Sexuality, Gender and Rights: Exploring Theory and Practice in South and South-East Asia

edited by Geetanjali Mishra, Radhika Chandiramani; Sage, New Delhi, 2005; pp 316, Rs 350 (hardcover)

ARVIND NARRAIN

R

ight from the recent arrests of four men in Lucknow merely on the assumption that they were gay, to the harassment of heterosexual lovers in Meerut to the Khushboo incident, sex and sexuality are increasingly at the centre of fierce political debates. Even though that is the reality, sexuality is generally not seen as a fit domain for theoretical and political analysis.

Sexuality is often understood to be a realm of biology which stands outside the framework of politics. This book seeks to contest this understanding of sexuality and locate sexuality within wider political, cultural and social frameworks. As the editors in the introduction note, in what can be taken to be the framing argument of the book, “Cultures provide widely different categories, schema, and labels for framing sexual experiences. These constructions not only influence individual subjectivity and behaviour, but they also organise and give meaning to collective sexual experience through, for example, the impact of sexual identities, definitions, ideologies and regulations.”

What this book takes seriously, is the claim that cultures do give meaning to sexual experience through a broad range of accounts of working with sexuality in countries in south and south-east Asia. Of course the way cultures constitute sexuality remains a deeply political process with the construction of sexuality being ridden with power. Some sexualities get constructed as obscene, immoral, against religion, while other sexualities emerge as the norm. This process by which cultures refuse to accept sexual diversity as benign but instead go on to construct good and bad sexualities within a hierarchy of sex, points to a politics of sexuality. It is this politics which this volume convincingly demonstrates.

To take a few examples, in Khartini Slamah’s piece we get a sense of what it means to be a Muslim transgender person in Malyasia. As she notes, Muslim ‘mak nyahs’ (transgenders) can be arrested for cross dressing under section 28 of the Shariat Criminal Offences Enactment, which includes as a crime, “...any men who wear women’s clothing , or who act like women in any public places for the purposes of immoral behaviour”. These provisions are widely used to routinely arrest mak nyahs. Almost all mak nyahs have been arrested at least once; many have been arrested more than four times. About two-thirds of Malaysia’s mak nyahs are sex workers, who are particularly vulnerable to police raids and harassment. The charge brought most often is that of cross-dressing.

Shazia Mohammad’s piece on moral guardianship in Pakistan charts the impact on women of the Hudood ordinances introduced by the Zia regime. The requirement of four witnesses to prove rape has resulted in a situation where if a woman alleges rape and is unable to prove it, she can stand convicted of adultery. The author notes, “The Hudood ordinances have also institutionalised the state’s role as a moral guardian by legally demarcating sexual practices and behaviours that are permissible and impermissible, This has had a significant impact. The police often ask couples who are together in public places to produce their nikahnama…In a milieu where sex outside marriage is demonised, admitting that one has had pre or extra marital sex is tantamount to admitting that one is a “bad Muslim”.

This construction of certain forms of sex and sexual and gender identities as abnormal and immoral and hence deserving of sanction is across regions and religions as seen by the narratives of violence suffered by women in sex work in India. As Geetanjali Mishra et al note, with respect to the imprisonment of women in sex work in India, “inmates live under pathetic conditions...like convicts with the remotest possibility of being rehabilitated.”

ality and invite us to engage more rigorously with the domain of sexuality as a form of politics.

However this book seeks to go beyond the documenting of violence based on sexuality by specifically narrating the series of strategies which have been adopted cross regionally by activist groups to protect and defend the rights of those who are targeted on the basis of their sexuality, i e (sex workers, sexual minorities and other women outside the procreative marital framework). What emerges through the series of narratives is how groups navigate the extreme complexity of their position hemmed in as it is by law, societal mores, religion and authoritarian state practices.

One gets a particularly powerful sense of the role that religion plays in shrinking the autonomy that subordinated groups enjoy. What is interesting to note is how groups are responding to the narrowing of options by fundamentalist interpretations of religion. One strategy which finds favour among a number of groups, particularly those working within deeply religious societies is to take religion seriously and strive to reinterpret religious texts from the point of view of safeguarding the rights of those who get targeted on the basis of their sexuality.

Perhaps emblematic of this approach is the Malaysian-based organisation, Sisters of Islam whose work is based on two assumptions. “One is that the interpretation of religious texts were and are made by men and influenced by men’s experiences and understanding, without taking into consideration women’s experiences and the realities of women’s lives. These interpretations are often gender insensitive. The other is that the interpretation and codification of religion is not the sole right of only a certain group of people(ulema). Other groups including women have the right to participate in the discussions and there must be sufficient public space to allow that to happen.”

