Global civil society as shepherd: Global sexualities and the limits of solidarity from a distance

Thinking about solidarity across borders

A number of high profile political confrontations on sexuality in Africa have attracted the media attention of global commentators and activists. For example, the anti-homosexuality bill proposed by Ugandan Member of Parliament, David Bahati, as the Private Members’ Bill on 13 October 2009 created a major international debate. The proposed law has provisions for homosexuals and those who have the knowledge of homosexual acts without necessarily being part of those acts. The law would have required imprisonment for the latter group of people if they failed to inform the authorities within 24 hours. For the first group, homosexuals, the law would have required life imprisonment for homosexual practices and it also required the death penalty for ‘aggravated homosexuality’ – defined as any sexual act between gays or lesbians in which one person has the HIV virus.

Kapya Kaoma argues that the genesis of the bill was linked with the impact of American ‘“renewal movements” in three religious denominations – the Episcopal Church (TEC), the United Methodist Church USA (UMC) and the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) and their Christian conservative allies’ in Africa (Kaoma, 2009: 2). In particular it was argued that the bill had the markings of the ideas discussed in the 2009 ‘“Seminar on Exposing the Homosexual Agenda” in Kampala’ (Kaoma, 2009: 15). The issue highlighted here is how funding relations with church groups allowed conservative positions to be imported from the US and domesticated by local groups through funding by their US partners. On the other side of the political fence, pro-LGBTI international actors also support various groups. As the bill was going through various parliamentary committee stages in Uganda many international activist groups including the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA), Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) made interventions to stop the process. In addition, a global petition was sent to President Museveni initiated by the global advocacy group AVAAZ (AVAAZ, 2009). Many politicians from the US, the UK and other European countries also intervened in the discussion. The Swedish government suggested that they would re-evaluate their aid to Uganda. Under all of these international tensions and pressures the bill was withdrawn in May 2010. President Museveni of Uganda presented an ambivalent attitude to the bill and its critics, while some of his top officials had remained supportive of the bill.

International attention was also drawn to the events around the relationship between Steven Monjeza, 26, and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, 20, in Malawi. They were arrested in December 2009 two days after what was described as ‘the first gay couple in Malawi to declare their commitment in a public ceremony’ (Smith and Mapondera, 2010). Their trial and the 14-year jail sentence passed in May 2010 focused the debate. In delivering the judgment, magistrate Nyakwawa Usiwa Usiwa ‘found both men guilty of “carnal knowledge” that was “against the order of nature.” He said that the two had been “living together as husband and wife,” which “transgresse[d] the Malawian recognized standards of propriety”’ (Bearak, 2010b). With these words the two were sentenced to 14 years in prison with hard labour under Malawi’s anti-gay legislation. The judgment led to a major campaign of condemnation of the Malawian system and its discriminatory homophobic attitudes. While many views reported in the media from Malawi were against the couple and considered their behaviour inappropriate, there was some local support as was evident in the funding of the couple’s defence by a local organization, the Centre for the Development of the People. In addition to the international activist groups such as Amnesty International, HRW and ILGA, international organizations such as the UNAIDS and the Global Fund for HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis intervened to discuss the situation at the presidential level in Malawi. The intense international pressure on Malawi reached its peak on the occasion of the visit by the Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon to Malawi. At a joint press conference in Lilongwe with the Secretary-General, the President of Malawi Bingu wa Mutharika announced a presidential pardon for the couple who were to be released from prison on 29 May 2010.

