Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T21:22:31.510Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Thinking beyond the Category of Sexual Identity: At the Intersection of Sexuality and Human-Trafficking Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 August 2012

Mary A. Robertson  and
Arlene Sgoutas
Mary A. Robertson
Affiliation:
University of Colorado at Boulder
Arlene Sgoutas
Affiliation:
Metropolitan State College of Denver
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

“Intersectional analysis,” or “intersectionality,” is a concept that is widely used in various academic disciplines to explain and articulate the oppressions faced by the “multiply minoritized” (Vidal-Ortiz 2006), those marginalized by their sex, gender, sexuality, race, class, and national identities. We are concerned that “sexuality” as an identity used in intersectional analysis is perhaps overly reductive, sometimes telling nothing more than whether someone is “straight” or “gay,” rather than leaving room to interrogate the complicated, diverse landscape that is at the intersection of gender, sex, and sexuality. In this essay, we apply a queer-theory critique of intersectionality to demonstrate how human-trafficking policy, particularly as it relates to sex trafficking, is productive of what Valentine (2007) calls culturally constructed and deployed identity categories, resulting in inclusion of some and exclusion of others. We aim to show how social science research that relies on normative identity categories can lead to incomplete intersectional analyses.

Type
Critical Perspectives on Gender and Politics
Information
Politics & Gender , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , September 2012 , pp. 421 - 429
Copyright
Copyright © The Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Chapkis, Wendy. 2003. “Trafficking, Migration, and the Law: Protecting Innocents, Punishing Immigrants.” Gender & Society 17 (December): 923.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chuang, Janie. 2006. “The United States as Global Sheriff: Using Unilateral Sanctions to Combat Human Trafficking.” Michigan Journal of International Law 27 (May): 437–94.Google Scholar
Collins, Patricia Hill. 2000. Black Feminist Thought. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Crenshaw, Kimberlé W. 1991. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review 43 (June): 1241–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crenshaw, Kimberlé W. 1993. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” In Feminist Legal Theory, ed. Weisburg, D. Kelly. Philadephia: Temple University Press, 383–95.Google Scholar
Dennis, Jeffrey P. 2008. “Women Are Victims, Men Make Choices: The Invisibility of Men and Boys in the Global Sex Trade.” Gender Issues 25 (May): 11–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Doezema, Jo. 2010. Sex Slaves and Discourse Masters: The Construction of Trafficking. London: Zed Books.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duggan, Lisa. 2003. The Twilight of Equality? Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy. Boston: Beacon.Google Scholar
Ferguson, Rodrick A. 2005. “Race-ing Homonormativity: Citizenship, Sociology, and Gay Identity.” In Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology, ed. Johnson, Patrick E. and Henderson, Mae. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Gallagher, Anne. 2001. “Human Rights and the New UN Protocol on Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling: A Preliminary Analysis.” Human Rights Quarterly 23 (November): 975–1004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mukherjea, Ananya, and Vidal-Ortiz, Salvador. 2006. “Studying HIV Risk in Vulnerable Communities: Methodological Reporting Shortcomings in the Young Men's Study in New York City.” The Qualitative Report 11 (June): 393–416.Google Scholar
Puar, Jasbir K. 2005. “Queer Times, Queer Assemblages.” Social Text 23 (Fall/Winter): 121–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Puar, Jasbir K. 2007. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Purkayastha, Bandana. 2010. “Interrogating Intersectionality: Contemporary Globalisation and Racialised Gendering in the Lives of Highly Educated South Asian Americans and their Children.” Journal of Intercultural Studies 31 (February): 29–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rubin, Gayle. 1984. “Thinking Sex.” in Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality. Boston: Routledge & K. Paul.Google Scholar
Surtees, Rebecca. 2008. Trafficking of Men—A Trend Less Considered: The Case of Belarus and Ukraine. Switzerland: International Organization for Migration.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
UN General Assembly. 2000. Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, Supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, November 15, 2000, available at: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/4720706c0.html (Accessed July 9, 2012).Google Scholar
United States. 2000. Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act. Public Law 106–386.Google Scholar
U.S. State Department. 2010. “2010 Trafficking in Persons Report.” Washington, DC: State Department.Google Scholar
Valentine, David. 2007. Imagining Transgender: An Ethnography of a Category. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Vidal-Ortiz, Salvador. 2006. “Sexuality Discussions in Santería: A Case Study of Religion and Sexuality Negotiation.” Sexuality Research and Social Policy: Journal of NSRC. 3 (3): 52–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wibben, Annick T.R. 2011. Feminist Security Studies: A Narrative Approach. Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Routledge.Google Scholar