an issue of that for us,” Maile said. “It’s an issue that we have to consider dispassionately and make our best judgment collectively about what the impact on fair play is for us, and that’s the basis on which we’ve proceeded.”
He added that powerlifting “is really unique, because we’re a high strength and low technique sport” — so the physiology of the competitors is particularly important.
Cooper doesn’t buy that argument, noting that women’s bodies come in all shapes and sizes, which may confer advantages for different sports.
“You look at a WNBA player, they’re pushing 6 feet versus someone doing gymnastics who’s 5 feet tall,” she said. “Their bodies are built completely differently. That’s what sports are about.”
‘THE SCIENCE IS IN ITS INFANCY’
The policies governing transgender athletes vary by sport.
The NCAA has policies similar to the International Olympic Committee and does not require athletes to undergo gender-confirming surgery, while USA Gymnastics does require it under some circumstances, according to research compiled by TransAthlete, a database of professional, recreational, college and K-12 sports’ policies on trans athletes.
Others aim to be more inclusive. USA Hockey, for example, offers options for nonbinary athletes who do not identify as male or female, as well as guidance for trans athletes.
While opponents of inclusion point to the “bigger, faster, stronger” argument as the basis of their fear that transgender women are taking over women’s sports, there are few examples of trans women who’ve excelled at a national or world level, according to Cyd Zeigler, co-founder of OutSports, an outlet that reports on LGBTQ athletes.
The scientific research on transgender athletes is in the early stages, and there is disagreement among experts about how to determine fair rules of competitions.
“There’s no simple or even complex biological test you can apply that tells you who’s a man and who’s a woman,” Roger Pielke Jr., director of the Sports Governance Center at the University of Colorado, said.
In the absence of such a test, testosterone levels are often used as a proxy to determine whether trans women are eligible to compete in women’s leagues. There is evidence that transgender women who are on hormone therapy have lower muscle mass and less aerobic ability than they did before, said Joanna Harper, a scientist who studies gender-diverse athletes and advises the International Olympic Committee. In a 2015 study she published on trans women who are distance runners, Harper, who is a trans woman and runner herself, found that after being on hormone therapy the women were running more than 10 percent slower.
But testosterone is an imperfect metric. Even among cisgender men and women, there is variance in the amount that is considered normal.
To deny Cooper “the right to compete based on ridiculous fear is completely unfounded,” Harper said.
‘TRANS LIFTERS BELONG HERE’
At the Minnesota State Championship in February — a USA Powerlifting meet where Cooper hoped to compete — almost a dozen athletes and 20 people in the audience protested her exclusion, according to Maxwell Poessnecker, a transmasculine-identified lifter from Saint Paul, Minnesota. Flanked by signs and wearing T-shirts that said, “I support trans lifters” and “trans lifters belong here,” the athletes stood on the lifting platform without competing to show their disapproval of the policy, Poessnecker said.
From little leagues to the Olympics, questions over transgender inclusion will continue to surface. Advocates who say concerns about “competitive fairness” are often rooted in gender stereotypes and scientific research is lacking believe policies should be as inclusive as possible.
“It’s hard to call anything model when it requires an individual to be tested and questioned,” said Breanna Diaz, a powerlifter and co-director of Pull for Pride, a charity deadlifting event that benefits homeless LGBTQ youth. If athletes “have a sincerely held gender identity, that should be sufficient,” she said.
Cooper, who co-directs Pull for Pride, hopes to use her experience with powerlifting as a way to drive the conversation about trans athletes.
On May 9, USA Powerlifting’s national governing body will meet to discuss its transgender inclusion policy.
“I really do love this sport,” Cooper said, “and it’s not fair to genetically eliminate an entire group of people.”
