Debating the legal recognition of gender identity in parliamentary discourse: Human rights and queer politics

Abstract

This study documented the rhetorical constructions of ‘human rights’ in political discourse and the potential implications of their invocation as a frame for LGBTQI+ claims. The minutes of the VI Greek Parliamentary session on a bill related to the legal recognition of gender identity, conducted in 2017, were analyzed. Analysis utilized the concepts of Rhetorical and Critical Discursive Social Psychology, indicating that human rights are flexibly used in arguments oriented to the expansion, the limitation, or the opposition to self-defined gender identity. Varied representations of human rights’ content and boundaries and different constructions of agency concerning their enactment are identified. Although representations of human rights as universal are oriented to the inclusion of LGBTQI+ community, other liberal arguments obscure anti-LGBTQI+ social actors’ accountability. Human rights are also depicted as threatening Westernizing tools. The rhetorical functions of these constructions and their potential implications for queer claims and politics are discussed.

Value frames in discourse supporting transgender athlete bans

“…On these terms, changing gender norms are a threat to basic American values, and policies that limit transgender participation in sport are a means of protecting constituencies. Similar arguments about transgender rights and a loss of traditional values have been observed in other parliamentary settings (Michos et al, 2022). Without further context or knowledge, this discourse creates a link between desirable values and scenarios under which these deep-rooted values are eliminated.…”

“…The emphasis on specific physiology carries the veneer of scientific authority, a key rhetorical strategy by supporters (Michos et al, 2022). Scientific expertise is presented as compelling and absolute justification for the need to separate transgender and cisgender athletes.…”

“…Scientific expertise is presented as compelling and absolute justification for the need to separate transgender and cisgender athletes. The mention of scientific authority reinforces a sense of objectivity, although what is considered ‘objective science’ corresponds with heteronormative expectations (Michos et al, 2022: 511–512). Through this discourse, ‘sex biology is reshaped from messy distributions into clean dimorphism’ (Karkazis and Jordan-Young, 2015), where men always outperform women in a traditional hierarchy.…”

Conspiracy theories in online deliberation on gender identity legislation: Dilemmas of prejudice and political partisanship and implications for LGBTQI+ claims

“…The first problematizes the co-occurrence of provisions on children rights in the same bill as gender identity. In common with accounts identified in other studies (Kadianaki et al, 2022;Michos et al, 2021;Michos et al, 2022;Μίχος & Φίγγου, 2019) human rights rhetoric, and the legislation which guarantees them in this case, is constructed as a smokescreen to culturally threatening Westernizing practices and values (in this case related to gender identity). The rhetorical questions in lines 1-11 introduce an escalation of moral critique which ends in constructing the abolition of the essential Greek tripartite values of Homeland, Orthodoxy and Family from children's upbringing as a perversion.…”

“…According to adversaries of this activism and scholarship, “gender ideology” is the wider ideological context within which claims are made and activism takes place and usually relates to sexual citizenship debates, LGBTQI+ rights, and gender education. Gender conspiracy theories represent “gender ideology” as part and parcel of a secret plot of powerful groups aiming to accomplish illicit ends (Marchlewska et al, 2019; Paternotte & Kuhar, 2018; Soral et al, 2018) and depict feminism and queer activism as threatening for traditional values and natural order (Hopton & Langer, 2022; Van Anders et al, 2014).…”