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Desirable rights: same-sex sexual subjectivities, socio-economic transformations, global flows and boundaries – in India and beyond

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 19:18 authored by Paul BoycePaul Boyce
Sexual rights are increasingly and unevenly advanced internationally as constitutive of progressive legal possibilities for same-sex desiring subjects. Legislative progress in this area has taken place in the context of recognition of same-sex sexual subjects within the globalising flow of neo-liberal political-economic ideologies in some parts of the word, and resurgent homophobia as a countervailing trend elsewhere (or indeed even within the same context). Ambivalent responses to sexual rights praxis in people's day-to-day lives indicate complex relationships between sexual subjectivity, economy, law, the state, and people's most intimate aspirations. Rights on grounds of same-sex sexualities may or may not be perceived as universally desirable, even among those people who might otherwise be imagined as their beneficiaries. Given this, the relationship between sexual subjectivities, political economies, and rights must be understood in terms of multifaceted refractions, attending to generative and curtailing possibilities – imagined in people's differing responses to free-market capital, legislation, and possibilities for livelihood. These issues are explored in respect of ethnographic work in West Bengal, India, with a particular focus on male-bodied subjects who evince both masculine and feminine subjectivities, and in respect of recent contestations in law, polity, and sexual rights praxis.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

Culture, Health and Sexuality

ISSN

1369-1058

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Issue

10

Volume

16

Page range

1201-1215

Department affiliated with

  • Anthropology Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2014-12-16

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