**Part 1: Politics of Difference**

### **Interview with Margo Okazawa-Rey: Politics of Difference as Politics of Connection**

#### **Andrea Zimmermann**

#### **1. Introduction**

In her conversation with Andrea Zimmermann Margo Okazawa-Rey addresses genealogies and challenges of transnational feminist politics of difference. As a founding member of the Combahee River Collective and activist scholar, she reflects on intersectionality from the perspective of personal experience. The starting point is the question how being different becomes a problem only in power regimes that organize social inequality according to differences. Difference as part of power regimes then affects structural and interpersonal relations. Furthermore, Margo Okazawa-Rey stresses the need for a special awareness for the analytical category of the nation in order to elaborate on a revised idea of collectivity. As a thinker, teacher and committed activist, Margo Okazawa-Rey highlights the necessity to build strong coalitions of transnational feminism nowadays beyond politics of identity and struggles of classification. These coalitions should give attention to the following question: to whom are we responsible and accountable?

Margo Okazawa-Rey is a feminist activist scholar working on issues of intersectionality, armed conflict, militarism and violence against women and she has published extensively on these topics. She teaches in various contexts worldwide and is a regular visiting scholar in the PhD program Gender Studies CH. As part of her academic work, Margo Okazawa-Rey is also strongly committed to activism in South Korea and Palestine. She is Professor Emerita at San Francisco State University.

#### **2. Interview with Margo Okazawa-Rey**


"oranges." Then the colonizers originally but later dominant powers decided apples are better than oranges and imbued them institutionally with special access, power, status, and so forth . . . . That's where the politics is—it's about power and structural and interpersonal relations that are affected by the structural parts of difference.

If we say you're this person and you're that person and you're somebody else without all the structural and cultural pieces connected to regimes of power it wouldn't be a problem obviously.

So, on the one hand, differences are made a problem and become a justification for discrimination and inequality, because of cultural and structural meanings that are given to them. Not because humans are being different from each other.

On the other hand, being made different as less-than—minoritized, racialized, and so on—required us to start with those identities as basis on which we could reframe our existence as valuable, beautiful beings then to organize. In this sense, it was important to embrace difference as a starting place, in a specific historical moment. Since then, identities have become both starting and ending points. Forty years later that is depressing, because what it's gotten to is just politics based on identities and struggles around classification and inclusion. Those are political questions, questions about societal and interpersonal power, but not very inspiring questions. Questions about the socially constructed, categorical identities do not help us excavate and understand the foundational forces threatening the existence of human and natural life on our planet. They point to specific groups' experiences (and there always will be new identity groups emerging as human consciousness develops) but not necessarily the whole ecology of life on this planet. Where things are in the world right now with the Corona pandemic, which is demonstrating "ultimate contingency as human beings," and the global uprisings sparked by the US-based Movement for Black Lives, which is inspiring other marginalized peoples to re-examine their own conditions, demands that we think more deeply, especially questioning previous assumptions and to imagine more audaciously about possibilities.

Identity politics, like wars and armed conflicts, is also fundamentally a struggle about resources, material for sure. Within the academy and within wider society, the struggle is material. I think it's also a struggle about what's understood or experienced as not enough attention: struggle over attention and recognition. So we end up with "I'm more oppressed or my group is more oppressed than" or "my group doesn't have any voice and you know the

only place the voice can come from is this other group who we're horizontally situated in very similar locations". So the question now is: How do we think about organizing ourselves in such a way that is really more fundamentally about vision, about what we're trying to create? How will we need to understand and address "difference" in that creative process? For example, we are engaging in creating our vision of a new world. As we are doing so, differences emerge, such as race and gender, political perspectives, differences in culture, differences in worldview. Because we are trying collectively to create a vision of a new world, there's a real context for the struggle and real need for it. In a sense we would be practicing core values of the new world: inclusion, diversity, principled struggle, for instance. It's not just "my group" who is needing and wanting attention. We would be sharing personal and collective histories and stories; we would be asking, what do we need to think about and to do, so as not to recreate what we are trying to change?


That's what I envision, that's what I hope for at this historic moment 2020. Remember too that we're not at 1970 where recognizing differences mattered in some ways much more, because we then really had much of a politics around that. I think if we don't move away from just starting with politics of difference, we'll always have people who will say, "well my group is not recognized, is marginalized, is invisible" because there are always new identities emerging as people's consciousnesses develop.

For example, 10 years ago transgender was an emerging concept and category, and only beginning in some places. Now the trans movement is becoming a really important force. An aspect of the current transgender people's struggle is emerging in the same way as other group's struggles: exclusion by dominant group, in this case genders. So trans-people are saying (as people before, we want our identities to be recognized and acknowledged; we want to have our say and practice self-determination. Creating the vision and addressing

differences will be intertwined, interdependent processes that I believe could more likely result in a vision grounded in principles and values that will create very inviting boundaries. In that way, newly emerging groups can enter easily and, once there, we collectively can think about how to improve our situations together. And have openings for new emerging groups to join together. We will be able consistently to re-conceptualize the "we" and hold firm on our values simultaneously.

	- AZ: Let's look back to the experience that you had in the Combahee River Collective. Since those days, you have been playing a very active role in current feminist discussions and debates. How do those past experiences shape your current politics? What have you kept and what have you let go? What of those experiences, and formative experiences we all have, do you think needs to stay with us? Why is it important to reflect on this genealogy of feminist work and feminist theory and theory of intersectionality?

The Combahee River Collective started with a small group of African American women living in the Boston area in the mid-1970s. We were feminists and part of the larger Boston women's liberation movement. Around the same time, there was a notional gathering of Black feminists in Chicago organized by the National Black Feminist Organization. Several of us who had attended that meeting were deeply disappointed by the liberal perspective and the agenda, homophobia, and classism embedded in that convening. When those sisters returned from the conference they started meeting more intentionally and purposefully to articulate a more radical understanding of Black feminism. This perspective was articulated in 'A Black Feminist Statement', which has become an essential reading to understand both the genealogy of Black feminism and intersectional feminism. We stated then, as Black and intersectional feminists, we have to understand that the conditions we face are global and international, that it transcends nation-states. The conditions—therefore, the struggles—are worldwide. Also, we know that it's very much connected to our struggles with our respective states, the states that govern our various people. The feminisms that need to be carried through, and I think the new, additional part of this is that we, specifically feminists in the Global North, need to take much more seriously the analytic category of nation and come to understand more deeply what it means to be connected to these states and corporations that are *leaders* of the world, many times said to be leading in our name: in the name of German people or Swiss people or American people, etcetera. We can't simply ignore this. Even though we consider ourselves radical and we're not agreeing to state policies, we still have to *own* that we are a part of that state and we structurally benefit. Even though we are distancing ourselves from it.

So one of the questions right now is: What's our struggle as feminists with the state that addresses not just domestic issues, but connecting the domestic with the foreign issues. How do we think about domestic policies and foreign policies as really going together, the interlinkages? As feminists, how do we need to think about these questions when we consider the centrality of gender that is all classed, raced, ethnicized, and so on, because all nation-states are patriarchal, heterosexist, and racialized/ethnicized.

And related to that is a really critical question for us. In that context of challenging our states and recognizing our dominance even in global feminist politics, to whom are we responsible and accountable? And for what?


short stories about Palestine, especially about everyday life as it's affected by the occupation and militarism and also about how people carry on: How the weddings are celebrated, how the people who have died are remembered and honored, graduations, going to the supermarket, just the granular daily life—and putting those stories in a political context somehow. People who know at all, know a lot about Palestine in some ways, but they only know the political analysis, that's what they mostly know. I am committed not only to know but also to understand contours and textures and meanings of daily life. The same with South Korea: what is daily life like around the US military bases, for example?

The activist scholarship I am committed to practicing, is fundamentally deepening relationships and putting to use not just my own analytic frameworks but "local" or "daily" "lived" analytic frameworks, how people analyze and theorize. Here I'm talking even about my 12-year-old teacher Yasmin: trying to document how she understands the world, not just the other academics. Or Anas, who just started his first year at university. I want to help put out into the world their theorizing and understandings.

	- AZ: Coming back to the transnational work you are doing, you are present in so many projects all around the world. Out of your experience, if we want to bring forward gender equality, what are the big challenges that we have to face now? How can we bring forward gender equality when we take differences and complexities of contexts into account in this transnational scale?

willing to commit to, for the long haul. Equality certainly is one thing. Although we need that, it is so basic. We also need and deserve something grander, more visionary, moving toward utopia: What's a transnational feminist vision of genuine peace and security, for example? How do we value differences and conflicts specifically as powerful opportunities to imagine possibilities, to think about alternatives? By peace I'm talking in a very big way, not just the absence of conflicts. We often think about conflicts and difference as things that pull us apart. Let's think about difference and conflicts as spaces that we're inhabiting. In this case, we can use that space not just in the usual ways but also think about the space of opportunity and that the politics of difference absolutely can lead to the politics of hope and possibility and creativity. What I think we need the most now are hope, creativity, and imagination, a politics of possibility, a "politics of life" as my friend Vanessa Thompson says. In some ways many movements have been operating with limited imagination, because everybody is so under pressure and unabating violence coming at us. How do we form collectives where we can just really be open hearted as well as open in so many other ways so that we can think together and imagine together? Otherwise we're always attached, tied to the oppressor and oppression to the old paradigm. I think what's actually happening now is the struggle over paradigms. It's not just who's leading which country and who's struggling over what resources, and all that . . .


© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

### **Policing Di**ff**erence, Feminist Oblivions and the (Im-) Possibilities of Intersectional Abolition**

#### **Vanessa E. Thompson**

#### **1. Introduction**

Intensive policing and the expansion of the carceral condition are some of the most flagrant expressions of the current phase of gendered racial capitalism. Through the regulation and illegalization of migration, anti-terror legislation, the punishment of poverty and the war on crime, black and other negatively racialized subjects and groups are particularly vulnerable to state sanctioned forms of premature death across the Global North and South. In many contexts of continental Europe, mobilizations against racist policing (racial profiling) led by human rights and community organizations and initiatives have addressed this condition in recent years. What remains often at the margins, however, are the intersectional modalities and dimensions of racist policing and punishment. Likewise, the issue of racist policing and the expansion of the punitive condition is seldom discussed within European gender studies and broader feminist movements in continental Europe. As the title suggests, this article challenges one-dimensional readings of racist policing and engages with the silences around intersectional modalities of police violence. It further addresses the reproduction of carceral feminisms within gender studies and feminist approaches in continental Europe. Departing from current debates and my scholarly activist work on racial profiling in the context of continental Europe (mainly Germany, Switzerland and France) and by applying a black feminist framework, I interrogate modalities of intersectional structural, slow and silent violence engendered by policing. In a second step, I discuss the implications of carceral feminisms and problematize the broad silences within gender studies and feminist movements around intersectional modalities of police violence. Finally, possibilities and horizons of intersectional abolition are sketched out.

#### **2. Policing Race in Continental Europe**

In many postcolonial contexts of continental Europe, such as Germany, Switzerland and France, race is hegemonically not considered a category of

structural dehumanization, exclusion, inequality and subordination. However, racism is nevertheless institutionalized and pervasive (El-Tayeb 2011; Goldberg 2006; Lentin 2008; Wekker 2016; Purtschert 2019; Michel 2015; Wa Baile et al. 2019) and impacts practices, legal regulations and norms of policing (Belina 2016; Bruce-Jones 2015, 2016; Cremer 2013; Fassin 2013; Thompson 2018). In the last years, the issue of racist policing has gained more public attention in the above mentioned contexts due to black, migrant and people of color organizing (Belina 2016; Kollaborative Forschungsgruppe Racial Profiling 2019; Keaton 2013; Kampagne für Opfer Rassistischer Polizeigewalt 2016; Thompson 2018; Wa Baile et al. 2019). In all three contexts, the legal discursive framework that defines conditions of police controls can be, despite important historical and socio-political differences, relationally discussed. There are police, federal and state laws that not only allow, but rather foster and re-produce, racial profiling and racist policing through codes of criminal procedure that declare that they combat (a) illegalized migration, (b) terrorism and (c) crime and risk to public order. These codes of criminal procedure such as *verdachts-und ereignisunabhängige Personenkontrollen* in Germany (carried out under § 22 Abs. 1a BPolG and § 23 Abs. 1 Nr. 3 BPolG of the Federal Police Act), *les contrôles au faciès* in France (carried out mainly under Article 78-2 of the Code of Criminal Procedure) and *Personenkontrollen* in Switzerland (carried out under Article 215 StPO and cantonal laws) enable law enforcement to conduct stop and search controls without "evidence" at border areas, in and around train and railway stations, and on international sites such as freeways and airports. The relation between space and policing, in which race is concealed but nevertheless operates through the racialization of the analytics of migration and mobility as well as crime and deviance, is already striking here. It is even more explicit within police laws that enable state police to assign certain districts as "districts of danger". These districts are thereby declared to be a spatial zone where police can stop and search "anyone" without basing these checks on "suspicious" behavior (Belina 2016, 2017). Often, these are districts where large proportions of racialized poor people work and/or dwell at the intersection of the criminalization of migration/sex work/mental health issues, homelessness and/or informal economies (Belina 2017; Keitzel).

Although the above mentioned legal regulations do not explicitly operate with references to race, institutional racism is perpetuated and fostered through the racialization of migration and mobility (i.e., who is constructed as a stranger/migrant in relation to the citizen), crime (which bodies are constructed as criminal or deviant or pushed into illegalized economies) and space (which places are constructed as safe in relation to the bodies that dwell in and inhabit these spaces) (Belina

2017; Hall et al. 1978; Camp and Heatherton 2016; Thompson 2018; Wa Baile et al. 2019). In countries in which the dominant national narrative, also historicized by its colonial implications, constructs its population as white (Ahmed 2000; Goldberg 2006; El-Tayeb 2011; Keaton et al. 2012; Lentin 2008; Michel 2015; Purtschert 2019; Wekker 2016), non-white people and especially poor black people, Roma and people read as Muslim are severely exposed to racial profiling under these legal regulations (Human Rights Watch 2012).

Racist policing, however, unfolds deeply intersectional with regard to the subjects and bodies it addresses/interpellates, the institutional dimensions and the forms of violence it enacts (Dankwa et al. 2019; Kollaborative Forschungsgruppe Racial Profiling 2019; Ritchie 2017; Thompson 2018). In the following, I delve into the intersectional modalities of violence enacted by racist policing. Based upon the lived experiences and archives of situated knowledges of racialized and multi-marginalized subjects in European contexts, I show that an intersectional critique contributes to a more thorough understanding of racial profiling and its gendered implications. This also challenges discussions on gender equality and within anti-racist as well as feminist struggles.

#### **3. Intersectional Modalities of Violence**

Racial profiling entails, but is not limited to, identity checks, pat downs and physical searches, which often have severe psychological and physical consequences (Ahmed 2006; Kampagne für Opfer Rassistischer Polizeigewalt 2016; Kollaborative Forschungsgruppe Racial Profiling 2019; Thompson 2018, Wa Baile et al. 2019). As a multi-dimensional violent institutionalized practice, racial profiling extends the actual control in time, space and embodiment.<sup>1</sup> Beyond the actual control, racialized policing "takes time", as George Lipsitz writes (Lipsitz 2016, p. 126). Rob Nixon's thoughts on slow violence (Nixon 2011; Vorbrugg 2019) are useful here as he describes a form of violence that does not speak to spectacular events but rather to mundane articulations. I bring this conception into conversation with an intersectional framework (Crenshaw 1989): as a tool, that does not only allow one (a) to engage with the policing of those multi-marginalized subjects, which often fall through the cracks in discussions on police brutality and violence, and (b) to analyze how racism operates alongside other relevant vectors of criminalization and punishment within racial gendered capitalism such as class, gender, sexuality, migrant status, dis/ability, etc., but further, it allows one (c) to

<sup>1</sup> I have discussed parts of this argument in Thompson (2018) and El-Tayeb and Thompson (2019).

investigate how racist policing as an institutionalized practice does not only operate within and through the institution of the police (Fassin 2013; Thompson 2018), but rather in juncture with other institutions such as juridical institutions, medical institutions, welfare institutions and the media.

Various NGOs, anti-racist organizations and initiatives have argued that racial profiling causes anxiety and have documented how policed subjects face stress and anxiety from policing. From the physical and psychological violence it enacts, depression, fear of prosecution and panic attacks can develop (Basu 2016; Louw 2016). Thus, everyday policing makes mental vulnerabilities worse. At the same time, mental vulnerabilities are a crucial condition upon which policing draws, as racialized people with mental disabilities are particularly vulnerable to policing (Bruce-Jones 2015; Nelson 2016; Thompson).

Further, the violence of racialized policing is extended on the basis of the lack of independent complaint offices and structures as policed subjects are further isolated instead of receiving psychosocial, public, juridical and financial support. Moreover, and this points to the effects of societal racism through racial profiling, witnesses rarely speak on behalf of the victims of racial profiling or seldomly intervene because racist policing confirms already established popular and everyday racisms (Basu 2016; Thompson 2018). Lawyers are also difficult to find based on their lack of knowledge on racism and the structural discouragement of thematizing racism during court cases (Naguib 2019). Like this, the criminalization of people of color is re-produced beyond the actual policing control and beyond the institution of police, as it works through various intersecting mechanisms, through which racialized folks are constructed as problems instead of victims of structural police violence. Victims of racist policing who manage (and have the resources) to engage in or have access to legal strategies and file complaints are often confronted with contraindications by more than one police officer.

The case of Wilson A. from Switzerland demonstrates this. Wilson A., who was stopped and searched by the police on 10 October 2009 in a tram after he came from a meeting with a friend and asked why the police only checked on him and his friend, explains that he was aggressively pushed out of the tram and then beaten. Wilson A. narrates that he told the police that he just had heart surgery, but the police continued and even insulted him with racist slurs. As stated in the many reports of support groups and his own testimony, Wilson A. could barely breathe.<sup>2</sup>

<sup>2</sup> Breathing refers to physical as well as to social breathing here. I approach these experiences through a Fanonian framework and follow, amongst others, the crucial and material motif of *un-breathing*, a motif

Wilson A. filed charges, the police officers filed charges too ("violence against state officials") and after nine years, the three police officers were acquitted. The case is in revision.

The psychological, physical and financial constraints that come with such a process are part of the slow violence of and through policing. Black and other racialized subjects are not perceived as victims in the hegemonic economies of perception and recognition, even if they were the ones who called the police. The case of Derege Wevelsiep from Frankfurt am Main, Germany demonstrates this. After a racist ticket control in a metro in October 2012, he called the police for support and explains that he was then beaten by the police he called for in front of his partner and 3-year-old son. Ousman Sey, who died after being held in a police cell in Dortmund on 7 July 2012, first called the ambulance because of stomach cramps, and instead of receiving medical care, he was arrested. I refer to these cases as racist policing, though no control without suspicion took place in a direct sense, as I draw on a broader understanding of racial profiling and racist policing that includes racist representations as well as the institutional criminalization and brutalization of race and blackness, which not only shape policing practices but furthermore court arrangements, media discourses and societal dimensions (El-Tayeb and Thompson 2019).

The slow violence of racial profiling also works through the ways in which family members and friends of police victims are treated by the authorities and institutions. Through the closing of procedures or procedures that extend over years, and through racism during investigations or hearings, as in the case of the terrorist murder series by the so called National Socialist Underground (where the families of the victims killed by the NSU first were accused of being involved in the killings), family members and friends thus experience a continuation of anti-black and racialized violence, especially when they are poor, which not only extends the

which sticks to the policing of race, especially of blackness, through time and space. Fanon wrote that the colonial condition is characterized by "combat breathing" (Fanon 1965). Combat breathing epitomizes the pant for breath, the gasp of air, the compression of air supply, the panic attack. The continuity of this material motif becomes apparent when thinking of the death of Eric Garner, who died in a police chokehold on 17 July 2014 in New York. His last words were "I can't breathe". The condition of un-breathing or of combat breathing travels in a transnational and transtemporal sense (See El-Tayeb and Thompson 2019 and Thompson). Think of the death of Samuel Dolphyne in Finland and of his friend who stated: "He was shouting and calling my name; Ofori, Ofori they are killing me. I can't breathe" (http://ghdiaspora.com/update-austrian-based-ghanaian-dies-in-the-hands-of-policein-finland/). The black refugee activist Sista Mimi, who was engaged in the refugee protests at the Oranienplatz and the Gerhart-Hauptmann School in Berlin, died on 11 December 2014. During her long term self-organized refugee activism, she argued that the repression by police absorbs her breath.

actual control but also goes beyond the subject towards which it was directed. Assa Traoré, the sister of Adama Traoré, who died in police custody in a suburb of Paris on 19 July 2016, constantly faces charges while she is engaged in the struggle for justice for her brother and other victims of racist policing (Traoré and Lagasnerie 2019). Racial profiling and the policing of blackness and race unfolds alsongside the transnational, transtemporal and transsubjective.<sup>3</sup>

What is nevertheless undertheorized and further often marginalized in anti-racist movements and organizing is the intersectional dimension of racist policing, which does not solely draw on race and masculinity but rather on intersectional dimensions of criminalization (Bruce-Jones 2015; Dankwa et al. 2019; Kollaborative Forschungsgruppe Racial Profiling 2019; Ritchie 2017; Thompson 2018, ). Black people and people of color who live at the intersections of oppressions are particularly vulnerable to (murderous) policing: Black women and women of color, queer and especially trans and non-binary black people and people of color, black people and people of color with dis/abilities, black working class and poor people and people of color, black people and people of color rendered refugees and asylum seekers, illegalized sex workers, etc.

In the German context, one can think of Christy Schwundeck, who was fatally shot in a job center in Frankfurt am Main on 19 May in 2011 while enquiring about her unemployment benefits. The case of N'deye Mareame Sarr, who was shot by police on 14 July in 2001 in the house of her white ex-partner, is a further crucial manifestation that reveals how racism, gender relations, migrant status, social class and dis/ability intersect in policing (Bruce-Jones 2015). In both cases two or more police or security officers as well as one more person were present, and Christy Schwundeck and N'deye Mareame Sarr were the only black women in these respective situations. Both were in a situation of crisis. Christy Schwundeck was without money since 1 May as her unemployment benefits had not arrived. N'deye Mareame Sarr wanted to pick up her two-year-old child from her white husband, from which she had separated. The child was supposed to stay there over the weekend. However, he had brought the child to his parents and applied for sole child custody without

<sup>3</sup> The sudden death of Oury Jalloh's mother, Mariama Djambo Diallo, after she came to Germany a second time during the trial, is part of this form of slow violence. In the US context, one can think of Erica Garner, Eric Garner's daughter, who, after her father was killed, became even more engaged in struggles for black lives. She died at 27 because of a heart attack related to her asthma disease. That Erica Garner couldn't breathe, the condition of un-breathing, was already scripted symbolically before her death as she carried the last words of her father "I can't breathe" into the protest on multiple levels.

letting her know. Both shots were fired shortly after police arrived. Mareame Sarr was one of the persons who was shot by the new PEP (*Polizei-Einsatz-Patrone*) (https://jungle.world/artikel/2001/36/bei-ankunft-todesschuss), a special bullet with a mushroom effect and created to gun down very "violent attackers", a label that sticks with blackness and poverty. In both cases, public prosecutors closed the case on the grounds of self-defense, as Schwundeck and Mareame Sarr were supposed to have threatened police officers with kitchen knives, although there were numerous contradictions and inconsistencies in the witnesses' testimonies.

Police reports as well as media representations described Schwundeck and Mareame Sarr in highly anti-black terms, as hyper-aggressive and physically dominating. Anti-black representations of the "angry black woman" (Collins 1990) in the case of Christy Schwundeck, she was also doomed as a "mad" woman (Bruce-Jones 2015, p. 43)—were strongly at play in these descriptions. They foster a gendered animalization and bestialization, which places black women and black non-binary folks outside of the realm of care and protection and constructs them as uncontrollable (alongside the representations of black masculinities).

On an everyday level, black women and women of color, queers and non-binary folks are further exposed to forms of police violence, which often go unnoticed. For the US context, Andrea Ritchie has engaged with the intersecting forms of police violence experienced by multi-marginalized subjects:

While it is in fact the case that fewer women are killed, brutalized by police or incarcerated, a focus on police killings and more egregious uses of physical force elides women's more frequent experiences of less lethal violations, like sexual harassment and assault, which go undocumented . . . Police contact with women also tends to take place in locations away from public view—and cameras—such as homes, clinics and public hospitals, welfare offices, public housing. The combination of these factors and more makes police interactions with women less visible, not only in the numbers but also in the public eye. (Ritchie 2017, p. 234)

The contexts at stake here indeed differ from the US context. However, the cases of Christy Schwundeck and N'deye Mareame Sarr (as well as others) demonstrate that an intersectional perspective on racist policing is necessary to not only analyze the ways in which policing as a method of gendered racial capitalism draws on intersecting modes of oppression, but further to account for the specific forms of policing (and their spaces) that multi-marginalized gendered subjects and groups are exposed to. First explorative studies as well as the accounts of support groups and initiatives show that black women/women of color, queers and non-binary folks

are criminalized as sex workers and are exposed to identity checks and searches (Belina 2017; El-Tayeb and Thompson 2019; Plümecke and Wilopo 2019). Black women/women of color, queers and non-binary folks who work in the sex industry are particularly vulnerable to racist policing and its gendered implications, as they are controlled more often than their white colleagues and are under suspicion of working as illegalized sex workers (Dankwa et al. 2019). A higher frequency of controls can have severe impacts on their lives, also in terms of, for instance, child custody regulations. More controls and police raids moreover further render vulnerable migrant sex workers who are illegalized (Hydra 2017).

Black and racialized mothers and non-binary parents are often constructed as "bad mothers/parents" and over policed. This is also important with regard to the cases of Christy Schwundeck and N'deye Mareame Sarr, as their children were implicitly or explicitly involved in both cases (in the case of Schwundeck, she was struggling to get her child out of foster care, which also fed into her depression). A detailed, historicized and contextualized critique of the gendered policing of race and blackness, or gendered racial profiling (Ritchie 2017, p. 145), alongside migrant status, disability and socio-economic deprivation, thus must interrogate the interdependency of systems of policing and punishment, regimes of welfare and social services, foster care and their implicit orders.

Whereas multi-marginalized subjects and groups are particularly vulnerable to policing practices in their various and intersectional forms, *in-action* of police (when black and racialized subjects are in danger and/or go missing) is also a modality which I define as part of racist policing (see also (Melter 2017)). This modality shows that racialized subjects, multi-marginalized subjects in particular, are not only constructed as perpetrators and violent offenders, but furthermore fall through the cracks of perceptions and regimes of security and safety. The active *in-action* by police in the case of the black female asylum seeker Rita Awour Ojunge demonstrates this. Ojunge was missing since 7 April 2019. Her body parts were found in the forest near the Lager of Hohenleipisch in Brandenburg in mid-June 2019 (https://iwspace.de/2019/07/unsere-freundin-rita-awour-ojungewurde-in-brandenburg-tot-aufgefunden/). It took police more than two months until they found her remains in the nearby forest, though friends and her family continuously pressed that she had been missing since 7 April. She had repeatedly reported sexual harassment in the camp before. In addition, her son had repeatedly told his father and police that someone had violently beaten her before he brought her away from the camp on 7 April. Not only was Rita Awour Ojunge's son not believed, her reports on sexual harassment were further ignored, which points to

the effects of s/exoticization of black women and queer folks (Santos Pinto 2018) as well as to the intersectional violence within the lager and detention system. She was further implicitly criminalized as a "bad mother" who would leave her children by themselves without letting anyone know.

