Sexual Rights: Concepts and Action

Abstract

Over the course of the past decade, the intersection between sexuality and health has become a central focus of attention for researchers and activists from a range of diverse fields. Scientific disciplines and social movements that, until quite recently, might well have seemed to have little in common with one another, have increasingly merged in seeking to address the complex range of questions that have linked sexuality to health in the late twentieth century. Yet in spite of intense research and activism in recent years, we have nonetheless largely failed to develop a more coherent framework for thought and action capable of resolving such questions-and this failure has been linked in important ways to our inability to develop a concept of sexual rights capable of serving as the cornerstone for a more progressive, global response to the relationship between sexuality and health. This paper briefly discusses the key challenge that currently confronts work on sexual rights. I begin by examining the complex intersections among a number of diverse fields that converge around questions related to sexual rights-and around the relationship between sexual rights and sexual health. Then I discuss the apparent difficulties encountered in seeking to elaborate a positive and empowering conception of sexual rights capable of providing a point of departure for the work carried out across such diverse fields. And finally, I would like to briefly suggest how such a conception, should we manage to build it in the future, might enable us to develop a coalition capable of working together both locally and globally not only against sexual violence, but in favor of sexual diversity