By Zenita Nicholson
Zenita Nicholson is a Guyanese human rights advocate and Secretary on the board of trustees for the Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination (SASOD).
Annually, International Women’s Day is commemorated on March 8. This year, I feel it is particularly important to highlight at home the plight of an often-forgotten group of Guyanese women who are most times invisible and silenced, due to the social stigma and daily discrimination they suffer: lesbian, bisexual and transgender (LBT) women.
A few local studies have been carried out in recent times on discrimination against these marginalised groups. Two recent publications are “Collateral Damage: The Social Impact of Laws Affecting LGBT Persons in Guyana” authored by Dr. Christopher Carrico and published by the University of the West Indies and a shadow report by the Guyana Rainbow Foundation (GuyBow), International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) and the Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination (SASOD) on “Human Rights Violations of Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender (LBT) People in Guyana,” submitted for consideration at the 52nd session of the United Nations (UN) Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women last July. Both of these document in quite comprehensive detail the continuous harassment and discrimination LBT Guyanese face in our homes, communities, schools and workplaces.
Gender-based violence, especially harassment due to gender stereotypes, is a common form of discrimination that LBT people suffer in Guyana. Lesbian and bisexual (LB) women, in particular, report experiencing street harassment on a regular basis when they deviate from established gender norms in terms of their dress, mannerisms and by having mostly female companions. Their gender presentation and the type of clothing that LB women choose to wear impacts the level and intensity of verbal harassment they face on the streets. One Guyanese woman reported being threatened by a strange man with a scissors to cut her dreadlocks off because she was “a disgrace to rasta” and had “a dirty lifestyle.” Another said, “I get harassed all the time because I don’t dress like a woman.” And yet another said, “Sometimes people will make comments about the fact that I’m always wearing pants.” Many lesbian women report harassment as a result of spurning advances from men. Some are threatened with sexual violence.
Only a few days ago, a transgender woman related to me the constant harassment she suffers on our streets. “Up to this morning someone hurled abuses at me saying, “ayuh battieman mus dead, doan think ayuh gon get rights and live happy,” she said. She continued to detail that the police would harass her for cross-dressing, often detaining but not arresting her since they know she is affiliated with SASOD.
Because of these pressures to conform to rigid gender roles, many LBT women experience discrimination in education and employment. LB women are forced to conceal their sexual orientation at school.
In the workplace, many women are expected to wear feminine, sexualized attire. Transgender women have found it difficult to seek employment, other than sex work, due to widespread transphobic discrimination.
Recently too, there has been a very prominent incident in the local media where two female soldiers were met with sanctions of suspension from work by the Guyana Defence Force after a cell-phone video of them engaging in sexually-intimate activities was disseminated publicly without their consent.
LB women experience discriminatory treatment in terms of their educational pursuits. This is more pronounced where the fields of study these women choose do not conform to traditional, ‘feminine’ gender roles. Some LB girls have suffered discrimination in schools at the hands of teachers and fellow students alike.
One girl reported that she was reprimanded by a teacher in front of the entire class for simply speaking to a known lesbian who was her friend. Another was chastised in front of the school assembly, stripped of her prefect’s badge and removed from the role. Many LB women report having to conceal their sexual orientation in order to maintain family support for their education, especially in terms of paying tuition fees.
These are just a few of the cases that are documented in studies or make the local media. However, the vast majority of incidents go unreported as the victims feel they have no real form of redress for these everyday acts of discrimination they suffer.
Some lesbian women especially feel compelled to conform to these socially-policed gender norms by having relationships with men in order to avoid sanctions.
All Guyanese, including LBT women, have human rights, to education, employment, protection from discrimination and to express themselves freely; among the many other rights outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Government of Guyana also owes particular obligations to all Guyanese women as our country is a signatory to the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
The CEDAW committee meets regularly – one year after a country ratifies the Convention and every four years thereafter – to review reports submitted by governments on progress towards implementation. I would like to reiterate key recommendations, based on the Convention’s provisions, from SASOD’S 2012 shadow report submitted to the CEDAW committee in New York last July:
– Repeal discriminatory laws that criminalise cross-dressing and same-sex intimacy.
