Less Than Woman, Less Than Human

Cathy Brennan and Elizabeth Hungerford have tendered a paper to the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, in response to a query regarding the current international status of women. From this exercise, the Commission will be working to “identify emerging trends and patterns of injustice and discriminatory practices against women for purposes of policy formulation and development of strategies for the promotion of gender equality.”

In their paper, Cathy Brennan and Elizabeth Hungerford (who if they want to sign their names to this, I’m happy to give them ample credit for it) adamantly and explicitly oppose the extension of basic human rights to transsexuals, under the premise that providing rights protections under the classes of gender identity and gender expression “erodes” womens’ rights.  Conveniently, Cathy Brennan and Elizabeth Hungerford waited until the deadline for submissions before making this public, so that transsexuals are not given an opportunity to respond, and once again have no voice at all in the question.

Cathy Brennan’s and Elizabeth Hungerford’s argument only works:

1. if you refuse to accept trans women as actually being women,
2. if you believe that the principle of human rights (that all should be equal) is negotiable, if the minority in question is small enough, and
3. if you ignore the potential benefits women gain from gender expression inclusion.