Ara Wilson,
"Sex at the Forum: Sexual Justice and the Alter-Globalization Movement"
(page 3 of 5)
This integration of sexual politics within broader global-justice
activism reflects the historical conditions of the post-cold-war moment.
Alter-globalization movements coalesced in the wake of centralized
parties, disappointing postcolonial realities, and radical orthodoxy.
The WSF is characterized as much by critiques of the older left as it is
by critiques of global capital and northern imperialism. Movement
intellectuals position their politics in relation to the failure of the
Old and New Lefts, hoping to avoid the "tragic utopias of the 20th
century" or Leninist vanguardism.[21]
Global justice networks make up "a
social movement of a historically new type, one unassimilable to older
models of struggle," in the words of Eric Lott."[22]
This differentiation
is exemplified by the WSF's emphasis on open space, participatory
democracy, and horizontal networks—an emphasis on the means as
much as the ends of progressive politics.
Sexual diversity is significant for Forum texts for its role in
signaling the difference of post-communist re-imaginings of citizenship
and participatory democracy from earlier left programs. In texts
primarily addressing neoliberal capitalism or U.S. imperialism,
referencing sexual diversity tacitly rebukes the homophobia that have
characterized many progressive struggles. Affirming sexual diversity
also challenges forms of nationalism that refuse to recognize sexual
lives that do not fit with visions of "traditional" heterosexual norms.
Sexuality indexes an alternative left; it marks the movement's reflexive
commitment to an open, inclusive, and participatory politics predicated
on translation and alliances rather than one coherent platform with
fixed meanings and boundaries.
This differentiating function helps explain where and how sexuality
appears in WSF discourse. When the Forum is understood as an open
space for processual means and democratic difference, the inclusion
of LGBT groups signals its identity as a "horizontal" field of encounter
while sexual diversity manifests the principle of inclusion. But when
the Forum is seen as a platform for organizing global action
towards achieving alternative futures, attention to sexuality in WSF
discourse becomes scarce. Beyond diversity for diversity's sake, how
sexual orientation might be "an expression of an alternative world"—as
one of the ends of Forum process—has yet to be genuinely
explored. While WSF texts call for solidarity with the struggles of
farmers and peasant struggles, for example, they neither identify queer
populations nor name specific groups working for sexual justice. The
emphasis on social diversity thus limits both critiques of sexual
injustices and visions for transforming current sexual arrangements.
Sexuality in Forum texts represents the radical democratic embrace of
difference—above all, it the difference of the global-justice movement
from both neoliberalism and communist parties—rather than sexual
diversity as the imaginative horizon for radical politics.
In practice, the Forum's self-conscious emphasis on diversity has
effects: the emphasis on inclusivity does create a space for addressing
sexual politics within the spaces of the World Social Forum, albeit in
contradictory ways. Feminists and queer advocates have criticized the
Forum's embrace of anti-imperialist but patriarchal religious politics,
arguing that the conservative religious voices included in the Forum
prevent "the integration of the struggles for sexual and reproductive
rights." In an open letter to the Forum, a collection of groups appeals
to the Forum's understanding of sexuality as diversity, writing:
As the struggles for the construction of another world
can only be successful if they recognize the diversity of identities and
political subjects, we affirm that the World Social Forum is a process
open to all that recognize this diversity. Consequently, organizations
and individuals that promote the marginalization, exclusion and
discrimination of other human beings, are alien to this
process.[23]
The Forum's emphasis on space and processes that allow for difference
has allowed advocacy for sexual politics to stake claims to its project.
The next section considers the extent to which the presence of
sexual-justice advocates at the Forum generates points of political
convergence between sexual justice and economic justice projects.
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