#### **4. Between Feminist Oblivion and Carceral (Queer-) Feminism**

State violence, prisons and practices of policing, the expansion of the carceral condition (Gilmore 2007; Fassin 2016)—and this includes the lager system—produce intersectional vulnerabilities that are seldomly considered within European gender studies and wider feminist movements. This produces troubling gaps as the feminization of punishment that works alongside the feminization of poverty (Sudbury 2005) is either ignored or actively perpetuated through carceral (queer-) feminist discourses.

The term carceral feminism is instructive here. Coined by Elisabeth Bernstein, it describes feminist movements' orientation towards the criminal justice system and carceral logics and away from social justice discourses. Bernstein developed the term and concept in the context of her ethnographic study on interventions against women trafficking and sex work in the US as well as debates on trafficking within the UN. She observed a shift away from the strengthening of human and labor rights towards the control and punishment of crime (Bernstein 2010, 2012, 2019). With the concept, she attunes to concepts of black women/women of color, who have long argued that neoliberal state formations further perpetuate racist logics and criminalize or abandon intersectionally vulnerable groups, and interrogates "the significance of feminism's own widening embrace of the neoliberal carceral state" (Bernstein 2012, p. 241). Carceral feminism is thereby defined as "a cultural and political formation in which previous generations' justice and liberation struggles are recast in carceral terms" (Bernstein 2019, p. 21).

Against the backdrop of a carceral turn (Fassin 2016), which is enhanced through the withdrawal of the welfare state on the one hand and the expansion of carceral and punitive measures and policies, military compartmentalization and the further criminalization of migration on the other, intersectional critiques of carceral feminisms thus analyze the entanglements of feminist anti-violence campaigns with the criminal justice system. What matters here is thus not only the analysis and critique of racist implications perpetuated by feminist discourses that draw on penal regulations (Hark and Villa 2017) but moreover the interrogation of punitive interpellations by liberal feminist movements and their acceptance of the carceral state and its enactment of intersectional violence.

In the German context, the restriction of asylum laws in the aftermath of the events of gendered and sexual violence in Cologne and other German cities on New Year's eve 2015/2016 and the massive use of racial profiling on New Year's eve 2016/2017 are striking examples of the articulations of carceral feminism. Furthermore, the reforms of the German Criminal Code of Sexual Offenses and the so called German Prostitution Protection Act, which includes obligatory identification and thus drives illegalized sex workers further into vulnerability, drew on carceral feminist discourses (Brazzell 2017; Hydra 2017).

Queer and queer of color theories and analyses have further shown how hate crime discourses not only draw on racist representations and discourses of the "homoand queerphobic migrant male subject" but render multi-marginalized queer subjects further invisible and disposable (Haritaworn 2015; Fütty Tamas 2019). Tracing hate crime discourses and policies in Germany, Jin Haritaworn shows how homo- and queer nationalist discourses merge with neoliberal and urban securitization and gentrification in the city of Berlin and thereby draw on racialized and post-colonial rationalities. Enhanced by this logic, queers of color are further exposed to state violence as well as to urban displacement (Haritaworn 2015). Tamás Jules Fütty also argues that discourses on "transphobic hate crime" individualize violence and merge with racist and culturalist rationalities as violence against trans and non-binary people is externalized and scripted onto black, brown and especially Muslim bodies. Simultaneously, normative and state violence against trans and non-binary people (ranging from legal and medical regulations, on the job and housing market and regarding health and social services) is further normalized and rendered structurally invisible. Haritaworn and Fütty do not only expose the current entanglements between feminism/queer-feminism and racism as well as the mobilization of gender and sexuality discourses for necropolitical/biopolitical regimes of securitization and exclusion. They further lay bare the queer-feminist complicity in criminal justice discourses.

#### **5. Horizons of Intersectional Abolition**

If multi-marginalized subjects are particularly vulnerable to policing and punitive measures, as well as fall through the cracks of state protection and are even brutalized through queer-feminist formations and interpellations of securitization, then it takes alternatives of safety and security which count as method as well as goal to end various forms of violence (Brazzell 2017). With regard to the case of policing, various organizations and initiatives document racist policing, educate parts of society on the implications and forms of violence enacted by policing and encourage

them to intervene, organize campaigns and conduct research. These practices of democratization work alongside a discourse on "watching out for each other" and engaging civil society against state violence (Loick 2016; Thompson 2018).

However, multi-marginalized subjects and groups in particular have developed methods and practices also by going beyond liberal reformism which not only tackle state violence but further call upon community accountability and transformative justice to end intra-personal violence within communities and civil society formations (Brazzell 2017; Critical Resistance 2008; LesMigras 2011). Placed at the intersection of not only policing and forms of state violence (either through active forms of securitization or through forms of abandonment) but further inter-personal and gendered modes of harm and violence, illegalized women and queers of color, as well as trans and non-binary people of color have developed methods and practices that go beyond the struggles against state violence. They thereby have addressed the oblivions of mainstream feminist movements who interpellate state violence through carceral feminisms on the one hand and those of anti-racist movements that concentrate on state and carceral violence, often at the expense of addressing inter-personal harm and violence, on the other. Intersectional violence is thus not only countered by calling upon communities and civil society to intervene in cases of intersectional state violence but also to struggle against inter-personal and gendered harm and violence such as domestic and partner violence. Methods such as community accountability and transformative justice are crucial for this intersectional approach. Community accountability aims at activating community structures (whereby community is understood in a very broad sense; this could mean your neighborhood, your workplace, political networks, marginalized communities, etc.) to provide safety and support for each other, especially for the person who had to experience harm (this includes accepting and centering their self-determination). Community values and strategies are developed to de-individualize inter-personal violence. As harm and violence is not individualized according to these approaches, community structures are also activated to develop sustainable strategies to address community members' abusive and violent behavior and to engage with them in a process of accountability and possible transformation. Further, community accountability aims at transforming the political conditions that reproduce violence and harm and foster forms of inter-personal violence (see the resource hub TransformHarm.org). The focus on structural forms of oppression without leaving behind the inter-personal dimensions, links community accountability to transformative justice, which takes all levels of violence and the necessity for transformation into account. Although the terms of

these methods were coined by black women, femmes and trans folks and women, femmes and trans folks of color in the US, the methods also have a history in various European contexts, as well as in the Global South. One example would be the intersectional organizing of refugee self-organized women against gendered violence within the lager system and against the lager system and border system itself, where they have developed support strategies against gendered violence and enhanced community accountability processes with the support of heterogenous self-organized refugee groups and allies. Another examples is the StoP (*Stadtteile ohne Partnergewalt*, districts without partner violence) project in Hamburg (and further cities), Germany (see Brazzell (2017)). The district work project, which cooperates with an anti-violence program in Boston, is based upon a community activating and awareness raising process, which includes prevention, support structures for subjects who experience partner or domestic violence, as well as methods of accountability for the person with abusive and violent behavior and strategy building for the broader community to transform structural inequality.

#### **6. Concluding Note**

Engaging in methods that withdraw from state interpellations on the one hand and mobilize community accountability and transformative justice on the other (instead of recreating and reproducing mass and intimate punishments) promises to not only transition to gender equality. These approaches of intersectional abolition moreover promise to transform gender politics which rather draw on criminalization and punishment than on care and intersectional racial justice and societal transformation.

**Funding:** This research was partially funded by The Hessen State Ministry for Higher Education, Research and the Arts, 2019\_05.

**Acknowledgments:** This text is a product of ongoing conversations and engagements, though the mistakes are mine. Thank you to Miguel Ayala, Mohamed Wa Baile, Serena O. Dankwa, Jeanette Ehrmann, Joanna James, Daniel Loick, Margo Okazawa-Rey, SA Smythe and Alexander Vorbrugg, for listening, talking things through with me, and for reading drafts. A very special thanks to the movements and initiatives against racist policing, in all its intersectional dimensions, who agreed to work with me (and beyond) for their fearless honesty and generosity, and for collectively engaging with their struggles and visions. I also want to thank the anonymous reviewer as well as the editorial team of MDPI Books. Many thanks also to Christa Binswanger and Andrea Zimmermann for putting together this edition, for their vision and work.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

#### **References**

Ahmed, Sara. 2000. *Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality*. London: Routledge.


© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

### **Who Intervenes? Thoughts from the Perspective of Arts and Culture Activism**

**Rahel El-Maawi and Sarah Owens**

The following text is a transcription and translation<sup>1</sup> of a conversation between Rahel El-Maawi and Sarah Owens, which took place as part of the 2018 lecture series "The Art of Intervention". Their dialogue touches upon topics such as Blackness, in/visibility, community, culture, art and criticism. Using their own voluntary work and Black-/queer-feminist literature as a starting point, El-Maawi and Owens talk about their motivations for, as well as the possibilities and consequences of, intersectional activism in arts and culture. Through this, the point of view shifts from the art of intervention to the question of who intervenes and how this intervention is supported or restricted by sociopolitical conditions.

*Rahel El-Maawi:* We met at Bla\*Sh, a network for Black womxn. Here, we will, however, not talk as Bla\*Sh specifically, but from a personal perspective. Still, Bla\*Sh was essential for us to meet. This is why I will quickly introduce the network.

Bla\*Sh presents itself as follows: "Bla\*Sh is a network of Black womxn in the German speaking part of Switzerland. We live straight or queer, with or without children. Some of us have grown up in Europe, others have lived on several continents. We are connected through our experience of being perceived as Black, and through the Afro-hyphen. We are 'of African descent' in the widest sense and aim at social, cultural and political empowerment."

Bla\*Sh exists because of the desire we had to come together as a group and to exchange and generate other forms of knowledge.

One of the first activities bringing us together was to talk about female authors: Black female authors, writers, also Western ones, who enabled us to learn with them. Bla\*Sh also refers back to an intervention by Audre Lorde, who repeatedly asked: Where are the Black women? She did not want to speak only to white feminists in the audience. She also asked this question in Zurich, at the end of the 1980s. Following this, different initiatives were formed by Black women, such as the network "Women

<sup>1</sup> The conversation was deliberately held in German in order to bring the discourse they participate in to the German-speaking part of Switzerland.

of Black Heritage" and later the "Treffpunkt Schwarze Frauen". Later, a book was published highlighting the work of the initiatives, and a few young Black women were invited to contribute.

In the same year, Audre Lorde's legacy was celebrated with a podium, to which several Black women were invited. At this podium, we decided that we needed a new network for us Black womxn. Our first meeting was a brunch at a kitchen table, which I find quite telling. We brought along books, learnt together and from each other, and were able to contribute different realities. Since 2013, a few of us have been meeting, and since 2016, many more have joined. Today, we are very active and repeatedly intervene—culturally, socially, and politically—with the latter based on the notion that "the private is also political".

*Sarah Owens:* For this conversation, we defined a few topics in advance we wanted to address. These are community, role-making, having to justify one's presence, visibility, and self-care. We chose quotes by Black female authors or journalists as points of departure, and, in the following, we use them as support for explaining our stance toward these topics, why they are important to us, and how we negotiate them within our work.

*Rahel El-Maawi:* In a world structured according to white, male, and capitalist principles, it is essential for survival to hear voices other than those continuously (re)cited and taught. For us, engaging with thinkers who name our realities and speak them out loud is *care*. Words can help when you need strength (see Ahmed (2017, p. 240)). This is why we chose to structure our conversation with quotes by Black womxn and Womxn of Color.

#### **Without community, there is no liberation [** . . . **]. But community must not mean a shedding of our di**ff**erences, nor the pathetic pretense that these di**ff**erences do not exist.** Lorde (2007, p. 112)

*Rahel El-Maawi:* Community allows me to find a language for what happens to me; it is a way of carrying each other. It allows me to name and relocate experiences we make as Black womxn, and to promote mutual learning. This is something I had been looking for and found in Bla\*Sh. My goal was to not be alone with these experiences, which I could not make sense of by myself, since I did not know: am I the only one experiencing this or are these situations created by society? Through our exchange, I can place my situation in a societal context and therefore de-individualize it.

*Sarah Owens:* I feel similar about this. I grew up in a predominantly white society and did speak to others about some of the experiences I had had but could not reflect on these experiences because I could not make sense of them. Now, upon looking

back, my aim is not to put a label on them and declare: "This was clearly racist." It is more about speaking with others who might have had similar experiences, or to enter into a dialog with those who have not had these experiences but who wants to listen. Most importantly, my goal is to listen more carefully to others. These types of conversations require a trust in each other and a "safe space".

*Rahel El-Maawi:* Yes, I also appreciate the way that we treat each other and that there is this place that lets us care for one another, know about each other, and develop a practice together to be active and to be able to intervene: A collective self-empowerment. Community, for me, also became a space for the transformation of grief and anger. It lets me transition from experience into action, into practice.

*Sarah Owens:* I agree—there is, one the one hand, the discovery of a mutual language that lets us contextualize these experiences and speak about them. On the other hand, we find support for action in everyday life: "Next time, if something like this happens, how can I or how do I want to act? When do I want to spring into action and possibly be regarded as difficult, when do I want to be silent?" I think Bla\*Sh reflects this in a twofold way: One is a gaze that is directed towards the inside, the way in which we care for each other. The other one is directed outwards in the form of interventions or statements.

**Oppressed groups are frequently placed in the situation of being listened to only if we frame our ideas in the language that is familiar to and comfortable for a dominant group. This requirement often changes the meaning of our ideas and works to elevate the ideas of dominant groups.** Hill Collins (2000, p. vii)

**So institutionalized is the ignorance of our history, our culture, our everyday existence that, often, we do not even know ourselves.** Njeri (1991, p. 7)

*Sarah Owens:* Role-making is an issue that concerns mainly our efforts directed outwards, since through these we often are confronted with expectations or find ourselves in roles we have not intended for ourselves.

*Rahel El-Maawi:* What I find interesting is how the topic of community links to the question of how we became addressable all of a sudden. Also, the questions arising therefrom: how do I want to be addressed, how do I want to appear in public? In short, actively taking matters into one's hands. I find this very important, in order to make myself aware of the way in which I want to frame myself to avoid getting into stigmatizing spheres, where I have the feeling that a twist might happen easily.

This connects to the question of the norm—where and when am I addressed as a Black woman? Is it only when I fulfil a certain normative expectation that is legible to mainstream society? Even though I have been socialized in a very Swiss way, I do stand out and get ascribed a specific role. I am also often invited as a "token". This is why active self-framing is central to me. I view it as my contribution to participate in order to shift the norm and to expose such demands.

*Sarah Owens:* Bla\*Sh defines itself as a network and thereby emphasizes that we are all Black womxn but that we are also different. This is to avoid the misunderstanding that Bla\*Sh has a single, homogenous perspective and opinion. It is understandable that in the context of today's society, which likes issues to be as quickly and easily digestible as possible, we are expected to demonstrate a certain uniformity. Thus, I find it even more important not to hastily try to meet this expectation, but instead to consciously show difference and divergence—all in the sense of the aforementioned quote by Audre Lorde.

*Rahel El-Maawi:* Because difference is also fed by our direct realities, by our being confronted with being womxn in this society, mothers, aunts, who also suffer from this unjust system. For me, this is an important incentive to counter these circumstances with something exciting. Still, there exists a sadness when we deal with certain topics in small groups, for it is often very moving and devastating at the same time. Speaking with others helps me gather my forces, so that I can articulate myself towards the outside and define and claim my position and role. I want to do something that empowers us, something that empowers women, People of Color, Womxn of Color, Black womxn and all of society.

*Sarah Owens:* We recently organized a reading session for children's books, as some of us are mothers, aunts, or godmothers. I very much enjoy reading to my daughter but was always a bit dissatisfied with German children's books that are available in stores, as the children in these stories are usually blond, with a blond mother and brunette father. The mother is at home, the father works. Usually there are two children, a girl and a boy, and their grandparents are often still alive and physically active. We once spoke about this at a Bla\*Sh meeting: "Do you know any books I can read or give as a gift that diverts from this norm? Where there are other types of family, and different experiences, and in which the protagonists are of color?" We then began to look for such stories, a search with quite a steep learning curve! The idea for a reading session emerged out of our inquiry—it was to give children of color the opportunity to encounter stories in which they can recognize themselves. Also, we wanted to share the knowledge we had acquired during our research with the adults who came to the session.

To continue our commitment even after the event, we thought ahead: "Let's write a children's book, let's translate non-German books into German, let's write to publishers." Surely, such an endeavor also requires that we think about how to manage it once it gets going: on the one hand, it is fantastic if projects continue, on the other hand, they require a significant amount of time and resources.

*Rahel El-Maawi:* Yes indeed, this means hundreds of hours of volunteer work! The example of the children's books also illustrates that we have not been able to intervene very deeply on a structural level. The project took effect on an individual level—those who participated are now likely more attentive. It is also an example for how we are addressed: Many people approach us, are interested in our activities, but have not thought about these issues before. And it means that we have to go further. A friend of mine wanted to order the children's books we had selected for a school library, but only two of the twelve books were available in the library catalogue. This small example already shows how many obstacles there are. I find this telling also in that it illustrates how white our knowledge is. I also grew up with white knowledge. With the children's book project, we aim to make Black knowledge accessible here in Europe, in Switzerland, which requires a lot of commitment and effort. I always find it surprising how much this depends on private initiative, how little support there is, and how much community is needed for us to be able to do this together.

**Whiteness—or, you know, white people—exists as the basic template. And that template covers all human experience, by the way: the ability to be special or ordinary, handsome or ugly, tall or short, interesting or dull as ditchwater. On the other hand, our presence in popular culture (as well as in non-stereotypical 'issue' roles) must always be justified. [** . . . **] Does that black woman deserve to be on that show? Give the exact reason that Chinese-British man is in this scene.** Adewunmi (2016, p. 209)

*Sarah Owens:* This quote is from an essay in which Bim Adewunmi questions whether certain forms of popular culture, such as film and television, are as diverse as they claim to be. A point well made by Bim Adewunmi is that whenever the wish for representation is fulfilled, this is in turn tied to certain demands. Casting a Black actress for the leading role in a film is therefore not a matter of course, but needs to be explained: "But she is a wonderful actress, she has what it takes, and she has even worked with producer xyz . . . " The main assumption apparently is that the decision to give the role to a Black actress rather than a white actress is based on

extraordinary circumstances and reasons. I often have the feeling that we need to explain our presence in a predominantly white society. This starts with the question: "Where are you from?" and continues into other areas. We are granted that we can talk about our experiences as Black womxn. But when we speak about experiences or topics others do not ascribe to us, there is an implicit expectation of an explanation or justification.

*Rahel El-Maawi:* I experience this in a similar way. There is a continuous stigmatization and thereby exclusion, a "making of non-belonging". Black citizens being wiped away from history. To have to justify ourselves over and over again costs a lot of energy. I think it is also a kind of wariness: I hope I am not promoting a certain stereotype, nor cliché, as a woman or Black woman. Where is the line? When do I have to be careful, in order to not be pigeonholed? How can I talk about experiences I consider discriminatory, without having them denied? How can I ask people not to use certain words (actually not use them at all but surely not in my presence)? And yet I am thereby regularly called into question and discredited as being whiny, not important, not conducive to a conversation, although the conversation could be heading into a different direction because the issue of racism is in the room. I find it difficult to explain this, over and over again. Also, I realize that I depend on having people who support me, who are advocates, as I do not feel like explaining myself all the time.

*Sarah Owens:* I notice that the continuous expectation that we explain ourselves unfolds not only in volunteer work or job-related spaces, but also in daily routine. It reacts to implicit questions posed towards us, such as: "Why are you standing here, why are you claiming space, why do you think you may contradict me?" For us, this permeates all spheres of life.

*Rahel El-Maawi:* This reminds me of Adrian Piper, who did an intervention with business cards. She handed them to people sitting next to her on a bench: "Please do not approach me, I am just sitting here and would like to eat my sandwich." These types of everyday situations rapidly show experiences of sexualized discrimination. I experience this over and over again; it is something in between sexualization and exoticization that requires me to continuously explain: "No, I am just here, I am just moving." The same thing counts for the need for explaining myself, I also see this at work. There is lack of awareness that there are Black Swiss womxn, that we live in a post-migrant Switzerland. This seems to have not been incorporated in education. So many people in Switzerland are not being seen, their story is not being perceived. It always requires double or multiple times the effort.

**In white supremacist society, white people can 'safely' imagine that they are invisible to black people since the power they have historically asserted, and even now collectively assert over black people, accorded them the right to control the black gaze. [** . . . **] Since most white people do not have to 'see' black people (constantly appearing on billboards, television, movies, in magazines, etc.) and they do not need to be ever on guard nor to observe black people to be safe, they can live as though black people are invisible, and they can imagine that they are also invisible to blacks. [** . . . **] They think they are seen by black folks only as they want to appear.** hooks (2015, pp. 168–69)

*Sarah Owens:* bell hooks describes American society in view of the history of slavery. Fundamentally, she also reminds us that a gaze may be returned and that we cannot assume that a gaze works only in one direction.

We could take an example from visual arts. We could imagine an exhibition taking place in Switzerland with photographic portraits of non-white individuals. However, whereas the white (i.e., dominant) gaze is considered in the exhibition planning and is publicly addressed in the media, less consideration is given to the fact that there are also non-white people in Switzerland who will visit this exhibition and whose gaze differs from the white (i.e., dominant) gaze. With regard to Bla\*Sh, I am especially interested in the conditions and consequences of visibility. Our work makes us more visible and adds new voices to the public discourse. But it also makes us "hyper-visible" in that we are always already visible, albeit in a certain way: We are perceived as foreign, exotic, just "different", or even as dangerous, as in airport security checks (see Browne (2015)).

I realize that in the course of time I have developed a certain protection mechanism in order to push away the implications of this visibility. I feel invisible, even though I am not. At the same time, it is important to me that Black womxn are seen and their voices are respected.

*Rahel El-Maawi:* This visibility, or perceived visibility, is also part of my experience. But then, again comes a rejection or the experience of not being perceived. Though now is a time in which Black womxn are increasingly heard and sought out, in which they become addressable, also because of the network we have founded, the fact that we have a name and the way in which we are increasingly asked for advice and opinion. And still, there remains the question of tokenism: Nowadays, we just need a Black woman on the podium, a Black lecturer at the academic institution . . . but apart from that, we are usually not wanted, except in the group I co-organize myself. And even as Bla\*Sh, we are on the one hand welcomed into a feminist scene, where there is a lot of resonance, but on the other side, I feel, we are not really seen. Possibly because we culturally match, which makes it easier to overlook various racialized positions. I allow myself to speak of a "we" here in this space—maybe this "we" exists, maybe not. But there is a certain activist group attitude and most fit in quite well into its DNA. This attitude, however, largely excludes experiences of racism, which harbors the risk that our topics are again nonexistent in the discourse.

In/visibility is quite ambivalent. The aim is to be seen in a non-limiting way. To be seen with all one's facets. One of our Bla\*Sh formats is called "polyphonic reading", and I think this is very fitting. It must be polyphonic rather than aiming to create a new mainstream.

*Sarah Owens:* We share common interests that of course influence Bla\*Sh. Many of us are interested in dance, literature, film, art, music, or work in these fields. Therefore, it makes sense for us to intervene in cultural formats alongside socio-political discussions. We are, however, also aware of whom we exclude or fail to reach through such interventions.

**I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.** (Lorde 2017, p. 1)

**With self-care, we don't mean self-indulgence [** . . . **] when we're talking about self-care, we're talking about actively pushing against systems that try to break us down, and against institutional ways of not being cared for.** Jenna Wortham (Wortham and Morris 2017)

*Rahel El-Maawi:* In our preliminary discussion, you said something really beautiful, Sarah, that our activism is not just art, it is struggle.

*Sarah Owens:* Yes, with this I tried to express that our commitment involves many different areas: from everyday life to work life, from individual relationships to the Bla\*Sh network and a larger community. It is important and very rewarding to do cultural events in order to reach others, and, for me, the boundaries between this work and my job and private life are permeable. A children's book reading, for example, is primarily a cultural event, but the books we present there are books I read to my daughter that affect my relationship with her and, in turn, affect my daughter in how she comes to perceive herself. Topics of exclusion, in/visibility, or the need for explaining oneself are not only topics we encounter in one sphere, they are always present. It is hard work to put yourself out there every day and say: "I don't think this is okay, I don't agree with this." Whether on the bus, when you hear a dumb comment, or at work, when you are ignored or patronized. It takes a

lot of courage and effort to counteract and be "difficult". This makes self-care so important. As Wortham says, the idea of "self-care" in this sense does not indicate a spa treatment, but that we attend to ourselves and do not lose sight of our self-respect.

*Rahel El-Maawi:* I once heard Patricia Hill Collins introduce Kimberlé Crenshaw, saying that she was deeply impressed that Kimberlé had been meditating regularly since the seventies, which for a long time she found funny, but now understands. This resonated with me: I may and must look after myself in order to be able to stay active, as an agentive Black woman. I do not want to position this within a neoliberal discourse of performance, but rather find a connection with myself, in order not to harden in response to the everyday racism that you mentioned and Philomena Essed writes about (Essed 2013). Racist experiences let my shell grow and harden; it becomes metallic. I need something to create an antipole. And there again we have a link to community as a space for mutual strengthening and nourishing. It might also be a more sensual way of doing politics than I have done previously. And that is exactly what I feel is the revolutionary thing: Not to spend too much energy on something, and instead concentrate on what empowers me and, at the same time, others. For instance, through making Black literature accessible through polyphonic readings, and therefore being able to contribute to a history of female thought leaders. Not being alone. This is a big part of self-care which I find important.

*Sarah Owens:* That we are so involved in the arts is also connected to the fact that these are spaces of reflection, for which we can assume that other forms of knowing and reflecting—or of pausing—are possible, in contrast to a dominant academic or political enterprise. Artistic formats allow alternative perspectives to become visible. Here, these perspectives are welcomed and are seen.

*Rahel El-Maawi:* And that which inscribes itself into our bodies can be expressed and find a language.

