Pathways
Sexuality Matters. IDS Bulletin 37.5
2005 - 2006
Lead Researchers: Andrea Cornwall , Susie Jolly
This bulletin addresses a theme that mainstream development has persisently neglected: sexuality. Drawing on a workshop held at the Institute of Development Studies in 2005, it seeks to show why sexuality matters. It features papers from the workshop which provide diverse accounts of sexual rights conceptions, mobilisation, and new approaches to implementation.
Resources For This Project
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Developing Sexual Rights: Challenges And Trends In Latin America, IDS Bulletin, 37.5
In recent years in Latin America, the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people have received greater institutional attention, and legislative gains have been made across the continent. Using a typology of legal frameworks, this article explores trends, challenges and prospects for advancing efforts to address discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in Latin America. It argues that deepening and adequately understanding LGBT rights and how they can be protected and promoted at multiple levels is an indispensable task for legal authorities, professionals and civil society. By proceeding in this direction, a fruitful dialogue can be established between law-making and jurisprudence, public policies, and civil society initiatives. …
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Enhancing Sensuality For Safer Sex Among Men In India, IDS Bulletin, 37.5
Stigma and legal sanctions against homosexuality, as well as gender norms among men who have sex with men, lead to an emphasis on aggression, power play and penetration in male-to-male sex in India. This in turn contributes to low levels of condom use among men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender people, and increases the risk of HIV and ill-health. This article explores the potential for promotion of more sensuous, pleasurable, and communicative sex which could also be safer. The article draws on the author’s research as well as on his personal experience working as a masseur in Kolkata Massage parlours which provide commercial sexual services to male clients. …
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Eroticism, Sensuality And 'Women's Secrets' Among The Baganda, IDS Bulletin, 37.5
Talk of ‘ensonga za Ssenga’ (Ssenga matters) among the Baganda of Uganda signifies an institution that has endured through centuries as a tradition of sexual initiation. At the helm is the paternal aunt (or surrogate versions thereof) whose role is to tutor young women in a range of sexual matters, including pre-menarche practices, pre-marriage preparation, erotics and reproduction. In contemporary Uganda, commercial Ssenga services abound, with Ssenga columns and call-in radio programmes and Ssenga booklets on sale in Kampala’s streets. The institution is being transformed by “modernization” and urbanization, re-drawing the boundaries of Ssenga to suit the times. …
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Exploring Linkages Between Sexuality And Rights To Tackle Poverty, IDS Bulletin, 37.5
Sexuality and sexual rights have generally been treated as secondary to the ‘really important matters’. This article explores the linkages between sexual rights and other rights which are considered to be priorities in development, such as health, education and labour rights. This article does not argue that sexual rights are of equal importance to these other rights. Instead, it asserts that sexual rights are all these rights, in that sexuality and social norms surrounding it have huge impacts on health, education and work. …
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Introduction: Sexuality Matters, IDS Bulletin, 37.5
This IDS Bulletin addresses a theme that mainstream development has persistently neglected: sexuality. Why is sexuality a development concern? Because sexuality matters to people, and is an important part of most people’s lives. Because development policies and practices are already having a significant – and often negative – impact on sexuality, and because sexuality and the societal norms that seek to contain and control it have, in turn, a significant impact on poverty and well-being. Development needs to move beyond the current limited and negative approaches, to embrace the significance of sexuality for development in more affirmative ways. …
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Man Hunt Intimacy: Man Clean Bathroom: Women, Sexual Pleasure, Gender Violence And HIV, IDS Bulletin, 37.5
The spread of HIV is affected by a wide range of factors including household income, domestic divisions of labour, seasonal workloads and expenditure, communication, relationships, gender violence, and sexual pleasure or dissatisfaction. Drawing on material from North and South America and Africa, the author concludes that the links between these issues are both universally experienced and critical to HIV prevention and mitigation. The author also challenges the rejection of ‘anecdote’ in formal research settings, particularly when the stories told by women – and men – are so similar and so widespread. The Stepping Stones training methodology supports participants’ own analyses of these links in their lives, and has enabled them to work out their own mutually agreeable solutions. …
