Agenda 2030? What will 2030 look like for LGBTI people?

With the adoption of the 2030 Agenda by the UN, everyone is looking forward to that year. What will 2030 look like for LGBTI people? The scenarios below are random mixes of prediction and speculative fiction, but I think they are all plausible futures. What do you think are plausible visions of what 2030 will look like? Please comment at the bottom of the page.

• A non-binary population explosion

  The group of people who identify as non-binary, initially highly concentrated among the 14 to 24 age group, will expand to include people in their early adult years. In some places, the number of non-binary people will rise to 4% of the entire population, more than trans and about the same as openly LGB people. Heterosexual people who identify as nonbinary will outnumber any other non-binary group.

  There will be multiple contested meanings of the concept of non-binary. Some non-binary people will consider themselves transgender, having rejected their gender assigned at birth. Some will consider themselves as cisgender “non-binary male” or “non-binary female,” meaning that they reject the notion that their male or female gender needs to be part of a binary gender system. LGBTI organizations will struggle with the issue of whether the movement includes heterosexual, cisgender, non-binary people.

• Emergence of new sexual orientations of enhanced humans

  The community will expand the notion of who is LGBTI by providing space to people whose sexual orientation is based on technology. Elon Musk and others will succeed in efforts to implant microchips in the human brain. These implants will enable people to communicate physical and emotional sensations to each other through remote, electronic connections, possibly as a part of a sexual interaction. Only a handful of people will have such implants by 2030, but some of them will identify their own sexual orientation as being oriented, not toward others specific genders, but toward other people with implants.

  Based the principles of bodily autonomy and the right to modify one’s own body, such as articulated in the Yogyakarta Principles, ILGA and other groups will easily recognize people with technology-based sexual orientations as being part of the LGBTI community. Debates about what letter represents this population will commence.

• More countries understanding their LGBTI Populations

  More countries will begin to collect anonymized data on the sexual orientation and gender identity of its populations. This will happen in countries that have a well-developed statistical capacity, and are supportive of LGBTI rights. We might expect Mexico, India, Chile, Peru, Costa Rica, Serbia, Urugay, Croatia, Columbia, South Africa, and Thailand to be among those countries.

  They will do this by adding questions to national surveys about health, income and living conditions. Sexual orientation questions will include items about sexual behavior/history and sexual identity. The two-step approach to gender identity will become the global standard, meaning one question about sex/gender assigned at birth and a second question about current gender. People with the same answer on both will be categorized as cisgender and people with different answer categorized as transgender.

  Some countries will try questions using some form of the word transgender, or terms used to identify indigenous identities, but because too many people don’t know these words, the rate of mistaken answers on these questions will render the data useless. Some countries will estimate the size of their intersex population by collecting data and sex characteristics from medical databases.

• Political leaders, pinkwashing, and violence in the US

  Lots of LGBTI people will be elected to office in all parts of the world, leading to the passage of pro-LGBTI laws in legislative bodies where openly LGBTI people sit. However, nationalist, right-wing parties will pinkwash. We will see a small number of high profile LGBTI nationalist political leaders who will try to use their sexuality/gender to portray their political agenda as inclusive. These candidates might do well for other reasons, but few people will fall for their pinkwashing gimmick.

  In the United States, deadly political riots will break out, triggered by shootings at election events and local meetings about trans and race issues in schools. Gun ownership will continue to increase, including by LGBTI people, bringing the total number of people in the US who live in a household with a gun to above 50%. While all LGBTI movement groups will stay on the left, some LGBTI people will become visibly active in militias nationalist groups.

• Intimacy wins, sexual freedom fades

  Courts will increasingly rule in favor of LGBTI people, but only when they conform to heteronormative standards. Building upon previous similar rulings in the US, India and Botswana, a small number of Courts will strike down sodomy laws by recognizing a right to same-sex love and intimacy rather than same-sex sex. Laws prohibiting public sex, sex with more than one person, interage sex, and the sale of sex toys will be upheld, even when enforced only against LGBTI people.

