Taking responsibility for creating spaces at CPF for discussion and action on questions of sexuality, gender and development

By Colin Robinson, CAISO: Coalition Advocating for Inclusion of Sexual Orientation, Trinidad and Tobago

Anybody? Questions of sexual citizenship cross-cut virtually every one of the eight topics on which CPF will focus. It’s just frankly impossible to “realise someone’s potential”, to borrow the theme of the last Forum, while stifling the expression of their sexuality or gender.

Human Rights: Sexuality and sexual identity is one area where human rights protections are weakest and where both civil, social, economic and other rights are flagrantly violated. Recognition of gender identity-related rights is far behind.

Economic Development: Discrimination and social stigma against those whose sexual practices or gender expression is non-normative make them especially vulnerable to economic marginalisation and force them into participation in shady and criminalised sectors of the economy.

Environment: The quest for sexual autonomy powerfully drives migration across borders as well as into urban areas.

Gender: At the core of state regulation of sexual orientation and gender identity is the goal of tightly policing the roles that particular genders should play. What is worse, as in the case of Trinidad & Tobago, is when states then explicitly exclude these clear questions of gender from their policies for gender and development.

HIV: Across the Commonwealth, criminalisation of same-sex behaviour diminishes access to information, services and support for those who practise it, and has contributed to significantly higher rates of HIV among men who desire and have sex with other men (MDSM). Pressure to practise heterosexuality also increases the challenge of controlling local epidemics, by increasing the likelihood of epidemics concentrated among MDSM feeding more generalised epidemics.

Peace and Conflict: Criminalisation of consensual sex legitimises violence, victimisation and blackmail of sexual minorities, and denies them access to justice. In hyper-violent societies, victims of such gender-based violence struggle against attempts to dismiss the bias-related nature of crimes against them. Philip Dayle comments famously on Jamaica that “a homosexual isn’t just an undesirable but an unapprehended criminal”.

Deepening Democracy & Governance: Overall, the denial of citizenship based on sexuality or gender expression makes a mockery of claims of social inclusion, democracy and good governance. The notion that homosexuals are not fit to serve in government is one example.

Creativity & Innovation: Finally, homophobia and transphobia censor the cultural and expressive activity of whole communities, and rob nations of their creative and economic capital. Arguably, as well, the experience of alterity itself fosters enhanced creativity among sexual minorities who have traditionally high rates of participation in creative and expressive activity. Nations spite themselves and lose this beauty when they restrict citizenship based on sexuality and gender expression.

Every body. There are therefore myriad ways in which sexual and gender identity questions will arise in the work of the Forum. And ample opportunity for anyone (especially those of us who are “neither a gay nor a fan of gays”) to raise them. We need to talk about sex and gender in sometimes uncomfortable ways. If we can talk about torture, war, disease and the potential end of a habitable planet, we can talk about sex.

Pride. Increasingly, movements for sexual citizenship in the Global South are framing their agenda in terms of staking out a role in nation-building. But we still often hark back to Global North frameworks of GLBT “Pride”, to counter the impact of stigma and shaming in depriving us of value and agency, and crippling our human potential. There’s an ironic way in which that anthem of Empire my mother was forced to sing decades ago brings those two notions together – a concept of a national pride that at the same time challenges the nation to do better:

A pride that dares, and heeds not praise
A stern and silent pride
Not that false joy that dreams content
With what our sires have won

I’d line up for that idea of a Commonwealth, even without the sweet drink and bun.

How then do we each – whether as CPF participants or as new media activists generating discourse around these gatherings – take responsibility for creating spaces at CPF for discussion and action on questions of sexuality, gender and development across each of its eight focus areas?