Adopted by the Board of Directors
May 2020 | Washington, DC
Resolution 2020-001
Gender-based and sexual violence against women, children, and gender-nonconforming, two-spirit and transgender people is embedded in the fabric of our society. It is manifested in racialized sexism and misogyny throughout the economic, educational, healthcare, legislative, and judicial systems in the United States and Native Sovereign Nations that particularly affects Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities. And it is compounded further by homophobia. This violence produces egregious personal and generational trauma and undermines the creation of a more just world. However all people have the right to live lives free of fear of gender-based and sexual violence, and in our efforts to create a more equitable future, humanists believe that we can remediate this form of violence through collective and individual action.
WHEREAS misogyny and violence—encompassing sexual assault, sexual harassment, intimate-partner violence, human trafficking, female child genital mutilation, and violence against a person because of their perceived gender or sexuality that impacts children, women, two-spirit, transgender and gender-nonconforming people—is deeply ingrained in American society, and
WHEREAS gender-based and sexual violence is perpetrated by and supports white supremacy, and
WHEREAS lesbian, gay, bisexual, gender-nonconforming, two-spirit, transgender, and gender-nonconforming people are disproportionately impacted by gender-based and sexual violence, and
WHEREAS gender-based and sexual violence is systemic insofar as it has infiltrated and is sustained by our education, healthcare, economic, legislative, judicial, and labor systems and infrastructures, and
WHEREAS gender-based and sexual violence is normalized by the everyday sexism and rape culture that seek to diminish the bodily autonomy of women, and
WHEREAS those in positions of power too often use that power to exact sexual harm, and
WHEREAS Black, Indigenous, and Latina women are disproportionately impacted by intimate-partner violence, sexual assault, human trafficking, and HIV/AIDS and STI contraction, and
WHEREAS women of color experience increased surveillance, higher rates of arrest, and higher rates of incarceration than white women, and
WHEREAS Black women and girls have some of the highest rates of domestic sex trafficking and commercial child sexual exploitation in the nation, and are more likely to be criminalized and incarcerated for prostitution, and
WHEREAS gender-based violence severely impacts the life chances of Black, Brown, and Indigenous women and girls through lifelong trauma that is passed on to children, and
WHEREAS Indigenous women, and girls experience greater rates of gender-based violence when extractive industries bring large numbers of male workers into close proximity to indigenous communities through labor camps, and missing and murdered Indigenous and Black women, girls, two spirit and gender-nonconforming people continue to be undercounted and underserved, and
WHEREAS intimate-partner violence takes the form of physical, emotional, psychological, verbal, and financial abuse, compounding the difficulty faced by victims to safely leave their abuser, and
WHEREAS the aforementioned inequities reflect institutional and systemic disparities in wealth distribution and income that undermine the self-determination, wellbeing, and economic sustainability of Black, Brown, and Indigenous women and racialized communities of color;
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the AMERICAN HUMANIST ASSOCIATION, in the pursuit of equity,
AFFIRMS the rights of cisgender and transgender women, gender non-conforming people, and femmes to live lives free from misogyny and violence, and
AFFIRMS its support for equity in education, including governmental measures to interrupt the school-to-prison pipeline, install anti-sexist, science-based sex education and violence prevention curricula, as well as to fulfill existing obligations to protect students from disparate impact discrimination, as codified in Title IX, and
AFFIRMS that victims of gender-based and sexual crimes are entitled to the full support of law enforcement, which includes the swift eradication of the national rape-kit backlog, adequate resources for a national database of federal and state cases of missing and murdered women, and adequate resources for unresolved cases of missing and murdered women that closes jurisdiction gaps, and
AFFIRMS its support for federal legislation that protects unregulated work, such as sex work and domestic labor, as work, including the rights of laborers to unionize, and to conduct business free from harassment and abuse, and
AFFIRMS its support for the decriminalization of sex work and the decriminalization of human trafficking victims forced or coerced to commit crimes, and
AFFIRMS its opposition to female child genital mutilation, and
AFFIRMS, after a gender-based or sexual crime is committed, the power of local communities to restore justice through community-based solutions, and
AFFIRMS its support for stronger oversight of extractive corporations that place temporary labor camps on Indigenous land or in close proximity to Indigenous communities and punitive measures for corporations that create environments where women and girls are vulnerable to violence, and
AFFIRMS the right of states to mandate the reporting of child abuse from those entrusted with the care of children, including clergy members, and
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the American Humanist Association calls upon all who are able and should be concerned about gender-based and sexual violence—and its intersection with white supremacy—to do your part to make this a better world for us all now and in the future. Support, with your voice, vote, time, energy, resources, and participation, the legislation, candidates, and action groups that center Black, Brown, and Indigenous people in their work to eliminate gender-based and sexual violence.