by Danton Remoto

Ugly as sin

The stereotype is that lesbians turned “that way” because they have faces only their mothers could bear to love. They have coarse hair cut close to the scalp, they have bodies like Kelvinator refs, and they have legs more curved than any bows you could see. No man would court them, send them chocolates and roses, marry them and gift them with ten kids and a house with three SUVs (sports utility vehicles)  in the suburbs.

Well, then, I’ve got some news for you. Many of the lesbians I’ve worked with are some of the prettiest, most charming people on earth. I know of some who have long, silky, black hair—the kind of hair that Mother Ricky Reyes, the Empress of Philippine hairdressing salons, would call “para kang nagpa-salon” (“like you’ve been to a beauty salon”). Others have 24-inch waistlines and legs that could make heads turn—without help from beauty mogul Vicky Belo and her smart-sharp-nip-and-tuck group of cosmetic surgeons.

Difficult to work with

The stereotype is that lesbians are difficult to work with because they are like bullies in the schoolyard. They look tough, they act tough, they hang tough. Step aside when they come, those elbows can dig a hole in your tummy. Do not engage them in debate or discussion—they will whip out their knives and turn your sides into faucets dripping with blood. They only hang around with fellow lesbians like themselves, muttering about their deep and dark conspiracies in low voices.

Well—hindi, no, nada, nyet! Unlike perhaps other lesbian and gay groups in the world, the Filipino versions work together. True, the gays are louder, more intrusive with their jokes and puns and so-called one-liners. But the lesbians, they are always there to bring everybody back to earth. They’re the easiest persons to work with in the world. Then and now, one of them would facilitate and/or take the minutes of the meetings—a move to take charge and steer the meetings back to their course, when the gays begin to talk about their weekends full of romance and love. Another would offer to be the marshal during Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Pride Marches—riding on her motorcycle that va-va-vooms on the street, clearing the lanes so that the beautiful could walk without any distractions.

Lethargic as molasses

Another stereotype is that since they think like men, they would form committees, hold endless meetings, bicker and dither hither and yon, and then arrive at no concrete action.

Think again. Some of the lesbians I’ve worked with are so decisive they would make the gills of my Management teachers in my Jesuit university turn green with envy. Yes, we meet but we do so only when we have a clear agenda for discussion. Yes, we form committees and discuss but not the whole day long and until the cows come home. After the committee members have reported to the committee head, there is updating before the group, followed by a consensus.

Leadership, after all, means forming a group that eventually arrives at that golden moment when everybody—or almost everybody—has reached the point of common agreement. Only then would we map out the action plans—specific, practical, doable, within a time-frame. So no time really for lethargy, for slowpokes, for endless committee meetings. The lesbians and I know that words are worthless unless backed up with work. With this equation—words with work—do my lesbian friends and I walk down the merry path of LGBT advocacy.  

Lack a sense of humor

The stereotype is that, like spinsters, lesbians have no sense of humor. Because they are ugly, dour, and sour, the comparison would be to that of vinegar.

But this vinegary quality is lacking among my lesbian friends. I’m always amazed at our meetings where the lesbians know the current gay speak; where they act “more gay” than the gayest, most flamenco-pink denizen of Manila; where they could impersonate the latest hilarious character in the country’s endless gallery of lunatics—politicians, movie stars, or us.

Lesbian bed death
The lack of sexual activity in a relationship.I almost died laughing at what happened when two of my lesbian friends applied for different jobs. One was as a flight attendant in one of the country’s top airlines. She went through the rigmarole of the application and the interview Q & A like a beauty-pageant contestant. She didn’t get the job—because she was not too tall. Another applied for a top job in a multinational firm in the business district of Makati—with her butch haircut and all. She did well in the exams, and during the interview, the personnel director was flabbergasted. The director asked, “Well, errr, hmmm. Are you a practicing lesbian?” Our dear sister looked at the straight director’s straight eyes, and then said: “Oh, I’m no longer practicing. I’m already good at it.” She didn’t get the job, but scored some points at queer advocacy in the towering canyons of multinational Makati.

Unhappy people

The last stereotype I know is that lesbians are unhappy people. Their affliction can be cured if a straight man courts them, has sex with them (eeewwww, I could hear squeaks from the lesbian gallery), marries them.

But tell me, baby, what does happiness mean? When I meet my lesbian friends in bookstores or conferences, they never fail to relate to me how they are amazed at the quickness with which gays meet and, well, mate. For them, I guess it’s a rather longer process that involves getting to know you, conversation and dates, movies and dinners, the works. “How could you,” one of them asks, “just meet somebody in the bathroom and have sex with them?”

“Ahh,” I answer, returning discreetly the illustrated Kama Sutra to its shelf in the bookstore. “I haven’t done that, I think, let me remember, no, I haven’t, but you know, that is just sex.”

“Precisely my point,” my lesbian friend answered, sounding like an interlocutor in a court of justice.

“I guess that we are still men, you know. With galloping gonads and as horny as hell.”

“Oh,” she said, a smile dawning on her face. I thought that was also the smile of recognition and acceptance.

Many lesbians I know are in relationships that have lasted for weeks, months, hey, even years. They’ve hurdled the petty jealousies and the small wars, wrestled with the lesbian bed death and other minor disaffections. They live and lust and love together, focused on the horizon of their common dreams.

Danton Remoto is an Associate Professor of English at the Ateneo de Manila University; a columnist of the newspaper Philippine Star; and the chair of  Ang Ladlad, a national LGBT network that might run for party-list elections for Congress in May 2007.  