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Promoting Sexual Rights Through Human Rights Education: Experiences At Grassroots In Turkey, IDS Bulletin, 37.5
Control of women’s sexuality is the root cause of many women’s human rights violations, such as ‘honour’ crimes, early and forced marriages and female genital mutilation. The Turkish organisation Women for Women’s Human Rights (WWHR) – New Ways, contests this control of women’s sexuality, taking an affirmative approach to sexuality to open up space for women to claim their rights. In 2004, WWHR led a campaign for reform of the Turkish penal code which resulted in over 30 amendments on sexual and bodily rights of women and girls in Turkey, including criminalisation of marital rape and removal of a provision granting sentence reductions for ‘honour’ killings. They have also run human rights trainings for over 4,500 women throughout Turkey which include a module on sexual rights promoting the idea that women have a right to sexual pleasure. …
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Putting The Sexy Back Into Safer Sex: The Pleasure Project, IDS Bulletin, 37.5
Pleasure – and even sex itself – have been noticeably absent from much of dialogue surrounding sexually transmitted infections and the spread of HIV/AIDS. Safer sex and good sex are not mutually exclusive, yet most established educational programmes give the impression that they are, by using only fear of risk and disease to motivate their audience to practise safer sex. Yet evidence suggests that positive incentives provide the most effective way to get people to want to have safer sex. The Pleasure Project works with these incentives – pleasure and desire – to build bridges between the pleasure/sex industry and the safer sex world. …
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Race, Culture, Power, Sex, Desire, Love: Writing In 'Men Who Have Sex With Men', IDS Bulletin, 37.5
Many names are given to identities and practices that suggest or involve sexual activity between men: queer, gay, homosexual, dandy, batty man, queen, bachelor, fag, etc. In international development, however, ‘men who have sex with men’ (MSM) has fast become the preferred descriptor for the myriad expressions of same sex desire by men. This term was originally proposed as an alternative to ‘gay’ or ‘bisexual’ by grassroots activists and healthcare workers concerned about the impact of sexually transmitted diseases in their communities. This was a radical gesture at the time, a sharp refusal of the dominant narratives about sexual orientation and sexual behaviour that were being relayed by organisations led by white, gay-identified men. …
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Reclaiming Travesti Histories, IDS Bulletin, 37.5
In pre-colonial Peru the distinctions between male and female were far more flexible than they are today. A traditional ‘travesti’ or transgender/transvestite identity and culture existed and played an important role in Andean religion and society. Colonial and subsequently development influences suppressed these identities and communities, although the Peruvian travesti remained. In contemporary Peru travestis face violence from the public and police, as well as economic exclusion and discrimination by health services. …
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Reflections On The Language Of Rights From A Queer Perspective, IDS Bulletin, 37.5
The language of rights has been of great value to queer movements, particularly in the context of claim making vis-à-vis the state. There are however significant limitations of the rights language that need to be recognised. This article focuses attention on these, drawing on the experience of PRISM (People for Rights of Indian Sexuality Minorities), a queer activist forum based in Delhi, India. The rights language pushes us into a limiting framework of identity politics. …
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Sex And The Rights Of Man, IDS Bulletin, 37.5
What can men’s interest be in the social and sexual revolution being proposed by advocates for sexual rights? The first answer to this question is to recognise that some men’s sexual rights have long been violated. Those men who ‘betray’ their gender through their ‘feminine’ representation and/or sexual relations with other men are especially vulnerable to such violation. Violence maintains the gender and sexuality hierarchy by keeping the men ‘who are not men enough’ in their place. But what about the men who appear to be, or strive to be, ‘man enough’? What can be said of their sexual rights? Perhaps the most basic demand of advocates for sexual rights is that people be free to live their sexual lives without coercion. …
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Sexualities And Development: A Story In Pictures, IDS Bulletin, 37.5
Current debates on sexuality and development need to be seen in relation to a longer historical cycle. This contribution provides a pictorial overview of the last three decades, laying out the diverse influences from the 1970s, which produced both the Washington Consensus and Foucault’s History of Sexuality, through to the current paradoxes of the 1990s and 2000s, with advances in sexual rights struggles pitted against the rise in conservatisms and fundamentalisms. This time line roots current sexual rights struggles in recent history, showing how the same themes resurface and gain new meanings over time. Throughout this history, how does development deal with sexuality? Development language regarding sexuality is far from transparent. …
