The Reverend Pressley Sutherland, M.Div.

“This is a transcript of a presentation given during The Anti-homoprejudice Week at the University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, SA, 15 May, 2009. In this exploration, I am trying to make links between the anxiety of abandonment and intersex awareness in our communities and in our bodies-an unacknowledged insecurity. The topic I was asked to address was Homoprejudice and Combating an Irrational Fear. The audience was a mixed group of students and faculty.”-Rev. PS

When white peoples begin to look at racism reflectively, at the heart of racial prejudice we find a rats nest of insecurities that ensnares individuals and communities alike. This leads us to the broader question of how we inculcate the value of worth within our cultures and religions. ‘To inculcate’ is to instil by persistent instruction, and it is one of the characteristics of culture. The social code which binds most communities leads the individual to be guided by one thought: “If I am of value within this community, I will not be abandoned.” I believe it is worth considering that the origins of homoprejudice stem from a deep seeded anxiety around abandonment.  

In a busy meeting on May 19th, members of TransLondon, London's largest support group for all trans-identified and genderqueer people, voted overwhelmingly for a boycott of the Pride London 2009 march and rally. As a result, for the first time since the group was formed, TransLondon will have no presence in the parade, nor at the rally.

Human Rights Violations on Kenya’s Transgender Community By Audrey Mbugua; Transgender Education and Advocacy, 2009.

Introduction

Human rights have been defined as 'basic moral guarantees that people in all countries and cultures allegedly have simply because they are people. Calling these guarantees "rights" suggests that they attach to particular individuals who can invoke them, that they are of high priority, and that compliance with them is mandatory rather than discretionary (Fagan 2006).

Creation of safe, inclusive spaces to be an 'other' in a normative society.

PRIDES are celebrated, internationally over four decades. How many people even entertain the thought that it originated from the most marginalised group of people within the LGBTI community. It was people who challenged daily expectancies of “how we should look and behave.” Gender non-conforming identities always posed difficulties for people. Stonewall and the incidents followed by those early year’s riots originated from drag queens and trans people. Surely gay and lesbian people were part of it – and that is the beauty of the Pride history – everyone was involved!

The Extraordinary Chamber of the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) is an official judicial body in Cambodia created in 2001. Its main function is to litigate human rights abuses of the senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime.

Presently, the ECCC accepted to investigate crimes against sexual minorities as potential crimes against humanity. Southevy, a 70-year old transgendered woman activist who is one of Cambodia ’s pioneers in advocating for sex workers rights & organizing sex workers, lodged the first civil party complaint with the ECCC for the investigation of crimes against transgendered women during the Khmer Rouge regime.

Southevy has been an active member and organizer for the Womyn’s Network for Unity, an NGO in Cambodia and an active member of the Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers for the past 18 months. She is a sex worker as well.

In the Philippines , Southevy can be compared to Walterina Dempster, popularly known as Markova. Markova is a transgendered woman and was a comfort gay during the Japanese occupation in the Philippines . She and two of her friends were detained in a Japanese camp as a sex slave.

The recognition made by an International Court to sexual minorities is a breakthrough in LGBTI rights advocacy. It will be our victory if gender based violence in general and discrimination and abuses to sexual minorities (LGBTI) in particular, be considered a crime against humanity.

Read the ECCC Media Release