Both of these events attracted international media attention and attracted the concerns of many across the globe as the events unfolded. In these media discussions the binary position between the religious conservatives and those opposed to them was clear. Here, it is important to quote an ILGA statement from December 2009 on the anti-homosexuality bill. The statement was made on behalf of the Pan Africa ILGA, which is part of the larger international group. The statement underlines the concern of the international LGBTI community about the proposed anti-homosexuality bill in Uganda. It states that ‘we believe that the bill goes beyond an intention to protect the nation, homosexual expression is part of the human family, we believe that everyone is unique and must have the liberty to express their unique individuality without fear and prejudice. We expect governments globally to look at the promotion of the welfare of all peoples, against criminality and discrimination’ (ILGA, 2009). The statement argues that the criminalization of sexuality and actions taken against minority sexualities would be in contravention of the international human rights law, including the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). As the High Commissioner for Human Rights at the United Nations, Ms N. Pillay emphasized in December 2008, ‘“there remain all too many countries which continue to criminalize sexual relations between consenting adults of the same sex in defiance of established human rights law”’(ILGA, 2009). Furthermore, the ILGA statement declares that the ‘laws criminalizing homosexual conduct violate the right to privacy protected by article 17 of the ICCPR … the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has also found that arrests for consensual homosexual conduct are, by definition, human rights violations’ (ILGA, 2009). They then call on the Ugandan government to comply with its international human rights commitments established in the ICCPR.

On 4 February 2010 the President of the US Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also made a clear statement about their views on the Ugandan bill. The President said that ‘We may disagree about gay marriage, but surely we can agree that it is unconscionable to target gays and lesbians for who they are – whether it’s here in the United States or, as Hillary mentioned, more extremely in odious laws that are being proposed most recently in Uganda’ (CNN, 2010). The Obama statement attracted more attention and response than the ILGA statement. Many American religious groups and politicians expressed either their support for the President’s position or their opposition to it. In Uganda many also expressed their views and in particular religious activists with public standing registered their disagreement to the President’s intervention. One such intervention was reported on an America news website, Accuracy in Media. According to the report ‘Charles Tuhaise, chairman of the board of Agape Community Transformation (ACT), a Christian organization in Uganda, has told AIM that “This is a bill written to control a problem that has largely gotten out of hand in western society and is now spreading tentacles worldwide. Perhaps Uganda has helped to highlight the danger that the homosexual movement poses to the world”’ (AIM, 2010). While the view reveals a particular position, the nature of the reporting is also itself important to comment on. This web-based news reporting appeared to use the Ugandan case to provide a right-wing political commentary on the problems of American politics, in that one of its targets seems to be the progressive Open Society Institute and its civil society funding towards marginalized sexualities and family health (AIM, 2010).

On a different web-based news outlet, the Huffington Post, there were also a number of reports about the issue. These highlighted how contrary this bill was to international human rights and provided evidence for the challenges faced by many minority sexualities in Uganda. One report, discussing the issue in February 2010 after outlining the questions raised by the Ugandan case, had the following statement: ‘Though I have never been to Uganda, it has been possible to follow the Anti-Homosexuality Bill closely through the media and statements from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Sylvia Tamale (the dean in the Law Faculty at Makerere University in Kampala), and other human rights bodies’ (Solis, 2010). The author, towards the end after analysing the bill and its implications in terms of the Ugandan constitution and health, reflects on their own discussion:

I understand the frustrations some Ugandans may have with the idea of foreign human rights activists ostracizing the Anti-Homosexuality Bill. However, as AVAAZ has stated, most of the opposition to the bill comes from Ugandan civil society and the Anglican Church. What both Ugandan and foreign activists are upset with is the possibility of seeing so many people negatively affected by inherently violent policies. I also understand that Uganda is a conservative country in the midst of a Christian revival and that a public discourse on homosexuality has never occurred before this bill. However, is that to say we cannot question or condemn those who seek to realize the bill’s provisions? And is it truly ‘selfish’ or ‘greedy’ to criticize discriminatory, abusive, and life threatening state policies when the majority of the populous is not necessarily ready to address the issue? (Solis, 2010)

