Racialized Sexualization in Transnational Human Rights Processes

• In Event: 156 - Section on Global and Transnational Sociology Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 09. Race, Class, Gender, and Human Rights in a Global Context

Abstract

In this paper, we examine the ways in which the concepts of gender and sexuality are framed, utilized, and unevenly evaluated within transnational human rights – in terms of such human rights’ ideological underpinnings as well as their implementation as a homogeneous platform. First, we show how these discourses construct Western countries as more “progressive” on issues around gender and sexuality, while casting the Global South as “backwards.” These discourses produce several outcomes: they mask the human rights abuses happening in Western countries, and erase the colonial histories and legacies that have altered ways of thinking about race, gender, and sexuality in formerly colonized countries. Secondly, we will show how transnational human rights discourses around race, gender, and sexuality are part of a neo-imperial project to try to maintain the presupposed moral superiority of Western countries and to demonize the Global South. We discuss a range of issues in international human rights as we insert a racial-colonial reading of the seemingly innocent (and racially blind) human rights deployment that oftentimes renders non-Western countries, and their cultures, as underdeveloped. We use cases of gender oppression and sexual orientation rights in several countries to illustrate their racial readings in a transnational and global context. In doing so, we show how human rights are not only an important globalized construct, but also, that they are racialized in its application of the advocacy for gender and sexuality human rights.

Authors

• Salvador Vidal-Ortiz, American University

• Brandon Andrew Robinson, University of Texas - Austin

• Cristina Khan, University of Connecticut