#### **References**


© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

### **Gender Roles and Empowerment in Women's Islamic Activism**

#### **Sherine Hafez**

#### **1. Introduction**

The success and longevity of women's Islamic social activist work across Muslim-majority countries have gained much attention from feminist scholars who focus their work on gender empowerment and women's status in Muslim-majority societies (Ahmed 2011; Ali 2014; Badran 2010; Mahmood 2005). While some studies applauded the positive impact Islamic activism has had on women in these societies, others remained skeptical about the extent of empowerment women might enjoy in Arab and Middle Eastern Muslim countries (Moghissi 1999, 2011; Mojab 2001; Shahidian 2002). Essentialized as misogynist and patriarchal to the extreme, Muslim-majority countries are often depicted as hostile to women's empowerment, which leads some to represent Islamic women activists as women who internalize their own oppression (Papanek 1994). Further noting that women who join Islamic movements and organizations parrot their male leaders, others maintain that Muslim activist women have access to leadership only under male supervision and command.<sup>1</sup> The following chapter questions the theoretical assumptions on which these conflicting views rest, in order to consider forms of empowerment other than those informed by mainstream liberal principles. Even early feminist writing, for example, the scholarship of Louis Lamphere (1993), Cynthia Nelson (1974) and Rosalind Rosenberg (1982), has long questioned Western universalist perspectives in assessing feminism and empowerment for women in non-Western contexts. Despite the legacy of this critical work reflecting decentering trends in Western feminist discourse which has grown since then, liberal assumptions remain trenchant in mainstream feminist discourses. As I point out above, this is not simply a Western phenomenon but liberalism is often a theoretical filter even among local scholars who examine emancipation and equality for women in Muslim-majority societies and in the Middle East from a liberal view. Recently, feminist historian Joan Scott (2017) argued against the predominance of liberal and secular notions in certain

<sup>1</sup> For a review of these perspectives, see Metcalf (1998).

strands of feminism in the West as well. She maintains that neither liberalism nor its offshoot, secularism, was ever intended as emancipatory gender discourse. Scott refutes the claim that secularism automatically brings about sexual liberation and, consequently, she maintains the question would remain a moot point for women who espouse the Islamic faith and its values. This chapter agrees with Scott and presents a glimpse into the lived experience of Muslim women who do not seek liberal emancipation but instead forge a trajectory that is relevant to them and to their societies. Drawing on feminist literature on power in Middle Eastern contexts, the following discussion will develop an understanding of what empowerment means to Islamic women activists. In many cases, Islamic women embody forms of empowerment that provide an Islamic alternative to general conceptions of empowerment in international development literature that often rely on universalist modern liberal norms. Women engaged in Islamically reforming their societies operate from within structures of authority which privilege men, paradoxically (and often unintentionally) finding themselves in positions of power by acting in accordance with prevalent norms of ideal female Muslim behavior. While women's roles shift to reflect their activism, they inadvertently begin to assume privileges and statutes in society that can be assumed to be empowerment in a liberal modern sense. However, I argue these shifts in roles and status are more complex and multi-layered when viewed from the perspective of the women themselves. Taking the perspective of Islamic activist women as a point of departure for this analysis allows for a more nuanced reading of the nature of their engagements with Islamic practice and how they often redraw the limits of normative gender roles. More importantly, we can also see how concepts of empowerment predicated upon universalist assumptions do not fully capture the impact of Islamic activism nor women's engagement with movements recognizing faith as an organizing principal.

Fieldwork data collected over a period of seven years from 2000 to 2003, then from 2005 to 2008 and then again in 2014, centering on women's Islamic activist movements in Cairo, Egypt, provide a perspective into these activists' own frames of reference and how they themselves make sense of the role Islamic teachings play in their lives and in their community.<sup>2</sup> Islamic activism appeared to redefine not only women's but also men's physical as well as discursive space. Muslim women activists became more visible in society. Their work brought a fresh new

<sup>2</sup> The present chapter draws on fieldwork notes, interviews and publications produced during this time period.

perspective to social reform and eradication of poverty, and they began to assume positions of respect and authority in their communities previously only enjoyed by men. As women became more active religiously and men's monopoly over the public religious domain began to be challenged, this produced conflict and tensions between women's and men's groups. These challenges were not interpreted as gender struggles, and the successes or failures the women experienced were not viewed as "power" issues but were viewed as part of the struggle for piety and Islamic social reform leading to God's blessing. In some cases, I have observed in my fieldwork the activist women's high levels of religious piety and social respectability have compelled—even obligated—male leaders to publicly endorse women's Islamic activism and to cede some control over religious spaces and activities. Through the various forms of activism and social work that they conduct, acquiring a good grasp of Islamic teachings and conducting their Islamic practices and rituals accordingly, Islamic women activists asserted their claims on this newly found space. Those claims intersect with socially acceptable gender norms, social values placed on age, education and the endorsement of government institutions, further their sense of self and enable their pious work. These interventions do not, however, in and of themselves, act as indicators or goals of empowerment for the Islamic activist women. In other words, assuming positions of power or acquiring control over space and resources does not appear to be a goal pursued by activist women but is, first and foremost, a means to gaining piety and religious fulfillment.

#### **2. Islamic Women's Activism in Cairo**

For decades now, since the 1990s, Islamic women have led an activist movement for social reform in Egypt centered in the capital, Cairo.<sup>3</sup> They preach in mosques to other women, they teach classes on Islamic theology and law, lead philanthropic activities and often organize large-scale fundraising events that enable them to carry out their activism and provide support to those in need. Educated Muslim women taking the lead in preaching are called *da'iyat*. <sup>4</sup> They have attracted much media attention and are considered authorities on issues dealing with Islam and

<sup>3</sup> Islamic women activists established hundreds of organizations catering to the needs of women and their families. This came in the wake of a surge in Islamic organizations in the country. According to Bayat (2002), one third of all private voluntary organizations (PVOs) in the late 1980s were Islamic as well as half the number of welfare associations. Following Kandil (1998, pp. 145–46), Bayat mentions that at least 15 million people in the 1990s benefitted from Islamic welfare.

<sup>4</sup> Da'iyat is plural of *da'iyah*, meaning a woman preacher, lit. one who invites people to the Islamic faith.

gender, the family and social Islamic ethics. While many activist women preach informally, most of the well-known preachers are certified to preach from the Ministry of Religious Endowments (*wizarat al awqaf*). They attract thousands of city women around them to hear their sermons. Many of these women *da'iyat* do not adopt feminism in their outlook, nor do they have a particular interest in addressing issues of gender equality. Their discourse is primarily aimed at perfecting the self through enhancing its relationship to God. Unlike their male counterparts who are employed by the Ministry of al Awqaf and therefore operate within the confines of the official government agenda, women's sermons focus on the daily needs of the modern Muslim woman. These needs include, but are not restricted to, raising children Islamically, conducting oneself according to Islamic teachings and the various challenges of being Muslim in a globalizing and Westernizing world. Their non-official capacity enables them to somewhat freely address the issues that are relevant to them and to their audience, creating a powerful impact and impetus for change.

These endeavors have created a momentum in society that has reversed some of the stereotypes about Islamic women being passive and oppressed—representations which often marginalized them and denied them a role in the religious, social and political aspects of government. With the growing trends in Islamism in Egypt before the revolution of 2011<sup>5</sup> and then again after the Muslim Brotherhood became the ruling party, Islamic women became more publicly engaged than ever before. Although the activist women on whom this study is based are not part of the Muslim Brotherhood, the brief period during which the party were in control acted as a catalyst for some of the activism that was started prior to the revolution. They began conducting forums of dialogue to create awareness and to allow for exchanging ideas and organized training sessions, carried out community projects and taught hundreds of under-privileged women skills necessary for employment and economic gain.

#### **3. Empowerment in Development Discourse**

Empowerment has become a commonly used term to refer to the ability of an individual to be *enabled*, i.e., to be free, to exercise their power in decision making

<sup>5</sup> Egypt experienced a series of uprisings, beginning on 25 January 2011, that sought to terminate the 30-year-old presidency of Hosni Mubarak and to usher in a new era of social justice, dignity and democracy. The revolution was steered into a different direction when Egypt's Islamist group, the Muslim Brotherhood, won the presidential elections. The short-lived presidency of Muhamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate, temporarily centered Islamic traditions as social practice.

and in making choices which shape their future. Despite the universality of the term, few attempts have been made towards developing a definition of empowerment. Often viewed as problematic and ambiguous, the word "empowerment" is not easily translated because it does not exist in most languages. In the Arabic language, the term "*temkin*" refers to the state of being empowered, yet it does not fully capture the notion of power and points instead to a state of being enabled. *Temkin* is employed in technical development language and is seldom, if ever, used in Arabic colloquial language. Social understanding of *temkin* or power as *meykanah* has some negative associations with tyrannical power, and *temakon*, which is the verb, implies the ability to dominate.

One study by Oxaal and Baden provides an extensive survey of development organizations and NGOs that aims at an understanding of the term's usage, implications and indicators (Oxaal and Baden 1997). According to Oxaal and Baden, the notion of empowerment is derived from the birth of the idea of Western individualism (ibid., p. 4). The roots of empowerment lie in longstanding concerns in development literature with power. "Power" itself, however, comes in diverse forms:

Power *over*—relations of domination/subordination are implicated here. It is based on socially sanctioned intimidation and invites active and passive resistance.

Power *to*—a creative and enabling power which is related to decision-making authority.

Power *with*—centers around the organization of people to achieve collective good.

Power *within*—refers to self-confidence, awareness and assertiveness. It is concerned with the way individuals can recognize power dynamics in their lives and learn to influence and change them. (Oxaal and Baden 1997, p. 4)

When development projects seek to "empower women," they address specific criteria mainly derived from these standards or a combination of them. Criteria for women's development include participation in decision-making processes, and the creation of an awareness among women that they may be entitled to occupy a decision-making space in the public sphere, to make choices and to be able to shape their environment. Power is generally articulated as a "possession" and determines whether individuals are dominant or oppressed. The Report of the UN Fourth World Conference on Women, which called its Platform for Action "an agenda for women's empowerment," maintained that "the principles of shared power and responsibility should be established between women and men at home, in the workplace and in the wider national and international communities" (ibid., p. 4).

As a common paradigm, "Empowerment corresponds to women challenging existing power structures which subordinate women" (ibid., p. 4).

Central to this vision of empowerment, which has gained impetus in development discourse, is the notion that power belongs to the individual rather than the collective. Entrepreneurship and individual self-reliance are emphasized over co-operation as means of challenging power structures, which are seen as subordinating to women. This view, Oxaal and Baden point out, is derived from a belief in the entrepreneurial market capitalism as a rescue measure for ailing economies and the retreating state subsidy of social welfare, employment, health and educational services. Many of these assumptions regarding empowerment emerge from the modern liberal conception of the individual which are often inapplicable to community-based societies.

#### **4. Selfhood: Boundless Possibilities**

The notion of the "self" as a universalist assumption often distorts how this self may be empowered in multiple cultural and social contexts.<sup>6</sup> Discourse grounded in an uncritical view of the unitary Western notion of the individual can be of little or no help in understanding unbounded selfhood or experiences of empowerment that are contextually different. Women in Western societies have struggled to find a place for themselves in a social world where power was not only defined in masculine terms but also identified with autonomy, independence and rights to freely construct legal relationships (Pateman 1988). Claiming a hegemonic discursive authority, in practice, however, this historically contingent concept of selfhood by no means included women—though political systems continued to presume the equality of men and women. Gendered, culturally specific and historical, the liberal view of the individual does not capture the nuances of selfhood in societies where concepts

<sup>6</sup> In scholarship on Middle Eastern and Muslim cultures, a critical trend of the notion of the individual began with the work of Suad Joseph (1993). As she points out, various constructs of the self exist across cultures because selfhood is mediated by gender, race, class, ethnicity, religion and the state. In her work on Lebanon, Joseph maintains that, to a large part, a relational notion of the individual prevails (unbounded), one which develops through connective relations with significant others. This is in contrast to a singular notion of bounded selfhood in the liberal Western sense which can be described as unitary, independent, autonomous. This, however, does not mean that bounded and unbounded selves exist as binaries because they also parallel, intersect and fluidly evolve even in the same societies. The problem is when scholarship assumes that all selves are homogenous and are bounded since that pathologizes the unbounded self and obscures the complexity of its existence.

of the individual may develop from alternative historical and cultural processes. It is necessary, therefore, to consider the complexity of relationships that mediate the construction of the self in any given part of the world and at specific points in time. Suad Joseph (1994) points out that not only do various constructs of the self exist across cultures but they may exist even within a single cultural setting. This is because she sees selfhood as mediated by gender, race, class, ethnicity, religion and the state. In her work on Lebanon, Joseph maintains that, to a large part, a relational notion of the individual prevails, one which develops through connective relations with significant others. This directly opposes a singular notion of bounded selfhood in the liberal Western sense and urges us to ponder the possibilities in the constructiveness of selfhood and, consequently, its sociopolitical manifestations. By understanding the self as a fluid and contextual notion, studies of empowerment may be able to consider boundless possibilities for understanding its multiple manifestations.

#### **5. Whose Empowerment? Islamic Activist Women in Cairo**

In contrast to the liberal modern reading of empowerment prevalent in development discourse, the Islamic women activists that I worked with in Cairo, Egypt, find an empowerment from "within" such relations of power (Hafez 2011). They subscribe to Muslim feminine ideals, demonstrating that women are not merely subjugated in relations of power, but are also empowered as a result of the dynamics in these relationships. Islamic women preach modesty and obedience and emphasize feminine roles that often appear in contradiction to what liberal theorists call, namely, independence, and freedom against oppressive traditions, sexual liberty and freedom from gender discrimination. These Muslim women were concerned with an entirely different project. Theirs was the project that began with the self as a site for social development. To these women, activism as a service to others lies at the heart of this process.

Most development theories and schools of feminist thought define strategies as resistance and contesting male authority as paths for women's empowerment. While these are paths that are not entirely absent from the experiences of the women I worked with, resistance, autonomy and independence in themselves were often necessary means to attaining the larger goal of social change. In fact, the tensions between the pursuit of a religious ideal that women define as being closer to their God often intersected with such liberal feminist ideals. These tensions and negotiations between what are often perceived as conflicting traditions are far more complex and complimentary than they are dichotomous. The various forms of empowerment that Islamic activist women experience in their movements are born out of these creative

tensions and intersections. While Islamic activism occasionally places women in positions that challenge male authority, such as competition over resources or public spaces where they preach or social reform projects that male religious leaders may have led in the past, the general consensus is that this is acceptable as long as these efforts are for the general good. The gender ideology that informs this general consensus is based on an Islamic model that emphasizes the complementarity of the different roles of women and men rather than their absolute equality. They are, in other words, equal but different. The goal is to affect harmony and balance in society with the belief in the justice of God, as the ultimate judge of all things in this world. The Islamic egalitarian view of gender roles seeks to create balance in society while guaranteeing women's rights as decreed by Islam. However, in the event that there is conflict between the genders, Yvonne Haddad and Jane Smith maintain that issues of obedience to male authority are of a more complex nature (Haddad and Smith 1996). The notion of *shura* (consultation), which is the basic form of Islamic decision making, prevails even in the home, with the husband acting as arbiter if consensus is not reached. Islamists, claim Haddad and Smith, see a need for leadership for all social units and as women carry the burden of childbirth, men are obliged to take on their own role as well.

However, many of the women interviewed who worked in Islamic social reform organizations saw empowerment in remaking themselves as ideal Muslim women. For instance, Salma, one of the leaders at an Islamic center for women, recounts that empowerment is related to her sense of success at self-enhancement. She spoke about how she undertakes a strict disciplinary attitude towards her sense of religiosity. Islam acts as a constant frame of reference for her in every action of the day. Salma explained how she sets high standards for herself because she is a *da'iyah* (preacher). She was reluctant to talk about her empowerment as we discussed the various manifestations of the concept in her opinion. After some minutes into our discussion, Salma said,

You know if it weren't for the fact that this concept is so important to you, I would never mention this to anyone. Saying that I am empowered is in direct contradiction to what I represent as a *da'iyah*. My duty is to be modest and unassuming. It is true that my religious role gives me a sense of power and achievement compared to those who involve themselves in trivialities, but talking about it should just not be done. It is against the spirit of Islam.

I had similar discussions with other activists such as Maha, a wife and mother in her 40s. Maha was a high achiever; she graduated at the top of her class and worked

as an assistant professor for a short while before moving on to banking. She now dedicates her time to Islamic activist work and has single-handedly improved many people's lives. Maha was the epitome of patience and care—even when faced with the most challenging situations. Attempting to understand what activism meant to her, I asked her how she would feel if she were to stop her activist work. Startled by the question, she stared back as if the thought never crossed her mind till this moment, and then she said,

It will affect my relationship to God. If I do not perform these acts of kindness, it will sever a strong link to God. I cannot see my life without this. This (activism) is a reward that God has sent me. I would feel deprived from a privilege that I tremendously enjoy to help others and to attend to their needs.

Maha interprets the satisfaction she gets from Islamic activism as a divinely given privilege. In this, her views seemed to parallel the rest of the Islamic activist women I spoke with. To them, Islamic activist work is a gift from their God and a path to piety. Activism is not a conscious pursuit for fame or social recognition, far from it. In fact, this work was about placing their will and agency in the hands of God. Any empowerment, therefore, which emanates from these activities is not understood in this rationale as a direct consequence of the action, but rather as borne out of the religious experience. Using the word in English, I asked Maha what it meant to her and how she would define "empowerment." Her response deflected from any possible confusion that I might have about conflating empowerment with autonomy or agency. She continued to explain that Islamic activist women enjoy positions of authority, such as the director of the organization, *Doctora* Zeinab, and famous Muslim preacher, Shereen Fathy, and others, but that these situations develop as these women succeed in achieving high levels of religious knowledge and as they themselves become role models to others who respect them and admire them. However, Maha here is using "empowerment" to mean power over others in an authority sense. Salma used empowerment to mean a higher level of self confidence and assurance. However, neither of them see empowerment as a goal of their Islamic activism. Rather, they see it both as a natural outcome of religious duty and of activism. Maha explains, "These women do not covet power. What they seek is a religious perfection which will bring them closer to God." This image of religious perfection is, however, defined and articulated by discourses which rest on patriarchal sources of Islamism.

#### **6. A Theoretical Conundrum?**

There are two main theoretical problems that Islamic women activists pose to liberal modern assumptions on empowerment. First, they belong to a "tradition"—Islam—which is perceived as being oppressive to women. With Islam generally interpreted as a patriarchal religion, which favors males over females, they fit into generalized feminist criteria of oppressed women. Secondly, Islamic women activists endorse a gender ideology that is not predicated upon a universal feminist view of gender equality as a means for women's empowerment. Instead, they emphasize in their daily activities their religious zeal, virtue and high levels of moral ideals as prescribed means to self-enhancement.

Some feminists caution against emphasizing gender differences, since this will inhibit an analysis of power, as power can be masked in arguments over "difference" (Flax 1987). Meanwhile, the Islamic women I interviewed posit varying viewpoints about gender relations, and many even do not consider the matter of gender difference as an issue in Islam. The majority of these women see that their God created the female and male to complement one another, to fulfill different roles in society, which are outlined in the Quran (holy scripture). Islamic women *da'iyat* (preachers) do not converge on the issue, but they are clear on the fact that men and women are different. They view the relationship between wife and husband to be based on responsibilities as well as obligations, which are clearly outlined in the Quran so that a harmonious and equitable relationship prevails in the family and both partners enjoy the rights which Islam has decreed for them. Islamic women scholars, however, elaborate on the issue of roles in that many of them maintain that the Quran never restricted roles based on gender. These scholars argue that motherhood, though most certainly an honored position in the Quran, was never presented as a sole option for women (Muhsin 1992). Egyptian Islamic women intellectuals include Heba Raouf Ezzat and Omaima Abou Bakr, who, among others, have developed new inroads into the Islamic debate on women's issues. Ezzat and Abou Bakr, who are both university professors, are an authority in the public debate on women and their position in the Muslim Middle East. These women scholars participate in the dominant discourses in their society, thus challenging male exclusivity on the religious forum based on their knowledge of the Islamic texts. In their view, gender complementarity, not gender equality, is the true path to women's liberation, a path that is already provided by Islam for both men and women. Ezzat and Abou Bakr perceive Western models of liberation as not only irrelevant to their societies but also as potentially harmful and demeaning for women. Despite their interest in seeing women gain their rights

in Muslim society, the term "Islamist Feminist" does not sit comfortably with either of them. Omaima Abou Bakr phrases this as follows:

I don't have to subscribe to any foreign/Western agenda or discourse on feminism and gender . . . . Some of these are simply irrelevant . . . . However, one can define one's own context and paradigms for a gender-sensitive perspective. (Abou-Bakr 2000, p. 1)

To Abou Bakr, a well-respected scholar and Islamic activist, the idea that gender scholarship on Muslim-majority societies must contend with topics relevant to Western audiences in order to gain credibility in academia seems misplaced. To her, gender issues in Muslim-majority societies should be defined by contextual and gender-sensitive paradigms. To pious women who have committed themselves to a life-long dedication to self-amelioration, perfection of religious ritual and service to their faith, contributing to Islamically reform society takes priority over seeking self-realization. Our scholarly epistemologies need to be sensitive to these nuances in individual aspirations because, while sharing many parallels with other women contending with patriarchy and gender injustice around the world, Islamic women activists may only indirectly engage with the challenges of patriarchy rather than address them as a goal.

#### **7. Conclusions**

The vigorous involvement of Islamic women in the public sphere to Islamically reform society in Muslim-majority countries such as Egypt could be generalized as an act of feminist empowerment which would obscure the nuances and complexities of pious activism undertaken by women. As discussed in what preceded, although women's Islamic activism has shifted their position in society and has redrawn the boundaries for gender roles in ways typically identified with feminist outcomes, this interpretation glosses over the women's desires and aspirations for pious fulfillment and religious service. This, however, does not mean that empowerment is altogether absent from these women's lives or thoughts, nor should we assume that Islamic engagement leads to the polar opposite of empowerment in a liberal modern sense. It is important to consider, though, that liberal modernist criteria for empowerment that advocate for independence and autonomy as markers of the modern individual who is free to choose an identity and lifestyle regardless of the social fabric in which they live cannot adequately critically analyze an empowerment for women whose world view is not consistent with this type of ethos. Clearly, a consideration of empowerment which regards its subject as created by social relations and not as autonomous from them will provide a more lucid understanding of the impact of

Islamic activism on women's empowerment and provide a better understanding of empowerment for future development projects.

As Islamic women's groups vary in their scope, orientation and activism, their empowerment also reflects varying degrees of social, psychological and political forms. Theirs is the sort of empowerment contingent upon relinquishing the forms of power that derive from overt resistance and relies instead on socially cogent notions of perseverance, cooperation and the attainment of higher levels of religiosity. In fact, the women I have studied defined a condition of empowerment concerned with attempting higher goals that are consistently spiritual as well as material. Working both inwards to hone their pious selves as well as outwards in their communities to reform them Islamically, activist Muslim women see these efforts as inseparable from their faith and worship. Despite what these experiences bring to their own lives, neither the sense of pride in what they do nor the acquired confidence from working on social reform is in itself their coveted reward. This is because their pursuit of self-enhancement towards the Islamic notion of the ideal woman is deeply committed to Islamic teachings and the attainment of higher levels of piety.

These conceptions of religiosity and self-awareness intertwine with social aspirations for what the activist women perceive as a better, brighter future for a society that upholds Islamic teaching. Although the Islamic agenda that they envision for their community is shaped by a patriarchal tradition—one that demands of women a specific attitude and comportment—it also allows them a measure of mobility and action. The patriarchal values that inform women's Islamic activism in contemporary Egypt should not be perceived as a return to a traditional past. This is because the women's activism engages with modern and contemporary issues and does not discount the global world in which the women and their families live and contribute to. Can we hasten to tell whether Islamic activism is going to actually empower women in the future? We cannot begin to tackle this question adequately without revisiting our own normative conceptions of empowerment necessary for understanding women across various historical and cultural contexts.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

#### **References**


Scott, Joan W. 2017. *Sex and Secularism*. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Shahidian, Hammed. 2002. *Women in Iran: Emerging Voices in the Women's Movement*. Westport: Greenwood Press.

© 2021 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

### **Men and Masculinities: What Have They Got to Do with Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment?**

#### **Jeff Hearn**

#### **1. Introduction**

When people mention the words, "gender" and "gender equality", the conversation often soon turns to women and girls. There are both good and bad reasons why this is so. On one hand, women and women's voices have long been, and continue to be, marginalized and subordinated, especially across various public realms; on the other hand, to limit work, policy development and politics on gender and for gender equality and women's empowerment as a task only women need to be concerned with may easily let men off the hook, and even suggest that it is women who have to change rather than men.

The UN Social Development Goal 5 is the SDG that specifically addresses gender equality, ending all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere, and eliminating all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation. At the same time, gender equality and women's empowerment are central to the fulfilment of all SDGs. This point is still often forgotten, as if gender equality can be siloed off to a separate arena of policy and politics.

SDG 5 aims to: eliminate harmful practices, such as forced marriage; value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection: promote shared responsibility within households and families; ensure women's full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in public life; ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights; grant women equal rights to economic resources, and access to ownership and control over land, property, finance, and natural resources; enhance use of technology to promote women's empowerment; and adopt and strengthen policies and legislation for the promotion of gender equality and women's and girls' empowerment. So, which of these questions has to do with men and masculinities? The answer is: all of them.

Working for gender equality means changing repressive structures that oppress and hinder women from thriving. Working for such changes is not only the

responsibility for women. How, indeed, can gender equality and stopping discrimination and violence against women be achieved if men and masculinities do not change? Achieving gender equality means changing and making demands on men. The emergence of men as such a target for action stems not only from women's struggles, but also from other movements, such as those for labor reform and occupational safety, gay, queer and transgender (LGBTIQA+) rights, and ethnic, racial, and post/decolonial justice—and, in some cases, from some men's resistance to those progressive movements. Men are key actors in both local and societal gender regimes (Connell 1987; Walby 2009), and specifically the struggles for greater gender equality, and the development of gender equality policy itself. Different local, societal and transnational gender regimes vary in the extent of their engagement of men and masculinities in gender equality and SDG policy processes (Hearn 2011).

Different traditions in gender and SDG policy have definite implications for men's practices, for example, in men's relations to home and work, different constructions of men as breadwinners, prioritization or neglect of anti-violence work. As such, this chapter addresses what might be called the "man problem" in the promotion of gender equality, in the context of the persistence of gender inequality in society and policy development that impedes the achievement of SDG5 and other SDGs. This concerns both how gender regimes can and do change men, and how men can be and are involved in changing gender regimes (Hearn 2011). In particular, I address challenges in terms of organizing with and by men, and strategies for changing men and masculinities, including transnational approaches. Thus, two sets of interrelations can be recognized: between gender regimes that construct men and masculinities, and men as actors and foci of policy within gender regimes; and between local, national and transnational gender regimes.