Both of these Web news reports are instances of a representation of a particular kind of concern that creates solidarity with their individual target groups. Furthermore, both bring different spaces and social contexts together in their solidarity. The expressed solidarity in each case bridges the gap between us and them who are living in a distant place. It also brings their lives into our claims of intimacy, framing their issues in terms of solidarity that are clear to us. While the content of solidarity claims of these news reports is antagonistic, their gestures towards the distant people like us seem similar. One position is about supporting sexual minorities in Uganda to gain their rights to be and to support them in their fight against the bill. The other position is a support to the anti-homosexual groups affiliated with various churches in Uganda. In both cases the positions are based mostly on a politics of sexuality more pertinent to the particular actor’s own socio-political contexts. Therefore, what appears to be a debate on other people’s lives is actually an extension of a debate that is largely about our lives. Arguably these solidarity gestures are bringing other people’s lives into discussions which are not necessarily framed in their own contexts or through their own framing of the problems.

This particular solidarity, based on the intimacy of distant people’s sexualities, is a new development within the broader context of cosmopolitan intimacies. It is an intimacy that is created mostly through the immediacy of their lives and their problems experienced through the various media, including 24 hour news, various internet-based technologies and increasing advocacy efforts of civil society groups to communicate with their core support networks using these media. Given that the complex set of relations is framed in terms of news segments, the complexity is usually reduced to reference points that will resonate with the audiences of such media across the globe. Cosmopolitan intimacies emerge at the juncture of events unfolding and the people observing them from a distance. They create an attachment to certain issues that could be reduced to a few reference points made to create solidarity across socio-cultural boundaries. In the cases we are looking at, the concept of gay, the persecution and the various sexuality rights such as same-sex marriage in the Malawi case act as reference points for the solidarity. However, it is not clear how such intimacies engage with the actual lived experiences of sex and sexuality in the diverse contexts. Moreover, the solidarity created from a distance creates challenges for those who are constructed as people like us.

The complexity of this situation was clearly revealed at the Vienna 2010 XVIII International AIDS Conference. One of the interesting developments in the conference was the large number of panels discussing issues pertaining to men who have sex with men (MSM). Although questions of sexuality had been sidelined for a considerable time when engaging with the disease in developing countries, the discussion on sexualities and HIV/AIDS had gained momentum since the XVII International AIDS Conference in 2008 in Mexico City. The participants came from across the globe to talk about their experiences and the ways HIV/AIDS impacts their lives as marginalized sexualities. Some of the panels included HIV+ people and representatives of non-governmental organizations trying to help people with different sexualities. The events in Uganda and Malawi discussed above also set the scene for a number of panels. In one of the panels three participants presented and highlighted the problems faced by various groups in Africa. The presentations ranged from the impact of organizations related to the US religious right in Africa, the events of the previous year in Malawi as they related to the attempted same-sex marriage between two men and the criminalization and absence of sexuality rights in southern Africa. A large audience attended the panel. However, one of the panellists pointed out that it was curious ‘to see few people from Africa in the hall where their rights were [being] discussed’ (personal observation). From the way people were applauding various comments it was clear that the majority of the people shared the panel’s worries and were generally supportive of the panel. It was also clear that the panel was informing the audience about the local background in relation to things that the audience had learned from the media during the previous year. In this way the panel was bringing the audience into the discussion and in doing do soliciting support and solidarity from the audience.

One of the first questions was from an African audience member who said that while the panel talked about human rights of people of various sexualities they did not consider his human right not to be exposed to homosexuality. At this point there was a weak round of applause mostly from the other Africans in the audience. The person asking the question carried on by stating that the panel was talking to a mainly western audience and not addressing the needs of the people in Africa. There was a deep silence in the hall. The second person asking a question, from his accent was from the US, and asked ‘what could we do to help you in the situations you described?’ The question was asked in a tone which conveyed our understanding of the difficulty of the situation described by the panellists. Furthermore it implicitly established that we are in a position to help. This has several aspects: we are in a position to help; as we know what to do; and we have resources to facilitate change. Here the question is based on the solidarity developed between the panel and the audience. The question was a gesture toward the Africans, but it was also an attempt to counter the impact of the first question and disregard the view expressed in it in order to refocus the discussion.

