Women discuss feminism and human rights
Three out of 14 recipients of the 2016 Secretary of State’s International Women of Courage Award discussed the issues surrounding human rights, women’s equality and social progress at a panel Thursday in Wallis Annenberg Hall.
The discussion was hosted by the Institute for Diversity and Empowerment at Annenberg and the panel included Nisha Ayub, a transgender rights advocate in Malaysia; Rodjaraeg Wattanapanit, the co-owner of a bookstore, Book Re:public, and co-founder of Creating Awareness for Enhanced Democracy; and Nihal Naj Ali Al-Awlaqi the minister of legal affairs of Yemen. The panel was moderated by Stéfanie von Hlatky, a visiting scholar at the Center on Public Diplomacy and assistant professor of political studies at Queen’s University. Al-Awlaqi and Wattanapanit spoke through translators.
Other recipients of the award, Latifa Ibn Ziaten from France, Debra Baptist-Estrada from Belize, Thelma Aldana from Guatemala, Nagham Nawzat from Iraq, Vicky Ntetema from Tanzania and Zuzana Števulová from Slovakia joined the event as audience members.
Each panelist was asked two questions from von Hlatky. Al-Awlaqi opened the discussion by answering the question of how she raised awareness of women’s rights in her country. She started off by describing the nature of women’s rights.
“As it is well-known, women’s rights are part of human rights. Once you have real guarantee of freedoms and human rights, women will benefit from that,” Al-Awlaqi said.
She then described her work for women’s rights in Yemen. Al-Awlaqi explained that women put the foundation for the new Yemen after the 2012 Yemeni Revolution.
“I believe we have accomplished a great remarkable victory by having women represented by no less than 30 percent in all three branches of our government,” Al-Awlaqi said. “That was mostly done because of the recommendations we have issued after the national dialogue conference, sponsored by the United Nations and many international partners.”
The moderator asked about the importance of educating young people about due process and democracy. Al-Awlaqi explained how the cornerstones of democracy are the rule of the people, political diversity and human rights.
“It is really a culture and attitude,” Al-Awlaqi said. “Therefore, raising children on accepting others, being independent and respecting human rights will reflect on their cultural and political behaviors. You will also see fruitful results of that in school and throughout their lives.”
Ayub was then asked about her thoughts on the pace of change. She discussed how Malaysia is starting to change despite the Sharia Law, which considers being gay a punishable offense.
“It is slow, but there is a progression,” Ayub said. “There is more awareness because of the visibility of the trans community. Most often within the LGBT community, the transgender community, especially the transwomen community — we are the most affected because of the Sharia Law back home in Malaysia.”
Ayub continued on how she recently challenged the system in Malaysia along with three transwomen and how the action attracted national attention.
“We were the first Malaysians to challenge the Sharia Law and that opened the mindset of the system,” Ayub said. “I think this is a first step. I encourage more trans people, not from just Malaysia but from around the world, to talk about trans issues and become more visible, because when you start to talk, people will start to realize that we are actually human beings.”
Ayub was then asked about how her personal challenges have affected her in terms of formulating strategies as an activist.
“I try to engage public without making them feel fear,” Ayub said. “I try to touch base on human values. Share our stories. I interviewed transgender women and men from all races to share their own personal stories, whether they are from prison, whether they are from discrimination in school or even their own families.”
Lastly, Wattanapanit was asked questions about what advice she would give to younger women to protect their rights and themselves. She began her response by relating how she had to escape the country to not get captured by the military. She explained that she returned home when her safety was secured as the martial law announced that the people who were arrested will be detained for seven days.
“Before we stand up to fight for any cause, we not only have to assess the situation, the environment, the atmosphere, but also look at our own safety as well,” Wattanapanit said.
Wattanpanit also spoke about how this applies to college advocates.
“When I train with the students I tell them that your family will be threatened by the military regime. So talk to them if they are ready for that,” Wattanpanit said. “And for college students, a lot of time when they stand up for their rights, they mostly get suspended from school. I also tell my college students, ‘be brave, but don’t be crazy.’”
Dr. Paul R. McHugh, the former psychiatrist-in-chief for Johns Hopkins Hospital and its current Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry, said that transgenderism is a “mental disorder” that merits treatment, that sex change is “biologically impossible,” and that people who promote sexual reassignment surgery are collaborating with and promoting a mental disorder.
Guess what?
The American College of Pediatricians (ACP) issued a warning of the dangers that gender ideology poses to children and adolescents,
The recent ACP statement denied much of the politically correct rhetoric used by transgender activists, with doctors calling for a more sober and realistic look at what the idea of gender fluidity actually does to children.
Like a splash of ice water, the pediatricians declared that human sexuality is “an objective biological binary trait” rather than an infinite series of self-determined “genders.”
The norm for human design, the doctors said, “is to be conceived either male or female. Human sexuality is binary by design with the obvious purpose being the reproduction and flourishing of our species,” and therefore, “XY” and “XX” are “genetic markers of health – not genetic markers of a disorder.”
While everyone is born with a biological sex, the doctors noted, their awareness of their sexuality develops over time and “may be derailed by a child’s subjective perceptions, relationships, and adverse experiences from infancy forward.” Helping them accept their objective sexual identity is one of the objectives of good parenting and intelligent education.
“A person’s belief that he or she is something they are not is, at best, a sign of confused thinking,” the physicians said.
“When an otherwise healthy biological boy believes he is a girl, or an otherwise healthy biological girl believes she is a boy, an objective psychological problem exists that lies in the mind not the body, and it should be treated as such.”
Therefore, to treat this gender confusion as a good and normal thing, or to encourage it as LGBT activists and college student virtue-signallers are doing, constitutes an attack on children that can only mean serious problems for them in the future.
Thinking of oneself as belonging to a different sex than one’s biological sex is a psychological pathology known as “gender dysphoria,” the pediatricians said, which is “a recognized mental disorder.”
The doctors also noted that the use of puberty-blocking hormones, a common treatment among the promoters of gender ideology, is exceedingly dangerous and involves serious health risks including “high blood pressure, blood clots, stroke and cancer.” Moreover, suicide rates “are twenty times greater among adults who use cross-sex hormones and undergo sex reassignment surgery,” they added.
Pulling no punches, the doctors stated that conditioning children into believing a lifetime of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex is normal and healthful is “child abuse.”
This is the conditioning that your friendly neighborhood college-aged social justice warriors and the LGBT lobby are trying to foist on parents and educators as somehow the right way to treat sexually confused children.
And yet, the doctors insist, what “compassionate and reasonable person would condemn young children to this fate knowing that after puberty as many as 88% of girls and 98% of boys will eventually accept reality and achieve a state of mental and physical health?”
What sort of person, indeed.
Dr. Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D