Post a response:
|
Human Rights and Sexual Rights The Legacy of René Guyon by Erwin J. Haeberle About an hour-long read. CONTENTS: European Sexology and Sexual Reform Rene Guyon - Legal Philosopher Between East and West Guyon's Critique of the League of Nations Guyon's Critique of the United Nations References The Writings of René Guyon The history of Human Rights and the full range of the now existing relevant declarations, covenants, and treaties are not very widely known. Indeed, the average man and woman, even in the Western developed countries, may find this knowledge rather difficult to obtain. The available literature is both sparse and unsystematic [1]. Most people, therefore, probably cannot say whether, where, or to what extent sexual rights have been recognized as human rights. As a matter of fact, sexual freedom is not usually seen as a human rights issue. However, there is a sound historical and practical basis for such a view. The idea of human rights itself, while traceable, in part, to the ancient Greek sophists, some stoic philosophers, and certain Christian reformers, is essentially a modern idea. Beginning in the Renaissance, it was developed by religious, political, and legal thinkers, who used a revived and refashioned Natural-Law doctrine to assert the sovereignty of "the people" against the abuses of power by absolute monarchs. Eventually, the Age of Enlightenment proceeded to claim additional "unalienable" rights even for the individual, protecting him against tyrannical majorities of his own peers. The American Declaration of Independence (1776), the French Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen (1789), and the "Bill of Rights" as part of the U.S. Constitution (1791) are the major milestones in this development. Of course, de facto slaves, women, and other groups remained disenfrachised at the time. Nevertheless, in principle, universal rights to liberty, property, freedom of religion and of the press, equality before the law, etc. had, for the first time in human history, been recognized. The traditional power of government, which now had to guarantee these rights, was thus not only limited, but also set on a course of increasing democratization, granting more and more human rights to ever larger segments of the population. In any case, the industrial revolution soon made it clear that the original catalog of human rights had to be expanded, since a growing proletariat was unable to profit from them fully without first winning certain social and economic rights, such as a right to an education and to a healthy work place, a right to organize in labor unions and to strike, etc.. Thus, the 19th and early 20th centuries saw a considerable expansion of individual rights, answering the concerns of a formerly small and neglected, but now increasingly combative "underclass". The experience of the Great Depression finally prompted Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941 to include a right to economic security in his declaration of the "Four Freedoms": the freedom of speech, the freedom of religion, the freedom from want, and the freedom from fear [2]. These demands then became part of the subsequent Atlantic Charter and inspired the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), which, in 1966, was followed by a Convenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights an a Convenant on Civil and Political Rights. In addition, U.N. declarations and conventions now try to protect refugees, the rights of women, children and prisoners, and they condemn racism, discrimination and genocide. It is noteworthy, however, that these and other U.N. human rights documents say nothing at all about sexual rights in the more specific sense, such as the right to sex education, free choice of sexual partner or sexual activity, a right to contraception or abortion. This is all the more remarkable as the fight for some of these rights by now already has a long international history. For example, at least since the days of the 19th-century Neo-Malthusians, a woman's right to birth control has been linked to her ability to achieve economic security on her own. It was also recognized that she needed this basis in order to exercise many other human rights already granted in theory, but often denied in practice because of her economically dependent status. Many early feminists, therefore, saw sexual rights as being basically political in nature, i.e. as part and parcel of human rights. Moreover, this view was widely shared by male supporters, especially those who promoted a new, special "science of sex" or sexology and, through it, universal sexual reform.[...] Continue reading at: http://web.archive.org/web/20050412215531/http://www2.hu-berlin.de/sexology/GESUND/ARCHIV/guyrig.htm [@nonymouse] [Guardster] [Proxify] [Anonymisierungsdienst] |