In response to this gesture of support one of the panellists immediately stated that while they need help this needed to be in a supporting role for what they wanted to do. He said that we know what to do – listen to us. We really need international groups and activists to listen to us. This was a forceful and rather unexpected answer in relation to the assumed solidarity link that was established in the hall. It was also an answer which questioned whether international actors have the skills and resources to deal with the problems identified. In other words, the relevance of our ways for dealing with problems of sexuality in different contexts was questioned. His answer challenges the listener to reconsider the stance of ‘the speaker’, as described by Goffman, implicit in the question. As a result it qualifies what is considered to be solidarity from the position of someone who is living in the context of the problems described by the panel. The second presenter who represented an NGO dealing broadly with justice questions, including the same-sex marriage case in Malawi, responded by saying that ‘while I agree with my brother here, of course we should not dismiss international help that fast. We need resources at many levels to be able to carry out our work’. He then talked about the way they utilized technical and financial help from international organizations in their case. This response was also a gesture to balance the discussion between the international solidarity and the contextual needs. Furthermore, coming from an NGO representative it highlighted how they consider what they could do on the basis of the international expectations and resource relations. This conversation brought together and divided the audience and the panel. The implicit tensions brought out in this discussion highlighted some important ways in which politics of solidarity is claimed and the ways civil society groups work across borders.

Why do these complexities matter for global solidarity and civil society?

In each of the events considered above, the relationship of solidarity is established through the claims and declarations of civil society groups or activists. In addition, the appearance of political statements from well-known politicians and from international civil servants working for international organizations also demonstrates the fluidity of the relationship between civil society actors and others within that particular issue context. The pressure created within this broader context of global civil society produced results in both Uganda and Malawi. In the former the bill was dropped and in the latter the men were released from prison. However, in terms of social attitudes towards sexuality the tensions were heightened and remain the same. Both progressive and regressive groups achieved important outcomes from their own positions. This approach, orientated towards immediate results, by global civil society organizations implicitly claims a mandate to observe, monitor and intervene when they deem it necessary in what appear to be public discussions on sexuality. But, how should we understand this leadership position of global civil society actors and its potential impact on the contextual politics of sexuality?

Michel Foucault’s work helps with this question. In a piece entitled ‘“Omnes et Singulatim”: Toward a Critique of Political Reason’ (2001a: 303–324) he considers the development and structure of pastoral power in the western political tradition. His analysis begins with the emergence of the idea of the shepherd in Greek literature and the way this idea is used by Plato. He presents two central moves in Platonic thinking: a) the designation of a species-specific shepherd to lead a particular flock and b) the way the initial position of the gods as leading the human flock is changed as ‘men had to look after themselves, for they had been given fire’ (2001a: 306). Foucault identifies the role of the shepherd in these discussions as a separate power from the political power of the king. According to his reading pastoral power is related to the ‘lives of individuals’ as opposed to the political power that aimed at binding the society together (2001a: 307). He argues that ‘Plato did admit that the physician, the farmer, the gymnasiarch, and the pedagogue acted as shepherd’ (2001a: 307). Foucault argues that while this idea of the shepherd is translated into ‘Christ’s denomination as “the good shepherd” in Christianity, the meaning and the position of pastoral care [are] changed’ (2001a: 307–310). In this Christian form Foucault identifies four central characteristics: a) this ‘form of power promises a salvation in the next world’; b) this kind of pastoral power is also ready to ‘sacrifice itself for the life and salvation of the flock’; c) while it is involved with the flock in general it also focuses on the life of the individuals; d) this requires intimate knowledge of the individuals’ minds and requires individuals to reveal themselves to the power (2001b: 333). This form of power is seen as ‘coextensive and continuous with life; it is linked with a production of truth – the truth of the individual himself’ (2001b: 333). In the relationship between the shepherd and the sheep the subjectivity of the latter is constituted and reproduced in the process of pastoral care of the former for the latter. The claim of the shepherd is moral and existential for the flock.