Queer Japan: Personal Stories of Japanese Lesbians, Gays,Bisexuals and Transsexuals

Edited by: B. Summerhawk, C. McMahill, & D. McDonald
by Ma. Georgianna Villar

Queer Japan as a personal stories book did not at first particularly strike me as interesting. As a matter of fact, I did not want to read it. But I resigned myself to doing so since I had  “rejected” the first book I was offered to review for this issue of WIA, which was also a personal stories book. Personal stories can be tricky, and I am wary of books that tell more than what I would like to know without making me feel like a crime witness. Then there are those personal stories that tell me more than I would like to know—only to realise at the end that there really is not much.

The good thing is Queer Japan turned out to be an interesting and provocative book. All its stories had a distinct voice and message that resonated with a common theme—queer is here.

Posing a queer-y

“Queer” is a problematic term even for many of the sexuality initiated—sometimes known as feminists. This probably is the case because queers, when asked to define “queer,” often say that it is defined by what it is not. This is the point when the listener either bursts into a frustrated tirade or a rock.  

One argument against queer is that there must be some parameters in terms of queer’s supposed fluidity and “definitionlessness” because it would be difficult to build a discourse around it or measure its political significance. The whole debate over it, however, had actually developed a discourse. To debate or not debate queer.
Other people feel that the idea of lumping everyone’s distinct identity as queer is a way of watering down the politics of sexuality—especially that of women. For years, feminists have studied and debated on the universality of women’s experiences and, lately, the particularities of these experiences. “Sisterhood is global” was chanted as feminists agreed that both these universality and particularities were necessary for a concerted and holistic approach to emancipating women everywhere.

Then came queer.  Queer challenged the definition of woman; it comes as no surprise that feminists unconsciously conjure images of “new women” to include mutant women made of different parts. With the gains being made by science in the field of reconstructive surgery and sex-reassignments, it is becoming easier to align bodies with claimed identities.  

Feminists believe that what women want and say should be respected; however, it operated on an assumption—that they (feminists) knew what “woman” meant. Confronted with an expanding diversity and redefinition of terms, feminists are now trying to backtrack and remember what they said after they threw out women’s essentialism as a concept.

If queer, as sometimes argued, becomes a “valid” sexual-political identity, would the various strains of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgenders now all be obsolete? And, if so, how will their particularities be addressed? Will the many years of trying to dissect and contextualise the separate and distinct layers of oppression based on sex, gender, race, class, etc., now be redundant as we embrace queer?

In the attempt to create a term to make our particular experiences inclusive, non-discriminatory yet distinct, have we created a new kind of unique…so we can just  be like everyone else?

Queer-ky

In the story “About a Lesbian in Hokkaido,” the author talked about an emerging sexuality that did not fit the gender roles prescribed by Japanese society. The story traced her journey toward the life she wanted to lead, and without any role models to pattern herself after or anyone to talk with, she had to learn on her own how to be a lesbian. She committed violent acts toward others and herself as her frustration mounted. Many people could relate to the difficult relationships she continued to inflict on herself, and the lessons she learnt along the way. In the end, the author summed it up succinctly. Life is a work in progress, and the important thing is to love oneself.

The issue of bisexuality, from one woman’s point of view, was also tackled in another story. Her acceptance of the diversity of her desires instead of being defined by her body or her political beliefs shows how one person was able to harmonise the sexual dissonance she was being made to feel by the people around her. This is perhaps the most revealing account of sexual liberation that anyone can read.

“Ten Years Worth of Experience” is a serious story with a wry self-deprecating humorous tone. The same story set to slapstick music could be a comedy—except that it is not. The loneliness and the search for meaning were serious, and the risky situations in which the author put himself could have resulted in very serious straits.

One of the best stories in the book is perhaps “A Married Woman.” Written by a woman who chose to remain anonymous, her story showed the fluidity of feelings and sexuality, and how society tries to legislate the expressions people naturally feel. In the end, she concluded that it was not the woman she met nor her family that will decide her future. As she says concisely, “…that is a problem that precedes even my sexuality, the fundamental problem of myself as an individual, and of my own first step forward to independence.”

In the end…

The stories in Queer Japan are an invaluable contribution to the queer cause. By not talking about being queer but about the unique experiences of various people, it succeeded in defining itself by what it was not. This is life, and it can be queer.

The stories were written in a very clear, logical style. It was like listening to a friend tell her/his story with dignity and quiet understanding.  In a sense it succeeded in making queer real. It talked about the aspirations and concerns of the individuals, and how they navigated their paths with plenty of examples of how they succeeded and failed. Readers can find themselves able to relate to the experiences of the storytellers.

Stories of people seeking meaning, actualising filial love, seeking stability, working with purpose, nurturing friendship, and finding acceptance are our own stories. Experiences and feelings are not exclusive to those who have “normal” sexual identities. The feelings of harshness and tenderness are the same. There are no norms for the human heart and spirit.

The accounts were written in a dispassionate, but not remote, way. It is truly personal and also, in fact, a political book that captures the way sexuality and queer are woven into the sociocultural fabric of Japanese life.

Ma. Georgianna “Giney” Villar read the statement of the first feminist-lesbian group to march during the International Women’s Day March of 1991 in the Philippines. Currently, she serves as International Advisory Board member of the Astraea Lesbian Rights Foundation, and is the Executive Director of The Theia Initiative, a knowledge management and communications NGO. 

When the editors of WIA invited me to contribute to this issue, I hesitantly said yes. But even after accepting the assignment, my reluctance did not vanish. The reason behind it is that while I see the creation of bridges across dominant feminist thinking and queer theorising as one main challenge of our times, the time frame in front of me was too tight to examine the subject as deeply and as thoroughly as required. When I finally decided to engage in the task, it was to be in a limited frame. I will use the next few pages to argue why it is crucial for feminist activists to be more acquainted with contemporary theories of gender and sexuality. These arguments derive from my own intellectual trajectory. But they also relate to the meaning of these theoretical frames in current moral and political debates as well as to the polyphony of voices claiming rights in contemporary gender and “sexscapes.”

