Transitioning Gender Equality to the Equality of Sexgender Diversity
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Abstract
The Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 “Gender Equality” is one of 17 goals aiming to change global inequalities until 2030. Contrary to the prior Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the SDGs not only target the Global South and East, but also make the Global North and West accountable for the global inequalities. SDG 5 “Gender Equality”, however, uses the term “gender” as a binary concept that includes only men and women considered healthy, and counts only specific women and girls as relevant: “Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls”. In this article, I argue that this is far too short a connotation of a phenomenon I call “sexgender”. Not only does it erase this notion of sexgender, a colonial concept, a multiplicity of diverse sexes and genders, which is deeply entangled in Western ideologies on sexual orientation and economy; it also leaves out large parts of the worldwide population, particularly intersex, trans, and sexgender non-conforming people1 (ITGNC) (EATHAN 2018, p. 3), who face human rights violations in many areas, such as education, employment, housing, access to health sectors, detention, migration, media representation, as well as oppressive norms shaped by societal and religiously informed prejudices, just to name a few. Furthermore, the term “sexgender” includes Rubin’s “sex/gender system” (Rubin 1975, p. 195) and explicitly refers to a patriarchal, heteronormative, binary societal structure of power relations. In this article, I show that the goal “gender equality” can only be sustainably achieved if we understand sexgender holistically; that means if the human rights of intersex, trans, and sexgender non-conforming people are included. The Yogyakarta Principles (YP 2006) and their additional Yogyakarta Principles Plus 10 (YP+1