TAG: political repression

Women’s Resistance in Kashmir

In 2016, the Indian-occupied state of Kashmir once again erupted in valley-wide protests, in collective expression for freedom, after the killing of a hugely popular militant commander Burhan Wani. The protests continued for over six months and resulted in the killing of around 100 civilians. Some of the most overpowering moments during that period were […]

UN Human Rights Council: report on Fundamentalism, Extremism and Cultural Rights

The Secretariat has the honour to transmit to the Human Rights Council the report of the Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, Karima Bennoune, pursuant to Council resolution 19/6. In the report, the Special Rapporteur addresses the phenomena of fundamentalism and extremism and their grave impact on the enjoyment of cultural rights. She […]

Sexual Politics Round-up in 2016

As 2017 begins, SPW highlights the main events and trends as well as tensions and challenges traversing sexual politics worldwide. January In January, the Zika virus epidemics stormed the headlines, as Brazilian babies affected by Zika congenital syndrome prompted a global alarm. Even though Zika had been previously detected in other countries, the Brazilian epidemic […]

Gender Politics and Authoritarian Regime

The question of whether and how authoritarian regimes may use gender politics to preserve their rule has attracted insufficient academic attention so far. Research on state feminism shows that non‐democratic regimes often enact women‐friendly policies for the purpose of maintaining power. However, this finding has not been linked to the broader research on authoritarian resilience.

Uprooting Whorephobia: Why We Must Change the Stigma of Sex Work

Counting money on a bed is taboo in my family. Growing up, I never fully understood why but I suspected it was another one of our countless every day South American customs that ensured we were in right relationship with the spirit world.

Gay and Transgender Egyptians go Underground

The last days of the government of Hosni Mubarak and the turbulent revolution that followed were tense, occasionally gut-wrenching times for many in Egypt. But for gay and transgender Egyptians, it was also a period of unaccustomed freedom. Read the full article at New York Times.

Attack on Trans and Prostitutes

The on-going political conservative trends that has brought us the Brazilian “soft coup”, BREXIT and the candidacy of Donald Trump has also resulted in an increase in reactionary politics across the political spectrum, even among “radicals” and “progressives”. In Brazil, this has been recently manifest in attacks against

Kohl’s new issue: Beyond Victims and Savages – The Complexities of Violence, Resistance, and Pleasure

Going beyond the dichotomy of victims and savages entails a nuanced understanding of violence. Such an understanding perceives mainstream violence as indivisible from other paradigms of large-scale oppression – hegemony, socioeconomic injustice, institutionalization, neoliberalism, occupation… It also accounts for the normalized violence we live on a daily basis, in silent acts of coercion, harassment, bullying, and self-damage, and the ways in which they are informed by macro instances of violence, and vice versa.

An unamed letter from Bangladesh regarding the murders of LGBT activists

SPW shares an unnamed letter written by Bangladesh activist after the murders of LGBT activists in the Asian country in the past weeks. The letter draws attention for the danger of protesting around the global against the murders, while it may actually fuel Western hegemonic discourses that claim to defend and promote tolerance, usually through […]

The sexual politics in March and early April 2016

We have the great pleasure to inform that our Spanish page has been re-launched. In this opportunity Alejandra Sardá from Akahatá has written an update of Argentinean sexual politics after the 2015 elections that has been translated to English. In March–April, SPW has also collected information on outraging state crackdowns on human rights defenders, feminists […]

Egypt: Unprecedented crackdown on NGOs

In recent weeks, the Egyptian authorities have summoned human rights workers for questioning, banned them from travel and attempted to freeze their personal funds and family assets. These steps indicate that a five-year-old investigation into the funding and registration of independent human rights groups could soon result in criminal charges, 14 international organizations said today. […]

Buhari, LGBT rights, and international pressure

This week General Muhammadu Buhari will be inaugurated as Nigerian’s president, a position he won by campaigning on a platform of change. But will that change include the people on the fringe of society, like lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals?