2nd International Conference on Gender and Sexuality 2019: Reflections, conflicts and lot of why?

“Changing your body is the most selfish thing a parent can do! If you are seen anywhere near your son, I would personally come to your door to arrest you!”

This is not some insult thrown by a random person, this was an explicit warning given in front of many people in the court room by a Judge in California. 2^nd International conference on Gender and Sexuality 2019 began with a very intense and powerful personal narrative by Jessica Lynn, Transgender advocate and activist from US. Sharing 50 years of her life, she began the session with the statement: when a child is borne, the first question ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ seals the gender of the new born. No one talks about intersex while 1.7- 2% children are born with both genitalia who don’t fit into the binary. She then shared that she began questioning her gender identity of boy at the age of 3-4 when it didn’t make sense, all she knew was that she wanted to be a girl. At the age of 7 years, when she came to know that it is because of sex organs, one is assigned gender; she tried to get rid of her penis.

The chaos, confusion and conflict of mind and body troubled her so much that she took solace in painting. The story of her teenage years, following adulthood, love, betrayal, marriage and parenthood was so painful to hear that I can’t imagine what it must be for her just because she wanted to be who she is! To hear her say these words with utmost distress after every few sentences – didn’t know, didn’t understand and had no idea about desiring the body of opposite gender created vortex in the room. It was an eye opening session even for the people who work on gender and sexuality be it academics or ground.

Post this, Conference chair Prof. Shahana Rasool, Associate Professor and Head of Department of social work, University of Johannesburg welcomed all the researchers, activists, presenters and attendees leading the session on the thematic of  the conference – “Rethinking Gender and sexuality- What do we know? What have we learnt? What’s next?” She focused on current scenario of women issues and education. Various interesting data and reflections were shared which depicted inter dependency between women’s development to health and development of children.

‘For children whose mothers have secondary education the chances of survival of those are more than triple compared to those with mother without education’   - UN Women 2014.

This also brought out triple burden of care on women: Reproduction, Production – labor force production, paid less than men, engaging in informal work – no entitlement for salary and vacation and lastly community – where there is emphasis on care giving role, there is no payment and it is undervalued and overused. According to OECD, 2014, Gender, Institutions and development database: In every part of the world, women spend more time on unpaid work than men do. She pointed out how funding for gender work is decreasing and the available fund is not really put in good use. The session ended with a very crucial note – “Gender equality must become a lived reality”

The research paper presentation line up was impressive and diverse, it was really difficult to choose between simultaneous run technical sessions. The session on ‘sexuality’ began with Dr. Ngcobo from South Africa presentation on ‘Sweetening the Pot: Negotiation of Entry into Sugar-Daddy relationships by Young women from an Urban University’ – a very unconventional and interesting topic. She threw light on the context of Urban Universities where girls get into these relationships to wave off heavy student loans and lead a better life, thinking that they have power, choice and authority to lead the relationships but is that really true? – because the traditional names itself declares the power dynamics. Her effervescent way of delivery of presentation along with ease of answering queries was very impressive.

Next in the line was the presentation by Dr. Preya Pilally from University of Witwatersrand, South Africa that talked about heteronormative discourse in Four SADC High school Buisness Studies Textbook. The last one was research study on struggles of a closeted Bakla engaged in same sex romantic relationship. It was interesting to hear both the perspectives of openly gay person and closeted person in the relationship – their beliefs, struggles, conflicts and idea of romance given the context of Philippines considering how they say they are LGBT friendly country but acceptance of the same is far off and also same sex marriage is still banned in their country. Implications of this study showed that the thought of being closeted shouldn’t be treated as problem, but an opportunity for a couple to thrive. The question of being comfortable still depends on the intimacy of the relationship. What I loved about the presentation was the in depth interview, simplicity of presentation and personal connect to the situation.

Post lunch, the session was led by Rita Bencivenga from Trinity Centre of Gender Equality and Leadership, Trinity College, Ireland.  She talked about FIAGES (Feminist Institutionalist Approach to Gender Equality in STEMM) - a two year research project funded with the core thought that studying and working in organizations having a satisfactory level of gender equality can foster gender-sensitive innovation in STEMM fields in academia and in high tech companies, creating a virtuous circle that reinforces a culture of Gender Equality. FIAGES applies the lens of Feminist Institutionalism to explore academic and workplace organizations, in particular STEMM disciplines and ICT companies, seen as a continuum from training, to employment, and building a career, but also, potentially, sources of a variety of discriminating situations. She also threw light on SAGE – systemic action for gender equality which focused on driving stronger action on gender equality in higher education and research. Gender equality has yet to be fully realized, and the European Commission recognizes the structural barriers that impede progress, namely: unequal pay, absence of work/life balance, the persistence of harassment and discrimination, and the under-representation of women in decision-making.

