Papers by Anthony J Langlois
Sexuality and gender diversity rights in Southeast Asia are deeply controversial and vigorously c... more Sexuality and gender diversity rights in Southeast Asia are deeply controversial and vigorously contested. Debate and protest have been accompanied by both legislative reform and discriminatory violence. These contradictory dynamics are occurring at a time when the international human rights regime has explicitly incorporated a focus on the prevention of violence and discrimination in relation to sexuality and gender diversity. This Element focusses on the need for such rights. This Element explores the burgeoning of civil society organisations engaged in an emancipatory politics inclusive of sexuality and gender diversity, utilising rights politics as a platform for visibility, contestation and mobilisation. This Element focusses on the articulation of political struggle through a shared set of rights claims, which in turn relates to shared experiences of violence and discrimination, and a visceral demand and hope for change.
The Oxford Handbook of Global LGBT and Sexual Diversity Politics, 2019
This chapter commences by examining the status LGBT rights have achieved within the United Nation... more This chapter commences by examining the status LGBT rights have achieved within the United Nations (UN) human rights system and reviews some key aspects of their trajectory. It considers how best to interpret the varying roles LGBT rights can play in the international system, given their new status, with a critical reading of Hillary Clinton’s famous and much lauded “gay rights are human rights” speech to the UN General Assembly in 2011. It then moves on to what LGBT rights as human rights might mean in those parts of the world where this status receives little if any formal institutional recognition, using the case of the Southeast Asian region, where a new human rights regime has been established but where non-normative sexuality and gender have been willfully excluded from its remit. The chapter considers what the politics of human rights mean for sexuality and gender-diverse people in this region with reference to two senses in which human rights claims are political: (1) activi...
Wenn sich die Hoffnungen auf einen Zusammenhang von kapitalistischer Krise und einer auf ihre ges... more Wenn sich die Hoffnungen auf einen Zusammenhang von kapitalistischer Krise und einer auf ihre gesellschaftliche Emanzipation gerichteten Reaktion der Lohnabhängigen wieder einmal nicht erfüllt haben, so kann dies nicht verwundern, beruhen diese Hoffnungen doch auf einer zu kurzgreifenden Analyse. Zunächst ist darauf hinzuweisen, daß die Krise die Lohnabhängigen in sehr unterschiedlicher Weise trifft, wobei eine längere Arbeitslosigkeit nur den krassesten Fall von Krisenbetroffenheit darstellt. Aber nicht nur in der Dimension der Beschäftigung, ebenso bei der Entlohnung, bei den Arbeitsbedingungen, der unterschiedlichen Qualifikation etc. können Reproduktionsrisiken für die Besitzer der Ware Arbeitskraft festgestellt werden.
The Oxford Handbook of International Political Theory, 2018
The real-world politics of rights for lesbians, gays, bisexuals, trans, and queer people is deepl... more The real-world politics of rights for lesbians, gays, bisexuals, trans, and queer people is deeply contested. While now recognized by the UN and leading democratic states (if still incompletely and often haphazardly), LGBTQ rights are denied in many other quarters. Empirical research demonstrates the value of human rights in securing protections for LGBTQ people while also highlighting the ambiguities of a rights-based politics. This chapter discusses discuss how the use of LGBTQ rights claims highlight the need for critical theoretical approaches to human rights. It considers the politicized and sometimes antithetical use to which the newly accepted discourses of LGBTQ rights are put in the foreign policies of states and the behaviour of other international actors. It examines how the practice of gay rights by states and other agents can be caught up in a politics which undermines their emancipatory impetus.