#### **2. Changing Men and Masculinities**

In the long story of addressing men, masculinities and gender equality, and building on much long-term preparatory action, the 1995 Platform for Action adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women was a crucial step. It read:

The advancement of women and the achievement of equality between women and men are a matter of human rights and a condition for social justice and should not be seen in isolation as a women's issue. . . . The Platform for Action emphasises that women share common concerns that can be addressed only by working together and in partnership with men towards the common goal of gender equality around the world. (United Nations 1995, sec. 3, 41)

Since 1995, these issues have been increasingly taken up in the UN (United Nations) and other transgovernmental political and policy discussions. In 2003, the UN's Division for the Advancement of Women organized a worldwide online discussion forum and expert group meeting in Brasilia, on the role of men and boys in achieving gender equality as part of its preparation for the 48th session of the Commission on the Status of Women, with the following comments:

Over the last decade, there has been a growing interest in the role of men in promoting gender equality, in particular as the achievement of gender equality is now clearly seen as a societal responsibility that concerns and should fully engage men as well as women. (Division for the Advancement of Women, United Nations 2003, sec. II)

Engaging men in gender equality activities can be understood and located within these developing historical contexts. Targeting men through gender equality and other politics, policies and actions means working with agendas at different levels and with different scopes and ranges, and it also needs both immediate urgent action and a long-term process of change, as discussed below. However, which men should be targeted? It may be tempting to focus on those who are explicitly sexist or dominant, but it should involve all men. Different men have variable relations to gender (in)equality, politics and policy change, and are involved and implicated in a wide variety of ways, as: family members, friends, community members and leaders, workers, service users, professionals, practitioners, political and social activists, (non-)citizens, policy-makers, members of organizations, NGOs (non-governmental organizations), the state, business leaders and managers, and so on. Gender equality work has to become normal and normalized for boys as well as men: in kindergartens, schools, workplaces, governments, business, sport, religion, in families, households, friendship, intimacy, and sexual relations.

Men are not just individuals, but operate collectively, as in public politics, social movements, organizations, management, trade unions, the state, capitalism, religion, science and technology, and so on. Indeed, many mainstream (or malestream) organizations, for example, in government and business, are places of men's organizing, often, in effect, 'men's organizations', with a variety of unnoticed and unnamed 'men's groups' of different sizes and powers. It is towards such organizations that women's individual and collective demands for greater gender equality are often necessarily directed, and it is also in those settings that men are likely to respond, often predominantly negatively, and without explicitly naming or thinking of those responses as '*men's* responses' (Hearn 2015b, p. 145). Recognizing "men" as a policy area, and indeed, developing specifically and explicitly men-related

politics and policy, still seem to be relatively rare phenomena. States, governments, NGOs, businesses, community structures and policy institutions are part of both the "man problem" and the solution. The "man problem" remains obscure, partly because so much policy is about and for men, and yet is not recognized as such, and partly because explicit policy on men and masculinities is at uneven stages of formulation—sometimes as part of gender equality or social justice projects, but sometimes as a means of furthering men's interests (Hearn 2015b, p. 148). In recent years, many countries have undertaken some form of initiative focused on supporting men's greater participation in promoting gender equality. There have been various initiatives at the international and supranational levels focused on men, boys and gender equality since the mid-1990s, for example, the EU (European Union) study on the Role of Men in Gender Equality (Scambor et al. 2013) drew on expertise from all EU member states and beyond. Such initiatives must continue, and must not be hijacked by men trying to argue that they are really the ones suffering most from discrimination (see Hearn 2015a, p. 24). Yet, it is amazing how the mass of national, international and supranational policies and reports on gender equality and resources devoted to gender equality hardly mention men or the need to change men and masculinities, and make no demands at all for them to change. They are still all too often treated as the unspoken norm, presented as gender-neutral "policy-makers", "stakeholders", and so on.

#### **3. Costs, Difference, and Privilege**

Organizing and policy development on and by men also need to be contextualized in the larger context of patriarchal social relations—transnational, national, local. At each level, there is a continuum from 'gender-non-conscious' to 'gender-conscious' forms of organizing (Egeberg Holmgren and Hearn 2009). For example, much transnational organizing, by, say, transnational business corporations or within international inter-governmental relations, is done mainly by men, arguably for men and men's interests, and in a 'non-gender-conscious' way. In contrast, there are also various forms of men's transnational gender-conscious organizing for or against women's reproductive rights, or for or against (pro)feminism.

Men's national and local organizing 'gender consciousness' varies from reproducing and advancing men's privilege, for example, men's rights organizing, fathers' rights, and misogynist, anti-women, anti-feminist or 'postfeminist' politics, to opposing such privilege, for example, profeminist organizing, men assisting in the promotion of women's greater equality and working against violence, to emphasizing

men's differences from each other, for example, organizing around gay rights, racialization of men, men with caring responsibilities, men in non-traditional work. These local and national forms of organizing are increasingly subject to transnational influences, as we discuss later in this chapter.

Within these local, national and transnational contexts, there are many gender-conscious reasons why men can become positively interested in, or indeed can resist, gender equality. Positive orientations include: to highlight and redress the costs of 'being a man'; to tackle differences amongst men; and to end male privileges (Messner 1997). These generally, though not always, positive motives are not necessarily in conflict, but they may become so if taken to their logical conclusion, for example, when only costs are emphasized and privilege is forgotten.

First, the costs: These might include costs to some men's health and life expectancy (see Lohan (2007) for a critical review), risks from occupational hazards and lower educational achievements. These are especially important when coupled with disadvantages of class, ethnicity and other inequalities. Being a patriarchal man is probably not good for your health, though the effects may be offset by more resources. There are also effects of violence and sexual violence towards men and boys by other men and older boys. There is a strong case for men to become more involved in gender equality on these grounds.

Next, differences: The motivation for engagement here comes from differences amongst men: age, ethnicity, gender identity, migration status, sexuality, and much more, as well as composite interests of, for example, black gay men or white older men. Policies for men are developed in various areas, including fatherhood and health and anti-violence programs, but these may not recognize differences between them. The very question of 'what is a man?' is becoming problematic, not least because of increasing numbers of older and old men living lives that are a very long way from the stereotypes of their masculine youth (Jackson 2015).

From the perspective of ending male privileges, men's involvement in gender equality means acting against oppression, injustice and violations of gender systems, and seeking a better life for all. It suggests a need for profeminist, (pro)gay strategies across all policy areas. Rather than seeking to change only those men defined as 'problems' or excluded, the focus may shift to men in positions with the power to exclude and control. For example, anti-violence interventions could be directed to ending men's silence on these issues. Even among men who oppose privileging one gender over another, there are totally different notions of the aims of gender equality in the long term, never mind among those who are anti-gender equality. To paraphrase Judith Lorber (2005): Is the key feminist task to introduce reforms and

abolish gender imbalances between women and men, as in reform feminism, or to resist and abolish patriarchy as a general gender system, as in resistance feminism, or to be rebellious and abolish gender categories, as in rebellious feminism? Do we aim to celebrate, transform or abolish 'men' as a category of gender power? These different feminisms suggest different reasons for involving men in gender equality, different possible motivations for men to become involved in gender equality, and indeed very different gendered futures for all.

These three motivations—around costs, differences, and privileges—may come from different directions, but they are not mutually exclusive. There is much to be done to bring them together. A good example here concerns what needs to be done in moving from war to peace. This entails recognizing the vulnerabilities of, and damage to, some men in and after war, as well as the real differences between different groups of men in war and peace. This is obviously not to suggest that only men are involved in war, less still to essentialize men (Hearn 2012), but it does highlight men's historical responsibility for, and propensity to instigate, many wars, as well as carrying out most of the killing and threats of war.

More broadly still, according to research by Øystein Gullvåg Holter (Holter 2014), greater gender equality is likely to bring greater happiness, less depression, and better well-being for both women and men, through better health and reduced threat of violence from other men. This refutes the argument of anti-feminist men who suggest that greater gender equality harms men. Other benefits for men from greater equality may include, at the more immediate level, the positive impacts of increased love and care for and from other men, and, at the more macro level, less likelihood of war, armed conflict, nuclear annihilation, and profound ecological damage and disaster (Hearn 1987; Enarson and Pease 2016).

#### **4. Strategies for Changing Men and Masculinities**

The emergence of men as 'gendered subjects' has partly been articulated in relation to women's and feminist struggles, but is also partly in relation to other forms of affiliation and organizing, such as racial justice, labor struggles, and gay and other non-normative gender and sexuality civil and legal rights. Spaces and opportunities for profeminist, (pro)queer gender work with men exist within civil society and social movements. The mobilization and politicizing of the social status and social power of 'men' and 'masculinity', so as to advance a broader justice agenda, are necessary. Strategies for changing men and masculinities take several forms: working on obviously gendered areas; acting against the persistence problem of violence; intersectional strategies; gendering the non-gendered; and transnational approaches.

#### *4.1. Working on Clearly Gendered Areas*

There are many obviously gendered areas for changing men and masculinities, whether we are talking at the interpersonal, local community or broader levels of analysis and practice. This involves profeminist, (pro)queer strategies in what are obviously gendered policy areas, such as work and the gender division of labor, health and welfare, family relations, sexuality, education, and interpersonal violence. In all these arenas, grassroots organizing, activism and educational work with men and boys, in collaboration with feminist organizing, is necessary. Changing to, or at least towards, egalitarian practices at home, at work and in the community and civil society are key here. Moreover, although national and regional laws, policies and explicitly gendered interventions with men may seem relatively rare, there are a number of areas where explicit state policy and action on men is often developed, if unevenly, including:


In addition, there are multiple policies and practices in schooling, education and elsewhere that are specifically designed on and for boys. These may either reinforce or subvert dominant gender power relations.

#### *4.2. Acting against the Persistent Problem of Violence*

An absolutely central aspect of changing men and masculinities which deserves special mention and attention is the reduction and stopping of violence. Ending violence and the threat of violence is a fundamental motivation for, and a necessary means to, ending gender inequality and achieving the aims of SDG5 and other SDGs. Violence here includes violence against women, domestic violence, intimate partner violence, gender-based violence, sexual violence, violence by men against men, human trafficking, violence to non-humans, misogyny, hate speech, and many further forms of violence and abuse.

These all need direct and effective action and intervention by men, both to prevent violence and also to counter the predominant perpetration by men (Edström et al. 2015; Jewkes et al. 2015; Flood 2019). Having said that, rather than seeking to change only those men defined as 'problems' or excluded, the focus can be shifted to powerful men in positions with power to exclude and control. Similarly, anti-violence intervention can be directed to non-violent men, not just men using violence; the silence of non-violent men partly maintains men's violence (Pease 2008). Such strategies also appeal to the reduction of threat of violence between men.

In their book *Societies at Peace*, Howell and Willis (1990) posed the question: what can we learn from peaceful societies? In societies where men were permitted to acknowledge fear, levels of violence were lower; in those where masculine bravado, repression and the denial of fear were defined as masculinity, violence was likely to be higher. In societies where bravado was prescribed for men, definitions of masculinity and femininity were often highly differentiated. The less the gender differentiation between women and men, the more men were nurturing and caring, and the more women were seen as capable, rational and competent in the public sphere, and men's violence was less likely. The more recent IMAGES (International Men and Gender Equality Survey) project has found that predictors of men's more gender-equal attitudes include: own education; mother's education; men's reports of father's domestic participation; family background of mother, alone or joint decision-making parents; not witnessing violence to mother. Self-reported attitudes in turn predict men's gender-equal practices, more domestic participation and childcare, more satisfaction with primary relationship, less interpersonal violence (Levtov et al. (2014); also see El Feki et al. (2017)).While gender policy against gender-based, 'domestic' and interpersonal violence is well recognized, as in anti-violence programs, this is less the case for civil disorder, terrorism, racist violence, riots, state violence, militarism and war.

. . . men in different parts of the world are spending vast amounts of money trying to kill each other, whilst a large proportion of the world's population (mostly, but not exclusively women and children) are allowed to starve to death. . . . Male violence, sexual or otherwise, is not the unusual behaviour of a few "odd" individuals, neither is it an expression of overwhelming biological urges: it is a product of the social world in which we live. (Cowburn et al. 1992, pp. 281–82)

Thus, to address men's violence necessarily means addressing collective violence and militarism; to do otherwise is to place militarism outside of violence, and, even if unwittingly, condone violence. Military activity is one of the most clearly gendered

and clearest examples of the hegemony of men, with or without conscription. Militaries are part of the state and organized in association with political, economic, administrative power in the highest reaches of the state, including policing, security services, foreign policy, and economic interests. They are concerned with both national offence and defense. They are specifically geared to the ability, actual and potential, to inflict extensive and severe violence and harm. At the structural level, men's domination of labor force participation links with the greater likelihood of societal internal violent conflict (Caprioli 2005), whilst women's well-being tends to link with societal peacefulness (Hudson et al. 2012). Indeed, the most gender unequal and homophobic countries are also those with the highest level of societal violence and most at risk of armed conflict in their own territory (Ekvall 2019), and there seem to be close associations between misogyny and terrorism (Díaz and Valji 2019). On the other hand, and interestingly, societies with the most positive attitudes to (male) homosexuality, including from men, are also those most likely to be arms exporters (Ekvall 2019), which indeed are likely to be used in armed conflicts in more explicitly homophobic countries. Changing this contradictory set of relations requires joined-up policy and politics that bring together sexuality politics, feminist and profeminist politics, peace politics, and last, but by no means least, politics around trade, industry and innovation. What is needed more generally is the promotion of positive peace (Galtung 1969, 1990; Farmer 2001; Murray 2014), that is, not just the absence of war, armed conflict, direct and interpersonal violence, but the absence of structural violence and injustice, and transformations to more healthy, non-violent masculinities and gender relations (Ratele 2012; Hearn et al. 2021). Arms exporting to other parts of the world is clearly not countering structural violence and not promoting positive peace.

#### *4.3. Intersectional Strategies*

Another important way forward is through intersectional strategies. Men are not only men; boys are not only boys; boys and men are constructed intersectionally. So, how are men's relations to gender equality and inequality gender discrimination to be understood? There may be cases of discrimination against men by women, but these are more likely driven by power relations other than gender, such as class or racialization; much more common are men's negative treatment of other men for being gay, black, old, young, unmanly, and so on. The disadvantages experienced by some men and boys largely results from domination by other men. Poorer outcomes for some men and boys are not the same as gender discrimination. Most inequalities that affect men and boys do not result from domination by women.

Lower educational performance by some boys, for example, results largely from poverty, class, migration status and attitudes towards masculinity that are not conducive (or are even antagonistic) to education (Hearn 2015a, p. 26).

Unequal social divisions—by class, race, religion, and many further divisions—all have an impact on men. Gender equality policies have to be pro-equality and anti-hierarchy more generally. Though, in one sense, some forms of 'gender equality' can co-exist alongside power hierarchies and inequalities; reducing wider inequalities generally promotes more thorough-going gender equality. This means opposing the intensification of neoliberal capitalism, with its increasing inequalities and hierarchies, opposing heteronormativity and structural domination, and it extends to inequalities between societies. Addressing inequalities generally can stimulate men's positive engagement with gender equality, with a focus on social exclusion and inclusion. Many white people and white men support anti-racism, but men rarely identify themselves as supporting anti-sexism. Anti-racism and anti-classism necessarily involve anti-sexism (Hearn 2015a, pp. 26–27).

In pursuing these agendas, a powerful way to proceed is through intersectional strategies that link men, gender relations and other forms of social inequality, such as ethnicity. While intersectional approaches remain relatively undeveloped in most law and policy, there are, for example, high correlations between poor health and the social disadvantages of class, ethnicity and other inequalities. Addressing these can stimulate men's positive engagement with gender equality and (pro)feminism, with critical attention to men's practices in both social exclusion and inclusion. Another arena for positive intersectional change is the linkage between men as parents and careers, and men as violent partners or violent parents. In many countries, fatherhood and men's violence are generally treated as separate policy issues. There may be the enthusiastic promotion of fatherhood and then, quite separately, policy to tackle men's violence against women and children. This gap needs to be bridged (Eriksson 2002). In developing effective political and policy responses, splits between 'problems which some men experience' and 'problems which some men create' need to be overcome. Joining what might seem to be disparate policy areas is essential, if rather rarely adopted (Hearn et al. 2006).

#### *4.4. Gendering the 'Non-Gendered'*

Mainstream organizing, politics and policymaking are typically presented as gender-neutral, however much they remain forms of men's organizing. Both the "man problem" and differences amongst men may easily remain obscured, partly because so much policy is about men, but not recognized as such, partly because explicit policies are at uneven stages of development.

The notion of policy can easily appear at first as gender-neutral. Yet not only is much policy and policy development constructed by and through assumptions about gender, but also much policy and policy development can be understood as policy on and about gender and gender relations. Gender constructs policy, as policy constructs gender. (Hearn and McKie 2008, p. 75)

Gendered policy on men and masculinities are mostly framed within a form of nation-based welfarism. However, strategies for change are needed beyond the policy areas mentioned thus far—at all levels and in all forums. This means thinking of gender agendas, not only in terms of those seen as 'gender issues', or so-called 'men's issues', but rather beyond the more obvious and explicit gender policies, as with, say, local economies, microfinance, capitalist production, finance, energy, transport, and environment, which also tend to be transnational in form. There is the gradually increasing recognition of the central place of men and masculinities, in what are usually seen as 'non-gendered' policy arenas: foreign, trade, security, militarism and war, and sustainable and just development and aid (Cornwall et al. 2011). This approach, gendering the 'non-gendered', ties in with strategies of change with men leaders and men who are not defined as the problem, as well as changing the institutional and societal structures that often remain dominated by men. This is not only a matter for individual and collective actors but applies also to social structures and structural arenas of international (capitalist) economy, international politics and relations, and sustainability in its various forms more generally.

Recent economic crises have highlighted significant gender biases in policy development and implementation. Finance ministers, financial boards, economists and banks, both nationally and transnationally, have generally maintained a 'strategic silence' on gender, even though their policies have an uneven impact on men and women. Deflationary policies, policies based on assumptions of male breadwinners and public spending cuts (rather than higher taxes) tend to affect men less than women. Economic crisis may initially have a stronger impact on men's employment, but later more on women (Young et al. 2011). Policies designed to boost economic growth without considering the overall impact tend to benefit men more than women overall, not least in terms of resources allocated by governments, investments and priorities. The promotion of economic growth without consideration of its effects tends to benefit men more than women, not least in resources allocated by government expenditures and investments, and R&D. Men tend to work in the

capitalist sector more than women, and to identify more closely with narrowly economic ideologies and less with welfare values.

#### *4.5. Transnational Approaches*

Political and policy debates on men and masculinities have largely been framed in terms of a given society; yet, global transformations and regional restructurings are changing the form of the hegemony of men. All of the issues already noted need to be placed into transnational contexts, raising the need for transnational strategies. Gender policies that are directed explicitly and specifically at men have been developed most fully when they address issues, such as men's health and 'domestic' violence, that may appear as immediate and close to the individual, mostly within nation-state welfarism, rather than in relation to transnational capitalism, global finance, or ecological frameworks. However, increasingly, local and national struggles in politics and policy, whether for or against gender equality, are transnational in character, as strategies tried, lessons learnt, and information gained in one location are transferred for use elsewhere. This is no more obvious than in the online activity of men's anti-feminist and far right movements.

Many transnational agencies now address, at least rhetorically: the place of men in moving towards gender equality; the links between masculinity, nationalism and racism; and risks of failing to act. Men's violence to women and children is receiving greater attention from the EU, the Council of Europe, OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) (Seftaoui 2011), UNICEF (The United Nations Children's Fund), UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), and other transnational organizations. Taking transnational action to foster change is essential, not least to counter transnational neoliberal hegemonies and transnational patriarchies (Hearn 2015b). The insights of postcolonial and decolonial theory and practice are vital here (Shefer et al. 2007; Ratele 2014, 2016; Izugbara 2015). It is likely that the process of considering the policy implications for changing men's practices transnationally will increase. A further key transnational issue concerns the impact of new bio- and socio-technologies, information and communication technologies (ICTs) and artificial intelligence (AI) in both reinforcing and contesting hegemony. They create potential for extensions and reinforcements of the hegemony of men, yet make some men and women dispensable. ICTs have been hugely 'successful' in promoting online violence and abuse, pornography, trafficking and sexual exploitation of women, as in supplying encyclopedic information on prostitution and the global sex trade (Hearn and Parkin 2001; Dines 2010).

On the other hand, there are also many transnational campaigns, projects and actions for changing men and masculinities, many in the Global South (Jones 2006; van der Gaag 2014), with a transnational, internationalist orientation, such as: Promundo, Sonke Gender Justice, One Man Can (South Africa, Sudan), MenCare, Men's Action for Stopping Violence Against Women (India), and CariMAN (Caribbean Men's Action Network). The umbrella organization, MenEngage, has over 700, mainly group, members, with national networks in Africa (22), the Caribbean (9), Europe (23), Latin America (11), North America (2), and South Asia (5). The 2014 2nd MenEngage Alliance Global Symposium in New Delhi attracted over 1200 people and 400 abstracts from 94 and 63 countries, respectively, and produced the 'Delhi Declaration and Call to Action', setting out aspirations for global change of men, boys and masculinities. The 3rd Symposium, Ubuntu, was held as a hybrid global event, beginning in Rwanda in November 2020 and continuing until July 2021.

#### **5. Concluding Comments**

In this chapter, a range of challenges in organizing with and by men in relation to SDG5, and how men can contribute to gender equality and women's empowerment, have been addressed. Most fundamentally, there is the need to gender men and masculinities explicitly and critically, and develop gender strategies for changing men and masculinities that contribute to gender equality and women's empowerment. One way to approach these challenges is by recognizing the costs, differences and privileges that accrue to men with patriarchal relations, and how the tensions and overlaps between these three positionings can be related to different feminist agendas: problematizing, and even abolishing, gender inequality, patriarchal systems, and current gender categories, respectively.

More specifically, men and masculinities can be transformed through: working critically on what are clearly gendered issues, including the persistent problem of violence, in its fullest meaning; adopting intersectional strategies; working on the gendering of what are typically seen as 'non-gendered' areas of policy and politics; and developing positive transnational approaches and linkages, that are both positively proactive and reactive against anti-feminist policy and politics.

Moreover, it is important to recognize that different men, both individual and collective, can have complex, even contradictory, relations to gender equality and other forms of equality. Engaging men in gender equality means dealing with many contradictions, between: the power and privileges of some men, and marginalization of others; explicit naming of men as men, and questioning and deconstructing the *very*

*category* of 'men'; seeing gender in terms of binaries, such as masculinity/femininity, and as a continuum; and fostering changes in attitudes among men and boys to become more gender equal, while supporting those who are suffering.

The relationship between men and gender equality is neither a zero-sum game, nor a win-win situation. In other words, greater gender equality does not mean that if women gain, men necessarily or automatically lose; and neither does it mean that women's gains are necessarily or automatically also beneficial for men, at least not so in the short term. In the processes of women's empowerment, men, different intersectionally positioned men, as individuals, groups and collectivities, are likely to face reduced formal power and domination over resources, but, at the same time, may unevenly gain, not least in reductions of violence, war, armed conflict and ecological damage, and destruction.

**Funding:** This research received external funding from the Swedish Research Council's 'Regimes of Violence' project (2017-01914).

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

#### **References**


Dines, Gail. 2010. *Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality*. Boston: Beacon.


Eriksson, Maria. 2002. Men's violence, men's parenting and gender politics in Sweden. *NORA—Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research* 10: 6–15. [CrossRef]


Hearn, Jeff. 2015b. *Men of the World: Genders, Globalizations, Transnational Times*. London: Sage.


Ratele, Kopano. 2016. *Liberating Men*. Cape Town: HSRC Press.


Walby, Sylvia. 2009. *Globalizations and Inequalities*. London: Sage.

Young, Brigitte, Isabella Bakker, and Diane Elson, eds. 2011. *Questioning Financial Governance from a Feminist Perspective*. London: Routledge.

© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

### *Trans***itioning Gender Equality to the Equality of Sexgender Diversity**

**Persson Perry Baumgartinger**

#### **1. Introduction**

The Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 "Gender Equality" is one of 17 goals aiming to change global inequalities until 2030. Contrary to the prior Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the SDGs not only target the Global South and East, but also make the Global North and West accountable for the global inequalities.

SDG 5 "Gender Equality", however, uses the term "gender" as a binary concept that includes only men and women considered healthy, and counts only specific women and girls as relevant: "Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls". In this article, I argue that this is far too short a connotation of a phenomenon I call "sexgender". Not only does it erase this notion of sexgender, a colonial concept, a multiplicity of diverse sexes and genders, which is deeply entangled in Western ideologies on sexual orientation and economy; it also leaves out large parts of the worldwide population, particularly intersex, trans, and sexgender non-conforming people<sup>1</sup> (ITGNC) (EATHAN 2018, p. 3), who face human rights violations in many areas, such as education, employment, housing, access to health sectors, detention, migration, media representation, as well as oppressive norms shaped by societal and religiously informed prejudices, just to name a few. Furthermore, the term "sexgender" includes Rubin's "sex/gender system" (Rubin 1975, p. 195) and explicitly refers to a patriarchal, heteronormative, binary societal structure of power relations.

In this article, I show that the goal "gender equality" can only be sustainably achieved if we understand sexgender holistically; that means if the human rights of intersex, trans, and sexgender non-conforming people are included. The Yogyakarta Principles (YP 2006) and their additional Yogyakarta Principles Plus 10 (YP+10 2017) provide an example of how such a necessary transformation can be achieved with

<sup>1</sup> While EATHAN uses the term "gender non-conforming", I extended it to "sexgender non-conforming" (see Section 2 in this article).

their extension of the Human Rights Law on the grounds of sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics (SOGIESC).<sup>2</sup>

To do so, I take the term transition literally in the sense of trans-ness, and use the concept of trans- (Stryker et al. 2008) as an intersectional approach to sexgender diversity; I also draw on the neologism "sexgender" as an umbrella term to include different aspects of the diversity of sexes and genders. By including data on the situation of sexgender-diverse people worldwide and referencing the claims of intersex, trans and sexgender non-conforming activists, I arrive at the conclusion that the SDG 5 requires a broader understanding of sexes and genders to do intersex, trans, and sexgender non-conforming children and adults justice—as well as men and women who fall outside their respective societal and cultural norms.

#### **2. Transition(ing), Trans- and Sexgender Diversity**

Transition or transitioning constitutes an important concept for trans and sexgender-diverse people. It refers to a process in which people

live and socialize as the gender with which [a person] wants to identify, rather than the gender they were assigned at birth, which often includes changing one's first name (for some) and dressing and grooming differently. Transition may or may not also include medical and legal aspects, including taking hormones, having [consent] surgery, or changing identity documents (e.g., driver's licence, passport or other identity documents) to reflect one's gender identity. (EATHAN 2018, p. 1)

As a trans studies scholar reading the title of the book series "Transitioning to . . . ", I think of transitioning as an ongoing process of changes, that entails sexgender diversity. The term trans- includes the trans studies concept of "transing", first described by Stryker, Currah and Moore (Stryker et al. 2008), who put their emphasis on the hyphen—as a symbol for a connecting link between different societal systems: "Trans: -gender, -national, -racial, -generational, -genic, -species. The list could (and does) go on" (p. 11). In this concept, sexgender is not seen as a uniquely defined, fixed category, but instead as an ongoing process. Therefore, Stryker et al. suggest not to think of fixed sexgender categories, like man or woman, but to focus on the discriminatory regimes that intersect and intertwine. This requires us to holistically

<sup>2</sup> The acronym SOGIESC stands for sexual orientation (SO), gender identity (GI), gender expression (E) and sex characteristics (SC). Although this article does not focus on sexual orientation, it cannot be separated from sexgender diversity, especially in pre-colonial and non-western concepts.

think of sexgender diversity and to extend its meaning beyond the binary phenomena of "man" or "woman".

