Wednesday 23 October 2013

gaydar

Surely intolerance breeds intolerance, and no brown-skinned person is not subject to a host of speculation and profiling—or downright unwelcome for asylum-seekers, whenever in public in a place where he or she is other than the majority, but redoubling efforts do not solve prejudice.
Rather blamelessly and unabashed, a certain ministry of health official has boasted that their country has developed a screening- tool, a conflated medical test of undetermined techniques, for homosexual, transgender and cross-dressing potential visitors in order to deny them entry to the that country and the broader states in the region. The country, already heavily reliant on guest-workers, requires medical testing for applicants and proposes to simply add this to the battery—for a population attracted by the often disappointing lure of employment for people from desperate lands, without the luxury to be otherwise, where stigmatised for real, perceived or rejected identities. It's a dicey subject that has not been without other champions to a greater or lesser degree, but I don't think such a stance is really representative of any diaspora, where discrimination is no gateway to respect. Besides, it seems that we all ought to have learned how dangerous such a path can be and not something to dismiss.