The other approach which is perhaps more suited to contexts where religion is not an overwhelming everyday reality is embodied in the narrative by Chantawipa Apisuk et al, from Thailand where the

Economic and Political Weekly March 25, 2006 intervention strategy emerges from the needs and articulations of the sex worker population in Thailand. Thus EMPOWER (education means the protection of women in recreation), starts by working with women on the streets, moves on to provide support they need, be it educational, health or labour. From there, EMPOWER moves on to link up nationally and internationally to the issue of sex worker rights and develops an understanding of the global politics around the issue of sex work. Thus they are able to critique the US government-related policy initiatives such as the anti-sex worker policy which is loosely disguised in the moral langauge of antitrafficking.

The intervention strategy in China among men who have sex with men seems to piggyback onto a wider structural phenomenon. The Chinese state in its attitude towards sexuality was extremely puritanical, particularly during the Cultural Revolution. The significant factor which accounts for a turnaround in China today is the liberalisation of the Chinese economy along with a wider exposure to the west. This along with a recognition of the potential consequences of the HIV/AIDS epidemic has created a certain amount of space for the emergence of same sex sexualities into the public sphere.

Thus the book convincingly demonstrates that the realm of sexuality is constituted as a realm of politics – the narratives of subaltern citizens of diverse countries throughout south and south-east Asia indicate how they are deprived of rights on the basis of their sexuality and how they resist.

What is particularly fascinating is that through a reading of this volume, sexuality emerges as a domain of politics not only with respect to an Indian context, but in a cross regional perspective. This is important as when one lives in a country which is a sub-regional power, one is apt to ignore the important developments in our neighbouring countries and see the world through the lens of an often imperial India. It’s rare that Indians demonstrate a keenness to look outside, at other neighbouring regions to understand what their problems are. This book tries to address the question of sexuality as politics looking at countries as diverse as China, Pakistan, Indonesia,Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Philippines.

What one gets through these cross regional accounts is a rich and nuanced account of the way the politics of sexuality plays itself out. One gets a sense of the complex and difficult contexts in which activists are making their interventions to ensure a life of dignity to women, sex workers (male and female), transgender people and other sexual minorities.

Sometimes the problem with activist narratives is a certain unreflexivity as to the work one is doing. Unreflexive methodologies end up narrowing the vision of those who are engaged in activism and end up perpetuating certain injustices. Those working on sexuality are particularly conscious of this danger as their work has often been dismissed by other (unreflexive) activists as unimportant. As the Filipino contributor to this volume, Demeterio-Melgar notes, “Yet women’s struggles for their own liberation from gender violence and sexual and reproductive oppression continue to be lonely, isolated struggles. Other political movements do not reciprocate women’s vigorous embrace of all political struggles as their own.”

Where this collection succeeds is in painfully embodying the challenges which are posed by value systems which form a part of the authors’ own identity. The process of confronting and overcoming these challenges is woven into some of the essays. So Khartini Slamah, the transgender activist from Malaysia records, “When I started the transsexual programme, Pink Triangle was an AID’s organisation working with gays and other ‘sexual minorities’. Some of us were shocked when we first saw two men kissing and being intimate with each other. As mak nyahs we had accepted some of the conditioning that in sexual relationships there needs to be someone in the ‘male’ role and someone in the ‘female’ role – a husband and wife. The fact that not all gay men accepted these roles was a challenge to our beliefs.”

Similarly members of the group PRISM, whose work with sexual minorities starts with a basis in identity politics, moves to a position where they are able to acknowledge serious limitations with identity politics. As Jaya Sharma et al note, “Identity based politics does not enable us to see the common roots of various oppressions, such as the connection between the persecution of the Muslims as the ‘other’ in India and the persecution of same sex desiring people. Identity based politics is therefore antithetical to the very diversity it arises from.”

What both the above essays signal towards, is a necessary quality of the present moment. A loss of the ideological certainties of the past perhaps has its value in enabling a certain conscious self reflexivity as to one’s own political practice. This enables one to be continuously sensitive to how one’s political practice may have built within it exclusions which need to be challenged. This reflexive consciousness is absolutely necessary for those working in the fluid and ever changing field of sexuality and is an essential component in the building of a more democratic future.

EPW

Email: arvind@altlawforum.org

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Economic and Political Weekly March 25, 2006