'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?

Definitely one way of describing some of the treatment of women, but not all situations involve being forced to work for no money.

I used to think so well of her.

Err that's why we don't trust those who claim legal expertise to be able to apply common sense.

Giving an example of law meant to protect women but actually fails them is not derailing, it's pertinent to why so many of us are sceptical.

Australia's Sex Discrimination Act was amended in 2013 to make it unlawful to discriminate against a person on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity or intersex status. The act does not include a definition of man, woman or sex.

The term Gender as used by the UN, does use the binary man/woman and uses sex as a descriptor.

I used to think so well of her.

Many people did. One of my aunts worked as a secretary in a law practice M R was in as a young woman and said sit was not a good experience. Aunt B was a good observer of people.

Slavery is not defined as a mere absence of payment for labour. It entails an attitude that the slave class are not fully human or worthy of basic rights.

Surely it's common sense to try to stick to the topic and choose equivalent examples. International law and its application is different to State law.

No, but it's a big part of it!

Roxy Tickle's gender identity makes him female. Women have been fined in other jurisdictions for saying that a man who claims to be a woman is a man. In Spain, men who abuse their female partners can claim to be women and evade "gender-based violence" charges. Or identify into a women's refuge. That is how gender destroys women's rights.

The definition of gender as used by the ICC has been posted. The ICC will be the body trying any cases.

The ICC use the definition of gender from the Rome treaty:

...two sexes, male and female, within the context of society.

Like I said in my post, the Australian SDA does not include a definition of man, woman or sex.

.two sexes, male and female, within the context of society.

in other words women do not exist or have rights of their own. They can only exist if men agree that they do in a societal context. That really is appalling law, no wonder the world is in such a mess, since it has left women without any Internationally recognisable legal rights since 1998.

I'm not convinced that creating a new(ish) indictable crime under international law of 'gender apartheid' could be used, for example, to attack us states that introduce bathroom laws (trans rights laws are a better fit).

And I think that the promoters of the concept have their hearts in the right place and just want to catch the Taliban bang to rights.

The wording is contentious, but I don't believe use of the 'gender' word is part of a conspiracy against women: its worse than than that.

The suffering of women is concealed by the 'someone else's problem' invisibility shield, and the victim-blaming deflection shield. Being conceived XX is a misfortune which the UN fails to address with enough brutal honesty, and the gender concept is part of that.

Imagine if you visited a distant planet and half of the aliens were being enslaved, tortured, murdered, mutilated, raped, traded for sex and breeding purposes, and kept ignorant and in a state of penury. Wouldn't you wonder what was going on?

The UN should be angry, and use its angry words.

That's certainly an (unsubstantiated) interpretation.

That is not the entirety of it. I posted the full definition upthread. Here it is again:

Under article 7(3) of the Rome Statute (“Statute”), “gender” is understood as the two sexes, male and female, within the context of society. Gender refers to sex characteristics and social constructs and criteria used to define maleness and femaleness, including roles, behaviours, activities and attributes.

The new law would build on the gender persecution law which defines gender in this way - including sex but not confined to sex. It's a dog's dinner of a definition but it clearly shows that "gender" is not just a synonym for "sex".

Like I said in my post, the Australian SDA does not include a definition of man, woman or sex.
And this helps your case how? That's the point - woman and man are meaningless. Sex is officially changeable in Australian law.

I'm not going to engage further with you. Posting only the first sentence of the definition has made me doubt your good faith.

The full definition in the Rome statute is this:

For the purpose of this Statute, it is understood that the term "gender" refers to the two sexes, male and female, within the context of society. The term "gender" does not indicate any meaning different from the above.

I mentioned that the Australian law doesn't include a definition of man, woman or sex because the definition of gender the ICC uses, does. It's the UN definition for this law under discussion.

Femicide is the word used in some latin american and spanish speaking contexts ("femicidio" or "feminicidio") as in distinct from homicide, because it implies that the sex is the motive for the killing. It's applied at individual murders, afaik. Could it be applied to the collective of women?
Should we just go with "crimes against Humanity"?

If it's going to be a 'gender' thing then it has to be 'crimes against femininity'.

@ArabellaScott yes but then we give the concept of "humanity" to men? Crimes against humanity because they are deliberately stripping women of human dignity, the goal is to dehumanize them. (I know you said it as an example, not as your position; this is not necessarily my position either, I'm just thinking out loud).
There are thinkers who disagree radically with the concept of "human", defending that all existence is sexuated: in this context, I see "crimes against femininity" working.

I was being tongue-in-cheek with 'femininity'.

I'm not quite sure how it should be worded - in the context I think 'gender persecution' works pretty well and is less problematic than 'gender apartheid', and I do find it a bit odd there is this big campaign to bring in a new phrase with a slick new campaign while people are still apparently trying to get the 'gender persecution' law up and running.

Oh I see 😅🙏 (you never know these days 😉)

To me, it's the word "gender" that's problematic. And yes, it is odd: maybe we'll find out sooner than later the motives behind it!

I do tend to think existing laws need to be properly applied first. If all the laws in UK were properly enforced we wouldn't need to think about misogynyas a separate crime.
To me apartheid is a clearer more forceful definition. Persecution? Is not being allowed to sing really persecution, is being forced to wear a uniform persecution? All societies have their norms, etc etc. Apartheid describes the bedrock of the society - it's split in 2 one with all the power and the other none.

Yes, I think it is persecution. And being confined to your home, not permitted to work or have an education, etc.

You could turn it around and ask whether not being allowed to sing or being forced to wear a uniform is apartheid? That feels forced.

Well it isn't just not being allowed to sing. It is not being allowed an education, to work and earn money to feed your children, to not be allowed to access health care for yourself (no female doctors or nurses), no health care for your children unless a man can take you.
Oh and the Taliban have also said women cannot speak in public or groups or listen to any broadcast or use social media.
So not just singing.

Dying in childbirth is probably the most horrific way to die. If women can't have health care from men and no women can train or work as HCPs, you can add torture and murder to the list.

If you look at the dictionary definitions of apartheid and persecution, the new definition this group wants to give for gender apartheid is far from the commonly accepted understanding of the word apartheid, which is defined as a political system of segregating the races. The separation/segregation is integral to the ordinary meaning.

Persecution is defined in Collins as cruel and unfair treatment of a person or group because of their politics, religion or race, and can also mean a campaign to subjugate a group because of their political beliefs or race.

So gender persecution is a lot better than gender apartheid and replacing "gender" with "sex-based" or similar as a qualifier for "persecution" would describe the crimes perpetrated against these women a lot better than "gender apartheid". Which could easily be corrupted into meaning the crime of separating the sexes for any reason.

All moot of course because as far as I can tell, no-one has ever been prosecuted under this law for harming women.