The reflections that will follow are, however, far from complete. They do not do justice to the vastness of existing literature on how gender, sexuality, and feminism interweave but which, at the same time, also become often out of joint. The reflections also barely tackle the richness and complexities found in the sexual politics of our times. This writer apologises for these limitations, and expects that in another opportunity and with more time, they can be overcome.1  
  
Anatomy, (patriarchy), gender, and beyond
 
The first signals of what we presently call “queer theory” were already present in Simone de Beauvoir’s (1949) affirmation in The Second Sex that anatomy as a destiny determines the placement of women—in history, philosophy, and twentieth-century societies. Its corollary is that all projects aimed at changing the position of the “second sex” require the biological imprints of male and female to be contested. 
 
While de Beauvoir was my first serious exposure to feminist thinking, the next one would be Engels’s The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), leading to the adoption of patriarchy as my key feminist concept.

Engels identifies female sexuality as a means of production. Patriarchs control women’s sexuality to control inheritance just as they control the trees to gain control over land property.... The theory does not lack cultural and political consistency and appeal. But from the epistemological point of view, it can and should be included among the various expressions of sex essentialism, or of sex as natural force, a natural means of production that precedes social life (Corrêa, 1996).

Therefore, looking at it retrospectively, my shift from de Beauvoir to Engels made me step backwards with respect to a more substantive critique of the supposedly unshakeable male and female nature. But in 1980, I had the opportunity to read Rayna Reiter’s Towards an Anthropology of Women (1975), in which a few landmark feminist pieces of the seventies were published, including “The Trafficking in Women: Notes on the Political Economy of Sex,” by Gayle Rubin.2 After 30 years, I still consider Rubin’s article to be one privileged point of entry for those who want to know better about and engage in sex thinking.
 
It is not possible to summarise Rubin’s insights in shorthand. But, in the context of this brief exercise, doing this cannot be evaded.  Rubin starts by sharply criticising the caveats of Marxist theory to explain women’s subordination to subsequently engage in a hard wrestling with Levi-Strauss, Freud, and Lacan theories. She sorts out of the match—having in hands, as a trophy—the one definition of the sex/gender system that would extensively influence our endeavours in the years to come: 

A Sex/Gender system corresponds to the totality of arrangements through which society transforms human biological sexuality in human activities, and through which human needs can be both satisfied and transformed. The adoption of a gender system favours the deconstruction of gender differences which were and still are interpreted and rationalised as being the result of an immutable natural and biological order, as to start thinking of them as socially and historically constructed circumstances, which can be transformed...3

In between, Rubin provides striking illustrations about the variation of sex and gender orders—mostly collected in non-Western cultures—while she searches for the underlying logic that would explain the inequality of power between men and women across these variations. Her first main insight derives from Levi-Strauss and concerns the meaning of kinship, marriage and, most principally, of the exchange of women between groups of men: 

Kinship systems do not merely exchange women. They exchange sexual access, genealogical statuses, lineage names and ancestors, rights and people—men, women and children—in concrete systems of social relationships…. The exchange of women is a profound perception of a system in which women do not have full rights themselves…4

In a further step, this insight is interweaved with Rubin’s critical revisiting of core psychoanalytical concepts—the incest taboo, the Oedipus crisis, phallic dominance, female masochism. The aim of this inquiry is to more fully understand how in the transition from biology to culture—from imprinted drives to language—one becomes a man or a woman. After this complex path, Rubin (1975) daringly affirms: 

I personally feel that the feminist movement must dream of even more than elimination of the oppression of women. It must dream of elimination of obligatory sexuality and sex roles. The dream I find most compelling is one on an androgynous and genderless (though not sexless) society, in which one’s sexual anatomy is irrelevant to who one is, what one does, and to whom one makes love.”

Though Rubin was not the only feminist author engaged in the invention of gender in the seventies, it was through her that my imagination was captured by the concept of a sex/gender system.5 As years elapsed, I would be exposed to other gender frames, such as those specifically designed for gender mainstreaming (Moser: 1990; Young: 1990). Nevertheless, the subversive imprint of gender/sex theory, as Rubin had deployed it, remained alive at the back of my mind.  
 
In this brief overview, it is important to note that Rubin’s “The Trafficking in Women” was published one year before the series of 1976 seminars conducted by Michel Foucault, from which emerged the History of Sexuality (1980). Once again, like in Rubin’s work, it is not possible to fully examine in this short paper Foucault’s outstanding legacy. In a nutshell, the History of Sexuality would become the other main intellectual enterprise behind the contemporary understanding of sexuality as a historical construct and of the necessary distinction between sexual acts and sexed identities. Additionally, Foucault sharply articulates sex and power by examining the way in which discourses and disciplines—religious norms, law, and scientific assumptions generate “sex.” In the words of Butler (1990):  

Foucault officially insists that sexuality and power are co-extensive and that we must not think that by saying yes to sex we say no to power.  [He] argues that sexuality is always situated within matrices of power, that it is always produced within specific historical practices, both discursive and institutional, and that recourse to sexuality before the law is an illusory and complicitous conceit of emancipatory sexual politics.

From there on the intellectual production on gender and sexuality as socio-cultural constructs would blossom (Vance, 1984 & Weeks, 1981 are just the better known examples).6 In 1984, Rubin (in Vance, 1984) critically revised her initial frame by distinguishing the gender and the sexuality systems as two articulated but different spheres of social representation and practice. In the same paper, she grounded the notion of sex hierarchies, which is one important building block of queer theories. This new wave of theorising was put into circulation in a peculiar political and social scenario. 

