Global Homophobia: States, Movements, and the Politics of Oppression

Chapter 6 Sexual Politics and Constitutional Reform in Ecuador: From Neoliberalism to the Buen Vivir

6 Sexual Politics and Constitutional Reform in Ecuador From Neoliberalism to the Buen Vivir amy lind In 2008, the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defense of Women’s Rights (CLADEM) released a report documenting violence against lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, transgender, and intersex women in Ecuador (Varea and Cordero 2008). Specifically, the report addresses the practice of reparative therapy in “rehabilitation centers” (centros de rehabilitación), where primarily women perceived as lesbian are forced to undergo various kinds of therapy, including electric shock therapy (Varea and Cordero 2008). The report demands the immediate closure of these centers, which aim to “dehomosexualize” lesbians. The authors state, “In these clinics physical and psychological punishment is practiced, including verbal humiliation, insults, permanent forced handcuffing, days without eating, whips, different forms of abuseandviolenceincludingsexualviolenceandthethreatofrape”(CLADEM report, cited in Queiroz 2011: 1, my translation). According to the report, these centers have been operating for at least ten years and have forcibly interned hundreds of women perceived to be lesbian or to have gender dysphoria. Internees ’ treatment in the centers, the report states, is considered “torture” according to the Convention Against Torture, a convention that the Ecuadorian state has ratified and incorporated into its constitution. In 2007, there were approximately 205 such clinics in Ecuador, and only 55 of them appropriately reported to thetwo governmental bodies that oversee psychological treatment: the National Council for the Control of Narcotic and Psychotropic Substances (Consejo Nacional de Control de Sustancias Estupefacientes y Psicotrópicos, or CONSEP) and the Ministry of Health (Queiroz 2011). The report states that the Ecuadorian state is ultimately responsible for these actions, as it has been 128 . amy lind “inactive” in addressing the abuse and unresponsive to the very international agreements that it has ratified or supported.1 It asks that the Ecuadorian state “investigate the complaints made regarding cases of torture and mistreatment of lesbian women in private clinics, and to apply the appropriate procedures and sanctions” (Varea and Cordero 2008: 7). It also asks for hate crimes based on sexual orientation and gender identity to be included in Ecuador’s penal code.Interestingly,thispracticehasjustrecently,inthepastdecade,beenmade visible by activists and received regional and global attention. One recent study (Wilkinson 2012) suggests that the reparative therapy movement is more complex than initial human rights reports indicated, though it can be said that it is a “modern” phenomenon in that, with the historical shift in the mid- to late twentieth century toward emphasizing homosexuality as a disease versus as a crime, reparation-therapy proponents have further pushed for and institutionalized the practice, which disproportionately affects young women of middleclassorhigherbackgroundsinareaswherepsychologicaltreatmentisavailable . Other forms of violence against lesbians occur as well that remain largely invisible in the literature on human-rights abuses against lesbian, gay, bisexual , transgender, transsexual, and intersexed (LGBTTI) people. Some stories are left untold, unpublished, and/or circulate primarily as rumor or as insider knowledge within specific communities. There is at least one account of two lesbian activists who were followed home after a public event and raped in their home by two men, likely for their activism and public personae as lesbians. The myriad ways in which trans people must negotiate transphobic institutions in order to access health care or sexual-reassignment surgery is another form of abuse that often remains invisible. Marcos and Cordero (2009) document the testimonies of several women who were forced to undergo psychiatric treatment, including at rehabilitation centers, because of their perceived identities. These forms of violence represent some of the ways in which violence is gendered and continues to be framed through a heteronormative lens, thus maintaining the centrality of the traditional, heterosexual family at the center of political, economic, and social life. This chapter addresses the perpetuation of homophobia and transphobia as it is inherent in Ecuador’s modernization project and as it has been politically contested in the context of neoliberal and post-neoliberal2 governance during the 1990s and 2000s. Specifically, I analyze the 1998 and 2008 constitutional reforms as a discursive and institutional realm in which constitutional assembly members struggled to redefine the family and remake the nation. In 1998, Ecuador was the first country in the region to include an antidiscrimination clause on the basis of sexual orientation in its constitution. In constitutional reform in ecuador · 129 2008, an additional antidiscrimination clause on the basis of gender identity was added and the legal definition of “the family” was expanded to the new...