Journal of Human Rights, 2021
This piece introduces a collection of essays that examine various aspects of the ASEAN human righ... more This piece introduces a collection of essays that examine various aspects of the ASEAN human rights regime, as we recognize decadal anniversaries for its two key foundational institutions: the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (ACIHR), established in 2009, and the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration (AHRD), promulgated in 2012. This introduction considers the aspiration of the regime to promote and protect human rights and the performance of the regime in practice over the decade since its establishment, and reviews the principle themes taken up by the contributors to this special issue of the Journal of Human Rights. We resolve to consolidate our Community, building upon and deepening the integration process to realise a rules-based, people-oriented, people-centred ASEAN Community, where our peoples enjoy human rights and fundamental freedoms, higher quality of life and the benefits of community building, reinforcing our sense of togetherness and common identity, guided by the purposes and principles of the ASEAN Charter.-ASEAN Community Vision 2025 All human rights are universal, indivisible, interdependent and interrelated … (Art. 7). … The exercise of human rights and fundamental freedoms shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition for the human rights and fundamental freedoms of others, and to meet the just requirements of national security, public order, public health, public safety, public morality, as well as the general welfare of the peoples in a democratic society (Art. 8)-ASEAN Human Rights Declaration A decade ago, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) made a radical pivot on human rights: from-variously-rejection, abuse, denial, and indifference, to institutional embrace and rhetorical enthusiasm. In 2009, ASEAN inaugurated the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) (Tan 2011); shortly afterward, in 2012, the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration was promulgated (Renshaw 2013). The international human rights regime, long absent a regional counterpart in Asia, could now look to a subregional institutional framework covering the 10 ASEAN states: Indonesia,
Politics and Religion in the New Century, 2009
Policy and Society, 2000
This paper examines the relationship between some particular political problems with human rights... more This paper examines the relationship between some particular political problems with human rights in Australia and philosophical problems with theorising human rights. John Howard's disdain for the United Nations Human Rights Treaty System and Meg Lees discussion of IVF as a basic human right are used to explore the way in which the language or discourse of human rights is used in relation to public policy issues. It is argued that a greater conceptual awareness of the politics of human rights may suggest a more satisfactory manner in which to theorise the human rights discourse.
Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 2018
Three recent books are discussed which offer queer analyses of attempts to protect lesbian, gay, ... more Three recent books are discussed which offer queer analyses of attempts to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people from violence and discrimination using the international human rights regime. A common theme is the way in which equal rights are invoked and institutionalised to address prejudice, discrimination and violence. The take, however, is critical: while it may be a remarkable turn of events that the United Nations (UN) and similar institutions have become LGBTI advocates, such Damascene conversions generate their own dilemmas and rarely resolve structural and conceptual paradoxes. This article foregrounds the curiosity of queer scholars engaged with the application of human rights to matters of sexuality and gender, observes how they articulate the paradoxes and dissatisfactions that are produced in this normatively and politically charged field, and draws out the limitations and complexities of rights politics in combating systemic exclusion.
IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies, 2017
Although in recent years many leading international actors, including the UN and European Union, ... more Although in recent years many leading international actors, including the UN and European Union, have endorsed the idea that "LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] rights are human rights and human rights are LGBT rights" (Clinton, 2011), at the regional and national levels support is still far from guaranteed. The result is that while globally there has been significant progress in recognising the rights of LGBT people, at times assisted by and resulting in cultural transformation, there has also been an accompanying rise in both popular, religious and political homophobia in many states. These conflicting and frequently highly contradictory dynamics are particularly evident in Southeast Asia, where some great leaps forward in protecting the rights of LGBT people have occurred in parallel with substantial setbacks. For example, in late 2014, a Malaysian Appeals Court ruled that a ban on crossdressing was unconstitutional, while a Singapore Court held that a law criminalising consensual same-sex conduct between men was constitutional. This paper explores the debates and trajectories of LGBT rights in Southeast Asia from four different perspectives in order to assess not only the overall state of LGBT rights in the region, but also to consider how further progress towards meaningful protection of LGBT rights can be achieved.
Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 2016
Cynthia Weber’s provocative and at times hilarious book Faking it concerns US-Cuba relations betw... more Cynthia Weber’s provocative and at times hilarious book Faking it concerns US-Cuba relations between 1959 and 1994.1 Reading it recently from Australia, I was frequently arrested by the relief into which Weber’s observations threw the behaviour of a now deposed prime minister, and the political culture which enabled his ascension to the office. From Weber’s first paragraph, in which the American body politic is depicted cartoon-like in heroic pose, ready for action anywhere, through to her final observations about strategies which deny and defer knowing, Weber speaks directly to the fakery of Australian public life. I don’t propose to read Weber’s heroic cartoon figure onto Australia. For one thing, while Weber describes her cartoon figure as ‘a white headless body of indecipherable sex and gender cloaked in the flag and daggered with a queer dildo harnessed to its midsection’, the cartoon figure in the Australian context is most discernably male. This figure is often stylised as a ‘dick’ or a ‘prick’, an arrogant bastard, a guy with a misplaced opinion of himself, who thinks he is something notable that he most certainly isn’t. Moreover, this figure is commonly depicted in ‘budgie smugglers’, very brief swimwear that leaves very little to the imagination. This is Australia’s recently ousted conservative Prime Minister. A hypermasculine Aussie male, Tony Abbott won office by pitting himself in the most macho manner against his two prime-ministerial predecessors – the woman, Julia Gillard, and the
Politics Trove, 2017
This chapter discusses the normative and theoretical foundations of human rights. More specifical... more This chapter discusses the normative and theoretical foundations of human rights. More specifically, it examines the theoretical basis for the normative ideas advanced by those who use the language of human rights for an ethical critique of international politics and policy. The chapter first traces the origins of the language of rights before discussing cultural relativism and imperialism, both of which challenge the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ claim to have universal application. It then considers the negative/positive distinction as a way of thinking about the differences between liberty and welfare rights. It also explores group rights, along with the philosophical and political history of the idea of human rights. Finally, it explains how the human rights agenda is deeply political, showing that it privileges a certain set of normative commitments that its proponents hope will become, in time, the ethical constitution of the international system.
Australian Journal of International Affairs, 2017
Altman and Symons commence their discussion of ‘Queer rights as human rights’ by referencing Hill... more Altman and Symons commence their discussion of ‘Queer rights as human rights’ by referencing Hillary Clinton’s famous ‘gay rights are human rights’ speech at the United Nations in 2011. Her speech, they say, ‘reflects the view of most contemporary queer activists’ (Altman and Symons 2016, 73). This, I think, is questionable, and depends very heavily on a domestication of what is meant by queer, especially for activists. Hillary Clinton is the quintessential establishment insider, and there is no doubt that her role in pushing for gay or LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) rights at the United Nations was significant and flagged a political turning point. However, by starting with Clinton and the United Nations, Altman and Symons indicate something about their approach to human rights which I wish to unpack. By focusing on the top-down regime of international human rights, they run the risk of losing the ethos of radical and queer activism evident in the stories they tell about the emerging global movement. This concern is underlined by Altman and Symons’ identification of Clinton’s rights agenda with that of queer activists. On any account of contemporary LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) politics which recognises that the terms ‘gay’ and ‘queer’ are not just synonyms, this is questionable. Whatever else is understood by the term queer, it signals a form of critical resistance. To take the example de rigueur: while now mainstream LGBT organisations campaign for what is called ‘marriage equality’, many queers reject marriage per se. They do so for all the reasons articulated by feminist social critique—reasons of radical intersectional equality which often seem neglected by the mainstream LGBT movement (Conrad 2014). These queers are not the nice, domesticated patriotic gays normalised by Hillary Clinton (see Weber 2016); they do not see their politics reflected in Clinton’s global gay campaign, nor in the hawkish centre-right establishment politics that she exhibited more generally in her bid for the US presidency. I will return to the question of queer below; first, I turn to human rights. Altman and Symons discuss and critique two dominant strands of human rights theorising, and their relationship to LGBTQ rights. A third approach lingers in the wings, not quite invited onto the stage. It offers a more radical challenge—one embodied in many of their stories. The two strands of human rights thinking they critique are the ‘natural’, pre-political accounts (often theistic) and the ‘practice’ or ‘political’ accounts. Without rehearsing general critiques, it is clear that the former are unhelpful for queers because of the ways in which homosexuality has often been regarded as ‘unnatural’, thereby licensing (implicitly or explicitly) a disregard for the humanity of ‘practitioners’. Practice or political accounts of human rights appear to give more leverage to LGBTQ people, given their openness