Foucault acknowledges that this form of institutionalized relationship in Christianity has lost its power to a degree. However, the modality of the pastoral power ‘has spread and multiplied outside the ecclesiastical institutions’ (2001b: 333). In this spread of the modality of pastoral power, the initial relationship identified in the Greek tradition between political and pastoral power has changed. One of the arenas where this change is observed is in the modern state and the citizenship idea associated with it. According to Foucault, in this changing relationship we also observe a transposition of the Christian concern for salvation in the afterlife into the concern for individuals’ life in this world (2001b: 334). He further argues that the modern modality of pastoral power is focused on a form of salvation in this world. As a result, it focuses on aims that are set for a worldly good life. This means that people’s individual lives have become a concern and a part of this power relationship. In other words the move has not only linked political and pastoral power to each other but also changed the nature of the political concern. It is no longer only concerned with the unity of a polity. It has become focused on constructing particular kinds of citizens whose lives and choices have become a question for the shepherd.

Foucault argues that the change also led to the number of actors involved in exercising pastoral power being diversified to include ‘private ventures, welfare societies, benefactors and philanthropists’ (2001b: 334). This diversity of actors is also a sign of a secularization process which makes pastoral modality a technology of power in multiple contexts. Here what is being ‘decentralized’ is the form of the relationship underwriting power relations in a given context. It is in this modality that individuals’ way of being and the way they live become a question of political power that is exercised through constructing and guiding people’s behaviour towards a particular way of living.

The position of global civil society actors involved with questions of sexuality presents this outlook. Their activities involve two processes: one, they are engaged within debates about individuals and their lives and two, this engagement itself constructs and informs the subjectivity of their global community. The guiding process is linked with ‘kind-making’ and creating descriptions that would guide people’s actions (Hacking, 1995). In other words, global civil society actors defending people’s sexuality rights also act as the holders of authority over the nature of such sexualities. In this process of kind-making people’s intimacies are re-formed on the basis of a good life considered within a global language. Furthermore, this process establishes a particular understanding of the sexual intimacies as indexes for the identification of people in different places (Appiah, 2005: 66). Foucault in talking about operations of power states that ‘[I]t is a set of actions on possible actions; it releases, it induces, it seduces, it makes easier or more difficult; it releases or contrives … in the extreme, it constrains or forbids absolutely, but is always a way of acting upon one or more acting subjects by virtue of their acting or being capable of action’ (2001b: 341). In considering the exercise of power as ‘a conduct of conducts and a management of possibilities’ Foucault opens the space for considering what kinds of effects this kind of exercise creates.

Furthermore, this modern linking of the pastoral to the political power has changed the grounds on which the power can be exercised. The authority to exercise power is de-linked from the metaphysical authority of religion to an authority that is linked with knowledge production and claims in particular areas. Here the idea of knowledge production needs to be considered in praxeological terms, leading to more formal theoretical knowledge claims. The insistence on praxis highlights that the knowledge claim authorizing the exercise of power is an outcome of a particular kind of experience and its construction into knowledge is a boundary condition. It is in this process that the shepherd begins to claim its role to guide and shape others’ lives. This is also important for understanding the mechanism behind Goffman’s discussion of ‘the speaker’. In the present case the global civil society actor is using her experience as a base for a knowledge claim to demonstrate what is possible. It is this knowledge claim that authorizes the speaker to project herself as a locus of power and in doing so forms the speaker into the shepherd.

