Equal Rights and Opportunity in Sexuality and Reproductive Work

We recognize that groups who identify with non traditional sexualities (gays, transgenered persons, lesbians, etc.), though each very different, are confronted with many similar challenges that need to be addressed. These include political and economic inequality, as well as unfair social treatment. These injustices need to be uncovered and ultimately serve as a catalyst to influence members of society to challenge the hierarchical polarization paradigm. Our process focuses on the denial of equal rights and opportunity for lesbians/gays, single mothers, bisexuals, and transgendered people by society at large.

The hierarchical polarization paradigm represents the oppressed and dominant groups that are divided along racial, gendered, socioeconomic, and religious lines. We will provide information based on past literature on ways for which members from these communities can gain more access to political, economic, and social opportunities.

Feminist transformation seeks to uproot gender hierarchical polarization that ascribes males and females to polarized gender identities (men and women) and roles, and places men and their traits and activities above those of women. 

Heterosexual marriage between male men and female women is core to gender hierarchical polarization. Men and women are expected to play opposite and complementary roles in marriage, and biologically create and raise children together. Members of the lesbian/gay and bisexual communities have been denied the right to marry and have children with their same-sex partners. Also, bisexuals are deprived of their rights because of the pressure to identify with one gender rather than engage in both gay/lesbian and heterosexual relationships.

Equal rights and opportunity in sexuality and reproductive work challenges this core aspect of gender hierarchical polarization. We will discuss the stigmatization and discrimination faced by the above groups, and how they deviate in key ways from core gender norms. Accepting members of the lesbian/gay, bisexual, transgender communities means accepting that traditional gender hierarchical polarization is not natural and inevitable –a core belief which provided the basis for cultural norms for millennia.

The hierarchical polarization of gender (i.e. sexual division of labor) has greatly influenced individuals from the aforementioned groups. Since “a key aspect of gender polarization is that it makes males and females into men and women who need one another to live full lives,” (Matthaei, 13) and without each other they can’t function on their own earnings. Our process refutes this idea in that it sets forth the possibility of gender independence, rather than absolute gender interdependence.

Single mothers face social stigmatization. Their children are viewed as illegitimate. Women are blamed for failed families and called "loose women." The traditional sexual division of labor mandates that a woman shouldn’t have a child if she doesn’t marry the child's father, and assumes that women aren't prepared to raise children outside of marriage due to a lack of financial and physical support.

Lastly, we will discuss the rights of transsexual and transgendered people who reject their ascribed gender roles and take on the role of the “opposite sex” without undergoing surgical procedure. They also have the right to reject these roles altogether, and not be mutually exclusive as men or women but be received as transgendered people.