Basic concepts related to LGBTI People

Basic concepts

Even though the IACHR has adopted an acronym easy to remember for its Rapporteurship, it is important to note that the Rapporteurship on the Rights of LGBTI Persons addresses human rights issues as they relate to sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, and bodily diversity.

The Commission also recognizes the self- identification of each person as a guiding principle.

Basic concepts included in this multimedia site should serve as a guide.

Select a category to filter by related concepts:

Sexual Orientation

Each person’s capacity for profound emotional, affectional and sexual attraction to, and intimate and sexual relations with, individuals of a different gender or the same gender or more than one gender.

Gender Identity

Each person’s deeply felt internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond with the sex assigned at birth, including the personal sense of the body.

Gender Expression

Generally refers to the manifestation of a person’s gender, which may include speech, mannerisms, dress, personal behavior, or social interaction, body modifications, among others.[1]

BODILY DIVERSITY

Bodily diversity refers to a wide range of presentations of the body, for example, variations in sexual anatomy that extend beyond from the socially accepted standard for female and male bodies. Intersex is an umbrella term including bodily diversity.

Sex assigned at birth

This idea transcends the concept of sex as masculine or feminine. Sex assignment is not an innate biological fact; rather, persons are socially assigned a sex at birth based on the perception others have of their genitalia. While in most cases persons are easily classified and their sex assigned, some persons do not fit the standard definitions for the male and female bodies.[22]

CISGENDER PERSON

When the gender identity of the person corresponds with the sex assigned at birth. The “cis” prefix is the antonym of the “trans” prefix[11].

TRANS PERSON

When the gender identity of the person does not correspond with the sex assigned at birth. Gender identity is not determined by body transformations, surgical interventions or medical treatments. Nevertheless, these could be necessary for the construction of the gender identity of some trans persons.

LESBIAN WOMAN

Women who feel emotionally, sexually and romantically attracted to other women.

HETEROSEXUAL PERSON

Women who feel emotionally, sexually and romantically attracted to men; or men who feel emotionally, sexually and romantically attracted to women.

Gay Men

Men who feel emotionally, sexually and romantically attracted to other men.

BISEXUAL

Persons who feel emotionally, sexually and romantically attracted to men and women.

Mati

It is not a static identity: “working class-women who typically have children and engage in sexual relationships with men and with women, either consecutively or simultaneously.” The fluidity of sexual behavior is an essential element.[2]

Two-Spirit

“Two-Spirit” persons have both feminine and masculine spirits. Two-Spirit “recognizes gender as a continuum and includes diverse identities, sexual orientations and social roles.” [4]

MUXE

A Zapotec culture term, muxe or muxhe, used to refer to a person assigned male at birth who dresses and behaves according to a female gender identity. It is generally considered a third gender.

INTERSEX

“All those situations in which an individual’s sexual anatomy does not physically conform to the culturally defined standard for the female or male body”.[6]

PREJUDICE-BASED VIOLENCE

Crimes based on prejudice are rationalizations or justifications of negative reactions, for example, negative reactions to non-normative expressions of sexual orientation or gender identity. Such violence is social, local and situated, and not idiosyncratic to the specific individuals involved. It requires a context and social complicity.[7][8]

HETERONORMATIVITY

refers to the cultural bias in favor of heterosexual relationships, under which such relationships are deemed “normal, natural and ideal,” and are preferred over same-gender or same-sex relationships.[9] It is composed of legal, social, and cultural rules that require individuals to act according to dominant and ruling heterosexual patterns[10].

CISNORMATIVITY

the expectation that all people are cisgender, that those assigned male at birth always grow up to be men and those assigned female at birth always grow up to be women 12].

Gender/Sex Binary System

social and cultural model dominant in western culture which “considers gender and sex as consisting of two, and only two, rigid categories, namely male/man and female/woman. Such a system or model excludes those who do not fit within the two categories[15][16].

Gender non-conforming persons

Persons who do not agree or follow ideas or social stereotypes about how should they act or express themeselves according to the sex assigned at birth [19].

Gender-Queer

“Gender-queer” is a general term for persons whose gender identity is not included or transcends the male/female binary. [20].

Stigma

Stigma attaches itself to an attribute, quality or identity that is regarded as “inferior” or “abnormal.” Stigma is based on a socially constructed “us” and “them” serving to confirm the “normalcy” of the majority through the devaluation of the “other.” [3]

Stereotype

A stereotype presumes that all members of a certain social group possess particular attributes or characteristics…. [Therefore] an individual, simply by virtue of membership in that group, is believed to conform to the generalized view or preconception.” [14]

Hate Crime

United States Law defines hate crimes as “crimes that manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, gender or gender identity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity.” The Uruguayan legislation defines hate crimes as “acts of moral or physical violence or scorn against one or more persons” based on these categories. [21]

References

[1] International Commission of Jurists, Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and International Human Rights Law, Practitioners Guide No. 4, Geneva, Switzerland, 2009, p. 21.

