'Gender apartheid' - risks and benefits

[ArabellaScott]

Recent calls for 'gender apartheid' to be made a crime against humanity.

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/02/gender-apartheid-must-be-recognised-crime-against-humanity-un-experts-say

“State laws, policies and practices that relegate women to conditions of extreme inequality and oppression, with the intent of effectively extinguishing their human rights, reflect the very core of apartheid systems,” the experts said.

'existing forms of gender-specific crimes, including gender persecution, while useful and relevant, do not fully capture the institutionalised and widespread nature of the deprivation of rights involved in systems of gender apartheid. “Only the apartheid framework can fully grasp the role of intent, ideology and institutionalisation in gender apartheid regimes as seen in Afghanistan,” they said.'

The idea is that this would make it easier to criticise Afghanistan.

Are there any potential downsides? Will it actually help the situation?

I think it’s important that extreme terms are used to describe what is extreme abuse. It’s all to easy for the world to dismiss terms such as ‘gender discrimination ‘ and its ilk as they are so commonplace and accepted.

I am completely in favour of an international treaty which would name and outlaw the persecution/subjugation of women - but with a title/name which expressed that in a way that could not be wilfully misconstrued.

Apartheid is not a new word. It already has associations and is widely reduced to the "separateness" aspect.
Gender has a special, or ambiguous, meaning.

It's hard enough to get any traction behind opposition to the treatment of women in Afghanistan, Iran and elsewhere without giving bad faith actors or the uninvolved and ignorant an easy "out", or reason not to support. Or to use it as a weapon to turn on women.

Edited for grammar.

Well, we seem to have dissolved into pointless wrangling over whether the label will cause pointless wrangling. Maybe we should move on to wrangling about whether that wrangling is pointless?

Wait - poppyzbrite4 seems to have made a start.

Bottom line, it's ambiguous enough to cause wrangling right here, so surely there's something better.

Thanks, everyone.

Re 'gender' - the open letter on the subject explicilty includes males, trans or non binary identifying people.

There is a risk of Western theories being imposed on societies where they are meaningless or actively harmful.

poppyzbrite4

If you meant what title would I suggest, I would start with persecution and sex. There'd be arguments but I think it's a better starting point than the current title.

https://endgenderapartheid.today/

'Targeting based on gender is not limited to women and can include victims who identify as women, girls, men, boys, nonbinary, and LGBTQI+ persons. Gender crimes target persons based on their sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression (e.g. woman/girl, man/boy, or nonbinary), or based on their sex. The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court’s guidance on gender crimes defines gender as “sex characteristics and social constructs and criteria used to define maleness and femaleness, including roles, behaviours, activities and attributes.” These social constructs can vary between societies and can change over time. '

Apartheid is not a new word. It already has associations and is widely reduced to the "separateness" aspect.
Gender has a special, or ambiguous, meaning.

Apartheid is a legal definition under the law. Irrespective of what people think it means, it has a legal definition. If a government body wasn't sure of the meaning, then they can look it up or consult a specialist. However that's not to say people can't willfully misconstrue it. People can and will misconstrue anything to suit their purpose.

As for Gender, that's another issue. If we apply common sense, we all know what women are and how they're being oppressed in Afghanistan.

What would be your suggestion? What law would you apply to the current oppression of women in Afghanistan?

Saudi also pretty much erases women from public life too. There are some pretty awful regimes out there. We also need to ensure we do not import the cultures here too without realising it. I am not particularly against my nearest local primary school having tiny little girls in muslim head covering if the parents want it but it does limit their freedom and sight to the side and all kinds of other things.

My thoughts exactly

Oh, see? They're already at it...

The UN urgently needs to come up with its own words for whatever it actually means. "Apartheid" is dragging in a load of connotations that don't apply. Does any country forbid marriage between the sexes?

If the UN use the word "apartheid" hen they are appealing to emotion and analogy not to law or reality.

I tend to agree, Amaryllis.

It feels like they're just hoiking a handy, ill-defined word that's worked before and repurposing it.

And I don't think it's entirely semantics - to counter the brutality and inhumanity of what is happening to women in Afghanistan (and elsewhere, for that matter) needs the right words.