The term "sexgender diversity" refers to all the multiple forms of gender identities, gender expressions and sex characteristics, and also notions of sexual orientation (SOGIESC) that people are born with, explore, express and transform during their lives. Sexgender has been used in different ways, like sex/gender or gender/sex, introduced in 1975 by Rubin as a broader alternative to patriarchy (Rubin 1975, p. 195) and later by Unger and Crawford in 1993 because "sex and gender are neither dichotomous nor independent of each other" (Fausto-Sterling 2019, p. 532). I agree, and this is the reason why I—unlike Rubin, Unger and Crawford, and Fausto-Sterling—do not use a solidus between the two connected concepts: sexgender. I suggest sexgender as an umbrella term, because it includes Western terms (unlike the often criticized acronym LGBTIQA+), while leaving room for all the many sexes and genders that have been and are lived worldwide, such as Fa'afafine, Feminielli, Burrnesha, Travesti, Muxhes, Omeguid and many others.<sup>3</sup>

As this short introduction regarding the use of my terms shows, defining sexgender as an exclusive idea of man or woman is insufficient. The aim of Stryker, Currah and Moore's concept trans- "was not to identify, consolidate, or stabilize a category or class of people, things, or phenomena that could be nominated 'trans', as if certain concrete somethings could be characterized as 'crossers', while everything else could be characterized by boundedness and fixity" (Stryker et al. 2008, p. 11). Instead, the term points to oppressive regimes that correlate, interlock, and rely on each other on the intersection of sexgender, with its respective societal, cultural, scientific, and medical norms (cf. Baumgartinger 2019). Such an approach asks for a new perspective. In the context of SDG 5, this means to question the concept of women and girls, and their implications: Where are the limits of those two terms? Do they, e.g., include female sex workers, divorced women, or young pregnant women? Do those terms also mean trans and intersex women and girls, or sexual and sexgender diverse identities and ways of living? Do they convey pre-colonial meanings and practices of sexgender? What about sexgender non-conforming men and boys? Are they part of the SDG's "gender equality"? Stryker et al. (2008) suggest the term "transing" for such processes of de-conceptualizing concepts that appear as "natural" all too easily.

<sup>3</sup> See, e.g., Independent Lense 2015. Available online: http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/content/ two-spirits\_map-html (accessed on 3 April 2020).

#### **3. The Situation of Sexgender-diverse People in the World**

Little (but increasing) research means that we lack sufficient data to adequately describe and assess the situation of sexgender-diverse people worldwide. Due to global community networks, it can be assumed that sexgender-diverse people face a range of discriminations, including increased likelihood of poverty, higher drop-out rates in education systems and lowered chances in the labor market than people conforming to binary notions of sexgender. Additionally, they are often rejected or badly treated in their respective health systems.

What we do know is that trans and sexgender-diverse people are murdered because of who they are. This affects especially people of color, indigenous people and migrants, most notably in the Global South. Within one year, between 1 October 2018 and 30 September 2019, a total of 331 trans and gender-diverse people, or people perceived as such, were murdered, adding up to a total of 3314 reported cases in 74 countries worldwide since 1 January 2008, as far as the Trans Murder Monitoring research project (TMM) could confirm the homicides.<sup>4</sup> The majority of the murders in 2018–2019 occurred in the Americas (130 in Brazil, 63 in Mexico, and 30 in the United States). Most of the victims were sex workers (61%), in cases where the occupation could be determined. In the United States, the majority of trans people reported murdered were trans women of color and/or Indigenous trans women (90%). Overall, 65% of the reported murder victims in European countries, to which most trans and gender-diverse people from Africa and Central and South America migrate (France, Italy, Portugal, and Spain), were migrant trans women (TvT 2019).

Those numbers alone show that stigma and discrimination against trans and sexgender-diverse people are real and profound around the globe. Although we cannot know specific numbers about murders of other sexgender-diverse people, like intersex people or people with a variation of sex characteristics,<sup>5</sup> we must assume that they, as well as sexgender non-conforming people, are part of this structural

<sup>4</sup> The Trans Murder Monitoring (TMM) research project monitors, collects, and analyzes reports of homicides on trans and gender-diverse people worldwide. See Transrespect vs Transphobia (TvT). Available online: https://tgeu.org/our-work/our-global-work/tvt/ (accessed on 3 April 2020); data on murdered sexgender-diverse people are not systematically produced, and it is impossible to estimate the actual number of homicides. There are, for example, no additional data available on murders of intersex and sex-diverse people, which may or may not be part of the counts above.

<sup>5</sup> The umbrella term intersex stands "for the spectrum of variations of sex characteristics that naturally occur within the human species". Intersex individuals are born with sexual anatomy, reproductive organs, hormonal structure and/or levels and/or chromosomal patterns (sex characteristics) falling outside the common definitions of male or female (Ghattas 2019, p. 9; see also EATHAN 2018, p. 1).

and ongoing circle of oppression that keeps sexgender-diverse children and adults deprived of their basic rights, just because most societies are structured along the supposedly binary concept of sexgender. Such a system makes all sexgender-diverse people particularly vulnerable to violations of their human rights in many societal areas, such as harassment, bullying at school and in their job life, or violence in medical settings. To illustrate the (discriminatory) situation of sexgender-diverse people, I discuss three topics: the right to the bodily autonomy of intersex, trans and sexgender-nonconforming people in general; access to the labor market for trans men and trans women in South-East Asian countries; and intersectional dimensions of discriminatory structures for sexgender-diverse people seeking health care in East Africa.

The right to bodily autonomy is constantly violated on the basis of sex characteristics worldwide, although "[b]odily autonomy is a fundamental human right, repeatedly enshrined throughout myriad human rights instruments globally. Each of us holds this right individually. However, it is not equally protected nor enforced for everyone" (Ghattas 2019, p. 6). Intersex activists fight against non-consensual pre-natal interventions, medical interventions on healthy bodies, and intersex genital mutilation (IGM), still often performed on infants and children (Ghattas 2019). Intersex genital mutilations share commonalities with female genital mutilations in terms of social acceptability or their negative impact on an individual's life and health (cf. Ghattas 2019, p. 12). Yet, trans and gender non-conforming individuals simultaneously have to fight, on the one hand, for consensual medical procedures such as hormonal treatment or sex affirmation surgery, as well as against forced sterilization, other involuntary medical treatments and pathologization.

The study "Denied Work" to trans men and women seeking a job in the South-East Asian countries Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam showed that "trans people are overall significantly less likely than cisgender people to receive a positive response to a job application" (Winter et al. 2018, p. 13). In terms of numbers, cis applicants received, on average, 50.6 percent more positive responses and were 54.6 percent more likely to be invited to an interview than trans applicants (Winter et al. 2018, p. 13).

Violence against trans and sexgender-diverse people frequently overlaps with other axes of oppression, such as racism, sexism, xenophobia, or ableism. The East Africa Trans Health and Advocacy Network shows, in their study "Nilinde Nisife", focusing on the health situation of intersex, trans and gender non-conforming people in the East African countries Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania, a direct correlation between


Those intersections are relevant to keep in mind, when we talk about sexgender equality in general, but especially in the context of sexgender-diverse people. The situation of intersex, trans and sexgender-diverse individuals is alarming, as the community report of Transrespect versus Transphobia (TvT 2019) on global trans perspectives on health and wellbeing shows. Focusing on Global South and East in their study, they identify a lack of access to healthcare coexisting with oppressive medicalized requirements. Regarding discrimination and violence, they describe 2982 reported murders in less than ten years. They additionally have a lack of legal protection and call the social and economic situations of sexgender-diverse individuals in the Global South and East "alarming".

Hence, intersex, trans and sexgender non-conforming people face varied forms of discrimination and human rights violations in different areas of their lives, such as bodily integrity, employment and healthcare, among others.

#### **4. Activism and Action**

Diverse activists all over the world have been demanding their human rights for a long time now. They raise awareness in their communities and demand increased media coverage. They build up support structures. They conduct studies. They go to court and to human rights bodies of the United Nations. In Brazil, for example, the program "Transcidadania" (trans civil rights), a pilot project conducted between 2012 and 2016 in Sao Paolo, aims to support travestis and transsexuals—who face poverty, low or no formal education and therefore little access to primary labor market—in achieving their secondary education certificate (cf. Garcia et al. 2019; Larrat 2019). The conference on "Health and Quality of Life of transgender people in Central Asia: achievements, barriers and perspectives" in Kyrgyzstan in September 2019 is another example. It was organized by activists representing Alma-TQ (Kazakhstan), Labrys

(Kyrgyzstan), and LighT (Tajikistan). Such activism is not new, but is increasingly recognized by (social) media and official representatives.

The number of support and activist groups all over the globe is increasing. The Asia Pacific Transgender Network (APTN), Associação Brasileira de Gays, Lésbicas e Transgêneros (ABGLT), East Africa Trans Health and Advocacy Network (EATHAN), GATE – Trans, Gender Diverse and Intersex Advocacy in Action, Organization Intersex International (OII) with local groups in Africa, the Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Europe, Samoa Fa'afafine Association, Transgender Europe (TGEU), Transgender Intersex in Action (TIA), TransAction Pakistan, Transgender and Intersex Africa, are just a few of many examples.

Due to increased pressure from activists, the United Nations Treaty Bodies have called on Member States to stop human rights violations against intersex people 49 times since 2009. The Council of European Member States has received 26 UN Treaty Body recommendations, 15 of these in the past two years alone (Ghattas 2019).

In 2006, the Yogyakarta Principles (YP) were intended to apply the Human Rights Law to sexual orientation and gender identity. The YP consisted of 29 principles, accompanied by detailed recommendations to governments, and several additional recommendations to institutions like the United Nations, the World Health Organisation, courts, humanitarian organizations and so on. Eleven years later, in 2017, the Yogyakarta Principles Plus 10 (YP+10) expanded the initial principles and state obligations in relation to gender expression and sex characteristics. Nine principles (30–38) were added and the state obligations were enhanced, including the rights to state protection, to bodily and mental integrity, as well as access to sanitation.

The Yogyakarta Principles Plus 10 show explicitly, that anti-discrimination is an ongoing process, and that they "rely on the current state of international human rights law and will require revision on a regular basis in order to take account of developments in that law and its application to the particular lives and experiences of persons of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities over time and in diverse regions and countries". This is similarly the case for the SDGs, and I hope to have shown that it is time to transform the notion of "gender equality" to equality of sexgender diversity.

#### **5. Conclusions**

"Achiev*ing* equality of *sex*gender *diversity* and empower*ing* all women, girls, *trans, intersex and sexgender non-conforming children and adults*".

If the sustainable development goals are to be achieved in general and in terms of Human Rights, we need a broader understanding—a critical, intersectional approach,

i.e., a post-colonial, sexgender-diverse, de-pathologizing, class-critical, non-binary, global understanding of what is commonly named gender. If human rights are to be taken seriously, our notions of "SDG 5 Gender Equality" have to be transitioned into "SDG 5 Equality of Sexgender Diversity". It starts with the title and goes much further—supporting and affirming an entire group of people who are discriminated against based on gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics, and whose human rights are violated on a daily basis, namely intersex, trans, and gender non-conforming, as well as sexgender-diverse people.

As the studies above have illustrated, there is still a lot to do. Some issues intersect with women's rights or worker's rights, others with the rights to adequate housing or healthy food, still others intersect with the rights to good health and well-being, safe childhood and the right to quality education, but especially the right to self-determination and bodily autonomy.

Hence, when we talk about the Sustainable Development Goal 5 "Gender Equality", and since we know that the concepts "sex" and "gender" are not only about specific notions of man and woman, but that sexgender is a much more heterogeneous, processual and complex phenomenon, and if we take the Human Rights of intersex, trans, and sexgender non-conforming, as well as sexgender-diverse people into account, the definition of gender equality has to be extended and include intersex, trans and gender non-conforming at all the intersectional levels. Furthermore, trans-ing "gender equality" means to question the respective cultural, societal, scientific and medical notions of "man" and "woman" and to broaden them, so that sexgender-diverse people are no longer the "deviant crossers" and man/woman are no longer the "natural fixities". Instead, the discriminatory binary sexgender system needs to be dismantled and decolonized. This is an ongoing process.

As a first step, we need to make the world a safer place, not only for women and girls, but also for trans, intersex and sexgender non-conforming children and adults. For the Sustainable Development Goal 5 "Gender Equality", this means to both alter the shorter word or phrase that identifies each goal from "Gender Equality" to "*Sex*gender Equality", and to rephrase the exact sentence wording of the goal to: "Achieve *sex*gender equality and empower all *women, girls, intersex, trans, and gender non-conforming children and adults*". In further steps, this process entails revising the addressees bearing the diversity of sexes and genders in mind, as well as the human rights of sexgender-diverse people, including their worldwide violations, to do the goal justice. Doing so may ultimately lead us to the phrase "Achiev*ing* equality of *sex*gender *diversity* and empower*ing* all *women, girls, intersex, trans, and sexgender*

*non-conforming children and adults*", with the suffix "ing" making the procedural character of transing even more visible.

**Acknowledgments:** I would like to especially thank Katta Spiel and Lisa Rosenblatt for the English editing.

**Conflicts of Interest:** No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

#### **References**


© 2021 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

## **Part 2: Sexuality**

### **Interview with Kathy Davis: Transitioning to Gender Equality with Regard to Sexuality**

**Christa Binswanger**

#### **1. Introduction**

This interview opens up the chapter on transitioning to gender equality, exploring sexuality and sexual agency. It aims at addressing possible changes towards more equal sexual relations among all sexes.

Within the field of Feminist and Gender Studies, sexuality and sexual encounters are contested topics and riddled with tensions regarding gender relations. First, sexual intercourse is taken as the basis for human reproduction and, as such, is entangled with hierarchical practices and politics in contemporary societies. This entanglement with power dynamics can be the cause for subordinating female sexuality to male sexuality, as long as systems are in place in which male dominance is taken for granted. Second, sexuality is a field in which relations of oppression are still very prevalent and lived out on a daily basis all over the globe. #Metoo and the many hostile reactions to it have recently proven that this phenomenon counts equally for Western societies where sexual harassment is often entangled with professional relationships. Third, and equally important, sexuality is considered as a potentially ecstatic experience framed by joy, intensity and/or consensual dialogue. Perceptions of sexuality within the field of Feminist and Gender Studies reach from "sex positivity", including, e.g., SM and BDSM (Sadomasochism and Bondage, Discipline, Sadism and Masochism) as variations of joyfully lived out sexuality, to "sex negativity", which treats sexuality as potentially harmful for women. These tensions have provoked many debates or even "wars" within the field of Feminist and Gender Studies.

In this interview with Kathy Davis, Christa Binswanger takes up feminist discussions dealing with inequality within sexual relations since the 1970s in order to lay out and make sense of the field.

#### **2. Interview with Kathy Davis**

#### *2.1. First Set of Questions: Looking Back to the 1970s*


people's opportunities and possibilities for action. The work facing feminist scholars who are interested in seventies feminism is to re-read this history through an intersectional lens—that is, to show how intersecting differences generated particular concerns or mobilized individuals in specific ways or produced different strategies for change at specific moments in history. I think our article (Binswanger and Davis 2012) on shifts in feminist debates on sexuality in which we analysed two feminist classic texts from different eras, Verena Stefan's *Häutungen* (Stefan 1975) and Charlotte Roche's *Feuchtgebiete* (Roche 2008) is an example of this kind of historiography. We showed how these texts reflected both similarities and differences in feminist thinking about gender and sexuality, but also about race and class.


wave feminism in which we talked about sexuality, sexual pleasure, and desire. Most of us came of age during the so-called 'sexual revolution' and were aware that it had been something of a mixed bag for women. On the one hand, we enjoyed the freedom to have sex outside marriage and without fear of getting pregnant, unlike many of our mothers. On the other hand, we were subjected to the pressure of always being up for having sex (something that has, if anything, increased in this postfeminist era) and our male partners were not necessarily attentive to our sexual needs and desires. Verena Stefan has written beautifully about this in *Häutungen*. We had to figure out what we wanted from sexuality and how to negotiate sexual encounters. I recall talking about what we liked and didn't like in our sexual experiences with partners, both male and female. We were open to experimenting. For example, we shared our masturbation experiences and tried out each other's methods. We all purchased vibrators from the newly emerging feminist sex shops. We discussed our sexual fantasies and sexual feelings at great length. Influenced by Anne Koedt's (Koedt [1970] 1996) 'The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm' and Carla Lonzi's (Lonzi 1975) important essay on female desire<sup>1</sup> , we generally took a critical stance toward penetration (as we called it) and saw clitoral stimulation as the only acceptable avenue toward sexual pleasure. Looking back on it, I would say we were too judgemental about what constitutes sexual pleasure (for example, we did not discuss BDSM as potentially pleasurable and were dogmatic in our rejection of pornography as invariably being bad for women). In this sense, the 'sex wars' in the eighties were a necessary corrective and opened our eyes to the vast varieties of sexual pleasure and the impossibility of ever establishing a politically correct feminist sexuality.


<sup>1</sup> See, a roundtable discussion of Lonzi's work in the *European Journal of Women's* Studies (2014) 21, 3.

KD: Sexuality was, of course, always a central concern in *Our Bodies, Ourselves*. You can trace the changes in feminist thinking on sexuality through the editions of OBOS. For example, the first issue treated sexuality as the same for all women. By the mid-seventies, lesbian sexuality had become a topic. Later, sexuality was interrogated through the lens of race and disability. By the beginning of the 21st century, the whole notion of gender had been deconstructed with attention paid to transgender and gender fluidity. There were three things that I particularly appreciated in the OBOS approach to sexuality. First, OBOS was always oriented toward pleasure and in the early days of feminism it was unique in this respect. From the first edition, readers were encouraged to explore their bodies and discover what gave them pleasure. The chapter on masturbation was classic and I spoke with many women who remember reading the text instructing them how to masturbate ('Just try it!') and how it encouraged them to find out what felt good to them. In fact, I remember reading this passage aloud in a gender studies class many years later, assuming that this would be old hat for my sexually savvy students. But, in fact, they were just as surprised and enthralled as I had been when I first read the text. Second, OBOS adopted an intersectional approach (without using that word) by having differently situated groups critically read each and every chapter of the book as part of the authors' collective process of revision. For example, women with disabilities were asked to comment on the sexuality chapter, thereby ensuring that its treatment of sexuality included differently embodied women. These groups of differently situated readers were specifically chosen for the critical work they could do in opening up new ways of looking at a particular topic. Third, when OBOS was translated into different languages, it was the chapter on sexuality that invariably had to be adapted in order to meet the needs of women living in different cultural contexts. This sometimes meant adding information that was absent in the US text (for example, the Egyptian adaptation of OBOS included a discussion of female circumcision and arranged marriages). While the US authors of OBOS initially had a policy that all of the controversial topics (lesbian sexuality, masturbation, and abortion) needed to be included in the translations, they gradually became more flexible about this, leaving the decision to the local feminist groups who were responsible for translating and adapting the book in their own cultural contexts. The most important lesson that I took away from OBOS and its various translations and adaptations is that there is no one feminist perspective on sexuality (see Davis, 2007). More important is that we find ways to generate debates across our

individual, cultural and geo-political differences about what our sexual desires, practices, and political aspirations are.

#### *2.3. Third Set of Questions: Contemporary Sexualities*


<sup>2</sup> See Zarkov and Davis (2018) where we talk about some of these 'grey areas'.

own decisions nowadays? And how can we keep up certain feminist beliefs, but still not contribute to a mainstream Western perception of these women as victims?


and I don't find it realistic or helpful to limit a particular sexual practice to an identity. There have been many productive approaches to understanding different sexualities. With regard to LGBTQI activism, intersectionality has inspired activists, particularly across Latin America, to unite under its banner as an antidote to identity politics. I would like to see more of this in Europe and the US. After all, no individual can be reduced to their sexuality; we are all located in complex configurations of power and difference. By calling themselves 'intersectional', these 'intersectional activists' are envisioning a new way to interact with one another—neither as an encompassing 'we' as second wave feminists used to propose, nor as a circumscribed identity, but as an complicated and ever changing panorama of differently located individuals. 'Affective solidarity' is an interesting concept developed by Hemmings (2012). I have used it myself with regard to bodily practices that feminists sometimes find problematic—for example, genital cutting, cosmetic surgery, sadomasochism. Central to this concept is the importance of reflexivity and engaging with one's own 'gut level' feelings of disgust or shame, but also of desire or attachment because this opens up the possibility for dialogue across differences. Given the enormous complexities of sexual desires and practices, a self-critical and open-ended dialogue seems to be the best we as feminists can hope for.


in how to engage with their bodies in more self-determined ways than in being willing to confront the broad panoply of feelings—from disgust, anger and shame, to attraction, sympathy, and compassion—that bodily practices can evoke. Affect should become an opportunity and resource for feminist scholarship that is critical, reflexive, and—above all—open to the messy contradictions of women's lives as well as feminist politics.

#### **References**


© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

### **Comprehensive Sexuality Education as a Tool towards Gender Equality**

#### **'Mathabo Khau**

#### **1. Introduction**

The 25th anniversary of the 1994 Cairo International Conference on Population and Development (2019) was celebrated in Nairobi in 2019. At the Cairo conference, governments of the world pledged to recognize gender equality, reproductive health and women's empowerment as pathways to sustainable development. There is a growing realization that women's universal attainment of reproductive health rights is fundamental to achieving all the global development goals.

According to the United Nations<sup>1</sup> , more women than men live in extreme poverty globally. This report also argues that sub-Saharan Africa hosts the majority of people living below the poverty line. In agreement with this sentiment, Maluleke (2014) highlighted that "the reality in South Africa is that poverty bears a feminine face . . . poverty patterns are influenced by gender and this is the result of the past, where women were unable to access the same economic resources and opportunities as men . . . " (p. 99).

South African society is among the world's most unequal societies due to its apartheid past. The apartheid regime thrived on the promotion of inequality in every sphere of life including access to education, economic empowerment, land, health, sports and recreation, as well as freedom of movement for Black people (Goldblatt and McLean 2011). White men enjoyed superiority over all other groupings in society. Black men were separated from their families to work in the mines and cities, thus creating a breakdown in family structures and the promotion of a militarized masculinity for Black men who were fighting the apartheid regime (Christopher 1988).

The advent of democracy in 1994 for South Africa heralded a call to redress apartheid inequalities. Towards this goal, the country adopted several structures and policies with the assistance of the international community (Ikejiaku 2009). While

<sup>1</sup> United Nations. Available online: https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/ending-poverty (accessed on 5 December 2019).

South Africa adopted its National Development Plan (NDP) in 2012 prior to the United Nations' adoption of the 2030 Agenda and the African Union's Agenda 2063, the South African NDP has 74% convergence with the SDGs (United Nations n.d.), highlighting South Africa's commitment to the United Nations 2030 Agenda (South Africa VRR 2019). The achievement of the United Nations 2030 Agenda is therefore of paramount importance to South Africa.

Despite the progress South Africa has made in its developmental journey since the 1994 democratic elections, there is still a lot to be done in terms of addressing past injustices such as the violent masculinities that were created by the apartheid regime which emasculated Black men and rendered Black women economically dependent on men. During the apartheid era, the top-salary and high-skill jobs were reserved for White men, while Black men worked in the mines and cities. White and Black women were relegated to service industries and the domestic workforce, respectively. While some White women worked as supervisors in government offices and some Black women held clerical jobs, their work sphere generally was in the background, supporting jobs held by White men. For those Black women who remained in homelands and rural areas, their job was within sustenance agriculture. As argued by MacKinnon's (2006) work in developing contexts, "women have historically been relegated to and identified with the private, excluded from, when present, subordinated in public" (p. 4). This system perpetuated the patriarchal hegemony of the masculine provider and female dependent.

Black men who worked in White households were called "boys" irrespective of how old they were. When men's culturally constructed masculinity is threatened, they perform the inscrutable masculinity, which, according to Morrell (1998), renders them unable to express their fears and emotions and causes them to enact violent outbursts of such suppressed emotions. Khau (2007, p. 60) posits that "men whose masculine identity and sense of self is predicated on exerting dominance and control over others express these characteristics even in their sexual interactions." This is not only true to South Africa but also many countries in the Global South, where STIs, HIV and AIDS remain high due to the violations of the reproductive health rights of women and girls (cf. Khau 2010; Piot and Bartos 2002; Simpson 2007; O'Donoghue 2002). Women are disproportionally affected by HIV in South Africa, where 4,700,000 of the 7,500,000 adults living with HIV (62.67%) were women in 2018 (UNAIDS 2019). However, UNAIDS (2019) claims that between 2010 and 2018, there has been a global reduction of 25% in young women newly infected with HIV. This reduction could be an indication of the effectiveness of school-based country initiatives to provide comprehensive sexuality education. The main challenge according to the UNAIDS

(2019) report is that women and girls are still deprived of their rights to sexual and reproductive health. Basile (2002) and Bergen (2007) have attested to the fact that some violations of women's and girls' rights are perpetuated by their intimate partners, thus making them extremely vulnerable in a context of total dependence on their partners economically.

Another causal factor to feminine poverty in many developing contexts is the number of adolescent and unwanted pregnancies. This does not bode well for young mothers and their children because of the challenges associated with adolescent pregnancies (Panday et al. 2009). While some African countries have laws permitting school attendance for girls during and after pregnancy, challenges still persist in reintegrating such girls due to stigma associated with teen pregnancy (Varga 2003). According to Kirby (2007), teenage pregnancy leads to the perpetuation of poverty through teen mothers dropping out of school and being unable to secure jobs to sustain their children's education. He argues that children born of teen mothers tend to have poor school attendance and performance and eventually drop out of school.

In order to address the injustices posed by patriarchy globally and apartheid in South Africa, UNESCO (2009) produced technical guidelines to help countries in implementing school-based comprehensive sexuality education to address adolescent pregnancies and STIs. While there is evidence of the effectiveness of school-based interventions in preventing early sexual debut (White and Warner 2015), there are still challenges in terms of implementing such interventions in schools.