In industrialised societies, while the societal effects of the sixties’ cultural revolution waned, moral conservative reactions gained strength, such as the anti-abortion and anti-pornography movements in the United States (movements of resistance and re-creation of political agendas. In the South of the Equator, in a few settings, particularly Latin America, gender and sex issues would gain strength and visibility under the impact of democratisation. Most importantly, in the most diverse settings, the outburst of the HIV and AIDS epidemics would forcefully open the grounds for public debates on sex and enhance the surge of new political sexual communities and identities. In this changing environment, the strength of these theoretical frames illuminated new in-roads in research (but also in advocacy) that argued for sexual pluralism, plasticity, and malleability, even if the pace of absorption of these new ways of thinking gender and sex varied widely across countries and communities.
...Butler affirms that "sex" (the naming of anatomical differences) is itself a cultural contruct. 
In 1990, Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity was published. The book starts with an instigating game of words:    

...To make trouble was, within the reigning discourse of my childhood, something one should never do precisely because that would get one in trouble…. The prevailing law threatened one with trouble, even put one in trouble, all to keep one out of trouble. Hence, I concluded that trouble is inevitable and the task [is] how to best make it, what best way to be in.

Once again what I can bring here is a minimalist illustration of Butler’s remarkable work that weaved the initial embroidery of what would later be named queer theorising. Like Rubin, she bravely wrestles with philosophy, psychoanalysis, and anthropology to destabilise all conceptual strands that attributes to “sex” a sort of material nature, which after being molded by culture becomes “gender.” Instead, Butler affirms that “sex” (the naming of anatomical differences) is itself a cultural construct. She also recaptures concepts such as “masquerade” (from Joan Riviere, the early twentieth century British psychoanalyst), impersonation (from anthropological and cinema studies) and, most principally, the observation of drag queen performances of being a woman (the drag queen Divine is her illustration) to define bodies “as variable boundaries, a surface whose permeability is politically regulated” and to conceptualise gender performativity (one leitmotiv of queer theory): 

Gender is, thus, a construction that regularly conceals its own genesis, the tacit collective agreement to perform, produce, and sustain discrete and polar genders as cultural fictions is obscured by the credibility of those productions—and the punishments that attend those not agreeing to believe in them….  The historical possibilities materialised through various corporeal styles are nothing other than those punitively regulated cultural fictions alternately embodied and deflected under duress (Butler, 1990).

...the "queering" ... of sexual dissidents... provides us with a lens to critically disclose the fake nature of genders, or, if we want, of heterosexual identity itself. Butler’s idea-image of performativity leads our imagination almost automatically to the fringe expressions of gender bending: the drags, the tranvestites, the transgender and transsexuals or the metis, hijras, and kotis from India. Although these “margins” remain crucial sites of queer research and theorising, Butler’s project is more ambitious in proposing that the “queering” (masquerade, impersonation, parodies) of sexual dissidents, most principally, provides us with a lens to critically disclose the fake nature of genders, or, if we want, of heterosexual identity itself.  It is quite hard to admit the fake nature of genders. The idea that male and female are true, natural, stable, and discrete realities is deeply imprinted in our mindsets (perceptions about who we and others are), bodies (the ways bodies are domesticated and used), spaces, and tools (sexual division of placement and labour).7  
 
Therefore, it is maybe useful to resort to movie imageries to more precisely illustrate the depth of  Butler’s project.  Today, we know that not a few Hollywood actors—icons as they were—led quite heterodox sexual lives. The list includes Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Cary Grant, Montgomery Cliff, Cesar Romero, and Rock Hudson, among others. Despite their bisexuality and homosexuality, the images they have projected on the screens sustained, for decades, in US society and far beyond, the idealisation of heterosexual love.  Through Butler’s lenses, these female and male fascinating Hollywood impersonations—that left deep traces in my own “gender formation”—reveal the queerness of the contemporary Western romantic couple. Butler’s reflections, in addition to eroding the fixed sexed constructions of men and women, also provides a conceptual frame to contest other identity-based rights claims. Saying it differently, her thinking also destabilises gay, lesbian, and transgender rights conceived as minority rights. 
 
I did not become acquainted with Butler’s work immediately after its publication. In fact I am still “reading” Gender Trouble.  But, at that point, I had the opportunity to closely engage in Richard Parker’s work. His anthropological studies of male homosexuality in Brazil systematically underline as well the disjunctions between gender identity and sexual desires and practices (Parker, 1991).  Another key contribution made by Parker is a conceptual frame that combines differentiated gender, sexuality, and erotic systems. This multilayered perspective allows us to examine how social identities, desires, sexual acts, and sexual norms may be entirely out of joint in the experience and perception of persons. It also enhances the visualisation of erotic US) and the election of the Reagan and Thatcher administrations. This triggered justice, a daring concept few of us have been juggling with for some time (Corrêa, 1996).8 Erotic justice in articulation with sexual rights may open the space for rights claim work that is not grounded in fixed gender and sexual identities.  
 
