Queering Gender Equality: UN SDG 5 Beyond the Sex_Gender Binary

With the aim of introducing a queer perspective to the UN SDG 5, the article explores tensions between gender equality politics and gender diversity politics within different strands of the United Nations (UN). It asks if there is indeed an irresolvable dilemma concerning gender equality and LGBTI+ diversity politics. Analyzing programmatic material found online on websites of UN bodies focusing on gender equality or LGBTI+ rights, the article concludes that the shift towards the SOGIEC (sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics) approach in Human Rights law (see Yogyakarta principles), provides a decisive steps towards resolving the dilemma. In looking at current reforms in German Civil Status Law, the article moves from critically considering the newly established sex-gender registration ‘diverse’ towards queerversity, which is offered as a modification of diversity politics. The principle of queerversity is meant to function as a political corrective, an ethical attitude and an aesthetic strategy. As such it combines the avowal of multiplicity, ambiguity and alterity with struggles against discrimination, social inequalities and the intersectional complexity of regimes of domination. Consequently, the article proposes the principle of queerversity as an overarching perspective of intersectional justice.