[2] Wekker, Gloria. The Politics of Passion: Women’s sexual Culture in the Afro-Surinamese Diaspora, New York, United States: Columbia University Press, 2006, p. 173. The phrase “mati work” has a particular meaning in the Suriname context; it “refers to women's sexual, spiritual, and emotional bonds with other women, as well as to the mutual responsibility and obligation that characterize their intimate relationships with each other.” Brown N., Jacqueline. Suriname, Sweet Suriname, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies Volume 13, Number 2-3, 200, p. 406, making reference to Wekker, Gloria. The Politics of Passion: Women’s sexual Culture in the Afro-Surinamese Diaspora, New York, United States: Columbia University Press, 2006.

[3] [Stigma] UN, Human Rights Council, Report of the Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation, Stigma and the realization of the human rights to water and sanitation, A/HRC/21/42, 2 July 2012, para. 12.

[4] National Association of Friendship Centres, Supporting two-spirited peoples: Discussion paper, Otawa, United States, 2008.

[5] Testimony of Amaranta Gomez Regalado during a public hearing at the 147th Period of Sessions of the IACHR, March 16, 2013. Hearing requested by Fundación Diversencia. Video and audio available.

[6] Cabral, Mauricio. Interview with Benzur, Gabriel. Cuando Digo Intersex. Un diálogo introductorio a la intersexualidad, 2005. Interview available in: http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0104-83332005000100013&script=sci_arttext

[7] María Mercedes Gómez, interview, Centro latinoamericano de Sexualidades y Derechos Humanos. 2007.

[8] Gómez, María M. Capítulo 2: [Chapter 2: Prejudice-based Violence], in Motta, Cristina and Sáez, Macarena (eds.), La Mirada de los Jueces: Sexualidades diversas en la jurisprudencia latinoamericana. Tomo 2. [Justice´s Gaze: A Casebook on Diverse Sexualities and Jurisprudence in Latin America. Vol. 2] Bogotá, Colombia: Siglo del Hombre Editores, Red Alas, 2008, p. 99. [Free translation by the IACHR].

[9] UNESCO, Review of Homophobic Bullying in Educational Institutions, 2012, p. 50.

[10] Global Rights: Partners for Justice, Demanding Credibility and Sustaining Activism: A Guide to Sexuality-Based Advocacy, Washington, United States, 2010, p. 95.

[11] From Latin: “trans” (across, on the other side of); “cis” (on this side of).

[12] [Cisnormativity] Bauer, Greta R., Rebecca Hammond, Robb Travers, Matthias Kaay, Karin Hohenadel, and Michelle Boyce. 2009. ‘I don’t think this is theoretical; this is our lives': How erasure impacts health care for transgender people. Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, 20(5): 348–61, cited in https://cisnormativity.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/harmful-ubiquity-introducing-cisnormativity/#more-26. Global Rights: Partners for Justice, Demanding Credibility and Sustaining Activism: A Guide to Sexuality-Based Advocacy, Washington, United States, 2010, p. 95.

[13] Bauer, Greta R., Rebecca Hammond, Robb Travers, Matthias Kaay, Karin Hohenadel, and Michelle Boyce. 2009. ‘I don’t think this is theoretical; this is our lives': How erasure impacts health care for transgender people. Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, 20(5): 348–61, cited in https://cisnormativity.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/harmful-ubiquity-introducing-cisnormativity/#more-26.

[14] [Stereotype] Rebecca Cook y Simone Cusack, Gender Stereotyping: Transnational Legal Perspectives. Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010, pág. 9.

[15] Global Rights: Partners for Justice, Demanding Credibility and Sustaining Activism: A Guide to Sexuality-Based Advocacy, Washington, United States, 2010, p. 95. See also Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity, Routledge, 2006.

[16] Cabral, Mauro. Pensar la intersexualidad, hoy, in Maffía, Diana (Ed.), Sexualidades Migrantes: género y transgénero, Argentina: Feminaria, 2003, p. 121.

[17] Cabral, Mauro and Maffia, Diana. Los sexos ¿son o se hacen?, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2013.

[18] Fausto-Sterling, Anne. Sexing the body, New York, United States: Brown University, 2000, p. 3.

[19] Sylvia Rivera Law Project, Fact Sheet: Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Youth in School.

[20] [Gender-Queer] Heartland Trans Wellness Group, Trans and Queer/LGBTQPIA Terminology. También ha sido utilizado para denominar una corriente teórica y política que denuncia exclusiones, fallos en las políticas de representación, una crítica a todos los procesos políticos que naturalizan las identidades como verdades objetivas, y una reflexión sobre el esencialismo y construccionismo, que considera errores del feminismo liberal. Ver, por ejemplo, Carrillo, Jesús y Preciado, Beatriz. Entrevista com Beatriz Preciado, Octubre de 2004.

[21][Hate Crime][Estados Unidos] The Hate Crime Statistics Act, 28 U.S.C. § 534. [Uruguay] Ley No. 17.677 – “Incitación al odio, desprecio o violencia o comisión de estos actos contra determinadas personas,” que sustituyó el artículo 149 ter del Código Penal, 29 de julio de 2003.

[22] [Sex assigned at birth] The “anatomic sex, and its presumed dichotomy (male/female), are the result of an ideological reading.”1 Moreover, “labeling someone as a man or a woman is a social decision. We may use scientific knowledge to help us make the decision, but only our beliefs about gender – not science – can define our sex. Cabral, Mauro and Maffia, Diana. Los sexos ¿son o se hacen?, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2013.

The Report

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IACHR Report: Violence against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Persons in the Americas

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