Session 4: Sexual Politics

1st Global Conference

Monday 4th May 2009 – Thursday 7th May 2009
Budapest, Hungary

Pornographic Imaginary and Constitutional Theory
Fernando Munoz
Yale Law School, USA

The relationship between constitutional law and pornography is usually regarded in a unidirectional way: what does the law say about pornography. This leads us to study the statutory and jurisprudential regulation of the production and distribution of pornography. But this neglects the interesting question of what can pornography say to constitutional theory. This is a multilayered subject that would bring us to explore the aesthetics and narrative of pornography, its underlying anthropology and sociology, and even its psychological appeal to our imagination.

The aim of this paper is to recur to the pornographic imagination to push further our understanding of the politico- juridical phenomena. The pornographic imagination can be described by means of the words that Freud dedicates to the Battas of Sumatra in Totem and Taboo: “These people assume as a mater of course that a solitary meeting between a man and a woman will lead to an improper intimacy between them.”

The objective, I should like to make clear, is not to point to causal relationships between sexuality or obscenity and politics; but rather to employ these dimensions as presented in pornography as a narrative illustrating a critical approach to constitutional theory. To provide this narrative, this exercise aims at deploying the elements available in contemporary popular culture and the tools of cultural theory as an input for legal theory. As serving a critical approach to constitutional theory, it underpins an understanding of constitutional theory characterized by its skepticism towards the autonomy of law and an insistence on the relevance of context, its emphasis on the indeterminacy of the legal systems and the plasticity of legal languages, and a vindication of the questions of power and its uses as the central issue at stake in constitutional debates; subscribing the calls made for the development of a phronetic social science.

Criminalising African Sex: AIDS Awareness Campaigns and the Change in Attitudes towards Sex and Sexuality in Namibia
Mari Kervinen
University of Joensuu, Finland

In every society there are norms of sex and sexuality based on for example age, family status and gender. The norms are in constant change, but in Namibia the change has happened relatively fast and in many ways forced. The precolonial structures are now in interaction with Christian, colonial and postcolonial attitudes and moral point of views; the latest norms being moulded in the era of HIV/AIDS and from the partly contradictory and imagined Western ideas in the times of globalization. The official information on HIV/AIDS is based on the idea of ABC – Abstinence, Being fateful and Condom use that is nowadays in many studies seen as Western-rooted and Christian-based that emphasises heteronormative, monogamous penile-vaginal-penetrative sex. The views of ABC have not considered the local history of norms, control and moral of sex and sexuality and thus the pure ABC-point of view could easily “criminalize” local sexual behaviour. In the HIV/AIDS work it is thus extremely important to notice all the different local norms that are affecting to the sexual behaviour in order to understand and discuss the local attitudes, behaviour and thus, the factors behind the spreading of HIV/AIDS.

In my paper I will discuss AIDS awareness campaigns and their role in the change of norms, ethics and moral of sex and sexuality in a village community in northern Namibia. In the wider level these issues link to the discussion of why sex and sexuality are controlled in different times and how these affect to the construction of gender and sexual identity. It is fundamental to understand which norms are followed, why they are followed and who constructs the norms when HIV/AIDS risk behaviour, sex and sexuality and attitudes towards those are discussed. We can also ask to what extend ABC structure is a way to emphasise Western Christian morals as the only way to “salvation” as any other form of sexual norms is shown to bring only death and suffering.

Download Conference Paper (pdf)

‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ Sex in 1970s France
Philippe Chassaigne
Department of Modern and Contemporary History, University of Tours, France

The cultural climate in France in the 1970s was a peculiar one: on the one hand, the May 1968 events had ushered in a nex approach to sexual mores, be it union libre, abortion, same sex relationships, or the age of consent question; sexuality matters were more openly discussed on air, on TV, or in the press. On the other hand, the political outlook remained definitely conservative: the right/centre-right coalition won the successive nationwide elections (for the legislature or the presidency) in 1969, 1973, 1974 and 1978, and the defense of ‘family values’ was more than once instrumentalized in the political arena. Finally, the victory of Socialist Party leader François Mitterrand at the 1981 presidential election resulted in the passing of a decisively liberal legislation in this field.

This paper wil focus on the debate surrounding what was deemed to be ‘good’ (or ‘legal’, or ‘lawful’, or ‘moral’) sex and ‘bad’ (or ‘illegal’, or ‘unlawful’, or ‘immoral’) sex in that crucial decade. It will address the then controversial questions of abortion, pornography, prostitution, and same-sex relationships (with the cognate question of sex with underage teens), focusing on such highlights as the Bobigny trial (1972), the passing of the legislation legalizing abortion (1975), the ‘rise of the pornographic tide’ and its backlash (1974-1975), and the chequered rise of French gay militancy (1971-1981). The sometimes overlapping, sometimes conflicting, positions of the statute book, ‘opinion makers’, the various militant movements, and the public opinion at large will be more particularly scrutinized.