In South African communities where comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) is implemented, access to reproductive health services is not inclusive of young people. This means that while young people may have knowledge of how to protect themselves, they cannot access contraceptives and condoms which are mostly available in clinics labeled as Family Planning Centers. In the context of South Africa and its neighboring countries, Family Planning Centers are seen as places for assisting married couples in spacing their families. As such, the staff in such centers are not trained to provide youth-friendly services, thus denying young unmarried people, most of whom are female, the resources they desperately need (Uugwanga 2016). This is because pre-marital sex is still seen as problematic and adolescent pregnancy is frowned upon. Hence, other services such as safe abortions are still illegal in many countries where pro-life groups, most of which are religion-based, mobilize governments to challenge women's rights to safe abortions (Ngwena 2004). In such situations, school-based sexuality education falls short in providing protection for young women.

On the plus side, South Africa legalized abortion for up to twelve weeks of pregnancy for any woman without question in 1997. However, this service is not free in medical clinics where women can get safe abortion services, and many health care workers and midwives refuse to offer such services due to religious reasons or lack of training. Thus, many poor women resort to so-called "backstreet" abortions which are cheaper but not safe, resulting in many deaths and future barrenness (Mhlanga 2003). For fear of such outcomes, some young women carry unwanted pregnancies to term, thus jeopardizing their educational and occupational prospects. This, according to Kirby (2007), creates perpetual poverty and gender inequality.

This chapter aims to discuss why comprehensive sexuality education is necessary in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. This will be conducted by discussing what CSE is and why it is necessary within countries in the Global South including South Africa. I will also discuss studies identifying some of the challenges towards CSE in communities, followed by studies that address ways in which these challenges can be addressed. Finally, I will discuss the need for CSE in achieving the SDGs.

#### **2. What Is Comprehensive Sexuality Education?**

Weeks (2003) defines sexuality education as a lifelong program of acquiring information regarding one's identity and relationships. He posits that this type of education includes affection, body image, gender roles and sexual development within a human rights framework.

According to UNESCO (2009), good sexuality education develops learners holistically and equips them with skills to negotiate their relationships with others. On the other hand, Janssen (2009) argues that for sexuality education to be good, it should critique norms and address all sexualities positively. This would allow for schools and communities to challenge oppressive and negative sexuality norms that privilege certain sexualities over others, hence creating safe spaces for learners to construct their sexual identities without prejudice.

UNESCO (2009) also defines CSE as a subject in which children are taught about all the aspects of sexuality to enable them to make informed decisions regarding their sexualities. Unfortunately, this is not how CSE is seen by religious bodies and some government leaders who position it as a way of encouraging young people to engage in casual, permissive sexual behavior and premarital sex (Jakobsen and Pellegrini 2008; Lesko 2010).

Despite these definitions of CSE, UNAIDS (2019) highlights that global consensus has not been reached regarding its definition and teaching strategies. UNAIDS (2019) also argues that the different names given to school-based CSE in different countries

create an opportunity for teachers to gloss over some important content areas of the subject which they feel uncomfortable with.

The "rights-based" framework required for effective CSE creates controversy within communities regarding its content and pedagogy (Kirby 2008). In South Africa, the controversy of CSE surrounds the ages at which children should be introduced to certain content such as same-sex families and multiple gender identities (Baxen 2010). In a study conducted by Samelius and Wăgberg (2005) in developing countries, it was found that some South African participants had misconceptions regarding homosexuality and pedophilia, where there was no separation between the two. These authors also found that some church leaders openly condemned homosexuality and promoted negative views against it. The fact that CSE teaches about homosexuality and LGBTIQ places it in the center of debates regarding its fit for children in South African schools.

Despite the negative attitudes towards CSE discussed in this section, it is important to understand why there is a need for it in schools. The next section discusses the need for CSE in relation to HIV infections, especially among young people.

#### *2.1. CSE in Relation to HIV Infections*

The advent of HIV in Southern Africa more than thirty years ago heralded the need for research that explores the linkages between sexuality education and behavior change (UNAIDS 2010). With HIV infecting young and old people alike, there was a need for education-focused solutions to reducing new infections among the youth. Morrell's (2003) and Pattman's (2006) studies focused on the power dynamics within heterosexual relationships and how these enabled coercive and unsafe sexual practices among the youth. On the other hand, Buthelezi (2004) and Simpson (2007) explored some of the cultural practices which perpetuate the taboo nature of sex talk within communities and how such practices are implicated in the increasing numbers of new HIV infections.

Additionally, Piot and Bartos (2002) highlighted how HIV ravages the education sector in many developing communities. They discussed how HIV impacts the demand for education and negatively affects young girls who drop out of school to take care of sick relatives and other family responsibilities. HIV also depletes household resources and incomes through death and lack of employment, hence creating challenges for children's schooling. This group of young people end up not having access to school-based interventions such as CSE and thus become vulnerable to the virus.

To address the ravages of HIV, UNAIDS initiated youth-centered programs as a way of providing sexual and reproductive health education (UNAIDS 2010). These programs were rolled out in different countries to ensure universal sexuality education coverage and prevention of new infections. UNAIDS (2010) argued that success in preventing new HIV infections could be achieved through sexuality education and youth-focused HIV prevention efforts. It also argued that countries needed to reduce youth's HIV vulnerability by ensuring equitable access to education and employment and enabling legal environments.

Kirby's (2008) study highlighted the effectiveness of school-based sexuality education based on the reduction in youth-related HIV infections globally. According to UNAIDS (2019), global numbers of new HIV infections have dropped, indicating that the pandemic could be halted by 2030. To achieve this milestone, there is need for concerted efforts to sustain CSE and other youth-centered programs that provide youth friendly reproductive health services and information. Kelly (2002) has also highlighted the need for discussions that unpack harmful sexual practices and norms.

The next sections discuss these arguments by focusing on challenges to effective sexuality education in some African countries (South Africa, Uganda, Lesotho) and pedagogical strategies that were found to be effective for CSE.

#### *2.2. Challenges to E*ff*ective CSE*

Mitchell et al.'s (2004) study in South Africa investigated the construction of young people as unskilled in making decisions regarding their sexuality, which makes them vulnerable to HIV. They argue that the politics of innocence embedded in youth and childhood discourses within South African communities deny young people the agency to seek protective measures against sexual violence, STIs and HIV. In agreement with the above sentiments, Parikh (2005) reported that issues of morality played a huge role in community responses towards sexuality education in Uganda. Parents argued that such an education would lead young people to experimenting with sex and becoming promiscuous.

In a study conducted in Lesotho with women science teachers, Khau (2010) found that women teachers were uncomfortable with teaching sexuality education due to their positioning as mothers within communities. They argued that if they teach about sexuality, they are seen as leading children astray and corrupting their innocence, while some argued that they felt uncomfortable talking about sex across the age divide. Thus, teacher identities impacted on their confidence in teaching sexuality education (see also Baxen 2010). However, despite these challenges, teachers were aware of the need for sexuality education and were willing to be equipped with strategies to

overcome their discomforts. In Khau's (2010) study, it was found that teachers lacked the necessary training to address CSE, and hence this challenge was countered by offering training on strategies that enabled teachers to use learner-centered methods of teaching which made the learners producers of knowledge.

Epstein et al. (2003) argued that school-based sexuality education was the only subject requiring parental consent because of its sensitivity and the fact that it was seen as corrupting young children. Believing that children should be sexually unknowing makes it difficult to teach them about their sexuality. According to Epstein et al. (2003) and Paechter (2004), such a belief constructs children as sexually innocent and not needing to know about sexuality.

In another study, Khau (2012) found that past traditional practices and societal values impeded effective school-based sexuality education. Religious beliefs were the dominant driving factor in parents being opposed to comprehensive sexuality education, arguing that it would destroy the innocence of children and lead them astray. They advocated for abstinence-only education. In the same study, Khau also found that CSE was a direct contradiction to traditional Basotho practices in relation to sexuality and rites of passage. This created a rift between communities and schools in terms of implementing CSE in schools.

Young girls in some countries of the Global South including Lesotho, Zimbabwe and Mozambique practice inner labia elongation as a rite of passage. Khau (2012) found that the people of Lesotho practiced inner labia elongation as a way of reducing young women's sexual excitability and pleasure. This was used as a contraceptive measure. However, in CSE, learners are taught about other forms of contraception, and that sex is meant to be pleasurable for both partners. This goes against the traditional teaching that a woman who enjoyed sex was a bad woman (see Fine 1988). In such situations, Khau (2012) found that it was important for teachers to acknowledge indigenous ways of teaching sexuality education and incorporate these into CSE such that harmful practices, myths and misconceptions could be addressed and alternatives provided.

#### *2.3. E*ff*ective Strategies in Teaching CSE*

In a study conducted in 2002, O'Donoghue found that school programs on HIV and AIDS required participatory pedagogies and life skills training. He claimed that all education stakeholders needed to be skilled in such participatory techniques. In agreement, Yego (2017) conducted a study with secondary school teachers in Kenya exploring the teaching of sexuality education using participatory and visual methods. She used drawings, collages, songs and a participatory video. The teachers

argued that using participatory and visual methods made the teaching of sexuality education less stressful to them because the children became the producers of the knowledge. This allowed for free and open discussions in class which did not leave teachers feeling like they were leading children astray.

In another study in Zimbabwe, Gudyanga (2017) explored with women teachers the effectiveness of using participatory methods in teaching sexuality education to address teachers' challenges in this subject matter. He found out that the teachers felt relieved with the use of participatory methods because they used children's prior knowledge to produce artefacts and talk about them in class. This allowed for addressing sensitive cultural practices that teachers would have felt uncomfortable with in a normal lecture.

While these studies proved the effectiveness of participatory methodologies in teaching CSE, Uugwanga (2016) found out that understanding what young people needed to know was most effective in teaching sexuality education. She explored young people's needs using letters to an *agony aunt*, vignettes and drawings. She argued that most curricula are based on what adults think young people need to know and do not address the issues facing young people in their daily lives. In Uugwanga's (2016) study, young people were curious about non-normative sexualities and identities which were not covered in the Namibian curriculum, and these were issues they were grappling with in their own lives. All learners wanted to know more about LGBTIQ+ identities, different ways of engaging in sexual intercourse and the necessary protective measures. Uugwanga (2016) argued that a curriculum that addresses these issues would be beneficial for young people and would warrant teachers being trained on how to teach about such.

Having discussed what sexuality education is, the need for sexuality education, the challenges it faces and effective strategies in teaching, I now provide a summary that links sexuality education with the attainment of the SDGs.

#### **3. Summary**

There is growing evidence of the need for CSE in communities to address economic and social challenges faced by young girls and women. With the challenges faced by young people in getting sexual and reproductive health services, Uugwanga (2016) argued that health service providers should be trained to serve the needs of young people. She also pointed out that there is a need for a positive change of attitude in service providers when young people seek help, instead of stigmatizing them as promiscuous. Thus, there is a need for youth-friendly service providers who are not necessarily labeled as Family Planning, where young people can feel free to

access sexual and reproductive health services. This can greatly reduce the numbers of adolescent and unwanted pregnancies, STIs and HIV infections, thus allowing young people to contribute meaningfully to their economies.

Women and girls find themselves resorting to unsafe abortions or carrying unwanted pregnancies to term, increasing the burden on family resources and time that could be used for economic pursuits and self-actualization due to unfavorable abortion laws. With such laws in place, the face of poverty will remain that of a woman (Maluleke 2014). This means that there will be no gender equality in terms of equal access to education, access to jobs and housing or other resources. Thus, the attainment of many of the SDGs will not happen.

Access to CSE is an important stepping stone towards achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls. It would ensure that communities and service providers become cognizant of the many challenges faced by young people and find strategies of how best to help them. As argued by UNESCO (2009), the rights-based approach taken to CSE is necessary in equipping youth with skills and the agency to choose life as they negotiate their sexual identities. Norm-critical and sex-positive sexuality education can help many communities to move away from the taboo nature of sex talk. This would create communities that acknowledge different ways of being and respect women's and girls' rights to sexual and reproductive health (Khau 2012). With CSE that employs participatory pedagogical strategies, there is hope for addressing harmful norms and stereotypes. This could lead to reducing the numbers of intimate partner violence perpetuated against women and girls, thus ensuring their safety such that they can achieve their full capabilities like their male counterparts (Basile 2002).

Communities that are open to talking about sexuality are necessary in a bid to attain gender equality. This would lead to young people having correct information to protect themselves against disease and unwanted pregnancies and knowing where to find resources such as condoms and contraceptives. Thus, these young people would become a productive workforce for their countries. Another advantage would be in addressing all forms of sexual violence, including gender-based violence, perpetuated against women and girls, and sexual minorities (Bergen 2007). While the burden of disease, poverty and illiteracy is negatively skewed against women and girls, it will be difficult to reach a state of equitable treatment of all (Khau 2010).

Unless investments are made to empower women and girls in promoting equal rights for all regarding sexual and reproductive health, it might be impossible to reach the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

#### **References**


© 2021 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

### **The Political Economy of Violence: Gender, Sexuality and SDGs**

#### **Suruchi Thapar-Björkert and Ruchika Ranwa**

#### **1. Introduction**

Consider two seemingly disparate quotes:

*What is more important is how we view and value the girl child in our society.* (Manmohan Singh, Ex-Prime Minister of India, commenting on declining Child Sex-Ratio as a national shame 2011)<sup>1</sup>

*Premila lived in a rural area of Bihar. Her parents lived in extreme poverty. Desperate to escape their plight she was sold to a man in Punjab. There was no marriage ceremony and her body was used and abused by her 'husband' and his other male relatives. She was then sold to a prostitution ring in New Delhi.* (Kapoor 2012)

These two quotes speak to different gendered realities, but drawing on their interconnections is the central thrust of our paper, delineated through two interdependent ideas: first, sex determination policies and the widely prevalent culture of son preference contributes to the skewed sex ratio, particularly in North India. Second, this abysmal gender imbalance results in bride shortages and a crisis in the institution of marriage in itself, which is not confined to North India but affects neighbouring states, creating channels for new forms of practices such as bride trafficking, slavery and prostitution. This paper draws attention to the skewed sex ratio and rampant bride trafficking in India as possible fallouts of uneven development, with specific reference to the state in Haryana in North India.

The right-wing political regime in India represented by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under the Prime Ministership of Narendra Modi, came to power in 2014 with its giant promises of development and a corruption-free India.<sup>2</sup> Its political

<sup>1</sup> https://www.oneindia.com/2008/04/28/declining-sex-ratio-national-shame-all-must-work-to-sa ve-girlspm-1209389687.html (accessed on 19 February 2020).

<sup>2</sup> The leading party of right-wing coalition National Democratic Alliance (NDA) which was formed in 1998.

ideology has been dominated by the idea of an all-inclusive development with its main motto of "*sabka saath sabka vikas*" (together will all, development for all). Women-centred schemes and programmes such as *Beti Bachao Beti Padhao* (save the girl child, educate the girl child) attempt to build a level-playing field for women in all spheres of development,<sup>3</sup> to correct skewed sex ratios and to promote education for girls<sup>4</sup> while the *Ujjawala Scheme* aims to eliminate trafficking of girl children in India, a country which has "emerged as a source, destination and transit for both in-country and cross border trafficking of women and children for commercial sexual exploitation" (Government of India 2019, p. 2). These positive government-led and funded initiatives appear seemingly consistent with the basic premises of gender equality, the fifth of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by all the United Nations Member States in 2015, and at the core of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.<sup>5</sup> Furthermore, the government has set the country on the path of economic development evident through a volley of schemes tailor-made and with overlapping agendas, to boost economic growth through entrepreneurship (Start-up India), micro enterprises (Mudra scheme), manufacturing (Make in India campaign) and industrial skill training (Skill India).<sup>6</sup> Significantly, women are referred to as "nation builders"<sup>7</sup> in political articulations and financial benefits have been introduced to encourage parents to not discriminate against girls.

Nonetheless, this neo-liberal vision of development, primarily along economic parameters is inherently conservative, disabling the Indian state from translating economic gains into sustainable human development (Tharamangalam 2016). While it brings women out in the public sites of capitalist production it simultaneously monitors and morally polices them through a discourse of protection (Purewal 2018). As Coleman argues, "the violent imposition of neo-liberal capitalism [ . . . ] is made possible and legitimised through a production of space that relies upon the mobilisation of gendered discourses" (Coleman 2007, p. 204). The disturbing trends of mob lynching by cow vigilantes; propagation of ideas like "Ghar Wapsi"

<sup>3</sup> https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/finance/budget-al1location-to-womensschemes-hiked-4-to-rs-1-21l-cr/articleshow/62745352.cms (accessed on 19 February 2020).

<sup>4</sup> India ranks 108th among 149 countries on the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Index 2018 (accessed on 28 February 2020).

<sup>5</sup> https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg (accessed on 20 February 2020).

<sup>6</sup> For Start-up India, see https://www.startupindia.gov.in/; Make in India; https://www.pmindia.gov. in/en/major\_initiatives/make-in-india/; Mudra Scheme; https://www.mudra.org.in/AboutUs/Vis ion; Skill India mission, https://skillindia.nsdcindia.org/ (accessed on 21 February 2020).

<sup>7</sup> https://www.business-standard.com/article/politics/need-to-see-women-as-nation-builders-mo di-114011900300\_1.html (accessed on 20 February 2020).

(Katju 2015); "anti- Romeo" squads (Sharma 2017) and "Love Jihad" (Punwani 2014) signals the unholy alliance between cultural ideologies and patriarchal forces, supported through a nexus of control by the family, the state and Hindutva organizations. The steady politicization of Love Jihad by the Hindu Right highlights the failure of the enabling legal provision in the Special Marriage Act 1954, permitting interfaith marriages between consenting individuals in India. In projecting the Muslim "other" as the ultimate threat to unsuspecting and "innocent" Hindu women, who are lured into marriage for the purpose of converting them, the Hindu Right is able to position itself as the patriarchal guardian of Hindu women whose purity (read: purity of the Hindu nation) needs to be protected from defilement by the Muslims (Graff et al. 2019). Furthermore, in evoking the symbolic idea of "mothers of the nation", the nationalist (read: Hindu) woman stands as an embodiment of the nation: as a nurturer, reproducer and defender of the motherland. The protection of the Hindu nationalist woman together with her valorisation through the symbolism of *Bharat Mata,* accords legitimacy to the divisive rhetoric on religious conversion and the politicisation of intimate/domestic and secular spaces.

These gendered political discourses have been coupled with incidences of gendered violence, often supported by state functionaries that threaten life in all its plurality and diversity. Sunder Rajan (1993, p. 6) argues that state functionaries, such as politicians and police officers, who are meant to be "guarantors of rights to its citizens, have invariably emerged instead as major perpetrators of injustices". For example, in the Unnao rape case (2017) of Uttar Pradesh, the BJP Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA), Kuldeep Sengar, as the main accused was convicted only after three years in 2020, after repeated nationwide public outrage (Sharma 2019a). Another conspicuous example is Asifa's rape case in Kathua district in Jammu and Kashmir, wherein an eight-year-old Muslim girl was gang raped by Hindu men in a temple. Despite the brutality of the act, the accused were supported by some BJP MLAs of Jammu and Kashmir (Ahmad 2018). As we write this piece, India is once again torn and outraged by the gang rape and killing of a 27-year-old female veterinary doctor in Hyderabad on 27 November, 2019, and more recently the gang rape of a 19-year-old Dalit girl by upper-caste men in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh on the 19 September, 2020. Bearing insidious similarities with the Delhi gang rape case of December, 2012, these cases point towards gendered inequalities, devaluation of women and restricting women's mobility in the urban public sphere (a space claimed largely by men), whereby any encroachments are seen as transgressions which have to be punished. These violent crimes against women and the tacit support

to their perpetrators occur against a backdrop of larger development-oriented and women-centric agendas advocated by the government.

In this paper, we conceptualise these paradoxes through the framework of "violence[s] of development" which refers to processes that can lead to either the denial of access to the benefits of development or an exclusion from development in itself- thus undermining the transformatory potential of development. Market liberalisation and economic globalisation that underpin rapid economic growth, carried out in the name of development, tend to accelerate processes which ingrain existing inequalities even further (Kothari and Harcourt 2004). Escobar (2004) argues that violence is not only endemic but also *constitutive* of development. By this, he means that the level of violence created by "development" is not a short-term, small feature or side effect, but is actually persistent, normalised and depoliticised. Yet, too often, the relationship between development and violence is overlooked because violence and suffering have traditionally been conveyed factually or quantitatively, which fails to fully take into account how "suffering is structured by historically given (and often economically driven) processes and forces that conspire [ . . . ] to constrain agency" (Farmer 1996, p. 263). Explicating further the "close relationship" between development and violence, Nandy argues that those who are seen as impeding the process of development are seen as retrogressive and, "deserve to be thrown into the dustbin of history" (Nandy and Kothari 2004, p. 9). Thus, the dislocation and suffering they undergo is often seen as brought upon by themselves. In fact, post-development imagining has prompted scholars to search for "alternatives *to* development" rather than "development alternatives" (Escobar 1992, p. 27).

We would like to make two additive clarifications. First, we are not suggesting that all aspects of development are violent or that the Indian state only governs through violence, as might come across when Escobar (2004) argues that development is inherently violent. Nonetheless, we would like to highlight the possibilities of violence(s) when (a) the state as the main architect of development programmes forms close alliances with entrenched power interests; supports local powerful players or chooses to remain silent; (b) when poverty reduction interventions for the marginalised (for example, social protection schemes such as MNREGA) reinforces traditionally entrenched social hierarchies; or when (c) the state, driven by the logic of the market, pursues its neo-liberal agenda over and above those whose livelihoods are fragile and exploitable. Second, the current development trajectory in India, we will argue, is inherently paradoxical. While the Indian government has initiated several schemes for the empowerment of women, these progressive processes are

often accompanied by escalating violence against women, which cannot be abstracted from cultural configurations of gendered practices and socio-economic contexts in Northern India. In an earlier work, Kapadia (2002) highlights the increased state investment in women's education and employment opportunities as pointers of growing female autonomy in India. Arguably, while this has created economic opportunities, it has simultaneously heightened other forms of inequalities and vulnerabilities. For instance, women still remain largely bracketed in the unregulated informal economy together with the prevalence of gender bias and devaluation of women.

To reflect upon the paradoxical nature of development, together with the context, causes, trends and implications of gendered inequalities in India, the paper focuses on critically assessing the all-inclusive idea of development. It delineates the paradox by juxtaposing government-led women-centric development discourses with prevalent gendered practices of son preference and bride trafficking. These practices are buttressed by extra-constitutional yet politically influential bodies like Khaps, which enjoy tacit political patronage in North India.

#### **2. Declining Sex Ratio**

The historic 1974 *Report of the Committee of the Status of Women in India* brought the dismal status of women in the country to centre stage (Government of India 1974). As compared to pre-independent India in 1901 when the sex ratio (SR: number of females per 1000 of males) was 972 to 946 in 1951, and 933 in 2001, in 2011 it was 940 (Government of India 2011; Anderson and Ray 2012; also see Navaneetham and Dharmalingam 2011). One particular state, which has shown a decreasing trend in the population of women and is a cause of concern, is Haryana (Usha et al. 2007). It has the lowest sex ratio in India and the figure shows 879 (though higher than 861 as recorded in 2001) females to that of 1000 males in 2011.<sup>8</sup> Despite the slight overall improvement in the SR, the Child Sex Ratio (CSR—child population in the age group 0–6) in India as a whole has declined significantly—from 945 in 1991 to 927 in 2001 to 914 in 2011. Punjab and Haryana—part of the "Bermuda triangle" for missing females—have buckled the trend. However, despite an improvement between 2001 and 2011, these states still had the lowest child sex ratios in 2011 (Rao and Oommen 2013). The worsening of the CSR points to a further widening of the gender mortality gap—that is, continuing anti-female rates of infant and child

<sup>8</sup> https://www.census2011.co.in/sexratio.php (accessed on 19 March 2020).

mortality as well as a decrease in the sex ratio at birth (SRB). The main explanation of these missing numbers resides in sex-selective abortions (SSA), neglect of young girls during infancy and to some degree female infanticide (made illegal through the Infanticide Act of 1870) (Arnold et al. 2002). The high preference for male children rather than female children, is often encapsulated in the Sanskrit saying, "may you be the mother of a hundred sons" and offered as a blessing to newlywed Hindu brides. Robitaille and Chatterjee (2018) suggest that within individual households' parents rely on "sex selective neglect" and infanticide to obtain their desired sex ratio among their children. Thus, in households where only the mother has a stated son preference, they, as primary caregivers, are able to eliminate unwanted daughters through medical or nutritional neglect. These small neglects which go unnoticed also contribute to sex selective infant mortality (Robitaille and Chatterjee 2018, p. 48).

In India, determining and communicating the sex of the foetus is illegal, legislated through the *Prenatal Diagnosis Techniques Act* of 1994 and the *Pre-conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Technique Act* (PCPNDT), 2003. Nonetheless, in May 2019, the All India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA) condemned the stance taken by Dr. Santanu Sen, President, Indian Medical Association (IMA), seeking "comprehensive review, repeal and re-conception" of the PCPNDT Act and deplored the fact that the President and the General Secretary of the highest medical body in India considers it a "harassment" for doctors to maintain transparency of their practice by complying with the rules and regulations of the act. As AIDWA commented, "the problem of son-preference is no doubt a social problem, but obviously identification of sex of the unborn child and elimination of the female foetus would be impossible without the intervention of a section of people inside the medical profession. Hence, people in the medical profession cannot shake off their responsibility to stand up against this social evil and ensure that son-preference is not further reinforced through their own stand. A powerful body like the IMA is duty-bound to generate awareness against son-preference at all levels instead of pushing the burden of such measures on the Government alone".<sup>9</sup> As is evident from this recent intervention, national bodies are themselves implicated in shifting medical norms unfavourably towards the girl child. This devaluation, neglect and annihilation of the girl child, arguably, is also buttressed by the extra-constitutional/-judicial structures of caste-based panchayats—the Khaps.

<sup>9</sup> 'AIDWA condemns attack on the PCPNDT Act', Press Release, 10 May, 2019, *All India Democratic Women's Association*, New Delhi; see, http://pndt.gov.in/ (accessed on 10 January 2020).

#### **3. Khaps**

The word "Khap", a Sanskrit derivative of "kashtrap" meaning domain, is an institution, which claims sovereignty over a particular area, "either in the name of the clan or the gotra which is dominant in that area or by the name of geographical area" (Singh 2010, p. 17). Though Khap panchayats are believed to be multi-caste (*sarv jatiya*) bodies, in states such as Haryana, Rajasthan and Western Uttar Pradesh, they have come to be dominated by Jats, who have used constitutional protections to expand their political and economic influence (Gupta 2000). This upwardly mobile "backward" caste has come to exercise considerable influence (Bharadwaj 2012; Thapar-Björkert 2006) demographically (on the basis of its population), economically (through extensive farm holdings) and politically (through dominance in local administration and politics). Emphasising caste and gotra identity as well as territorial rigidity, these patriarchal male-dominated Khaps uphold *aikya* (unity), *izzat* (honour), *biraderi* (community) and *bhaichara* (brotherhood) (Chowdhry 1997, 2004a, 2014b; Kumar 2012). Furthermore, they override any notion of gender equality or gender empowerment that the Indian constitution endeavoured to provide women at the grass-roots level through Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs). In fact, Khaps do not even see women as citizens (Khairwal 2017). Khaps act as agencies of social control, which are involved in resolving local disputes in accordance with customs and traditional values while upholding patriliny, caste endogamy and village exogamy.<sup>10</sup> These contexts of local power enable forms of normative violence against women to continue with impunity.