The uneasy match of theory and action 
 
The connections and disjunctions between theory and political action are an unresolved inquiry of progressive political philosophy. The absorption of contemporary “sex thinking” and feminist activism is just one specific illustration of this perennial problem. In the early nineties in Brazil, this novel literature on sexuality was read by feminists; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) people; and, most principally, HIV and AIDS researchers and activists, even when the use of theoretical frames was quite uneven and sometimes subject to controversy.9  
 
By then my engagement with feminist global activism, most particularly in the realm of sexual and reproductive health and rights, intensified. Significantly, when I started moving “globally,” I realised that, in the political imagination of Pacific, Asian, African, and Caribbean activists, sexuality was not as relevant as it was in my own setting. In the DAWN (Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era) regional dialogues preceding the “International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD),” quite often the raising of sexual matters sounded “queer.” At that stage, the gender frame privileged by my partners emphasised empowerment—though in political not sexual terms—within the Feminist Marxist frame of social reproduction and sexual division of labour (which was consistent with the broader gender and development perspective emphasising North-South disparities).  when I started moving “globally,” I realised that, in the political imagination of Pacific, Asian, African, and Caribbean activists, sexuality was not as relevant as it was in my own setting...quite often the raising of sexual matters sounded "queer." In many places, feminists strongly criticised reproductive technologies—as an expression of capitalist male-dominance over women’s bodies. But very rarely was this critique extended to the disciplinary function of biomedical discourses and practices with respect to female sexuality along the lines developed by Foucault. It is not excessive to say that in the very eve of Cairo and Beijing, and their immediate aftermath, not many feminist voices would contest sex essentialism (sex as an unchangeable natural drive) and the fixed binary “nature of genders.” However, the feministcritique of “population discourses” would lead us unequivocally in the direction of fully addressing sexual matters simply because:    

Sex is pivot in relation to which technologies of life are developed: sex is a means of access both to the life of the body and the life of the species; this means that sex offers a means of regulation of both individual bodies and the behaviour of “population” (le corps politique) as a whole (excerpt from Weeks’ summary of Foucault concept of biopower, 1996).

Not surprisingly, the ICPD Programme of Action was considered by many to have too much sex in it. Not surprisingly, the ICPD Programme of Action was considered by many to have too much sex in it.  Most importantly yet, as we know, a year later in Beijing, feminists were able to politically legitimise women’s sexual rights, even if paragraph 96 in the “Beijing Platform for Action (BPFA)” does not explicitly mention the term. This was also a crucial partial achievement. However, the second sentence of the paragraph has a strong heterosexual imprint (Petchesky, 2000).10 In addition, we have lost language on sexual orientation in the human rights section of the BPFA. 

But in this context of analysis, what is more relevant to acknowledge is that paragraph 96 triggered in the most diverse settings a new and very positive way of conversations about sexuality (and gender) within feminist communities and, most importantly, between feminists and the many other subjects of sexual politics (ARC  International & Action Canada for Population and Development, 2004; Campaña por la Convención de los Derechos Sexuales y los Derechos Reproductivos, 2005; CREA, Sangama, and TARSHI, 2004).11 These dialogues may favour the gradually overcoming of the estrangement between feminist activists and contemporary sexuality theories. 
 
This, in my view, is crucial, because in my own perception, even if and when feminist activists have somehow absorbed the overall critique of sex essentialism, the distinction of sex (as nature) and gender (as culture) and the related binary conception of genders remains unshaken. Rosalind Petchesky constantly reminds me that to deconstruct feminist one-dimensional and binary thinking is one main challenge those of us engaged in sexual rights must tackle. The most widely known manifestation of this binary logic is found in the widespread conception/image of male total sexual power versus female sexual objectification.
 
I also often hear in feminist circles the argument that sexuality theorising is excessively complex to be adopted in gender-based feminist advocacy. This argument is not entirely out of place. The systematic and severe critique deployed by contemporary sexuality theories with respect to institutions (particularly the State) and disciplinary systems—such as religious norms, biomedical assumptions, and the law itself—makes it not so easy to be absorbed by activists whose main focus is to change policies, norms and laws. But as Currah (2001), analysing specifically the US ...it is extremely difficult for feminist activists to entirely detach themselves from the idea of women as a foundational category of political and juridical representation because a full step in that direction will make, somehow, the ground vanish beneath our feet. context, suggests: There are good reasons for rights claim (either civil or human rights) work in the domains of sexuality to be informed by insights of queer theorising even if “those insights require some translation before they can be effectively deployed in the legal/political arena.” We are therefore challenged to find ways to overcome this theoretical resistance and the eventual feeling of being lost in translation. 

I am conscious that the reshaping of these lenses is not a minor task. First and foremost because male sexual brutality is a reality that everywhere requires political responses. But we must acknowledge that these realities do not portray the wide heterogeneity of sexual practices, whether these involve men and women or those in which other sexualities are at play. Most importantly, it is extremely difficult for feminist activists to entirely detach themselves from the idea of women as a foundational category of political and juridical representation because a full step in that direction will make, somehow, the ground vanish beneath our feet. Philosophers and anthropologists who locate themselves at a distance from the muddy waters of political action can eventually do that step without panicking. But this should automatically disqualify their insights. As Joan Scott said a long time ago: There are no easy responses for difficult conceptual and political problems. If almost 60 years ago, de Beauvoir had not dared to contest anatomy as women’s destiny, many political realities would not have changed as they did. 
 
The “real politics” of queering  
 
Those of us directly engaged in the preparation for the Beijing Conference lively remember that in the March 1995 Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) session operating as the last Preparatory Committee for the conference, the term “gender” was bracketed in the negotiation under the pressure of the Holy See and few Islamic countries. Meanwhile, pamphlets were distributed to delegates affirming that:   

Unfortunately there is a ‘gender feminism,’ often homosexual, which strongly promotes the idea that gender is something fluid, changing, not related naturally to being a man or being a woman. According to such feminist/homosexual ideology, there are at least five genders! (Coalition for Women and the Family)

At that point, this grotesque propaganda made many of us laugh. But a few of us already detected in the operation a serious engagement on the part of the religious right with queer theorising.12 But it would take some time before we fully realised the extension and depth of this right wing intellectual investment. This would take place in August 2004 when the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith issued the “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World.” Upfront in the introduction, the text of the Letter analyses the evolution of feminist thinking—without ever mentioning the term “feminism”—to say that it has shifted from a confrontational position between women and men to a new approach that:     

