Politics & International Relations
Sexual Politics
Sexual politics refers to the ways in which power dynamics, social norms, and institutions intersect with sexuality and gender. It encompasses the political struggles for sexual and reproductive rights, gender equality, and LGBTQ+ rights. This field of study examines how political systems and policies impact individuals' sexual identities, behaviors, and relationships.
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5 Key excerpts on "Sexual Politics"
eBook - PDF- Vanessa May, Petra Nordqvist, Vanessa May, Petra Nordqvist(Authors)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Bloomsbury Academic(Publisher)
A common criticism is that life-politics as described above ignores the fact that gender and sexual relations vary across cultures, as well as according to factors such as social class and ethnicity . In addition to this, critics contest the empirical basis of the life-politics argument and the way it has ignored much of the existing theory and research on gender and sexualities. Nevertheless, several strands of the existing research on gender and sexualities also have similar weaknesses in terms of imposing their Western, white and middle-class meanings on the practices they observe and analyse. They can also be criticised for their rootedness in more or less wholly oppressive analyses of power, and their denial of the political agency inherent in everyday life. The point, therefore, is not to focus on one model for answering the sociological questions that the contemporary politics of personal life raises with respect to sexuality. It is to construct sociological ways of examining sexuality and its implications for the politics of everyday living that bring existing different ways of understanding sexuality into conversation so as to explore the politics of sexual lives as they are: dynamic, emergent, and multidimensional. The politics of LGBTQ ways of living This section considers some late twentieth-century analyses of LGBTQ ways of living and relating and how they differed from heterosexual ones. It considers the implications of denigration, exclusion, and inequality for SOCIOLOGY OF PERSONAL LIFE 164 the everyday politics of sexual life, and aims to show how LGBTQ people responded to these in a combination of emancipatory, biopolitical, and life-political ways. Prior to the development of active LGBTQ communities and polit-ical movements, the cultural image of LGBTQ lives was one of lonely and isolated individuals who lived secretly in the shadow of the het-erosexual mainstream.
eBook - ePubThe Sexual History of the Global South
Sexual Politics in Africa, Asia and Latin America
- Saskia Wieringa, Horacio Sívori(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Zed Books(Publisher)
Ahmed 2005 ).In this introductory chapter we address two themes that cut across the empirical contributions in the various chapters: the interrogation of the colonialist gaze that has constituted sexuality and sexual subjects as an object of scientific inquiry, state repression, and bio-political intervention in the global South; and the conception of sexualities as an inherently localized phenomenon.Whose sexuality, whose gaze?If the meanings of sexuality and the production of sexual knowledge are part of a social process, it becomes important to interrogate its cultural and historic conditions, and locate the actors involved in that process. Colonialism, modernization, the Cold War, the surge of neoliberal policies over the past few decades, and the rise of new economic centers of power have a large impact on gender orders, bodily practices, and sexual subjectivities. National political and economic elites, religious leaders, international organizations such as WHO, UNAIDS, UN Women (formerly UNIFEM), and the World Bank, as well as Western and non-Western intellectuals and experts, have played a substantial role not only in shaping sexual subjectivities and regulating sexuality, but also in the classification of ‘sexual subcultures’ globally. The historical trajectory of studies of sexuality in the global South is also the history of a gaze constituted at the confluence of modern medical science and Western colonial expansion, which catalogued Southern perspectives on gender and the erotic as exotic innocent curiosities, at best, or degenerations at worst.
