What does it mean to be straight, gay, queer, L or G or B or T or none of the above? What is it like to live with the stigma of HIV? How does it feel to be denied the right to marry your partner?
Sexual rights activists and
scholars from all around the globe met from April 15-18 in Hanoi to
share their thoughts and experiences on these questions, discussing
gender equality, sexual diversity, sexual identity, sexual health, social
justice and human rights. The VII Conference of the International Association
for the Study of Sexuality, Culture and Society (IASSCS), convened for the first time in Asia,
involved a diverse range of participants undertaking multidisciplinary
study from a range of countries, such as Kenya, Indonesia, the United
States, Senegal, Taiwan, Peru, Pakistan, Argentina and Switzerland.
Past conferences have been held in Amsterdam (1997), Manchester (1999),
Melbourne (2001), Johannesburg (2003), San Francisco (2005), and Lima
(2007). The title of the 2009 conference drew upon the presumed sexual innocence
often used to define female sexuality and adolescent sexuality: "Contested
innocence: Sexual agency in public and private space."
One of the strongest messages that I took from the conference was that of challenging society's expectations and norms about gender and sexuality. A gay rights activist from Indonesia, Dédé Oetomo, opened his discussion with a reference to sex-selective abortion and how Asian cultures have an obsessive preference for male babies: "It is a perilous moment if we turn out or are even suspected of being female". He questioned society's obsession with conformity and asked why "gender" has become synonymous with "women" or "gender identity" with transgender, "as if men and women don't have gender." Referring to homosexual men, men who have sex with men (MSM) or men who love men, he criticized the emergence of "MSM language," which I myself have fallen into the trap of using in previous posts: "With all this diversity, it is dangerous to classify it all by ‘MSM.'" A similar comment that homosexual men who have sex with men do not commonly use the label "MSM" was made by another researcher in reference to Vietnam.
Similarly, US researcher Evelyn Blackwood criticized the notion of LGBT as a "western" concept." Referring to the June 1969 rebellion in New York City's West Village that helped spark the modern LGBT movement, she recognized that having these labels creates a sense of community that one can identify with, but concluded: "There's a lot more going on with gender and sexuality that can ever be encapsulated in four letters." This is particularly the case with terms like Tongzi, tomboi or lesbi used in Asia. She also felt that lesbian women or women loving women had been less visible in the global homosexual movement.
A great deal of discussion was dedicated to the stigma of living with HIV. HIV prevention campaigns have a "missing link" where the campaigns target men who have sex with men but these men are unwilling, unable or, simply, do not identify this way. The peculiar vulnerability of migrants and mobile populations to HIV infection was also highlighted, particularly with reference to Vietnam and China. Low condom use, either because of lack of knowledge or lack of access among these vulnerable populations, was also evident in the data presented by researchers.
Proposition 8 also received some brief negative coverage. South African activist and scholar, Pierre de Vos, highlighted that the introduction of same-sex marriage alone is unable to change the deeply patriarchal and homophobic society in which he lives: "Laws alone will not affect the radical social change that some of us want to see." A more positive picture was presented about Spain, where there were 1,275 same-sex marriages in 2005, 4,574 in 2006 and 3,250 in 2007 following the introduction of same sex marriage in mid 2005. In Spain too, however, homophobia remains a challenge, with families sometimes absent at weddings and same-sex couples fearful of telling colleagues at work, and therefore losing the right to 15 days off work, a legal entitlement for all couples getting married.
To me, the entire conference pushed boundaries and raised challenging ideas, particularly in light of the backdrop of conservative Communist Vietnamese society. Many of these activists and scholars will meet against at the VIII IASSCS Conference which will take place in two years time. No doubt, they will discuss new ways of tackling new obstacles in the fight for dignity, citizenship and sexual freedom for all. For now, I walked away from this conference with a better understanding of the influence of culture in creating diverse sexuality. Any transnational fight for equality must recognize this.
