Sexual Inequalities and Social Justice

The problems posed by positionality are not interrogated by the editors but they are intelligently considered by some of the contributors. Jessica Fields who investigated sex education in North Carolina middle schools decided to mask her lesbian identity so that she could interact with conservative parents, teachers and homophobic students. Doubtless, her identity informed her cogent critique of educational practices. Russell Shuttieworth is not himself disabled, but lived near a disabled cousin when he was growing up and therefore understood the forms of discrimination the disabled face. When one of his disabled friends asked for his company on a visit to a strip club where the researcher would have to negotiate with a sex worker on "Josh's" behalf, Shuttleworth agreed despite his qualms. Christopher Carrington was/is a participant in the subculture of the gay dance "Circuit" (events that take place in many Western countries throughout the year), and draws on a quarter-century of experience to explain the hedonistic, liminal abandon of three-day parties which involve uninhibited dancing, muscular sexuality and consumption of a plethora of psychotropic drugs, while also raising substantial funds for gay charities. Carrington's functionalist conclusions would not be startling to most anthropologists, namely that the Circuit is a response to pervasive homophobia, prudery and the climate of fear caused by AIDS. However, they contradict the opinions of some AIDS activists and conservative gays such as Andrew Sullivan who view the Circuit as reprehensible, irresponsible and defying all logic. One could say that the partygoers on the circuit follow a cultural script which resists the "rationality" of health workers and many other gay activists. Sexual stereotypes are generated by the symbolic and structural violence which pervades most classrooms where adolescents are educated in North America and Europe. As [Gilbert Herdt], Russell, Sweat and Marzullo remark (p. 235), "since the time of G. Stanley Hall at the close of the nineteenth century, the invention of adolescence as a sexual period has gone hand in hand with the emergence of public schools as an arena for social control of adolescent sexuality." Some symbolic violence is directly perpetrated by the educational system itself, but a large part of it results from the representations and practices which adolescents learn from their peers and their parents. Both the assumption that girls who discuss sexuality