eBook - PDFThe Sexual History of the Global South
Sexual Politics in Africa, Asia and Latin America
- Saskia Wieringa, Horacio Sívori, Saskia Wieringa, Horacio Sívori(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Zed Books(Publisher)
The empirical study of Sexual Politics in locations as varied as republican Cuba, post-communist China, and twenty-first-century 9 1 · Wieringa and Sívori Keralam requires an open-minded exploration of a diversity of historical processes, embodied perspectives, and public claims. Bio-politics and heteronormativity In exploring historical articulations of modernity, sexuality, and the production of sexual knowledge in connection with processes of state formation and nation-building, a central concern in this vol- ume is the notion of ‘dangerous desires’ (Hollibaugh 2000), whose deployment has not only inflicted suffering upon, and led to the unfair treatment of, sexual dissidents (Al-Ghafari, Kumaramkandath, Cordeiro, Sierra Madero, and Sempol, this volume), but has meant the sexual disciplining of modern nations’ citizenry (Ndjio, this volume). Bio-power refers to the numerous and diverse techniques for achiev- ing the subjugation of bodies and the control of populations (Lemke 2001) and is a constitutive component in the government of colonial territories and modern nation-states. In early twentieth-century Latin America, bio-politics peaked with the expansion of eugenics (Stepan 1991), which reverberated in the late twentieth-century development rationalities of population control, public health, reproductive poli- cies, disease prevention, and, lately, the expansion of a human rights framework across the global South (Pigg and Adams 2005). While, to a certain degree, the success of feminist and LGBT movements, together with the expansion of the human rights discourse and a global concern with gender equality, has led to the empowerment of women and sexual minorities, the circulation of notions such as reproductive and sexual health implies the continued medicalization of sexuality. Heteronormativity is a core element of the workings of bio-power, regulating the moral codification of sexuality.
eBook - PDF- Anne Sisson Runyan(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
1 Introduction: Gender and Global Politics Why does gender matter in global politics? What difference does it make to view global politics through a gendered lens? What becomes visible when we see “international relations” as interconnected relations of inequality—among genders, races, classes, sexualities, and nationalities—as opposed to simply interactions between and among self-interested states? What are the costs of being inattentive to gendered dynamics in global politics for addressing a myriad of world problems that ultimately affect us all? In this introductory chapter, an overview is presented of the contemporary relationships between gender and global politics. It begins with a conceptual discussion of gender as a dichotomous power relation and normative ordering power, referred to as the power of gen-der , a meta-lens that fosters dichotomization, stratification, and depoliticization in thought and action through the processes of masculinization and feminization , thereby sustaining global power structures and crises that prevent, militate against, or reverse meaningful advances in social equality and justice. It then addresses why adopting not only a gender lens , but more importantly a gendered lens , informed by intersectional thinking, is important for understanding how the gender interacts with other power relations, such as race, class, sexuality, and nationality (including power relations among nations as well as those based on national origin) to produce both gender and gendered divisions of power , violence , and labor and resources in global governance, global security, and global political economy, the principal areas of inquiry in the study of International Relations (IR). These divisions, in turn, keep in place and exacerbate the crises of representation , insecurity , and sustainability in global politics, which are also introduced.
eBook - PDF- Robert J. Sternberg, Karin Sternberg(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
117 117 Chapter 6 Love Is Political: How Power and Bias Influence Our Intimate Lives Terri D. Conley, Staci Gusakova, and Jennifer L. Piemonte Love 1 is political. Not political in the sense of governments or elections – though we would argue that such institutions do regulate love – but in a broader sense. In her book, Sexual Politics, Kate Millett (1970) used the term “politics” to refer to the ways in which people jockey for power within groups. We borrow this approach as we address the issue of love. Love pol- itics, we argue, refers to the ways in which love can be used to manipu- late power dynamics in relationships, the ways in which love processes may reflect societal inequalities, and how loving relationships are often embedded in larger social structures. By deeming love political, we mean to suggest that love is a power-laden dynamic and the social structures that we inhabit influence how power unfolds in loving contexts. Some groups have (presently and historically) more power in society than others. When members of groups with different social statuses interact in loving relationships, power differences manifest themselves, making the process of loving others more complex and challenging. We suggest that being aware of this power dynamic could lead to smoother sailing as we navigate our relationships. In this chapter, we will consider how a variety of social positions (i.e. one’s status as a member of a particular gender or racial/ ethnic group, sexual orientation, body-type category, relationship status, etc.) can shape the experience of love, sex and relationships. Most people assume (sensibly) that when they tumble into a loving rela- tionship, they are there of their own volition – they alone are making decisions about their dyad.
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