I also often hear in feminist circles the argument that sexuality theorising is excessively complex to be adopted in gender-based feminist advocacy. This argument is not entirely out of place. The systematic and severe critique deployed by contemporary sexuality theories with respect to institutions (particularly the State) and disciplinary systems—such as religious norms, biomedical assumptions, and the law itself—makes it not so easy to be absorbed by activists whose main focus is to change policies, norms and laws. But as Currah (2001), analysing specifically the US

I also often hear in feminist circles the argument that sexuality theorising is excessively complex to be adopted in gender-based feminist advocacy. This argument is not entirely out of place. The systematic and severe critique deployed by contemporary sexuality theories with respect to institutions (particularly the State) and disciplinary systems—such as religious norms, biomedical assumptions, and the law itself—makes it not so easy to be absorbed by activists whose main focus is to change policies, norms and laws. But as Currah (2001), analysing specifically the US

...it is extremely difficult for feminist activists to entirely detach themselves from the idea of women as a foundational category of political and juridical representation because a full step in that direction will make, somehow, the ground vanish beneath our feet. context, suggests: There are good reasons for rights claim (either civil or human rights) work in the domains of sexuality to be informed by insights of queer theorising even if “those insights require some translation before they can be effectively deployed in the legal/political arena.” We are therefore challenged to find ways to overcome this theoretical resistance and the eventual feeling of being lost in translation.  I am conscious that the reshaping of these lenses is not a minor task. First and foremost because male sexual brutality is a reality that everywhere requires political responses. But we must acknowledge that these realities do not portray the wide heterogeneity of sexual practices, whether these involve men and women or those in which other sexualities are at play. Most importantly, it is extremely difficult for feminist activists to entirely detach themselves from the idea of women as a foundational category of political and juridical representation because a full step in that direction will make, somehow, the ground vanish beneath our feet. Philosophers and anthropologists who locate themselves at a distance from the muddy waters of political action can eventually do that step without panicking. But this should automatically disqualify their insights. As Joan Scott said a long time ago: There are no easy responses for difficult conceptual and political problems. If almost 60 years ago, de Beauvoir had not dared to contest anatomy as women’s destiny, many political realities would not have changed as they did.     Those of us directly engaged in the preparation for the Beijing Conference lively remember that in the March 1995 Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) session operating as the last Preparatory Committee for the conference, the term “gender” was bracketed in the negotiation under the pressure of the Holy See and few Islamic countries. Meanwhile, pamphlets were distributed to delegates affirming that:

...it is extremely difficult for feminist activists to entirely detach themselves from the idea of women as a foundational category of political and juridical representation because a full step in that direction will make, somehow, the ground vanish beneath our feet. context, suggests: There are good reasons for rights claim (either civil or human rights) work in the domains of sexuality to be informed by insights of queer theorising even if “those insights require some translation before they can be effectively deployed in the legal/political arena.” We are therefore challenged to find ways to overcome this theoretical resistance and the eventual feeling of being lost in translation.  I am conscious that the reshaping of these lenses is not a minor task. First and foremost because male sexual brutality is a reality that everywhere requires political responses. But we must acknowledge that these realities do not portray the wide heterogeneity of sexual practices, whether these involve men and women or those in which other sexualities are at play. Most importantly, it is extremely difficult for feminist activists to entirely detach themselves from the idea of women as a foundational category of political and juridical representation because a full step in that direction will make, somehow, the ground vanish beneath our feet. Philosophers and anthropologists who locate themselves at a distance from the muddy waters of political action can eventually do that step without panicking. But this should automatically disqualify their insights. As Joan Scott said a long time ago: There are no easy responses for difficult conceptual and political problems. If almost 60 years ago, de Beauvoir had not dared to contest anatomy as women’s destiny, many political realities would not have changed as they did.     Those of us directly engaged in the preparation for the Beijing Conference lively remember that in the March 1995 Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) session operating as the last Preparatory Committee for the conference, the term “gender” was bracketed in the negotiation under the pressure of the Holy See and few Islamic countries. Meanwhile, pamphlets were distributed to delegates affirming that:

In order to avoid the dominationof one sex or the other, their differences tend to be denied, viewed as mere effects of historical and cultural While the absorption of contemporary gender and sexuality theories remains subject to resistance and suspicion among us... [the religious right] are systematically investing in a broad intellectual endeavor to politically disqualify contemporary sex thinking.conditioning. In this perspective, physical difference, termed sex, is minimised, while the purely cultural element, termed gender, is emphasised to the maximum and held to be primary. The obscuring of the difference or duality of the sexes has enormous consequences on a variety of levels. This theory of the human person, intended to promote prospects for equality of women through liberation from biological determinism, has in reality inspired ideologies which, for example, call into question the family in its natural two-parent structure of mother and father, and make homosexuality and heterosexuality virtually equivalent, in a new model of polymorphous sexuality.

This doctrinaire perspective was amplified and deepened in the recently launched encyclical letter “Deus Caritas Est,” whose full analysis would require much more space than what is available in this paper. But I can briefly share that in the 2006 “International Women’s Day,” one main Brazilian newspaper had the ludicrous idea of publishing as its main March 8 opinion-editorial piece, an article by Dom Javier Echeverria, a Prelate Bishop of Opus Dei. The article “The World Needs the Feminine Genius” argues, in a very sophisticated language, that the ontological difference between women and men—as discrete and distinct manifestations of God—must be retained in order to preserve the positive contribution of the female genius to the sustaining of love and the world.   
 
