Unspoken Rules: Sexual Orientation and Women's Human Rights

by Rachel Rosenbloom, Charlotte Bunch (Foreword)

This courageous and groundbreaking book documents human rights violations against women in 30 countries around the world and discusses the strategies that lesbian activists and other human rights advocates have employed to challenge such oppression. Placing lesbian rights within the framework of the broader struggle for women's human rights, this book demonstrates how women's rights and lesbian rights are linked in substantive ways. Both issues highlight how human rights distinctions between the private and public, as well as reluctance to address female sexuality, have perpetuated violations of women and kept them invisible. Furthermore, the defence of lesbian rights is integral to the defence of women's right to determine their own sexuality, to work at the jobs they prefer and to live as they choose with women, men, children or alone. Homophobia, it is argued, is used as a tool to keep women in line and force them to accept their society's assigned gender roles and limitations.

160 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1996