Image made by Gabriela Mesones on Canva Pro for Global Voices
Gender expression offers a broad panoply of joy, beauty, and self-determination, and free gender expression is a fundamental human right. And yet, all over the world, we are seeing that right attacked by governments, religious groups, and political organizations, often enabled by Big Tech. While some places have seen an opening in terms of permissiveness and regulation, we are now seeing an active rolling back of rights and freedoms all over the world, especially with legislation targeting trans people.
Attacks on gender diversity can take a wide range of forms, from undermining the autonomy of women to specific persecution of trans, intersex, and non-binary people, to restrictions on administrative options for gender, to toxically constrained cultures for masculinity, and more. They are underpinned by a range of justifications, many of which are tied to national, ethnic, and religious identity.
So much of the international media coverage focuses on tracking attitudes and regulation in a small minority of wealthy countries, or follows stereotypes about other countries, necessarily and automatically restricting gender expression, regardless of the actual history and cultures involved. Global Voices uses its network to amplify underrepresented voices, and in this Spotlight, we want to bring out a wide range of perspectives and analyze the variety of situations around attacks on gender expression, the resistance to those attacks, and the joys of freedom around the world.
We have so many stories to tell, and not enough budget for all of them. The global funding crisis has made it harder to report on these issues, even as that reporting is more and more vital. Donate now, and your contribution will go towards paying our editors and other staff so that we can offer you more of these urgent insights from around the world.
Rewards
Each individual donation of $25 or more will receive an eBook copy of the full Spotlight issue once it’s complete.
Stretch goals (cumulative)
$1,000: An additional Undertones column analyzing narrative trends — we have more ideas for fascinating narrative analysis stories than we can produce at our current budget, help us add another one!
$1,500: An additional online panel, bringing together experts, journalists, and analysts to discuss an aspect of the theme!
$3,000: A podcast including follow-up interviews with editors and contributors, highlighting some of the most interesting stories in the Spotlight issue)
$10,000: An additional article from each of our regions. Most of our editors have far more article ideas on this topic than they can complete in their paid hours. Help us pay them more, and you get more fantastic insights into gender diversity!
$15,000: Surprise! Based on the topic and our learnings from it so far, we’ll choose an add-on that we think will add the most to our understanding of the Spotlight theme.
Any funds that don’t make it to a stretch goal level will still be used to support the Global Voices newsroom!
You can also support additional translation of all of our stories by donating to Lingua.
