ANALYSIS OF THE LACK OF PROTECTION OF LESBIAN AND BISEXUAL WOMEN WITHIN THE SPANISH ASYLUM SYSTEM: A CLOSER LOOK INTO AND FROM THE PRIVATE SPHERE

Abstract

The dichotomy public/private sphere serves as a mechanism to maintain the subjection of women and sexual dissidences and their relegation to the Ostracism, both as individuals and as citizens. Lesbian and bisexual women are placed in the margins of the margins, not being their realities recognised nor legitimised, thus being their identities denied. Being the systems created from an androcentric perspective, their realities must fit the androcentric standards when entering the structural and institutional processes. This way, lesbian and bisexual female asylum seekers find great social, political, economic and legal obstacles to benefit and even to access a system that was built to protect human rights. However, whose human rights? The asylum system does not equally protect lesbian and bisexual women, having been built from and looking into the public sphere, it does not consider those realities tied to the family, the domestic and the private spheres, in which persecution takes a different form, ignored from the political realm. The grounds under which international protection can be applied for are in need of reconfiguration, as well as current notions about persecution and violence, and the processes and procedures of this system, effectively considering the female realities and the intersecting aspects that may generate differences between applicants, in a way that experiences and realities are understood as heterogeneous.