  Some LGBTI people will get snared in a newly established international sex-offender registry.

  National and local governments will continue to look to the Yogyakarta Principles as a reliable description of the rights of LGBTI people, and will also use the language of the principles, particularly the definitions of sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, and sex characteristics. However, in one such jurisdiction, an employer will fire a gay man who identifies himself to coworkers as a ‘sexy gay slut’ and tells them that he has anonymous grinder hook-ups all the time. The employer’s attorney will successfully argue that, according to the definition of sexual orientation taken from the Principles, casual sexual encounters are not a manifestation of sexual orientation.

  The Court will agree that the definition sexual orientation only refers to sexual relations that are intimate, emotional, affectional and profound, and the worker was being fired for sex that was superficial and purely physical. Additionally, the definition lacks any reference to any form of expression or identity, thus excluding his statements to his coworkers as being part of his sexual orientation. Though his case will proceed on other grounds, this decision will cause a group of international human rights experts to join in an effort to create a new definition and seek repeal of the previous definition wherever it has been adopted.

• Data breaks stereotypes - Children and rural LGBTI

  Countries that gather anonymized information about their LGBTI population will discover that the stereotype of LGBTI people living in cities without children is completely wrong. More LGBTI people than previously thought are raising children, either their own or children of others. Additionally, LGBTI people live in rural, culturally conservative areas. Knowing the exact number of children in the care of LGBTI people will increase the willingness of leaders to protect LGBTI families (and to a backlash on this issue). Rural politicians will re-examine the need to be accountable to rural LGBTI populations.

• Gender becomes legally less relevant

  Laws to remove gender designations from various government documents will become the new wave of gender-related laws around the world. In places/situations where it is considered illegal to place race/ethnicity labels on people, courts will begin holding that it is also illegal to assign gender labels.

  Advocates for trans youth in sports will shift strategies, spending less time talking about the benefits of participation in sports and more time talking about the realities of being a trans kid. Voices and images of trans kids speaking for themselves will become more common.

  Most large humanitarian organizations will develop, in concept, approaches to help transgender people in emergencies, though implementation will be spotty. Trans people themselves will be the ones to provide leadership in disasters and conflicts

• Trans people get $ and status

  Non-LGBTI micro-finance organizations like Grameen and BRAC assist more and more trans entrepreneurs. These projects are able to provide some, but often not much, additional income. However, successful trans entrepreneurs will become known in their communities as business owners, increasing their social status and decreasing stigma.

• Data shows LGBTI vulnerable to climate change

  Climate change will explicitly become an issue for LGBTI organizations in some countries. Data gathered in countries that collect anonymized data about the population will show that LGBTI people tend to live in less neighborhoods more heavily impacted by climate change — flooding, ground pollution, sanitation and power problems. This data will lead to organizing by LGBTI people about climate response and housing.

• Job sectors become purple collar

  Countries that collect anonymized data about their LGBTI populations begin to see that LGBTI workers are concentrated in certain sectors which become known as “purple collar jobs.” Though it varies, evidence shows that call centers, hospitality and tourism, private security, ITC, translation/linguistics, and airplane mechanics are some of the industries. This data leads to efforts to form LGBTI employee resource groups, insure these sectors have non-discrimination laws, and that the employer companies are supportive of the LGBTI community.

• Elton John and Ian McKellan

  You knew what this one was going to be. We don’t all live forever (except for Cher, she might live forever).

• Indigenous sexualities and genders go global

  Coalitions of people with traditional, indigenous sexual and gender identities become highly visible at the UN and regional bodies. This is spurred by new research documenting such identities in Asia and Africa as well as a number of people with such identities becoming political leaders. Additionally, efforts to collect data on LGBTI populations conclusively confirms the existence of indigenous populations in many regions. And, as always, funding. These coalitions get funding to advocate in global human rights fora. The existence of such groups holds a rhetorical power for those who believe that variations in gender and sexuality is a modern, Western phenomenon.