liencamps-blog

[liencamps-blog]

[liencamps-blog]

Emancipation through female body hair?

Lush pubic hair or rather a clean shaven venus mound?

Would you like to colour your armpit hair?

The neo-liberal society of the 21st century aims for equality between men and women. Women are increasingly given the possibility of choice and freedom. However these choices are often subject to social factors. A debate about female body hair colours the newspapers and social media. Moran argues that this debate about female body hair occurs between two opposing parties: the porn industry and the third feminist wave.

The porn industry suppresses a huge amount of women through the social norms of society. Smelik (2008) states that removing body hair is the norm to meet beauty ideals in Western culture. This arose from the development of photography and the visual culture through which body hair was crowned a taboo. The porn industry as well as the fashion and beauty industry reinforce this pattern, thus forming the phenomenon of Foucauldian Disciplining in which women remove body hair with the help of self-regulation and internalisation. In other words, women shave their body hair because society expects it. In general, the porn industry stigmatizes women that don’t shave their body hair. As a consequence they might get labelled as ugly, untended and unattractive.

But not everybody accepts this oppression of women.

Feminism strives for gender equality by challenging fixed ideas such as acceptance towards women’s body hair.  Self-development and freedom of choice are central assumptions of the third feminist wave. They want women to feel free not shaving their body hair. If women prefer shaved legs or armpits, that’s also fine. Clearly the only importance is the freedom of choice of the women to shave or to not shave their body hair.

Nowadays, women and men fight together for freedom of choice for all sexes! Nevertheless, the battle is far from being fought.

[liencamps-blog]

[liencamps-blog]

LGBT-Refugee in the Western world

The refugee crisis is a huge current debate, including their sexual orientation. Some people need to flee their home countries because of fear for prosecution for their sexual orientation. How could we make it easier for these people to find a home in an arrival country? Hardly understanding the problem of discriminating people, I will try to explain the difficulties that LGBT refugees are facing regarding sexual orientation.

Many problems exist surrounding procedures for LGBT-refugees in Europe. European countries determine their own policies to evaluate the so called SOGI claims (Refugee status claims based on sexual orientation and gender identity),  which provide asylum to refugees because of their sexual orientation and sexual identity. However problems remain for these vulnerable asylum seekers because sexual orientation is not something that’s written on your face, easily to prove to authorities of an arrival country. Unfortunately, the common European asylum system remains underexposed. We need an enormous improvement of this system to treat and act in a fair way with more justice for these asylum seekers in need. Political progress towards more human rights and equality might be the solution. However I doubt the political willingness.

But this is about to change.

Rainbowhouse Brussels, Arc-en-ciel Wallonie en çavaria are LGBT organisations that support LGBT communities. This year they worked together and organised the 22nd Belgian Brussels Pride emphasizing on the theme asylum and migration. Together they staged a debate with the slogan ‘Crossing borders’, to throw a positive light over LGBT-refugees, and to challenge the human right discourse! However the migration policy of Theo Francken is not very supportive of LGBT refugees. Opposite opinions make this an important discussion whereby we need to emphasize individual human rights and the cultural influence of LGBT-refugees to improve the situation of LGBT refugees.

In addition to a better situation for this minority group, 10 years ago  the ‘Yogyakart principles’ were introduced to the human rights discourse. This is a collection of 29 principles that formulates the rights of LGBT refugees. This international human law is against discrimination regarding sexual orientation and sexual identity. This law might challenge policymakers and politicians to change the situation for LGBT asylum seekers and work together on more inclusive, universal guidelines for this debate.