The Pacific Review, 2017
The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) escalated its community building project sign... more The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) escalated its community building project significantly over the last decade, culminating in the launch of a reformed and substantially integrated ASEAN Community at the end of 2015. This article considers what might follow from this newly reformed and rhetorically people-focused version of ASEAN for matters of sexual orientation and gender identity and expression (SOGIE). In claiming to be people-oriented and people-centred, and by developing a regional rights regime, ASEAN opens itself to standards by which it can be measured and held to account. We critically review ASEAN 2025: Forging Ahead Together, and consider civil society's response, focusing on the critique offered by the ASEAN SOGIE Caucus, the peak civil society organisation for ASEAN SOGIE matters. We focus on three themes: identity, visibility politics, and rights. We argue that while ASEAN falls short of its own rhetorical standards, these same standards support a politics which keeps rights in contestation, enabling civil society to push for accountability to international standards, and a more democratic politics. KEYWORDS SOGIE; ASEAN; human rights; LGBTQ; sexuality; gender We resolve to consolidate our Community, building upon and deepening the integration process to realise a rules-based, people-oriented, people-centred ASEAN Community, where our peoples enjoy human rights and fundamental freedoms, higher quality of life and the benefits of community building, reinforcing our sense of togetherness and common identity, guided by the purposes and principles of the ASEAN Charter. ASEAN 2025: Forging Ahead Together (art. 4) An ASEAN Community with common and comprehensive anti-discrimination laws, ensuring the decriminalization of SOGIE (sexual orientation and gender identity and expression), eradicating cultural and traditional norms and practices that stigmatise LGBTIQ persons, and promoting the well-being of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, intersex and queer (LBGBTIQ) community.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2016
Australia has had a long, and at times tumultuous, relationship with our nearest neighbour, Papua... more Australia has had a long, and at times tumultuous, relationship with our nearest neighbour, Papua New Guinea. This relationship took a twist in late 2012, with the reopening of the offshore processing centre on Manus Island, and again in February 2014, when Iranian asylum seeker Reza Berati was murdered by locals during a violent disturbance at the centre. The latest test of the strength and endurance of the relationship between PNG and Australia came in April 2016, when the PNG Supreme Court ruled that the detention of asylum seekers on Manus Island breached the right to personal liberty in the PNG constitution. This article provides much-needed insight into the human rights situation in PNG, and makes recommendations regarding the prospect of resettling refugees in that country.
Politics, 2015
Responding to efforts to ‘resurrect’ International Relations theory, this article suggests that t... more Responding to efforts to ‘resurrect’ International Relations theory, this article suggests that the study of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) – and, more controversially perhaps, queer – global sexuality politics can bring new and transformative insights to the discipline. The study of this global sexuality politics is replete with ideas and approaches that can and should be integrated with IR theory. The article first considers the general absence of global sexuality politics within IR, and why this is significant for theorising the international. It then surveys some recent scholarship which shows how the study of global sexuality politics can speak to and within IR.
International Journal of Applied Philosophy, 2015
The question of whether democracy is a human right or not has received increased attention in rec... more The question of whether democracy is a human right or not has received increased attention in recent years from philosophers, and in the light of recent world events, from the general public. Tom Campbell provides a minimalist strategy to support the human rights status of democracy, one linked to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 21) and subsequent developments in International Law and global institutions. I suggest that we need to consider the question at a more philosophical level and argue that Campbell’s minimalist strategy for understanding the right to democracy is inadequate to both the normative and symbolic claims associated with the idea. I develop my argument by considering two themes also engaged by Campbell: the demandingness of democracy, and the relationship between rights and interventions.
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Papers by Anthony J Langlois
deeply controversial and vigorously contested. Debate and
protest have been accompanied by both legislative reform
and discriminatory violence. These contradictory dynamics
are occurring at a time when the international human rights
regime has explicitly incorporated a focus on the prevention
of violence and discrimination in relation to sexuality and
gender diversity. This Element focusses on the need for such
rights. This Element explores the burgeoning of civil society
organisations engaged in an emancipatory politics inclusive
of sexuality and gender diversity, utilising rights politics as a
platform for visibility, contestation and mobilisation. The author
focusses on the articulation of political struggle through a
shared set of rights claims, which in turn relates to shared
experiences of violence and discrimination, and a visceral
demand and hope for change.