Sexuality

Citation:

Adams, Carol J., and Lori Gruen, eds. 2014. Ecofeminism: Feminist Intersections with Other Animals and the Earth. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

Authors: Carol J. Adams, Lori Gruen

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Topics: Environment, Feminisms, Ecofeminism, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gender Analysis, Sexuality

Year: 2014

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Baaz, Maria Eriksson, and Maria Stern. 2018. “Curious Erasures: The Sexual in Wartime Sexual Violence.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 20 (3): 295-314.

Authors: Maria Eriksson Baaz, Maria Stern

Abstract:

Wartime sexual violence is especially egregious precisely because it is a sexual form of violence that causes particular harms. Yet, curiously, and in contrast to feminist theory on sexual violence more generally, the sexual has been erased from frames of understanding in dominant accounts of wartime rape. This article places the seeming certainty that “wartime rape is not about sex (it’s about power/violence)” under critical scrutiny and poses questions about the stakes of the erasure of the sexual in explanations of conflict-related sexual violence. It argues that the particular urgency that accompanies this erasure reflects the workings of familiar distinctions between war and peace, as well as efforts to clearly recognize violence and separate it from sex. Erasing the sexual from accounts of wartime rape thus ultimately reinscribes the normal and the exceptional as separate and reproduces a reductive notion of heterosexual masculine sex (in peacetime) that is ontologically different from the violence of war.

Keywords: sexual violence, wartime, peacetime, rape, feminist theory, sexuality

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Gendered Discourses, Sexual Violence, Rape, Sexuality, Violence

Year: 2018

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Nagel, Joane. 2012. “Intersecting Identities and Global Climate Change.” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 19 (4): 467–76.

Author: Joane Nagel

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This article explores the place of race, class, gender, sexual and national identities and cultures in global climate change. Research on gendered vulnerabilities to disasters suggests that women are more vulnerable than men to many meteorological disasters related to climate change, specifically flooding and drought. This is because of their relative poverty, economic activities (especially subsistence agriculture) and the moral economies governing women's modesty in many cultures. Research on historical and contemporary links between masculinity and the military in environmental politics, polar research and large-scale strategies for managing risk, including from climate change, suggests that men and their perspectives have more influence over climate change policies because of their historical domination of science and government. I expect that masculinist identities, cultures and militarised institutions will tend to favour large-scale remedies, such as geoengineering, minimise mitigation strategies, such as reducing energy use, and emphasise ‘security’ problems of global climate change.

Keywords: gender, masculinity, climate change, militarism, identity

Topics: Class, Economies, Poverty, Environment, Climate Change, Environmental Disasters, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarism, Race, Security, Sexuality

Year: 2012

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Achilleos-Sarll, Columba. 2018. “Reconceptualising Foreign Policy as Gendered, Sexualised and Racialised: Towards a Postcolonial Feminist Foreign Policy (Analysis).” Journal of International Women’s Studies 19 (1): 34–49.

Author: Columba Achilleos-Sarll

Abstract:

How can we theorise more effectively the relationship among gender, sexuality, race and foreign policy? To explore this question, and to contribute to the nascent field of feminist foreign policy (analysis), this paper brings together two bodies of international relations (IR) literature: postcolonial feminism and post-positivist foreign policy analysis (FPA). This paper contributes a fundamental critique of both ‘conventional’ and ‘unconventional’ (namely post-positivist) FPA to demonstrate the lack of attention paid to postcolonial and feminist theories within FPA. In turn, this exposes the ways in which FPA marginalises, and renders inconsequential, the gendered, sexualised and racialised dimensions underwriting foreign policy practice and discourse. While post-positivist FPA seeks to rectify the silences that characterise ‘conventional’ and ‘unconventional’ (namely constructivist) FPA, this literature remains blind to the ways that intersecting oppressions, operating through hierarchies of social categories made possible through their naturalisation, inform the process, the production and the resultant gendered consequences of foreign policy. Moreover, while there are limited country-specific examinations (residing outside of FPA) on gender and foreign policy that offer useful insights, they are theoretically limited. Like much post-positivist feminism, these examinations privilege gender as a social category, omitting race and other markers of difference. Rather than presenting ‘gender’, ‘sexuality’ and ‘race’ as concepts only for interdisciplinary inquiry, it is propounded here that they should be seen as vital to the study and practice of foreign policy. Advancing the untested promise of a postcolonial feminist approach to FPA that (re-) centres intersectionality, (re-)instates connected histories, and (re-)configures normative orders, this paper argues that foreign policy should be re-conceptualised as gendered, sexualised and racialised. It is hoped this intervention may offer a blueprint to seriously engage with the possibility of a postcolonial feminist foreign policy approach to FPA, and to think anew about how that may be translated beyond the discipline: advocating for a symbiotic and complimentary feminist foreign and domestic policy that fundamentally challenges rather that maintains the status quo.

Keywords: Postcolonial Feminist Theory, Foreign Policy (Analysis)

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Feminisms, Feminist Foreign Policy, Gender, Race, Sexuality

Year: 2018

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Rosenow-Williams, Kerstin, and Katharina Behmer. 2015. “Gendered Environmental Security in IDP and Refugee Camps.” Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice 27: 188–95.