She ended the session on a very important note with an emphasis on “Promoting conversations from gender to diversity but not forgetting gender issues.”

The first session ‘Gender based violence in LGBTQIA+ communities’ on the next day of the conference began with a very honest declaration calling out the reproduction of heteronormativity at the Conference pointing out the logo which has stereotypical image of men and women; also the identity card that has Mr or Miss assigned to names of the participants. She said – “I am suffering from normativity and this shouldn’t have happened at least here in Gender and sexuality conference!”

The next presentation gave a snapshot on access to justice for LGBT people in Southeast Asia when they are victims of sexual and gender based crimes; LGBT people especially women also face challenge to have access and equal opportunity in the legal professions and consequently in the justice sector. This paper was based on the direct research and interviews conducted in various South East Asian countries including Rohingya refugees. The third presenter was not there to defend their research but it was disappointing in many ways – primarily the title says third gender instead of Transgender – it is appalling how people in the field of gender and sexuality especially researchers still feel that it’s okay to use this term which downright negate the struggles of Transgender community.

The technical session on ‘Gender and Education’ had two very impressive researchers. One of them presented on ‘Persistence of Glass Ceiling in Academia: The case of Women Academics in Kenyan Universities’ This paper gives empirical statistics on the number of female PhDs that have come through the rank in Kenya during the past 15 years. It is guided by African feminism theory in the analysis of reason behind the absence of female professors in Kenyan universities. This paper also evaluates the strategies that female academicians have adopted to break the glass ceiling in the Universities. The other research paper talks about adolescence issues and role of comprehensive sexuality education in South African schools.

Post this, a Professor from deemed University and a journalist spoke about women issues, education and current scenario of gender based violence in India. I was appalled, disappointed and baffled by the statistics and ignorant approach towards the issues! Using words like girls are dominating, tasting waters before getting into relationship, Indian education system being superior and many more trying to negate the seriousness of women issues and not giving the clear picture of current state pissed me off. She was blasted off for her naïve and shallow approach by a very brutal volcanic answer by a PhD research scholar from India. She threw light on how current education system is not reproducing better individuals but well defined employees, how even today in metro cities even well education women have no choice in selection of their partners, a huge pay gap for same work and so for. She was applauded by for her answer.

One of my favorite session was the one led by Jennie A. Williams, Trafficking and Gender specialist from Thailand – she spoke in details about gender, sexuality, women issues and above all the very concept of Consent! She also threw light on sex work, women companions to men and biased jurisdiction regarding sex work in Thailand. Her approach to questions, concepts and openness to conflict made people hear her!  

The last technical session ‘Violence against women’ started with Milliam K. presentation ‘Socio economic and cultural factors that hinder women from escaping Intimate Partner Violence:  Experience of 30 female prisoners convicted of Murder in Uganda’. The findings of in depth interviews revealed their harrowing experiences of physical, sexual and psychological violence in the hands of intimate partners. The victims of female prisoners reflect on the context of violence – 27 out of 30 women killed their family members. The narratives depicted how they were tormented at each step that led them to kill the person and also they have no remorse for the act.

The next in line researcher talked about Malay female survivors of intimate partner violence. The narratives were harrowing, disgusting and extremely painful – for example when one of the women tried very hard to leave her husband’s house with children, her grandmother refused to let her in and forced her to go back inspite of knowing that her husband might kill her. The research also talk about choices and agency of women in extremely patriarchal society.

We then presented our gender work with women in Baghpat, India at Sahas sharing the narratives of rural women through the intervention study conducted in 2017. The emphasis of this study was to give agency to women where with the adequate knowledge and understanding they can stand for themselves and say No to Violence.

The closure session of the Conference brought out lot of conflicting topics of white vs black feminism, Feminism Vs traditional culture, appearance of new issues, whose feminism is right feminism and the very usage of the term Feminist! I was amazed that even after 2 day of elaborate conversations, narratives and such a diverse set of research on gender and sexuality – the idea of my body belonging to me was called a romantic notion! I don’t understand why even in 21^st century we hide behind culture, media, religion to not address gender and sexuality issues! Why it is so difficult for us to understand that men being protector or not – no one has asked for protection, it is more like this is me being me and please don’t force on me, all of us can co-habitat without taking away each other’s basic rights!