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Susie Jolly’s chapter is a nuanced account of how Chinese activists have drawn on the possibilities afforded by international forces, agendas and discourses, to broaden openings available in the flux and ambivalence of processes nearer to home. Jolly highlights the great overlap among donors, government and activists, showing that the boundaries between these institutional spaces are in fact porous, rather than partitioned from one another. …

Susie Jolly asks if we can reclaim sexual pleasure from the grip of the market and influence the terms on which the market engages with pleasure. She proposes a political perspective on sexuality which challenges the structures and ideologies that generate guilt and shame and make pleasure more accessible to some groups than others. …

Images of women as victims are rampant in gender and development. This is particularly the case in discussions of sexuality, where the world is portrayed as so fraught with danger, it seems almost impossible to imagine women enjoying themselves. This focus on the negative can be paralysing – both in terms of ease with one’s own body, and in terms of mobilising around women’s wants and desires. And such narratives dovetail with religious right agendas to protect women’s chastity. …