Authors: Kerstin Rosenow-Williams, Katharina Behmer

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Topics: Age, Clan, Displacement & Migration, Migration, Refugees, Ethnicity, Gender, Gender Mainstreaming, International Organizations, Race, Religion, Security, Human Security, Sexuality

Year: 2015

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Authors: Sabina Faiz Rashid, Stephanie Michaud

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This paper explores the experiences of female adolescents during the 1998 floods in Bangladesh, focusing on the implications of socio‐cultural norms related to notions of honour, shame, purity and pollution. These cultural notions are reinforced with greater emphasis as girls enter their adolescence, regulating their sexuality and gender relationships. In Bangladeshi society, adolescent girls are expected to maintain their virginity until marriage. Contact is limited to one's families and extended relations. Particularly among poorer families, adolescent girls tend to have limited mobility to safeguard their ‘purity’. This is to ensure that the girl's reputation does not suffer, thus making it difficult for the girl to get married. For female adolescents in Bangladesh, a disaster situation is a uniquely vulnerable time. Exposure to the unfamiliar environment of flood shelters and relief camps, and unable to maintain their ‘space’ and privacy from male strangers, a number of the girls were vulnerable to sexual and mental harassment. With the floods, it became difficult for most of the girls to be appropriately `secluded'. Many were unable to sleep, bathe or get access to latrines in privacy because so many houses and latrines were underwater. Some of the girls who had begun menstruation were distressed at not being able to keep themselves clean. Strong social taboos associated with menstruation and the dirty water that surrounded them made it difficult for the girls to wash their menstrual cloths or change them frequently enough. Many of them became separated from their social network of relations, which caused them a great deal of anxiety and stress. Their difficulty in trying to follow social norms have had far‐reaching implications on their health, identity, family and community relations.

Keywords: Bangladesh, 1998 floods, adolescence, sexuality, gender, women

Topics: Economies, Poverty, Environment, Environmental Disasters, Gender, Girls, Health, Mental Health, Infrastructure, Water & Sanitation, Sexuality Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: Bangladesh

Year: 2000

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Hagen, Jamie J. 2017. "Queering Women, Peace and Security in Colombia." Critical Studies on Security 5 (1): 125-9.

Author: Jamie J. Hagen

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Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, International Organizations, LGBTQ, Peacebuilding, Peace and Security, Rights, Human Rights, Security, Sexuality, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Colombia

Year: 2017

Citation:

Bedford, Kate. 2009. Developing Partnerships: Gender, Sexuality, and the Reformed World Bank. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 

Author: Kate Bedford

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Topics: Development, Gender, Gender Roles, Households, International Financial Institutions, Sexuality Regions: Americas, Caribbean countries, Central America, South America Countries: Argentina, Ecuador

Year: 2009

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Author: Lori Leonard

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This article explores masculinities and changes in men's lives in the rural oil fields of Chad during the period of an oil and pipeline project described by the World Bank as a "model" for oil-as-development. In many parts of Africa, private sector investment is concentrated in the extractive industries, especially oil and gas projects. Africa's emerging oil economies entail new institutional configurations, or what Michael Watts called an "oil complex," that challenge antecedent norms and forms of identity. In this article, I describe the expectations, desires, and experiences of three distinct groups of men-those who found temporary employment on the project, those who continued to make a living from farming while contending with land expropriation, and those who migrated to oil field towns in search of work-to make three general points about the oil complex and masculinities in Chad. The structure of the global oil industry meant that local men who found jobs on the project could act as breadwinners and patriarchs, but only temporarily; local workers struggled post-employment with their exclusion from the possibilities associated with the project. Men who never found jobs continued to eke out a living from the land, but state-of-the-art policies governing land expropriation led simultaneously to conflict in families and greater economic interdependence among family members. Finally, in the low-media environment of the oil field region, ideas and images about sex, sexuality, and love emanating from the transient and hyper-masculine global oil industry workforce served as models for landless young men who migrated to oil field towns and who, in the absence of work, sought to transform themselves into objects of desire through the mediation of pharmaceuticals.

Keywords: Chad, extractive industries, land expropriation, lay-offs, masculinity, oil, pipeline, pornography, Viagra, Africa

Topics: Development, Economies, Extractive Industries, Gender, Men, Masculinity/ies, Sexuality Regions: Africa, Central Africa Countries: Chad

Year: 2016

Citation:

Ly, Lynn. 2017. “(Im)Possible Futures: Liberal Capitalism, Vietnamese Sniper Women, and Queer Asian Possibility.” Feminist Formations 29 (1): 136–60.

Author: Lynn Ly

Abstract:

This article examines the ways Vietnamese sniper women have been narrated and imagined in North America. Part nightmare, farce, icon, historical figure, and real person, the weaponized Vietnamese woman was a troubling figure to comprehend for US soldiers and the public alike. Navigating across historical, aesthetic, and performative texts, the article thinks through the different authorized narratives about this figure, and the queer futures made unintelligible in their making. It argues that liberal capitalism plays an important role in the determination of the relationship between past to present, and what may be imagined as possible, now and in the future. Vietnamese women soldiers during the US war in Vietnam (1955-1975) both frustrate and realize a queer Asian diasporic desire for historical ground on which to challenge racialized, gendered, and sexual epistemological regimes of the war. That is, while militant Vietnamese women were used as evidence of liberal capitalist logics, they also often failed to complete its fantasies, opening up important alternative and queer pasts--ones that inevitably fail to reach dominant conceptions post-Vietnam War presents, but also, for that very reason, critically arrive at an alternative modality for living in the present as a queer Asian and Vietnamese woman.

Keywords: liberal capitalism, militarism, queer Asian women, queer of color critique, time studies, transpacific studies

Topics: Armed Conflict, Economies, Gender, Women, LGBTQ, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarism, Post-Conflict, Race, Sexuality, Violence Regions: Americas, North America, Asia, Southeast Asia Countries: Vietnam

Year: 2017