The discussion reveals a particular relationship that is based on a power imbalance between leaders and the led. It indicates not a ‘power over a space’ but ‘over a flock’ and its members (Foucault, 2001a: 301). This particular aspect of the modality makes it important for us to understand solidarity and its politics across borders as they are exercised by civil society groups. The shepherd acts as a point of order and maintains the unity of the flock. The shepherd/flock analogy has relevance for the ongoing discussion, in terms of how global civil society groups establish themselves as the voice for people across the world. The move observed in the linking of pastoral concerns with political ends highlights the characteristics of the pastoral technologies employed by many activists in their political discussions. Many global civil society networks and organizations acting in such networks aim to speak and to act on behalf of their members who are conceived as belonging to a particular kind of life the actors are protecting. In doing so, they place themselves as the agents of change who are leading the way for those whom they claim to represent.

The workings of pastoral power

The previous section argued that knowledge claims based on particular experiences become the grounds for establishing a pastoral relationship in which the shepherd-speaker becomes the holder of power in relation to a group. It then argued that the way pastoral power is used leads to the creation and expansion of the group which the speaker represents. In the present context the shepherd-speakers are the global civil society organizations and their activists who are engaging with people’s lives in contexts other than their own. This section considers how this pastoral relationship functions in the sphere of global civil society that is concerned with issues involving sexuality.

As mentioned above one of the important mechanisms here is the creation of categories whose content guides people’s subjectivities and forms/informs their everyday lives. It is in acting in a particular way that they become part of the flock. The modality of appearance in public according to a given identity becomes important. In the present case following the modality of sexual politics brings people into the fold of the global community. This relationship is about the way international politics of sexuality is informing and re-forming everyday intimacies experienced in different contexts. For instance, one of the statements issued by HRW in relation to the Malawian case highlights this situation: ‘“The case against Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza is an affront to essential principles of non-discrimination and equality,” said Dipika Nath, researcher in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) Rights Program at Human Rights Watch. “It singles out two people as criminals simply because they love each other”’ (HRW, 2010). This statement points out that ‘The arrest and trial violate both domestic and international human rights standards. Articles 19, 20, and 21 of the Malawian constitution guarantee the right to human dignity and personal freedom, equality, and privacy. Articles 32 and 35 guarantee the right to freedom of association and expression. The criminalization of consensual sexual conduct has been held internationally to violate both the right to privacy and to equality’ (HRW, 2010). In this way the argument moves to contend that two people were in love, which implicitly suggests that they are having sex as consenting adults and their rights for privacy are the central contention. The statement is reframing and re-forming two people’s intimacy from within the international discourse. The relationship is cast as a homosexual conduct that is protected under a particular human rights discourse.

However, the reason for the arrest was linked with: ‘The two celebrated their engagement – their chinkhoswe, in the Chichewa language – with a party at a lodge here in Malawi’s commercial capital’ (Bearak, 2010a). In other words, they were publicly declaring their intimacy. They were arrested on charges of unnatural acts and gross indecency. In this way the public event was the trigger to reveal their private intimacy which was then considered under existing laws as ‘unnatural acts’. The chronology of events creates a complex situation for the HRW position: does the right for privacy and equality for sex among consenting adults imply that public affirmations of such relations are also protected? The international position locates the problem into a modality in which a particular sexual enactment is linked with understanding of people’s appearance in public and their demand for recognition within the public sphere. The position does not allow one to think about sex as a private act and sexuality as a public declaration in a particular context.

