Gender and Sexuality

To believe the orthodox view of the development of gendered and sexual rights, this is a story of slow progress and rationality in respecting difference and choice amongst gendered and sexual identities. This progress is uneven, marked by an unfinished application of enlightenment and modernist values and a politics of recognition and rights in the ‘advanced West’. Conventional claims are for this ‘superior position’ to hierarchically stretch down the societies who have yet to ‘develop’ such values and ideas<strong>.</strong> Alternatively, this hierarchical conception may misconceive the local sexual cultures of those in the global south. Yet such a narrative suit both orthodox political narratives and the political narratives of equality of opportunity and identity politics that prevail in the West. What it overlooks is the political temporality and dialectical nature of continual struggles on gender and sexuality. 

Trans is currently the subject of harsh gender-critical attacks silently supported by a waning of the barest advances in recognition and public services. Whilst there is a superficial degree of cultural equality and recognition, there remain harsh gendered inequalities in relation to economic assets, salaries, and political power (except those who play the ‘masculine’ game) violence and cultural stereotypical representations. Gay rights, and to a lesser extent lesbian rights, have degrees of equality and recognition contained within a subservient homonormativity, with some symbolic equalities such as civil partnerships in some countries. Moreover, a pathological approach to bi and diverse sexualities manifest itself as absolute marginalisation where political economic priorities are concerned (such as with world cups!) or the commercialization of kink (such as Hollywood’s’ ‘Fifty Shades). It is clear that in many parts of the world, in the face of increasing authoritarianism, these degrees of equality and recognition are still important areas of struggle. Hence, feminist, and queer interventions are preoccupied with the gendered, classed, and racialised component of structural violence and their ultimate unfolding at the global stage.

This stream welcomes any current work exploring gender and sexuality issues, and important debates such as social reproduction within Marxist literature. It seeks to rethink the relations between hetero-capitalist patriarchy and its rationality/irrationality through a re-engagement with Marxist theory and ideas. Papers that explore particular contemporary political struggles that stress the conditionality and partiality of advances and the real tensions and issues raised by political struggles are welcome.