– Conduct public education campaigns against homophobia and transphobia and promote the human rights of sexual and gender minorities through mass media and other public means.
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– Amplify the Prevention of Discrimination Act Chapter 99:09 by including sexual orientation and gender identity as grounds for discrimination in employment, training and recruitment.
– – Conduct comprehensive training in both the public and private sectors on non-discrimination in the workplace, especially based on sex, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity. –
– Conduct public education campaigns against gender-based violence and sexual harassment, including against lesbian and bisexual women and transgender people.
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– Include information on human rights, sexual orientation and gender identity in the Health and Family Life Education curriculum it in all schools nationwide. Also, mandate this as a requirement for certification of all private schools in the country.
– Include sexual orientation and gender identity as grounds for discrimination in the Constitution of Guyana.
The CEDAW committee took note of these submissions by civic stakeholders, as they are mandated to do, when Guyana was reviewed and encompassed many of these issues in their concluding observations, especially as it relates to education, employment and discrimination against Guyanese women.
I too would like to echo the CEDAW committee in these key areas and urge the Government of Guyana to “ensure equal access of girls and women to all levels and fields of education,” “overcome traditional attitudes that in some areas may constitute obstacles to education of girls and women” and “implement measures to eliminate traditional stereotypes and structural barriers in social settings (the family, schools and religious institutions) that might deter girls from enrolling in non-traditional areas of academic and vocational education at the secondary and tertiary levels.” In terms of employment, the committee also recommends that Guyana “intensify technical and vocational training for women, including in traditionally male-dominated fields and in the agricultural sector.” We must be committed to addressing these issues as a nation if we really are committed to gender equality, as anything more than rhetoric.
To address harmful gender stereotyping and its venomous effects, the CEDAW committee urges Guyana “to provide effective protection against violence and discrimination against all groups of women through the enactment of comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation that includes the prohibition of all forms of discrimination against them and the decriminalization of consensual adult same sex relations…”
The UN Human Rights Council also addressed this issue when it assessed the country’s record at the Universal Periodic Review in 2010 and recommended that Guyana decriminalize same-sex intimacy and cross-dressing, as well as “intensify political initiative and legislative measures to combat any act of discrimination, including those committed against gender identity and sexual orientation.”
These calls for law reform in these areas by UN human rights bodies are not new. Local civil society groups have been making these pleas for many years; long before we had access to these UN mechanisms to report our issues. Indeed, it is our participation as stakeholders that influences these calls.
The Government of Guyana undertook to conduct consultations on these issues, as well as the abolition of corporal punishment and the death penalty.
A special select committee of parliament has begun consultations on corporal punishment as the first listed of the three. Our country has a golden opportunity to rid itself of all these colonial inheritances through this process. We need laws that protect all our citizens; not any which exclude, shun and stir stigma and discrimination against them. Indeed, laws that criminalise gender-nonconforming people’s identities and same-sex intimacy provide a state-sanctioned basis for transphobic and homophobic discrimination meted out by the general population.
Social norms which fuel these gender-based prejudices will not change overnight, but unless we do away with these discriminatory laws and in their place enact legislation that protects people, future generations will also suffer.
I dream of a Guyana where one day all of us have equal access to all services and opportunities and are treated with dignity and respect, regardless of our differences. Guyana is, or should be, as our motto says: “One People, One Nation, One Destiny.” I would like to see us demonstrate that we truly are one people living in one nation with one destiny, as diverse as we are.
After all, it is our diversity that enriches our Guyanese tapestry. I therefore have one wish for our March 8 observances: Let’s celebrate our gender and sexual diversity as Guyanese and include all women as we celebrate International Women’s Day.