Another question this poses is whether the attempt here is about the extension of gay marriage discussions from the industrialized world to a general category of politics. Is same-sex marriage becoming an international norm to evaluate the level of progressiveness in countries? While the debate is immediately referenced to the registers of the international politics of sexuality, the individuals involved in the court case seem to have expressed their views according to a different register of intimacy. According to a report in an interview ‘Mr Monjeza, 26, presented himself as a model of remorse. “I have never had sexual feelings for ladies, but I had them with Tiwo,” he said, his words translated from Chichewa. “I am regretting my actions now. I want to apologize. I am no longer in love with Tiwo”’ (Bearak, 2010a). While Tiwo, ‘33, was simply indignant. “I have done nothing wrong but fall in love and declare this love for my husband”’ (Bearak, 2010a). If we take the statement of Mr Monjeza first it is clear that his engagement with Tiwo was premised on her proclaimed gender. The idea that this was one woman he could have a relationship with is an important statement. Also Mr Chimbalanga – Tiwo’s – position presents a similar insight that Tiwo is acting in a particular gender context. The sexuality question does not seem to come into their discussions. Tiwo’s position is framed within her chosen gender role. In this role Tiwo was very convincing. ‘Jean Kamphale, Mr. Chimbalanga’s boss at a Blantyre lodge, testified that she accepted “Auntie Tiwo” as a woman and assigned her cooking and cleaning chores. But after the article in The Nation appeared, she made her employee disrobe and refused to let him stop until he was naked from the waist down and “that’s where the cat was let out of the bag”’ (Bearak, 2010a). The everyday appearance and functioning of Tiwo was based on a gender economy which was broken down with the court case and the events following it. There is a gap between these statements and the way their situation is framed as a problem of sexuality. This gap is related to how two people’s relationship is represented by the various actors who deploy themselves as the shepherd/speaker for the global community on this matter. The representation issue, following Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, is at two levels: a) ‘the representation as speaking for’ and b) ‘representation as re-presentation’ (1988: 275). In the present case both people are represented but in this representation their intimacy and relationship are re-considered as a concern for the global gay advocacy networks. In this process Jeffrey Atteberry identifies a subterfuge in the ‘discourse that is used by self-appointed representatives to represent the represented’ (2010: 331). He points out the lack of reflection by these representatives on the nuances of their own discourses and its historical contingency. This position indicates that the represented in this process become objects of global politics. They find themselves represented as objects of interest independent of their everyday context. In doing so their own positions are lost in the discussion.

A counter argument might be that many of the actors who are claiming to represent voices do so on the basis of local organizational support. They would point to the above mentioned ILGA statement against the Ugandan bill and to the discussion developed by the NGO from Malawi at the panel at the AIDS conference. This argument would legitimate the actions of the global groups on the basis of their manifest relations with local groups. Another version of this argument would point to the local emergence of demands for the legalization of same-sex marriage in many parts of the world. However, Spivak’s caution against considering the representation of voice in a given context as a homogeneous affair remains important. In her discussions on the feminist engagement with Muslim women through the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) she argues that ‘it is the emergence of the middle class that creates the possibility for the kind of feminist struggle that gives us RAWA. And the middle class, the agent of human rights all over the world, is altogether distant from the subaltern classes in “their own culture” epistemically’ (Spivak, 2004: 89). This brings out the nuanced way in which the global position of representatives of the local voices is linked with re-presentation of their conditions in a global language. It is in this sense that Spivak points to the epistemic differentiation between such representations and the local experiences and knowledge these create. The above discussion of the NGO from Malawi re-represents the case as a particular problem of sexuality in Malawi from within the global politics of sexuality. In the process of re-presentation of people and intimacies according to a global register, the global movement as the speaker presents itself as the legitimate actor in the global debate. According to Sara Ahmed ‘[t]he idealisation of movement, or transformation of movement into a fetish, depends on the exclusion of others who are already positioned as not free in the same way’ (2005: 151–152, italic in original).

