Globalization, Sexuality and

Abstract

The globalization of sexuality refers to the sexualized and embodied nature of processes associated with the movement of people, capital, and goods across national boundaries. It also refers to how the consciousness of the world as a single place is sexualized. The globalization of sexuality is manifest in a range of processes and phenomena that are often couched and approached in highly emotive terms (e.g., the trafficking of women into prostitution, mail‐order brides, the development of the sex industry and sex tourism). It is also characterized by the AIDS pandemic, mass international tourism, and the development of cyberspace. Each of these has in turn intensified consciousness of the status of sexual minorities and the unevenness of their treatment across the globe. Key to our understandings of the globalization of sexuality is the relationship between sexuality and economics. While debates on the globalization of gay identity have been marked by an ambivalence over the development of gay identities and politicized communities outside of the West, work on the globalization of sexuality more generally has tended to have been marked by concerns with the worse excesses of what Smith (1997) has termed the “satanic geographies of globalization.” Here we are concerned with the trafficking of women forced into prostitution. Contemporary moral panics on the scale and extent of the trafficking of women for prostitution across national borders mask the extent to which sex work has been intimately connected to the development of the global capitalist system. The transnational migration of sex workers has taken place for centuries. However, there is a perception we are seeing an acceleration in the scale of the phenomenon resulting from increased mobility across national borders – as witnessed by the increasing numbers from Eastern Europe working in the sex industry in Western Europe.

Gay men, Gaydar and the commodification of difference

“…These claims are made despite arguments that the resources of such a market are overemphasised (Campbell, 2005) and that the meanings and identity of being a gay male are not universal (Binnie, 2004). In August 2007, a press release [3] was issued by QSoft as a response to Light's (2007) study which suggested that Gaydar potentially, could marginalise and stereotype users through its profiling system.…”

The Language of Intersectionality: Researching ‘Lesbian’ Identity in Urban Russia

“…I have argued that calls to deconstruct and destabilise normative gay and lesbian subjects can remain an emphatic declaration of intent if not supported by a coherent methodology. Replacing 'gay and lesbian' with 'queer' terminology does not represent a way forward, since queer is not inherently a subversive and 'democratic' (Binnie 2004) and the privileged status of English within them, by reminding the reader that languages reflect heterogeneous conceptual world, and that 'a monolingual view of the world is also a monocultural one' (Besemeres and Wierzbicka 2007:xiv). A research agenda sensitive to linguistic and cultural diversity can hopefully avoid unwarranted polarisations between 'East' and 'West', and contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the intersections between the global, the national, the transnational and the local.…”

“…Bleys (1996) shows that European representations of nonWestern sexualities constructed the boundaries of a specific 'geography of perversion and desire', which opposed modern, civilised, domesticated 'Western' sexualities to premodern, perverse, exotic sexual 'others'. This kind of Orientalist discourse (Said 1978), pitting the 'progressive' and 'liberated' West against the 'traditional' and 'sexually repressed' East, is by no means confined to the past, as the paradigmatic 'modern homosexual' has been replaced with the 'global gay' (Altman 1996), embodied in new globalising discourses around 'pink dollar' consumerism and LGBT human rights (Binnie 2004;Puar 2007). …”

“…Merely replacing 'gay and lesbian' with 'queer' terminology does not offer a satisfactory solution to the complex and sensitive issues raised by the labelling process inevitably involved in research (Farqhar 2000;Garber 2003). Unquestioningly embracing 'queer' as 'an intellectual panacea' (Garber 2003) may paradoxically reify both 'local' and 'Western' homosexualities in the process, instead of fulfilling queer theory's initial promise for complexity and fluidity (Garber 2003;Binnie 2004). It should also be kept in mind that queer political activism and academic discourse remain predominantly located within Anglo-American and Western European societies, and are therefore deeply implicated in global power hierarchies.…”

“…The enormous influence that Western discourses on sex and sexuality have had, and continue to have, in other parts of the globe reflects this heritage, and the global power hierarchy it created. Encounters brought about by colonialism, post-colonial migration and globalisation have variously resulted in the clash, homogeneisation and hybridisation of sexual identities and cultures (Binnie 2004). These encounters have often been explored through the prism of language, for example by analysing 'local' queer argots and the influence of global sexual culture on them, exemplified by the introduction of English borrowings such as 'gay' and 'coming out' (Leap 1995;Altman 1996;Manalansan 2002;Boellstorff 2005).…”