They are utterly dehumanising women, systematically stripping them of every joy, and human right. They are endangering them both directly and indirectly. They are attempting to destroy women.

If anything it feels more like 'genocide' would be appropriate here. But yes, that word is also wrong.

Maybe we need our own word.

Oh FFS have these people never heard of a metonym? If they just said 'persecution of women and girls on the basis of their sex' it would cover 99.999% of cases, everyone would understand that trans people might indirectly benefit from the anti-persecution measures, and those of that turn of mind would read sex to include legal sex, gender identity, or acquired gender anyway.

Instead they employed a lawyer to try to define the precise boundaries of the problem. What a fool's errand!

Edited to remove solipsism.

They are taking away the rights set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Dehumanising. Treating as subhuman, or like animals. Treating inhumanely. It's hard to think of a single word or phrase that encapsulates it.

It's deliberate cruelty, sadism, brutalism. That seems to be the point.

Apartheid is a legal definition under the law. Irrespective of what people think it means, it has a legal definition.

From the document posted above by ArabellaScott:
"The definition of apartheid under international law should be interpreted to include gender hierarchies, not just racial hierarchies."

So the current legal meaning of the word is not as you say it is.

As for Gender, that's another issue. If we apply common sense, we all know what women are and how they're being oppressed in Afghanistan.
I can't believe you would say this in all seriousness, considering which MN board you are posting on.
Plus this, again as posted above by Arabella:
'Targeting based on gender is not limited to women and can include victims who identify as women, girls, men, boys, nonbinary, and LGBTQI+ persons. Gender crimes target persons based on their sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression (e.g. woman/girl, man/boy, or nonbinary), or based on their sex. The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court’s guidance on gender crimes defines gender as “sex characteristics and social constructs and criteria used to define maleness and femaleness, including roles, behaviours, activities and attributes.” These social constructs can vary between societies and can change over time. '

Common sense doesn't stand a chance.

And finally from the document...
"..we already have the crime of gender persecution as a crime against humanity."
Gender is defined as above - not sex alone but also sex characteristics.

This initiative is a Trojan horse.

we already have the crime of gender persecution as a crime against humanity.

They do? I missed that.

So why the attempt to rebrand?

Brutalised is about right. Because it doesn't convey just cruelty, but also treatment intended to reduce its object to the state of being a brute (a beast, not human).

Dunno. Same definition of "gender", more or less. Perhaps it's to do with what Amaryllis said: If the UN use the word "apartheid" hen they are appealing to emotion and analogy not to law or reality.
Effectively flipping the axis of oppression away from women to MCWs - anyone who wants single sex spaces is a proponent of gender apartheid?

Or maybe "transphobia" is losing its power and they want something more powerful?

Or just to act as a thought-terminating cliche.

Does it have to be one word? "Oppression, subjugation and dehumanisation of the female sex by those of the male sex" could at least be in the title.

So the current legal meaning of the word is not as you say it is.

Yes I know. This discussion is about a proposal, there is currently no such thing as Gender Apartheid.

I can't believe you would say this in all seriousness, considering which MN board you are posting on.

Why not? Do you imagine the Taliban arguing that due to gender ideology there's no such thing as a woman? Or governments arguing that the definition can't apply as women don't exist?

And finally from the document...
"..we already have the crime of gender persecution as a crime against humanity."
Gender is defined as above - not sex alone but also sex characteristics.

I would say that the crime of persecution alongside slavery would be included under the definition of Apartheid.

You can roughly define Apartheid as:

(1) an intent to dominate by one racial group over another; (2) systematic oppression by the dominant group over the marginalized group; and (3) inhumane acts

This initiative is a Trojan horse.

That's an opinion.

.

Yet Amnesty recently made a statement about the treatment, by the Taliban, of people who identified as women and girls. They changed it. But the fact that they even said it is a cause for concern.
As if those poor women could just identify as men and all their problems would be solved.

This is not for the benefit of women. They are using the emotional pull of the situation of women in Afghanistan + the word apartheid to garner unthinking support for the creation of a crime which would further oppress, silence and erase women and girls worldwide.