In proclaiming the primacy of male heirs, Khaps in Haryana have worsened the problem of declining sex ratio. For example, in 2004, the Tevatia Khap while deliberating on a property dispute in Duleypur decreed that families with fewer than two sons were not eligible to approach the Khap about property disputes as these "unfortunate" families had "lesser scope" towards carrying forward the father's name or increasing family assets. They simply "deserved less", the Khap said. This has had devastating effects as families desperate for the "required" two sons have tried to avoid female births and even resorted to killing baby girls. It was observed that after this pro-male Khap diktat, sex ratio in Ballabhgarh block in Faridabad, governed by the Tevatia Khap, fell from 683 in 2004 to 370 in 2008 (Dixit 2009). Furthermore, this statement by the Tevatia Khap in 2004 offers a revealing

<sup>10</sup> See also, https://www.hindustantimes.com/chandigarh/khaps-against-lowering-of-age-of-sexua l-consent/story-267lqdgQYafmuXYSB6dZwK.html (accessed on 21 March 2020).

explanation for the shockingly adverse sex ratio. Kanta Singh, member of the Tevatia Khap and father with a daughter older than his three sons, stated that "Sons are a man's assets. My sons will take my name forward and expand my farms. They will earn money to pay for this girl's dowry and marriage". When asked where his sons will find brides, considering the scarcity of girls, he answered rather arrogantly, "they will earn enough not to have to worry about that" (Dixit 2009; Thapar-Björkert and Sanghera 2014).

Furthermore, Khaps derive their legitimacy from political patronage in India. They have been influential in informing political choices of many and thus political parties have repeatedly approached them for strengthening their vote bank. Even though all political parties have benefitted from their support to the Khaps, the recent BJP regime has been more explicit in their support. Narendra Modi, during one of his political rallies in Haryana in October 2014,<sup>11</sup> made a statement addressing the Khaps and stated: "I respect your authority" which stands, paradoxically, in contrast with his pre-election statement made on another occasion in 2013, when addressing the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) ladies organisation, he spoke of "inequality", "gender insensitivity" and the practice of "female foeticide" as hindering the empowerment of women in India.<sup>12</sup> It was for the first time that a political leader, more so a Prime Minister, publicly made a statement in support of Khap Panchayats, who are widely known for their atrocities against women. In a similar vein, the current BJP chief minister of Haryana, Manohar Lal Khattar, during a felicitation function organized by two Khaps in the Jind district of Haryana in 2015, praised Khaps for being "custodians of social customs". He also appreciated Khaps for their role in the implementation of *Beti Bachao Beti Padhao* scheme, which stands in contradiction to the ideological premises of Khaps, though no further details were forwarded on this subject.<sup>13</sup> Jagmati Sangwan, ex-General Secretary of AIDWA, highlights the important role played by Khaps in BJP's success in forming central government in India after winning the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. She is of the view that Khaps influence the voting choice of people

<sup>11</sup> See also, https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/three-firsts-in-haryanashistory/articleshow/44882599.cms (accessed on 19 February 2020).

<sup>12</sup> Bharat Mata-loving Narendra Modi makes a point about empowerment in his FICCI speech, April 9th 2013: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/bharat-mata-loving-nar endra-modi-makes-a-point-about-empowerment-in-his-ficci-speech/articleshow/19450687.cms (accessed on 19 February 2020).

<sup>13</sup> See also, https://www.firstpost.com/india/haryana-cm-khattar-praises-khap-panchayats-calls-cu stodian-social-customs-2260210.html (accessed on 12 February 2020).

in villages under their control by announcing their support for a particular political party (Khairwal 2017). The political party, in turn, support Khaps in maintaining their control and even nominate Khap leaders during assembly elections, which enhance the chances of Khap leaders to officially enter the domain of political power (Moudgil and Rahar 2019).

The influence of Khaps and their support for son preference, as Kaur (2010, p. 15) argues, have greatly reduced the pool of marriageable women, leading to a "marriage squeeze" (too many men chasing too few brides). Furthermore, to protect the shrinking "pool" of marriageable women, Khap councils have resorted to issuing diktats to punish young couples accused of having transgressed customary norms through disapproved marriage and thus overriding Khap diktats of caste endogamy and *gotra* and village exogamy. Khap panchayat imposes its writ through social boycotts and fines, which includes brutally murdering young couples in full view of the village community or forcing them to commit suicide (Gupta and Seth 2007; Sangwan 2010).<sup>14</sup> The state of Haryana has seen the most extreme cases of these so called "honour" killings, though other states such as Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Punjab have also witnessed similar incidents.

These unlawful killings by Khaps together with SSA, and to a small extent female infanticide, have contributed to demographic anxieties of "surplus" men and "scarce" women which subsequently feeds into practices of bride sale, bride shortage-related marriage migration and trafficking. This is arguably rooted in "patriarchies of oppression that reduce women to commodities available for men's entitled purchase" (Schwarz et al. 2017, p. 4). The excess bachelors referred to as *malang* (aloof and loopy) in Haryana and *chhara* (a derogatory term for unmarried men) in Punjab is a newly emerging social problem in India.<sup>15</sup> These practices are not confined to India but extend to demographically similar countries such as China where, like India, the imbalance in sex ratio has led to the abduction, sale and prostitution of women (Edlund et al. 2007).

Khaps do not see "bride trafficking" as a problem either. For instance, even in the context of re-selling the already bought women to other brothers in the same family, a Khap leader named Om Prakash Dhankar in Dhakla village of Haryana said, "what is

<sup>14</sup> See also, https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/et-editorial/grisly-tradition-the-fight-inharyana-is-as-much-against-khaps-as-against-rape/articleshow/16791718.cms?from=mdr (accessed on 15 March 2020).

<sup>15</sup> https://www.economist.com/asia/2015/04/18/bare-branches-redundant-males?fsrc=scn/tw/te /pe/ed/barebranchesredundantmales (accessed on 15 March 2020).

wrong with that, even Draupadi had five husbands" (Bose 2018).<sup>16</sup> In another Khap panchayat meeting, which was attended by a BJP Member of Parliament, Brijendra Mishra, one of the leaders of the Kandela Khap panchayat named Hoshiyar Singh justified the practice of bride trafficking by commenting that *"Ladkiyan kam hain ji, ab ye bechaare kya karenge"* (There are few girls in this region, what should these poor men do) (Singh 2019). Nonetheless, Khaps and their authoritative interventions in relation to marriage has often been questioned and seen as illegal by the Supreme Court of India recently (Sinha 2018).

Bringing our discussion together on Khaps, declining sex ratio and bride trafficking, the question that arises is how do Khaps, which endorse caste endogamy reconcile with brides from unknown, lower or different castes? Arguably, rules of hypergamy, caste endogamy, *gotra* and territorial exogamy are often negotiated primarily among the Jat communities, who are known for their conservatism. In this context, Hoshiyar Singh, Chief of Kandela Khap panchayat, had also commented, *"Agar ladka jat hai to jatni ban jati hai, harijan hai to harijan"* (if the boy is a Jat, the girl becomes Jatni, if he is a Harijan, she also becomes one) (Singh 2019). This statement reveals how Khaps find ways to accommodate the practice of bringing brides from other castes, which would otherwise be counted as serious transgressions. Nonetheless, there are other cultural adjustments (learning a new language, dietary adaptations, gender-specific social norms) that are expected from brides who are "extracted from their local and cultural context" (Kaur 2004, p. 2601).

#### **4. Bride Trafficking**

Bride shortage related marriage migration is a social phenomenon emerging due to the demographic imbalance in India. Over the last decade, numerous reports on "bride trafficking" have been highlighted by the national and global media which have referred to it as "the business of brides", "paro pratha" and "bride-buying" (Chatterji 2018; Gierstorfer 2014; Singh 2019). The trafficked brides are referred to as "slave brides", "cows and goats", "commodities that can be recycled and resold" and "cheaper than cattle" (Jolley and Gooch 2016; Raza 2014). According to a 2016 report by the National Crime Records Bureau in India, 33,796 females were abducted for marriage purposes (NCRB 2016).

<sup>16</sup> The Indian epic, Mahabharata depicts Draupadi being married to five brothers, the only instance of polyandry in Hindu mythology, which is adapted by Manish Jha in his controversial debut feature film *Matrubhoomi: A Nation Without Women* (2003) to depict the consequences of gender imbalance in India.

A field study report cited in United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC 2013) revealed the effects of sex ratio on marriage patterns. The study was conducted by *Drishti Stree Adhyayan Prabodhan Kendra* NGO covering over 10,000 households, across 92 villages in Haryana. It unveiled that more than 9000 married women in Haryana were bought from economically impoverished villages of Assam, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar and Odisha (East and North East India) and from neighbouring countries such as Nepal and Bangladesh. The report further states that, "most [women] are untraceable or exploited or duplicated as domestic servants by the agents or men who marry/buy them" and "there are also instances of girls being resold to other persons after living a married life for a few years" (UNODC 2013, p. 11). The main receiving states in North India such as Haryana but also Punjab and Rajasthan have significantly low sex ratios (Kaur 2004; Blanchet 2005; Ahlawat 2009; Mishra 2013).

The process of bride trafficking is executed through well-structured networks facilitated through "dalals" or agents who negotiate the purchase of brides. These girls, more than often, from poor families, are either sold by their own parents to men in Haryana and Punjab for between ten thousand to two lakhs Indian rupees or on many occasions abducted. Poverty exposes these women to the "violences of everyday life" - the routinization and anonymity of suffering- which dehumanises and threatens their lives in all its plurality and diversity (Kleinman 2000, p. 227). An agent in the Jind district of Haryana states that "Brides are being bought from Uttarakhand, Bihar, West Bengal and Jharkhand with the assurance of their parents that they will not get a case registered. The girl's photo is shown to the prospective buyer-cum-husband through WhatsApp and later a place is fixed where he and his family are shown an album. The girls are mostly below 18 years of age and are not well-educated" (Bajwa 2019; also see Kapoor 2012). Disturbingly, the district of Jind in Haryana has even witnessed the formation of *randa* or *kunwara* unions comprising of unmarried men who unionised their vote bank before Lok Sabha elections of 2014 with their demand "*bahu dilao, vote pao*" (*Get us brides, get our votes*) (Siwach 2014; Singh 2019).

The practice of bride trafficking arguably has roots in socio-cultural norms prevailing in Haryana. The historic practice (observed in early twentieth century by British administrators) of *karewa* (the marrying of young widows to the brother of the deceased husband) soon became a right and, though still present in Haryana, the older "karewa of panchali system" is being replaced by the buying of women from other regions of the state (Khan 2013, p. 45). This is a shock to women who are brought from a social milieu where polyandry is unknown. Furthermore, these brides

experience isolation due to their unfamiliarity with the language and associated cultural alienation (Bose 2018; Kaur 2004). These brides, whose status is lower than the local brides in the villages, are referred to as "paro" or "molki" or "mol-ki-bahu" (a purchased bride) or Jugaad (arrangement), a familiar vocabulary in Haryana, Punjab, western Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. The experiences of these brides vividly show their plight as they are forced to do tedious fieldwork, sexually used and abused by husbands and their male relatives, often beaten up by husbands' families and resold further. They are subjected to sexual slavery and according to 2013 UN Office on Drug and Crime Report, girls trafficked for marriage are "exploited, denied basic rights, duplicated as maids and eventually abandoned" (Estal 2018). Saeeda, one of such brides in Mewat district of Haryana, shared the following narrative: "I was beaten by my husband and his family. They wanted me to obey them, and if I objected they always had the same words for me- we own you because we bought you" (Estal 2018). These trafficked brides do not have their families or any relatives to support them. Saeeda does not even know where she is from as she was bought twenty years ago and has never seen her family since then. Some of these brides are abandoned after the demise of their husbands. Babita, a 55-year-old trafficked bride, shared a horrifying experience of her brother in law trying to run her over in order to kill her so that he could claim the property she inherited from her husband after his demise (Sharma 2019b).

Women who can escape or were rescued from such oppressive circumstances are also not accepted back in their natal homes. Sujana, a 15-year-old rescued bride from Haryana, revealed that she was pregnant when she was brought back to her home in Assam. She now lives with her grandparents and her nine-month-old son. Sujana is aware of the stigma associated with her as a woman raising her child without the presence of a "husband" but she wants to focus on her son and his upbringing. Tahmina, another rescued bride from Haryana, lives with her grandmother in Assam because her parents did not accept her and moved out of their village due to shame (Estal 2018).

India does not have any laws which directly tackle the issue of bride trafficking. The Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act (ITPA), 1956<sup>17</sup> (subject to a amendments in 1986) and Trafficking of Persons (Prevention, Protection and Rehabilitation) Bill, 2016 (Government of India 2016), have been implemented but they have failed to specifically address the practice of bride trafficking due to inadequate

<sup>17</sup> https://legislative.gov.in/sites/default/files/A1956-104.pdf (accessed on 14 April 2020).

conceptualisation of the varied meanings and practices of trafficking. Of the sections (370, 372, 373 and 366) in the Indian Penal Code (IPC) that deal with the problem of trafficking in general, section 366 is the only one to have focused more on bride trafficking by sanctioning punishment for abducting or forcing women for marriage<sup>18</sup> . Section 375 IPC also criminalizes sex with minors, which can be seen as a hindrance to the practice of bride trafficking because traffickers have used marriage with minor girls as a pretext for sexual violence and prostitution (Anjickal 2018). Besides this temporary respite in the form of indirect initiatives, more explicit and efficient laws and policies are required to execute a crackdown on the peril of bride trafficking.

Besides government initiatives, there are non-governmental organizations like *Justice and Care, Shakti Vahini and Empower People* who work towards uprooting the problem of trafficking. Largely self-funded with some support from corporate partners, these organizations often work in collaboration with the government bodies, local administration, police, other non-government organizations and the media. They also work with community-based organizations to identify victims of trafficking, rescuing and empowering them through skill and business training, with the aim of making them self-sufficient. *Justice and Care* state their objectives as "shar[ing] our expertise with governments to shape legislations" and "work[ing] with community-based organizations to prevent trafficking, with government and privately run shelter homes and with educational institutions in regards to research".<sup>19</sup> *Shakti Vahini* conducts sensitisation programmes to train professionals like police, judges and community leaders on the issue of trafficking and rights of its survivors. Working alongside the police, it has also brought perpetrators to justice through their conviction.<sup>20</sup> Similarly, *Empower People* facilitates the education and counselling of the trafficked victims and also connects them with the police and administration. The organization forms village communes at the local level that are spearheaded by trafficked brides. The children of trafficked brides are also taken care of since they run the risk of being discriminated against in the society.<sup>21</sup> As a result of these sensitization and awareness raising programmes, there are reported efforts taken by the locals themselves to support these *paro* women in the Mewat district of Haryana to regain a sense of dignity. In 2014, a door-to-door survey conducted by *Empower People* revealed 1352 trafficked wives in 85 villages of North India

<sup>18</sup> https://legislative.gov.in/sites/default/files/A1860-45.pdf (accessed on 19 February 2020).

<sup>19</sup> https://www.justiceandcare.org/faqs/ (accessed on 30 April 2020).

<sup>20</sup> https://shaktivahini.org/ (accessed on 30 April 2020).

<sup>21</sup> http://www.empowerpeople.org.in/ (accessed on 25 April 2020).

(Parthsaarathy 2018). Similarly, in order to identify trafficked cases, the organization has also carried out demonstrations against bride trafficking which have spread awareness about the gravity of the menace at the same time.

#### **5. Conclusions**

The fifth SDG goal to achieve gender equality and empowerment has placed women at the centre stage for achieving economic growth and a sustainable future. Modi's government in India has made a targeted effort to incorporate women within its agenda of economic development through various women-centred schemes. In the recent Delhi assembly elections of February 2020 in India, yet again, all the competing political parties, such as BJP, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Indian National Congress (INC), substantially focused on issues of women education, their skill development and safety in their respective political manifestos. There were a slew of schemes offering subsidies and rewards for girls to encourage them towards education—from primary schooling until graduation, and a helpline for women's safety (Dutta 2020). In parallel with these progressive women-oriented development schemes, the current Modi government also attempts to reconstitute secular India as a Hindu state together with the incorporation of women into the Hindutva ideological project. It calls upon the discourse of gender equality but, in adhering to a discourse of security of Hindu women and thus the nation, it also violently regulates and disciplines women.

We argue in this paper that development is inherently paradoxical which we conceptualise through the framework of "violence[s] of development", that relates to processes where the transformatory potential of development is undermined. While development envisions the elimination of gender inequalities through economic development, it also recreates them by not responding adequately to these disparities. The northern state of Haryana is exemplary of the paradoxical framework of Indian development. It is second in the country in relation to high per capita income but lowest in relation to gender equality and sex ratio. The devaluation, neglect and annihilation of the girl child and the widely prevalent culture of son preference have exacerbated gender inequality in the form of skewed sex ratios. These practices have been buttressed by the extra-constitutional/judicial structures of caste-based panchayats—the Khaps and contributed to the menace of bride trafficking, rampant in Haryana. These skewed gendered realities, as possible fallouts of uneven development, de-politicise the processes of empowerment set in motion by the SDGs.

**Author Contributions:** Both the authors have developed, conceptualised and analysed the paper together. Both authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research received no funding.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.

#### **References**


Gupta, Dipankar. 2000. *Mistaken Modernity: India between Worlds*. New Delhi: Harper Collins.


Kapadia, Karin, ed. 2002. *The Violence of Development: The Politics of Identity, Gender, and Social Inequalities in India*. London: Zed Books.


Usha, R., Sayeed Unisa, and Sucharita Pujari. 2007. Sex Selective Abortion in Haryana. *Economic and Political Weekly* 42: 60–66.

© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

### **Queering Gender Equality: UN SDG 5 Beyond the Sex\_Gender Binary**

**Antke Antek Engel**

#### **1. Introduction**

Equality and difference have long been decisive political challenges. Yet, convincing answers on how to respect difference while striving for equality are still lacking. At the moment, the United Nations (UN), like other transnational organizations, corporations and state actors, seem to face an irresolvable dilemma between gender equality politics, holding on to a binary sexual difference and gender diversity politics, creating an ever-increasing list of gender and sexual minorities in need for protection. On one hand, one refers to the empowerment of women and girls as the promising remedy against inequality and violence, and on the other hand, self-determination is the key to the universality of human rights. On both sides, the fight against discrimination is a driving force, though for gender equality politics the focus is on structural discrimination along the axis of male versus female, while gender and sexual diversity concerns individual and group discrimination, underlining the exclusionary effects of the binary distinction. From this perspective the insistence on a clear-cut and exclusionary sexual difference of women and men is in itself discriminatory against non-binary genders and sexes. The individualizing argument, however, with its focus on personality rights and self-determination tends to overlook or underestimate the ongoing effects of structural discrimination with regard to the male/female distinction or other categorizing differences.

Thus, there is a need to reconceptualize sex\_gender in UN politics in a way that neither simply diversifies the existing categories from within while upholding the binary distinction nor proposes a potentially endless diversification that loses the capacity to address patterns of structural inequality and violence.<sup>1</sup> Once inter\*,

<sup>1</sup> I use the term sex\_gender (in German, simply *Geschlecht*) in order to signify an integral simultaneity rather than a distinction between its two elements: There is no social subjectivity, which is not always also embodied, and there is no embodiment, which does not carry socio-historical, epistemic, discursive and biographical traces.

trans\*, non-binary\* or third\* sexes\_genders speak up,<sup>2</sup> gain public attention and state or legal recognition as those who do not fit the binary order of sex and gender difference, it will no longer be convincing to state that women and men each form half of humanity. Yet, is there indeed an irresolvable dilemma concerning gender equality and diversity politics? Or are we facing a false alternative between only two options? My thesis is that queer theory and the principle of queerversity may instead provide an overarching perspective of intersectional justice,<sup>3</sup> one that does not overcome all tensions, but allows conflicts over diverging opinions, values or resources to be addressed in transparent and productive ways.

What does a queer perspective in UN politics mean? I will argue that it differs from merely taking on issues of LGBTI+ subjectivities and communities. A more thorough understanding of queerness and queering refers to an analytical and transformative intersectional approach that is not adding to but questioning the binary order of sexual difference that underlies the UN gender equality goal (SDG 3). This article begins with a critical consideration of programmatic material found online on websites of UN bodies concerned with gender equality or LGBTI+ rights and recognition (SDG 2). This includes reference to the Yogyakarta Principles, which promote the application of international human rights law in relation to sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics (SOGIEC). In order to propose a queer reconceptualization of UN politics, I will discuss the potential of SOGIEC offering abstract criteria rather than minority rights (SDG 2.2), and consider this in reference to recent reforms of German Civil Status law (SDG 4). My conclusion builds on queerversity, a principle that fosters difference, but fights inequalities (SDG 5).

<sup>2</sup> The asterisk (\*) functions as an equivocating and denaturalizing marker, inserted either at the end or within a word that names an embodied classification (or a phenomenon whose status as nature and/or culture is contested). It indicates genderings not reducible to the binary (e.g., women\*, or *Freund\*innen* = friends, of any gender) or also, e.g., racializations such as white\*ness/white\*, or abilities, e.g., deaf\*ness/deaf\*. For English usage, see (Halberstam 2018). Furthermore, I use LGBTI+ in order to refer to lobby politics with an extendable clientele.

<sup>3</sup> The concept of intersectional justice was proposed by Emilia Roig, who, in close collaboration with Kimberley Crenshaw, founded the Center for Intersectional Justice (cij) in Berlin. Available online: https://www.intersectionaljustice.org/ (accessed on 20 December 2019).

#### **2. Gender Equality and Gender Diversity in UN Politics**

#### *2.1. Politics of Representation and Figuration*

"Human Rights belong to everyone, no matter who you are or whom you love".<sup>4</sup> This is a slogan from UN Free & Equal, an online platform, which was launched in 2013 by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in order to foster global public information aimed at promoting the equal rights and fair treatment of LGBTI people. It has initiated various campaigns, addressing general publics and multipliers in widely accessible modes.<sup>5</sup> UN Free & Equal promotes a Human Rights (HRs) approach that combines the protection of minorities with a declaration of the universal reach of HRs: "no one will be free before all are free" (cf. f.n. 3). Already in its first year, Free & Equal launched a public relations campaign in order to raise intersex awareness, plus another one with a focus on the courage it takes to live a transgender life.<sup>6</sup>

Both topics, inter\* and trans\* rights/lives, are clearly relevant for gender politics; they propound indispensable material about discrimination and violence on the basis of gender. However, the Free & Equal campaigns as well as the work of the "Independent expert on sexual orientation and gender identity" do (to date) not provide a significant reference point for UN gender equality politics or the SDG 5, which work on the basis of a binary distinction of female and male, women and men.7,8 In fact, the demands for gender equality and those for LGBTI+ equality

<sup>4</sup> United Nations. Free & Equal. Available online: https://www.unfe.org/freedom/ (accessed on 18 December 2019).

<sup>5</sup> According to its own website, in 2017, UN Free & Equal reached 2.4 billion social media feeds around the world. It is accessible, because it provides material in graphic and video formats as well as in plain language, making use of photography, animation, and personal stories, involving also VIP artists, actors, and musicians; cf. https://www.unfe.org/about/ (accessed on 18 December 2019).

<sup>6</sup> United Nations. Free & Equal, Intersex Awareness. Available online: https://www.unfe.org/intersexawareness/ and https://www.unfe.org/transvisibility/ (accessed 18 December 2019).

<sup>7</sup> An "independent expert" is a mandate holder, who works for the UN independently of governments and without compensation. The "Independent expert on sexual orientation and gender identity" has been Victor Madrigal-Borloz since January 2018, and from August 2016 to October 2017, it was Vitit Muntarbhorn.

<sup>8</sup> For example, the page on violence against women, last updated in November 2019, does not capture violence against lbti women in its thirteen detailed paragraphs on "Various forms of violence". There is one single mention of "non-heterosexual women (those who identified their sexual orientation as lesbian, bisexual or other" in reference to a particular study explicitly limited to the European Union; Facts and figures: Ending violence against women. Available online: https://www.unwomen. org/en/what-we-do/ending-violence-against-women/facts-and-figures (accessed 18 December 2019). Additionally, "The Gender Snapshot 2019", a 24-page brochure about progress on SDG, does not mention sexual orientation as a reason of discrimination, or lbti women, not even concerning access to

coexist without any intentional systematic links (apart from article 1 of the UDHR). UN Women very rarely references on its website the discrimination of women on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity or points out the criminalization of same-sex relationships.<sup>9</sup> If there is any mention of non-normative genders or sexualities, this is usually presented as extending the understanding of gender, but keeping binary sexual difference intact.

One notable exception is that UN Women signed the joint statement of eleven UN bodies for "Ending Violence and Discrimination Against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex People" of 2015.<sup>10</sup> A more wide-ranging formulation can be found on the November 2019 page against rape culture, which problematizes "restrictive definitions of gender and sexuality that limit a person's right to define or express themselves" and asks its readers to "promote acceptance of all gender identities and sexualities".<sup>11</sup> Nevertheless, the overall impression is that UN Women puts much effort into maintaining the image of heterosexual cis-genders being meant when the terms women and girls are used in statements by UN Women or, for that matter, concerning the SDG 5.

One might come up with various pragmatic, historical or strategic arguments for the omission of non-normative sexual orientations, gender identities and embodiments. A well-meaning view would, maybe, point out that UN Women, similar to its intersectional gender equality goals, successfully differentiates the category/ies of women (and men) from within, and as such covers a heterogeneity of factors leading to disadvantages or privileges. However, such internal differentiations of the two sex\_gender categories can never acknowledge as free and equal those who

health care or education; Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals: The gender snapshot 2019. Available online: https://www.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2019/09/progress-on-thesustainable-development-goals-the-gender-snapshot-2019 (accessed 18 December 2019).

<sup>9</sup> Infographic: Human Rights of Women. Available online: https://www.unwomen.org/en/digital -library/multimedia/2019/12/infographic-human-rights (accessed on 13 December 2019). When searching "lesbian" on the UN Women, one current 2019 news compilation appears: https://www.un women.org/en/news/stories/2019/5/compilation-lgbti-activists-to-know (accessed on 13 December 2019), plus one more recent article, indicating the appointment of a LGBTIQ+ Policy Specialist at UN Women in 2020, an important step that took place after my article had been finalized: https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2020/6/take-five-sophie-browne-pride-2020 (accessed 19 April 2021).

<sup>10</sup> Joint UN statement on Ending violence and discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people. Available online: https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2015/10/lgbt-joint-s tatement (accessed on 13 December 2019).