As we know, this perspective can easily capture ordinary people’s imagination. Most importantly, it has strong affinities with the positions of not a few feminist strands. It is not by accident, in my view, that the title of the article is directly derived from the French feminist thinker Julia Kristeva’s trilogy on Hannah Arendt, Melanie Klein, and Collette, entitled The Feminine Genius (Kristeva, 1999). I do not want to imply that Kristeva—a remarkable theorist whose ideas about singularity are very inspiring—is politically aligned with Pope Benedict XVI. But rather to suggest that by making this choice, the Vatican (and Opus Dei) intellectuals reveal that they are fully aware that Judith Butler, in Gender Trouble, developed a substantive critique of Kristeva’s inquiries on  “women’s body and language (semiotic) difference.”13  
 
These new trends are both ironic and frightening. While the absorption of contemporary gender and sexuality theories remains subject to resistance and suspicion among us, our formidable adversaries [the religious right] are systematically investing in a broad intellectual endeavor to politically disqualify contemporary sex thinking.  Concurrently, they are further carving existing rifts between distinctive streams of gender and sexuality theorising in an obvious divide et impera (divide and rule) political maneuvering. 
 
But this unexpected and insidious operation of our adversaries is not the only compelling political reason for us to more fully engage in sex theorising and politics. As I was finalising this article, the Latin American Chapter of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission issued a statement structured in two sections: “Las Inominadas,” and “Las Ausentes” (“The Unnamed” and The Absent”).14 The text is aimed at calling attention to the invisibility of intersex, transgender, travestis, and transsexual women in the International Women’s Day:    

Their genitals are shown, commented, and studied, but their names are never mentioned. Their voices are not heard. The history and the struggle of women do not include them. Many bear in their flesh the experience of an endless violation. But for many they are not even real. They do not exist  (As Inomidas, 2006). 
 
Many are caught by the police in the streets simply because they use dress and sandals. The majority does not find work. They are associated with scandal, prostitution, drugs, and crime…. They are objects of the eternal curiosity of the media as well as objects of study. But never as subjects themselves (As Ausentes, 2006).

These brief and incomplete reflections strongly suggest that we feminist activists are caught between the Vatican discourse on dignity and ontological female nature, and the call for plasticity, visibility, and justice expressed by transgender, travesti, transsexual, and intersex women. These are signs of how dangerous and complex the political landscape in which we move has become. We may panic and retreat. But we can also use these dangers and complexities to reconsider the reluctance in respect to queer theories, and to start exploring its potentialities, as a tool to respond to fundamentalist voices and a bridge towards renewed dialogues and alliances across gender and sexual identities. 

Sonia Corrêa is an architect, with a specialisation in Anthropology. She is the coordinator of the Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) for its Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights Program. She co-chairs with Professor Richard Parker the International Working Group on Sexuality and Social Policy.

Sonia Corrêa is an architect, with a specialisation in Anthropology. She is the coordinator of the Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) for its Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights Program. She co-chairs with Professor Richard Parker the International Working Group on Sexuality and Social Policy.

References
ARC International and Action Canada for Population and Development (2004). International dialogue on gender, sexuality & human rights: An overview—International strategy building on sexual orientation: The UNCHR and beyond. Ottawa: Mimeo. 
Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routlege. 
Campaña por la convención de los derechos sexuales y los derechos reproductivos. (2005). Memorias del Seminario "Prostitución, trabajadoras del sexo, transgeneridades, nuevas tecnologias reproductivas—Un debate a partir de los derechos sexuales y derechos reproductivos. Lima. Retrieved from <www.convencion.org.uy>.
Corrêa, S. (1996). Gênero e sexualidade como sistemas autônomos: Idéias for a de lugar. In R. Barbosa & R. Parker (Eds.), Sexualidades Brasileiras. Rio de Janeiro: Relume Dumará.
CREA, Sangama, & TARSHI (2005). A conversation on sexual rights in India. New Delhi.
Currah, P. (2001). Queer theory, lesbian and gay rights, and transexual marriages. In M. Blasius (Ed.), Sexual identities and queer politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.  
De Beauvoir, Simone. (1949). The second sex. Translation of Le deuxième sexe.  
Engels, F. (1884). The origin of the family, private property and the state.  
Foucault. (1980). The history of sexuality: Volume 1. New York: Random House.  
International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission Latin America (2006). Las ausentes; Las inominadas. Buenos Aires: Mimeo.
Kristeva, J. (1999). Le génie féminin. Tomme premier: Hannah Arendt. Paris: Arthème Fayard.
Parker, R.G. (1991). Bodies, pleasures and passions: Sexual culture in contemporary Brazil.  Boston: Beacon Press.
Petchesky, R. (2000). Sexual rights: Inventing a concept, mapping an international practice. In R.G. Parker, R.; M. Barbosa; & P. Aggleton (Eds.), Framing the sexual subject: The politics of gender, sexuality and power (pp. 81-103). Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of California Press.
Reiter, R. (Ed.). (1975). Towards an anthropology of women. New York: Monthly Review Press.  
Rubin, G. (1975). The trafficking in women. In R. Reiter (Ed.), Towards an anthropology of women. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Rubin, G. (1984). Thinking sex: Notes for a radical theory of the politics of sexuality. In C.S. Vance (Ed.), Pleasure and danger: Exploring female sexuality. London:  Routledge and Kegan Paul.Vance, C.S. (Ed.). (1984a). Pleasure and danger: Exploring female sexuality. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 
Vance, C.S. (1984b). Pleasure and danger: Towards a politics of sexuality. In C.S. Vance (Ed.), Pleasure and danger: Exploring female sexuality. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith. (2004). Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the collaboration of men and women in the Church and in the world. Retrieved from <www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20040731_collaboration_eng.html>.
 Weeks, J. (1996). The body and sexuality. In S. Hall; D. Held; D. Hubert & K. Thompson (Eds.), Modernity: An introduction to modern sciences. London: Blackwell.
Sonia Corrêa is an architect, with a specialisation in Anthropology. She is the coordinator of the Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) for its Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights Program. She co-chairs with Professor Richard Parker the International Working Group on Sexuality and Social Policy.
 
