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Trans human rights in age of Trump
Human rights implies two things: either a universal approach to rights which ought to be applied to all people or an approach to rights that accepts that each society and community has the right to frame human rights to best suit those societies and communities. Trump and those on the right have had a long-standing assertion that rights ought to be framed within a given society, which resulted in the 1949 UN Declaration of Human Rights walking back an absolute universalism. The reality is that every country is free to frame human rights as they see fit within their jurisdictional boundaries, meaning that LGBTQI+ people have a patchwork of rights globally; on the one hand free to live as they wish in Britain and the Netherlands and facing execution for expressing their sexuality in Saudia Arabia and Iran. Trans human rights are under extreme attack in part due to the lack of universal understanding and in part because human rights have persistently been predicated on the whims of those who have the power to uphold them.
It is not enough to call for human rights, as I assert that there is no such thing as universal human rights because each person has their own axes of oppression. Rather, I suggest it is in the operative nature of rights that issues such as duty, integrity, and actions rooted in thinking. Trans rights have always asked the world to accept that a trans person can…
