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So you've had a whole day now, How did it go? I think this is a fabulous conference. I've been to many conferences, human rights conferences back home in Australia and what I have noticed a discernible difference is the engagement with the indigenous culture. Here in New Zealand, there's a lot more active participation of indigenous voices and and a strong presence of indigenous values and cultural processes reflected [00:00:30] in the in the kind of approach and the methods that the conference utilises, which unfortunately, Australia is still lacking somewhat. Um, we have a traditional, uh, welcome to country or acknowledgement to country back home. But the participation of diverse voices, um, specifically indigenous voices is quite limited. So, um, I felt particularly struck and particularly moved by the, um the level of indigenous participation in the conference so far, and, um, [00:01:00] the level of diversity within this conference as well. And the fact that you know, this is a conference dedicated to diversity, and it's not simply rhetoric or lip service, um, and that you know, the the constituency is not diverse themselves, but this is actually a conference where the content and the participants are largely reflective. of one another. Um, so, yeah, that's probably been my most striking, um, observation since the first day. One of the things that struck me was that the the the quality of indigenous contribution [00:01:30] is not necessarily about LGBTI. It's about who people were before the West, for instance, came Absolutely. Um, I think that's another fascinating observation Is that you know, when people talk about LGBTI Q people, it's often through a very stereotyped lens of, you know, um, you know this Western idea of what constitutes sexuality. And here we have presentations from people from diverse cultural and ethnic communities. Uh, talking about [00:02:00] how their sexual practises, their desires, their intimacies, um, had all these complex ways of defining themselves prior to the imposition of colonial attitudes and laws and politics, which sought to define their relationships as necessarily gay or lesbian. And so it was really great to hear the kind of disparate nature of, um all these different experiences and the rich histories associated with, um you know, um, same sex sexual practises. Before colonialism came and entrenched this very [00:02:30] normative idea of sexuality and sought to police it in a particular way. And of course, it and, uh, following from that as well. It's important to see how it's not simply an issue of just sex. It's an issue about culture, about race, about faith, about spirituality, about geography and the fact that, um, a lot of our identities and ways of belonging are negotiated through many different kinds of attachments, not simply our sexual or gender attachments as well. Does economics come into it? [00:03:00] Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think the point that's been raised throughout this conference is that there is no aspect to our identity that can be taken out as a discrete portion. And economics is absolutely critical to that as well. You know, um, socio demographic status, the the access to capital and the mobility of financial mobility of certain groups enable some people to be more active participants of certain kinds of sexual communities, whereas others are limited in their choice of engagement [00:03:30] simply because of their financial means. So I think you know, economics, politics, geography, religion, race. They all operate together to highlight the fact that sexuality needs to be considered in very specific historical and cultural circumstances. I spoke to a woman who was a sex worker and clearly criminalised in the past or wherever she might go. Whatever country Asia Pacific reason that stops her from working, doesn't it? Um, [00:04:00] forgetting about how she expresses herself sexually or gender wise. Yeah, I think, um, what we've seen is the the criminalising provisions associated with, you know, consensual same sex activity or the criminalization of sex work has been really problematic, produced really poor health outcomes and has sought to police people's rights to determine over themselves, Uh, how they choose to use their bodies and what capacities they choose to use their bodies. Um, and you know, a lot of the rhetoric around, [00:04:30] um, sex work and criminalising sex work is to prevent, uh, forced trafficking and, um, specifically human trafficking of sex workers. But at the same time, that actually obscures the fact that a lot of sex workers choose to engage in these practises as part of an economy and that they should be free and entitled to have agency over their bodies and over their over their lives the same way any other professional has, um, to dictate how they choose to participate in any aspect of economic life. Um, and [00:05:00] if we are to create safe regulated, um, mechanisms for sex work and sex workers. It's absolutely essential that the criminal provisions be removed and that, you know, there is greater access to health care and services and, um, proper, um, you know, complaints, um, and scrutinising bodies and that, you know, sex workers aren't stigmatised or criminalised and, um, you know, treated on the margins of society, so to speak.
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