 
Endnotes
1 This author being a Brazilian, these reflections also reflect a situated perspective—and this is not trivial—from a so-called Southern-based feminist perspective. As hybrid as our culture may be, we do recognise the relevance of the Western legacy in it, particularly with respect to its intellectual dimensions. I belong to a specific generation that was both influenced by Marxism and French contemporary feminism and philosophy. It was much later that I got acquainted with the Anglo-Saxon feminist literature. Lastly, in recent years, my inquiries have shifted more and more from gender towards sexuality.
2 I should say the privilege, as at that point, we communicated by mail. In Brazil, many years could elapse before we had access to relevant materials published in other languages. Five years later, not many Brazilian feminists had been already exposed to Rubin’s thinking. I greatly thank my dear friend Leni Silverstein for sending me the book at such an early stage in my feminist search for good theories.
3 This definition was elaborated by the Mexican feminist Teresita de Barbieri on the basis of Gayle Rubin’s original frame. My preference for it is that it emphasises the greater disciplining strength of gender systems during the reproductive phase of human lives.
4 And she adds the following: “We need to study each society to determine the exact mechanisms by which particular conventions on sexuality are produced and maintained. The exchange of women is an initial step towards building an arsenal of concepts with which sexual systems can be described.”
5 The list also includes Louise Lamphere, Michelle Rosaldo, and Shirley Ortner in the seventies, and Joan Scott in the early eighties, which I read much later.
6 Vance, C.S. (Ed.). (1984). Pleasure and danger: Exploring female sexuality; Weeks, J. (1998). La construción cultural de las sexualidades. Que queremos decir cuando habalamos de cuerpo y sexualidad?
7 This definition is inspired in Pierre Bourdieu’s first famous article “La Domination Masculine.”
8 To be fair, the notion of erotic justice emerges from both Parker’s frame and the principles laid by Rubin in her 1984 paper about the requirements of fair treatment of sexual variation in both private and public domains.
9 For instance, Joan Scott’s paper “Gender as a Category for Historical Analysis” was clearly more widely read and accepted in feminist circles than Rubin’s and Foucault’s insights and approaches. In particular, “Thinking on Sex,” her 1984 revision that criticised the fusion of gender and sex, often provoked uneasiness. But these authors were widely accepted and used by sexuality and HIV and AIDS researchers.
10 Paragraph 96 reads as follows:  "The human rights of women include their right to have control over and decide freely and responsibly on matters related to their sexuality, including sexual and reproductive health, free of coercion, discrimination and violence. Equal relationships between women and men in matters of sexual relations and reproduction, including full respect for the integrity of the person, require mutual respect, consent and shared responsibility for sexual behavior and its consequences.”
11 Just to mention a few examples: CREA, Sangama and TARSHI organised a conversation on sexual rights in India (2004). ILGA, IGLHRC, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, ARC International & ACPD were involved in a wide mobilisation of sexual rights activists around the “Resolution on Sexual Orientation and Human Rights” presented by Brazil at the UN Human Rights Commission in 2003. Since 2004, in Latin America, the “Campaign for a Convention on Sexual and Reproductive Rights” has mobilised a series of dialogues among feminist, gays, transgenders, travestis, and sex workers. In 2005, the Institute for Development Studies organised a broad-based workshop on realising sexual rights.
12 I remember Rosalind Petchesky in Beijing intensely saying to me: “These guys are reading post-modern theories of sexuality to more consistently erode our positions.”
13 Kristeva’s thinking is too complex to be summarised. But—in order not to the leave the mention to female difference floating in the air—one way of synthesising her position is to say that she emphasises female semiotics or poetic language, which, in her view, is what can erode the Symbolic (that in the Lacanian tradition of pyschoanalysis is always Phallic). In her vision, poetic language derives from the impossibility, especially for women, to fully relate with the inaccessible body of the mother.
14 This initiative must be situated in relation to a recent debate that swept Latin American feminist communities. In the preparations for the October 2005 “Regional Feminist Meeting,” a harsh polemic burst out in respect to the participation of transgender and transsexual women. Few known transgender feminist activists were prohibited to attend the event. This action triggered a debate in the meeting itself in which it was finally resolved in favour of the participation of transgender, transsexual, and intersex women in the next event.

A Note from the Guest Editor

Whether we are organising communities for empowerment, staging pride events for visibility, lobbying for non-discriminatory legislation, discoursing sexuality in the classroom, or facilitating online discussions, we give evidence to a collective reality and carve out a common space in this sexuality-unfriendly world.

Yet formal recognition and understanding of gender and sexuality issues remain scant. Within social movements, such issues have either unified activists or further deepened conflict. Whether they are bound by loose threads or by tight knots, the relationship between lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, queer (LGBTQ) activists, feminists, and human rights advocates has been a source of tension and/or solidarity.

With stigma and discrimination against LGBTQ people persistently occurring at a global scale, it is an opportune time for participants of these various social movements to engage in meaningful conversations about convergences and differences on gender and sexuality issues. It is not by accident that Isis International–Manila, through WIA magazine, decided to devote an entire issue on the theme “Queering.”

While this WIA issue celebrates LGBTQ life, it likewise recognises the LGBTQ experiences of harassment, violence, discrimination, and persecution.

As a concept, “queering” is evolving and changing through time. As an experience, it connotes continuous movement and action. Thus, we need to keep the conversation going, to sharpen our analysis, and to approach the issues with a broader, more inclusive look. Queering, after all, is an ongoing journey of rebirth and reconstruction, of redefining meanings and reshaping history.

Malu S. Marin
Guest Editor