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Sexuality And Women's Sexual Rights In The Gambia, IDS Bulletin, 37.5
Drawing on grassroots activism by the women’s rights NGO GAMCOTRAP, this article considers contested forms of sexuality in the Gambia. Among these are polygamy, early marriage, sexual abuse, female genital mutilation, marital/statutory rape, forced retirement by spouse from sex due to menopause, trafficking in women, and lesbianism. Arguments relating to Gambian culture and Islam are central to the contestations around these issues. For example, some men cite articles in the Koran as justifying polygamy, and many women accept this as their right. …
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Sexual Rights Are Human Rights: But How Can We Convince The United Nations?, IDS Bulletin, 37.5
In 1995, sexual rights were articulated in the Beijing Platform for Action. Now, however, principles agreed many years ago are being deemed too radical to be cited in new texts. In the face of these roll-backs, and at a time when activists are being silenced by funding restrictions, what possibility is there of progress? Drawing on examples from the Commission on Human Rights, the 49th Commission on the Status of Women (Beijing Plus Ten) and the Commission on Population and Development, this article examines the obstacles to progress, the challenges to and of maintaining the status quo and the opportunities we must seize if we are to realize the potential of sexual rights. We must not lose the hard-won gains from the International Conference on Population and Development, the Fourth World Conference on Women and other for a. …
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Sex Workers' Struggles In Bangladesh: Learning For The Women's Movement, IDS Bulletin, 37.5
In 1999, the government of Bangladesh forcefully evicted sex workers from a large cluster of brothels just outside Dhaka. Members of the sex worker organisation, Ulka, immediately sought support from Naripokkho, a country-wide women’s NGO. The Naripokkho office was transformed into an impromptu shelter with over 40 women sleeping there, and a few more staying with staff in their homes. This led to a new set of relationships and alliances between the sex workers and staff. …
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Small Powers, Little Choice: Contextualising Reproductive And Sexual Rights In Slums In Bangladesh, IDS Bulletin, 37.5
How do young married women fare in an urban slum in Bangladesh? This article is based on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork among 153 married adolescent girls, aged 15–19, in a Dhaka slum, carried out from December 2001–January 2003. The author finds a shift away from the traditional arranged marriage practices, with 81 out of 153 young women having “love” marriages. Young women now have greater mobility and freedom to choose their own partners, but at the same time, face greater instability in marital relations. The lived experiences of engaging in sexual relations with their spouses are fraught with contradictions. …
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Sodomy In India: Sex Crime Or Human Right?, IDS Bulletin, 37.5
There is a wide spectrum of sexual acts, practices and identities worldwide. The existing language of sexual rights has emerged largely in relation to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. In turn, this language seems to cater primarily to LGBT or similar such identities. Heterosexuals may be excluded, as well as indigenous same sex practising or transgender people who do not identify as LGB or T, such as the Hijras of South Asia. …
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Terms Of Contact And Touching Change: Investigating Pleasure In An HIV Epidemic, IDS Bulletin, 37.5
Western-led discussions of sexual health have foregrounded warnings of the dangers of sex. Yet, pleasure is one important reason why people have sex. Sexual health work must open up discussion of how pleasure can be experienced with less risk. There are challenges in addressing pleasure in work on safer sex. …
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The (Im)Possibility Of Child Sexual Rights In South African Children's Account Of HIV/AIDS, IDS Bulletin, 37.5
A key strategy in the fight against HIV/AIDS is to safeguard the rights of those who are infected and at risk of infection. However, because of the association with sexuality, the rights of young children are not often addressed. Instead, children are represented as innocent and ignorant of sexuality and HIV/AIDS. This article challenges that representation, based on a study of 7 and 8-year-olds in a black township in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. …
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Vagina Sisters, Crying Mine, Soap Opera Stars And Sushi: The Story Of The Vagina Monologues In Belgrade, IDS Bulletin, 37.5
In spring 2006, the Vagina Monologues was staged in Serbia for the first time. Performed by well-known actresses, including a celebrity soap star, the show attracted a wide audience of people beyond those usually interested in the women’s movement. Hundreds of young girls came to see the soap star, but at the same time they heard about pleasure and orgasm, and how to love their bodies, as well as about sexual abuse and domestic violence. Men in the audience cried with emotion. …