<sup>11</sup> Cf. point 7. and 9. of "16 ways you can stand up against rape culture". Available online: https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2019/11/compilation-ways-you-can-stand-against-rapeculture (accessed 18 December 2019).

do not fit the binary order. Yet, since the term "women" is integral to UN gender equality politics, written into the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), adopted in 1979, and situated under the auspices of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), established in 1946, how would one proceed from herstory to theirstory? How can this take place without losing sight of the fact that the binary sex\_gender axis is a powerful structuring moment of social and global inequalities?

The fact that structural inequalities, discrimination and violence keep taking shape along the binary sex\_gender axis also points to the limits of LGBTI+ minority politics. The latter usually avoids addressing this problem, which not only indicates a lack of solidarity with feminist politics but fails to acknowledge how LGBTI+ people are themselves perceived within and thus affected by the binary sex\_gender order. Since such ignorance may lead to the reproduction of masculinist privileges and hierarchies within its own constituencies, one might even like to formulate a wider critique: any kind of politics that argues in favor of individualized differences or single issue antidiscrimination measures runs the risk of losing sight of intersectional structural inequalities.<sup>12</sup> In contrast, the work of UN Women has focused, since the adoption of CEDAW by the UN General Assembly in 1979, on abolishing the powerful social and cultural factors that produce inequalities. In understanding inequalities as being the outcome of processes of discrimination, oppression and violence, it clearly stands for politics and policies that counter the naturalization of womanhood. The concepts of gender and "gender equality goals" introduced by the 1995 Beijing conference underline such a social constructivist epistemology.

Underlying the critique of socio-sexual and gender hierarchies is, however, an unquestioned sex/gender distinction, which states a universal sexual difference built on an exclusionary opposition of either male or female embodiment (sex). In order to overcome its inherent cis- and heteronormative assumptions, it is important to understand that the universal sexual difference is not adequately captured as a biological one. Rather, it is a naturalization colluding with a hierarchical symbolic order that installs a norm and its others.<sup>13</sup> The decisive challenge lies in unpacking the complex relations of power, domination and desire that invest sexual difference—or,

<sup>12</sup> A limited understanding of personal or group-based rather than structural discrimination can be found in the Free & Equal appeals to business companies as agents of change, whose role is simply seen in respecting the human rights of their LGBTI staff and clients. Standards of Conduct for Business. Available online: https://www.unfe.org/standards/(accessed 18 December 2019).

<sup>13</sup> On the controversial understandings of the terms gender and sexual difference in the context of the UN Beijing conference see Judith Butler's essay "The end of sexual difference" in Butler 2004.

for that matter, sexual and gender diversity—with normativity and processes of exclusion or normalization.

#### *2.2. The SOGIESC Approach*

A promising advance that avoids categorizing identities lies in the introduction of the abstract, universalizing criteria of sexual orientation, gender identity and expression and sex characteristics (SOGIESC). SOGIESC are features of all human beings, thus universal, integral to human rights, and allowing us to formulate an inclusive reach of sexual and gender justice rather than minority protection. If UN Secretary General António Guterres says we need " . . . to build a world where no one has to be afraid because of their sexual orientation or their gender identity",<sup>14</sup> this clearly also implies women's, or rather women\*'s rights and empowerment. The 2006 Yogyakarta Principles and their 2017 supplement make use of SOGIESC's universal reach and formulate state obligations for implementing them into constitutional laws and securing their value for personal dignity.<sup>15</sup>

Instead of criticizing discrimination through pointing out vulnerable groups (LGBTI+) and accepting the risk of re-stigmatizing them, the SOGIESC approach shifts the focus towards the criteria that are employed in installing or legitimizing discrimination or privileges. In reference to these criteria, the processes of normative exclusions, normalization and hierarchization can be analyzed, without their effects being presumed due to group membership. Instead, actual (socio-economic, cultural and geo-political) conditions or intersectional specificity/distinctiveness can and need to be considered. While the Yogyakarta Principles are constricted to the legal sphere, disregarding social and cultural politics, a wider UN equality framework carries the potential of applying the SOGIESC approach of inclusive protection also to, e.g., education, the medical field, security and military politics and economic sustainability. This allows for structural analysis, examining legislation, public discourses, socio-economic conditions or cultural imagery and habits, which either explicitly carry discriminating moments or raise the probability of its occurrence.

Except for these potentials, however, within the UN framework, the SOGIESC criteria often seem to be reserved to special interest groups and thus reaffirm minority politics (Free & Equal), or as in the case of UN Women, are subsumed as secondary differences under the more general and overarching category of women.

<sup>14</sup> Mission statement. Available online: https://www.unfe.org/about/ (accessed on 13 December 2019).

<sup>15</sup> The Yogyakarta Principles. Available online: https://yogyakartaprinciples.org/ (accessed on 13 December 2019).

Thus, in order to capture SOGIESC's abstract, non-identitarian, yet universalizing potential, intersectional queer theory is required: "Queer", in order to consider political practices that focus on processes of normalization, hierarchization and exclusion (Engel 2002, 2013); "intersectional", in order to consider the interplay with other distinguishing criteria. Here, the interest lies in avoiding the prioritization or isolation of sex, gender and sexuality as categories of analysis and critique, overlooking, for example, their inevitable racialization (Cohen 1997; Ferguson 2004), but also in avoiding an understanding of queer theory as a critique of identity in general or any kind of normativity or normality, respectively (Weber 2016). Concerning both aspects, critique has been articulated by Black and Queer of Color scholars as well as other minoritized subjects within the global queer movements, who insist on recognizing the importance of coloniality (Ruvalcaba 2016; Castro Varela and Dhawan 2016; Xiang 2018), racism (Puar 2007; Ferguson 2004; Haritaworn 2015), capitalist exploitation (Manalansan and Cruz 2002) and compulsory ablebodiedness (McRuer 2018) as structuring queer people's lives. This delegitimizes a queer theoretical analysis, which would limit itself to a homo versus hetero or straight versus queer opposition (Cohen 1997).

#### **3. Intersectional Queerness and Queering in Theory and Politics**

#### *3.1. Queer Intersectional*

Concerning the analytics of power and domination, queer intersectional approaches take into account how classification and hierarchization work together in particular contexts. A current discussion asks whether heteronormativity and intersectionality should be treated as two different approaches, which have their own ways of problematizing the exclusionary and hierarchizing effects of identity logic, binary thinking and additive diversity. While some scholars are suggesting that heteronormativity and intersectionality may function as a mutual corrective for each other (Haschemi Yekani et al. 2011), others insist on an integral understanding that would or should lay out the critique of heteronormativity as a mode of intersectional thinking (Mesquita 2016). In any case, it should be considered that diversities or extendable, individualized differences can very well be hierarchized without referencing a single dominant norm. Furthermore, any dominant norm might take on a complex, multidimensional form (e.g., the idealized combination of white, cis, able bodied, affluent, heterosexual and Christian). It becomes necessary to rethink how the notion of heteronormativity fosters particular constellations of sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics, and disavows others.

The term heteronormativity was originally coined as the mutual constitution of compulsory heterosexuality and a rigid binary gender order, as well as its flipside, the abjection or at least marginalization of all identities and desires that do not fit the norm (Warner 1993; Jagose 1996). However, within an intersectional frame, one needs to consider how heteronormativity also undergoes historical transformation and takes on particular socio-geo-political forms. Questioning the current formations of SOGIESC allows us to acknowledge changes—for example, the decriminalization of homosexuality; the legal recognition of same-sex partnerships; the opening of the marriage institute to all genders; egalitarian civil status for cis\*, trans\*, and inter\* persons. These are clearly contested developments, but they have become social realities of the 21st century in different countries of different continents around the world. Envisioning fights for intersectional justice only becomes possible when queer theory addresses complex relations of power and domination, and acknowledges that an additive diversification does not fundamentally question but simply renews the privileging and idealization of certain forms of hetero- or homosexuality and cis-binary sexes\_genders, supplementing it with forms of homonormativity (Duggan 2002) and homonationalism (Puar 2007).

Therefore, I argue that the focus of queer theory is not on gender and sexuality per se, but how they are involved in (are the product of, are upholding or are transforming) power, domination, exploitation and violence—including social relations, e.g., capitalist economy, individual rights, asylum systems, artistic and cultural production—which at first sight might seem to be beyond a heteronormative structuring (Carver and Chambers 2008). Queer theory as an analytics and a critique of macropolitical and global relations of power and domination asks the following question: what is the role of sex, gender, sexuality, and desire in upholding the complexity of current and historical, geo-politically and culturally differentiated relations of power and regimes of domination? (Weber 2016; Richter-Montpetit 2018).

#### *3.2. Queering: Thinking Di*ff*erence Di*ff*erently*

The view on queer theory and politics that I promote combines an analytical with a transformative approach; that is, a critique of heteronormativity with a desire for intersectional justice.<sup>16</sup> The latter articulates itself in practices of queering current regimes of normalcy, and the exclusions, normalizations, hierarchies and forms of violence that go along with it. In this sense, queer politics is not primarily concerned

<sup>16</sup> See f.n. 3, and for a comparable use of queering, (El-Tayeb 2011).

with fighting homo- and transphobia, or demanding the legal equality of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender and intersex people. Rather, the focus is on dismantling a hierarchical binary order and fighting the violence that goes along with regimes of normality in all their complexity. In other words, queer theory is looking for ways of thinking difference differently than according to the logic of categorization (Probyn 1996). For this matter, I suggest the "queer strategy of equivocation" or "undisambiguation" (*VerUneindeutigung*) as an alternative to proliferating or abolishing the sex\_gender binary (Engel 2002, 2013). Where a clear-cut identity, meaning or norm is installed, naturalized or made unquestionable, the strategy of equivocation renders it ambiguous. Equivocation is a procedural measure that does not pursue a specific ideal of organizing relations of gender, sexuality and desire. Instead, it aims to disrupt concrete and historically changing norms in a flexible and context-specific way. Equivocation employs representations and practices that resist being pinned down to a single meaning, yet are not arbitrary but oriented along the criteria of dehierarchizing, denormalizing and non-violence.

In a similar way, Xiang (2018) proposes to think below rather than beyond the either/or model in order to not repeat the same exclusionary gesture one is criticizing. Xiang introduces the notion of "transdualism", which is not meant to overcome masculine and feminine genders but to involve them in dynamic processes of becoming. In a decolonial queer mode, Xiang employs the "illegitimate pairing 'either . . . and'" (p. 437), which simultaneously combines "difference" (either) and a capacity of "transing" (and). Mergings, diversions, crossings or passages may turn both sides of a duality from one into the other; they may allow for neutral spaces, or lead to formerly unexpected directions: "dissenting and *transing* queerly at any given moment of fixity that would become an orthodoxy, naturalized or essentialized" (p. 437). Since for Xiang, in any process of change, there are moments of distinguishing, yet the distinctions undergo a continuous change, I would add that transdualism means inhabiting a "paradoxical tension": a simultaneity of "as well as" and "neither/nor" (female as well as male while simultaneously neither female nor male) (Engel 2013).

Weber (2016), queering international relations, calls this a plural logoi, which she explains as upholding the simultaneity of and/or (rather than either/or) in thinking difference. This means understanding social/global realities as social/global complexities. Gender, for example, does not necessarily follow the pattern of either female or male, but might be articulated as female and/or male. You might like to call this transgender; yet, if you prefer to avoid another label (which would, anyway, only return to an either/logic—either female or male or trans), you would instead

claim undecidable simultaneity: "both *either* one thing *or* another or possibly another while . . . simultaneously . . . one thing *and* another *and* possibly another" (Weber 2016, p. 196). Transdualism, plural logoi, and the strategy of equivocation consider the powerful (and sometimes violent) effects of dual thinking, but insist that they do not need to lead into an exclusionary and hierarchical A/non-A logic. They may dissolve as multiplicities or manifest themselves in processes of becoming that attend to nuances and transitions, avoiding categorical thinking in favor of non-hierarchical differences and singularities, or, as Catherine Keller puts it, being "resistant to any fixed difference as well as to any indifference to difference" (Keller 2003, p. 166; ct. Xiang 2018, p. 432).

How does this kind of queering translate from an epistemological project into politics? Obviously, it does not cohere with the longing for a minority status, which would risk further stigmatization or normalizing integration according to the dominant order, nor would it support a pluralizing of sexes and genders that corresponds to more differentiated hierarchies. Does it fit with demands for self-determination? Or would this presume a free choice that overlooks how structural inequalities and normative violence but also relationships of care and dependency predetermine any agency? Let us further examine this by considering a concrete example.

#### **4. How Queer Is "Diverse" in German Civil Status Law?**

In December 2018, a new paragraph was introduced into German Civil Status Law (PStG §45 b),<sup>17</sup> which opens the option of registering as "diverse", as well as possibilities of deleting or changing the sex registration of the birth certificate. Long-lasting struggles of inter\* movements, queer activism and a groundbreaking decision by the Constitutional Court made this possible. Despite breaking the monopoly of the binary sex\_gender order, the reform is still critiqued as halfhearted: the process is bound to a doctor's certificate confirming a "variation in sex development", a condition not further defined, but still inserting a moment of pathologization or at least medicalization. Furthermore, the current reform maintains legal inequality, because the so-called Transsexual Law with its complicated and

<sup>17</sup> Official German version, no translation available. Availabe online: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de /pstg/\_\_45b.html (accessed 18 December 2019). For an introduction to the legal argumentation behind the new paragraph, see the press release of the German Constitutional court from 2017. Available online: https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/EN/2017/bvg17- 095.html;jsessionid=5419390A194C3385C23D3034F27D300F.1\_cid370 (accessed 18 December 2019).

expensive court procedures, exists parallel to and claims cognizance in regulating sex changes. Concerning the administrative application of § 45 b, a controversy has developed whether it is meant exclusively for intersex\* or open to trans\* and non-binary\* people, or whoever desires its use. Conservative forces try to limit its reach and secure cis-gender privileges. However, notably, the wording of the paragraph as well as legal reasoning avoids delineating minorities; instead of installing a special law, it follows an egalitarian approach that defends personality rights and sex\_gender self-determination.<sup>18</sup> Yet, also within activist contexts or among liberal reformers, no consensus exists as to whether "diverse" provides for a promising political step: Is it convincing as a catchall term open to interpretation? Or is it a pathetic notion that no one identifies with and that creates a subordinated "deviant other"?

Answers depend, among others, on whether people read "diverse" as indicating a "third sex" (as most of the media coverage suggested), thus naturalizing it as "the other of the norm" (biological), as a third option of classification (linguistic) or simply of registering (juridical-administrative). It is only the latter interpretation that reduces the risk of stigmatization and could, as a positive side-effect, also lead to acknowledging the variability and multifariousness of "female" and "male". After all, it is by no means clear whether those who register as female or male self-identify as trans\*, inter\* or cis\*. While it would have been a more radical step to abolish sex registration altogether, the existing law nevertheless undermines the exclusionary status of male and female as the only state-recognized sexes, and forces administration as well as the civil public to question and/or extend the binary sex\_gender order.

I see queer potential in the entry "diverse", precisely because it is a vague notion and hardly used by anyone for self-description or identification. The third option is neither a third gender nor a clearly defined category, but a designation of multiplicity and processuality. It shows that a non-identitarian, non-binary and polysemic expression, such as "diverse", can articulate a "positive" understanding of difference. As soon as no doctor's certificate claims authority, but individuals themselves decide whether they want to be registered as female, male, a variation of sex\_gender development (diverse) or no gender registration at all (x), the latter

<sup>18</sup> A recent legal opinion commissioned by the Federal Government states that any distinguishing of groups non-/eligible to the law violates the equality principle, and up-to-date biological and medical research does not allow for a definition of sex other than based on self-identification (Mangold et al. 2019)—a position explicitly contradicting current pronouncements of the Ministry of the Interior, but important for grounding further reform steps.

two entries become statements that explicitly denounce the exclusivity of the binary sex\_gender order.

Since estimating the queer potential of the law would be a longer discussion, I will limit myself here to some comments on its relevance for gender equality politics: Once a third option is available, affirmative action, empowerment and antidiscrimination measures become more complicated, because discrimination on the basis of gender turns multidimensional. Thus, what is needed in order to avoid a competition unfolding between cis\* women and girls and inter\* and trans\* persons of various genders? Proposals are made that, rather than identifying vulnerable groups, one should focus on the question as to whether discrimination occurs, which form it takes and what conditions its probability (Baer 2010). In order to avoid using identity categories, one could instead talk about socially structured biographical starting positions and ongoing experiences of discrimination. An intersectional understanding of gender equality insists on not only acknowledging trans\*, inter\* and non-binary\* positions but to assess particularities.

I see the debate about the PStG § 45 b as a controversy that is at the core of queer politics. It signals towards the following question of strategy: Should we ground the fight for equality on arguments that denaturalize the binary, but naturalize variety, or build on politicizing the binary (or any other way of conceptualizing difference)? The latter would draw attention to the functions that "difference" takes on in organizing social relations and institutions. Instead of looking for one single or final answer, what is needed is the (self-)critical discussion whether certain measures reduce or reinforce inequalities and violence, and whether they have repressive or liberating, empowering or discriminatory effects (and on whom).

Such critical reflection points out a second challenge taken on by queer theory and politics, namely, the desire to recognize differences that resist classification and acknowledge their political relevance. Accordingly, struggles over the distribution of resources (in the case discussed: who gains the privilege of an acknowledged sex registration, or even a self-defined sex registration?) should be seen as connected to conflicts over those dimensions of difference that escape definition, remain unintelligible or provide confusion. This is when queerversity comes into play as a principle of orienting queer theory and politics towards the "the aporia of difference": fighting difference as inequality, but fostering difference as particularity and uniqueness—a tension that should be upheld rather than solved.

#### **5. The Principle of Queerversity**

Queerversity is meant to provide a modification of diversity politics, which is criticized for either building on classification or on a neoliberal paradigm that depoliticizes and individualizes social differences (Ahmed 2012; Castro Varela and Dhawan 2016). In contrast, queerversity, in recognizing differences that resist classification or even escape intelligibility, embraces ambiguity, doubt and confusion as politically relevant, namely, as a means of disrupting common regimes of normality. Queerversity is not a description of a given reality, but a principle that directs political practice towards an ongoing process of reducing violence (including the symbolic and epistemic violence of "the normal") and increasing intersectional justice.

Thus, confronted with structural discrimination and violence, queerversity aims at dehierarchizing social inequalities and denormalizing rigid categories simultaneously. In accordance with a non-additive intersectional framework, it shifts the focus from diversity to the question as to how dynamics of power, desire and belonging (Probyn 1996; Yuval-Davis 2011) entangle different relations of domination in complex ways. As such, queerversity necessarily demands a historically and geo-politically specific analysis of relations of power and domination. Differences are to be examined as always framed, if not constituted, by contingent social conditions, which become the objects of contestation. Whereas neoliberal diversity approaches embrace differences according to their utility, queerversity addresses the power inequalities of social differences in order to face the conflicts that correspond to social heterogeneity—conflicts over opinions, values and desires, but also over limited resources, diverging interests, the will to power and the readiness for violence.

As a political corrective, an ethical attitude and an aesthetic strategy, the principle of queerversity combines the avowal of multiplicity, ambiguity and alterity with struggles against discrimination, social inequalities and the intersectional complexity of regimes of domination. Queerversity as a political corrective criticizes the exclusions, normalizations and hierarchizations that correspond to particular measures and institutional formations built on categorization. As an ethical attitude in social relationships, queerversity invites multiple perspectives as well as a readiness for confusion resulting from encounters with the other, or the Other of the Other (Butler 2004) that cannot be contained in any category. The aesthetic strategy of queerversity draws attention to the sonic and visual modes of articulating difference differently to the logic of categorization or the binary oppositions deriving from that. Sounds, colors and shape-shifting forms function as models of difference, which allow for nuances, oscillation, fluidity and liminality. Literary and poetic writing creates ambiguities, ambivalences and absurdities; seeks polysemy; and accepts paradoxes.

Hence, what is particular about queerversity is its capacity to acknowledge and articulate differences as simultaneously conflictual heterogeneity, internal multiplicity and irreducible alterity: Queerversity introduces "the difference of the different" into diversity. Let me provide a clarification of the terms: Multiplicity draws attention to the uncountable—whenever one proposes a category, a whole range of differences unfolds from within, which can neither be contained nor excluded. Ambiguity points out that there are (at least) two sides to each phenomenon, each meaning and each feeling. Therefore, it becomes impossible to stick to a single truth—at least not if one allows for standpoints, contexts and different perspectives. Alterity is a positive expression for what in a rigid identitarian order is excluded as the abject that is not allowed to claim reality, is called "unintelligible", is suppressed or disavowed—that which upholds the norm, as long as it functions as its constitutive other. Combining these three elements puts a socio-cultural order on the horizon, which disregards the illusion of homogeneity and finds pleasure in complexity and confusion.

However, what makes queerversity politically interesting is that it does not follow the either/or logic but installs an ongoing tension, a conflictual interplay between social heterogeneity (built on identity categories and classifications) with multiplicity, ambiguity, and alterity. This combination will never settle into harmony, because multiplicity, ambiguity, and the abject rub against each other while together carrying the potential of interrupting classifications and binaries. Yet, this is exactly what secures the political as an open potentiality. My proposal is to understand desire, or rather the tensions inherent to desire, or the contingent dynamics of power and desire, as what is mobilizing queerversity. While desire may, of course, also have most conservative effects, providing the libidinal investment that upholds binary, heteronormative, racist and ableist orders, queer reconceptualizations and rearrangements of desire allow for drawing new and unexpected connections (Engel 2011).<sup>19</sup> These are not limited to intimate relations but unfold in the social and the global context (Spivak [2012] 2013; Dhawan et al. 2015). Queering desire/desire as queering not only challenges the heterosexual norm built on the premise of binary sex\_gender difference but undermines the hierarchical divide of "subject" and "object" that invests desire with the power of producing relations of appropriation, domination

<sup>19</sup> Queer theories of desire are various and incompatible, but generally challenge the hierarchical pattern of subject–desires–object while focusing instead on the relationality of desire, its readiness to engage with a multiplicity of identifications as well as disidentifications, the way it is bound to and may evolve from fantasy and may be lived in shared fantasy scenarios. For an overview, see (Dhawan et al. 2015).

and submission. The principle of queerversity translates desire's queer/ing potential into politics.

Questioning normalcy has become almost a routine in queer politics fighting normative, epistemic and structural violence. However, the redistribution of power and resources remains another crucial task, if non-categorizable difference or alterity are seen as contributing to the rearrangements of power, desire and belonging, without being defined by or reproducing social and global hierarchies and inequalities. Politics built on queerversity aim at extending the chances of social, cultural and political participation further than what is already acknowledged as social heterogeneity. Accordingly, dehierarchizing differences and fighting social inequalities are vital—for (gender) equality as much as for (gender) diversity politics. Therefore, I argue that queerversity may function as an operationalization of queer theory for state and international politics. Claiming more than the position of critical reflection, but functioning as a principle guiding political practice, it introduces the queer critique of identity categories into consultancy and political decision making.<sup>20</sup> Equality as well as antidiscrimination measures may build on the complex, dynamic and conflictual understanding of differences as ongoing processes or becoming. Thus, queerversity undermines the idea of an unmarked norm and its others, but instead makes everyone accountable for the relations of power and desire pervading social and global heterogeneity, creating the possibility of non-hierarchical differences and singularities.

#### **6. Conclusions**

We are, historically, at a point where it is possible to develop a queer-intersectional understanding of equality, which overcomes the existing tension between single axis equality politics and complex diversity and antidiscrimination politics. This, however, is by no means a politics without tension, but open to contradictions and competitions over opinions, values, resources and desires. Thus, UN Women's focus on gender equality based on sexual difference may remain on the agenda and inspire the search for convincing measures of extending rights, fostering equality and freedom, fighting violence and empowering populations who have been disenfranchised and disadvantaged due to being perceived and designated as

<sup>20</sup> I started using the term and developing the concept in 2010 with a group of colleagues working at the Gender Competence Center in Berlin, an organization which at that time did consultancy work for ministries and state administration on gender and diversity mainstreaming and antidiscrimination politics.

female. This, however, demands that the meaning of "female" is openly contested and its extension into female\* is not limited to a symbolic gesture but designates a notion of sex\_gender which immediately politicizes the binary, e.g., through the principle of queerversity. Politicizing the binary means being transparent about and problematizing a framework that subsumes the vast array of differences of its constituency called "half of humanity" on the basis of a second-order status, while essentializing the distinction between "women" and "men". Furthermore, politicizing the binary means underlining its constructed character and its functionality for upholding heteronormativity and intersectional dimensions of power and domination. Working with a politicized rather than an essentialized binary indicates its limits and the fact that it does not cover the entirety of lived or potentially livable and desired sexes\_genders and sexualities. Transdualism undermines its exclusionary either/or logic.

As such, the sex\_gender binary can be activated for the analysis and critique of a given system of power and domination, but it cannot function as its cure. Positive measures, subsidies and gender equality or empowerment programs can no longer be awarded on the criteria that someone "is a woman". An in-between step one could say is when someone is "discriminated as a woman". However, the more precise formulation from a queer intersectional perspective would be when someone is discriminated against "due to their gender", or simply is discriminated against. This acknowledges that it is very often unclear whether a person is discriminated against as a woman, or a trans or an inter person, or a man, because discrimination may occur due to an entanglement of racism, capitalism, ableism, coloniality and heteronormativity. Any of these dimensions has particular effects on living a sexed, gendered, or sexual life; yet, it is impossible to disentangle their complex interplay.

Rather, there is a need for spaces of self-naming, solidarity and collective organizing from which political demands can be defined, negotiated, issued, re-negotiated and re-defined. It might very well be the case that persons designated as, among other things, "masculine" make a claim for and gain support under a gender equality framework. Under the headline "empowering women and girls", this would be impossible, because it is built on the premise of an overarching structural disadvantage of women compared to men. Yet, on the one hand, it is necessary to acknowledge that there are persons designated as women who are so privileged (and, possibly, in powerful positions, and/or positions from where they can enact violence) that no social equality framework would justify reinforcing their privilege through affirmative action. On the other hand, it is as important to recognize that there are masculinities (or people whose masculinity is put into question) that are

vulnerable to all kinds of discrimination and violence. While facing this might seem discomforting and arduous, it brings us closer to the realization of intersectional justice. Queerversity—as a political corrective, an ethical attitude and an aesthetic strategy—is the principle needed to live the aporia of difference, that is, to respect difference while striving for equality.

**Funding:** This research was partly funded by an ASA BRIGGS visiting fellowship at the University of Brighton, Sussex.

**Acknowledgments:** I would like to thank Cynthia Weber, Melanie Richter-Montpetit, Louiza Odysseos and the students of the Global Queer seminar for their most valuable feedback to the section on queerversity.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Yuval-Davis, Nira. 2011. *The Politics of Belonging: Intersectional Contestations*. London: Sage.

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