Spivak insists that western intellectuals in talking about the ‘colonial subject as Other’ form their own subjectivity and create ‘homogenized colonial subjectivity’ (1988: 279, 281). In the present case the global civil society activists seem to initiate a similar process. However, in this case the subjectivity of the people who are protected is homogenized not by othering them but by making them appear similar to us. Considered from this perspective, the advocacy work observed in the Malawi case above recasts the nature of intimacy in a homogeneous global register without paying attention to the intimacy expressed in context, within local gender relations. Furthermore, the discussion has subsumed the question of transgender needs and engagement under the issue of the right to homosexual sex and privacy. The intimacies and experiences are re-presented using a category of homosexuality that needs to be protected by the interventions of global actors. Not only does this construct a homologous subjectivity between the global activists and those who need their protection, but it also forces the latter to occupy the one available subject position. Spivak also highlights the othering process that imposes the colonial authority as the judge of the good life. In the designation of the group that needs help the move creates a power relationship that also creates or designates the agent of change. Here the concern is that this categorization of the other as an object for the outsider’s political and social protection homogenizes diverse subjectivities that exist in a given context and produces a narrative of protection that is disempowering. Spivak identifies a relationship in the way ‘the protection of woman becomes a signifier for the establishment of good society’ (1988: 298). The important aspect of this signification is that the protection by the colonizing power means that the good society is established by the outsiders for the benefit of natives who are implicitly designated as not free. On the one hand this creates a solidarity with the other who is designated as non free in their particular context, while on the other, in the attempt to free them within a universal solidarity homogenizes their subjectivity, inscribing their freedom with an ‘imperialist project’ (Spivak, 1988: 298).

The global politics of sexuality represents this kind of process in which groups and their problems are identified according to the registers that are objectifying what it is to be homosexual. Catharine A. MacKinnon argues that sexuality is ‘that social process which creates, organizes, expresses, and directs desire’, and is created and recreated within particular social processes (1982: 516). If we agree with this view then the global politics of sexuality, as observed in the cases considered here, is arguably imposing one socio-historically contingent understanding of homosexuality as the substance for subjectivity in diverse and multiple social contexts. In other words, the global activists’ subjectivity is establishing a particular experience of homosexuality as a natural kind. The content of this move is linked with the experiences of activists in their own country contexts. This is leading to knowledge claims that are legitimating their position as the shepherd/speakers with knowledge of how to do things in general.

The gesture of solidarity is setting out what is the nature of the truth of being homosexual in general. This problem seems to have been identified by Foucault when he was answering a question in a 1981 interview:

Another thing to distrust is the tendency to relate the question of homosexuality to the problem of ‘Who am I?’ and ‘What is the secret of my desire?’ Perhaps it would be better to ask oneself, ‘What relations, through homosexuality, can be established, invented, multiplied, and modulated?’ The problem is not to discover in oneself the truth of one’s sex, but, rather, to use one’s sexuality henceforth to arrive at a multiplicity of relationships. And no doubt, that’s the real reason why homosexuality is not a form of desire but something desirable. Therefore, we have to work at becoming homosexuals and not be obstinate in recognizing that we are. (Foucault, 1997: 164)

Here, the answer could be read in two ways: one, as a resistance to or warning against substantive discussions of what might be the truth of being homosexual; two, highlighting the implicit orientation of the politics of sexuality that developed in the 1970s. Here the issue is to challenge the move from intimacy as experience to intimacy as identity (Clarke, 2000). The latter has become the basis for a global solidarity where intimacy is linked with people’s particular public appearance to be recognized by global actors (see Butler, 2005: 29–30). The last sentence of the Foucault quote opens also the discussion for understanding different forms of relations rather than focusing on a kind of being that is prescribed or objectified in the way solidarity gestures might incorporate and subsume different positions.

Conclusion

This article sets out implicit tensions in the politics of solidarity in one of the main areas of work for global civil society. The operational dynamics of solidarity relations are considered on the basis of pastoral power and the way it creates particular effects in relation to the target groups of these gestures of solidarity. A number of cases from the recent politics of sexuality are unpacked to engage with the creation of such effects whereby groups and their everyday lives are abstracted and re-constructed as objects of such gestures. In most of these cases the situation is represented as a fight between local backwardness about sexuality and basic human rights. Many global civil society actors act as the guardians for the fight to get rights for people with different sexualities, while many religious groups act as the guardians of morality to stop people living their sexualities. Both sides seem to follow the shepherd/speaker modality of power that is discussed here. In most of these discussions the way people engage with sex and their intimacies is hidden under a global language of rights versus culture/religion.

The analysis provided here highlights a number of important tensions for global civil society actors and their politics of solidarity: a) the question of representation i.e. how such claims re-present people’s demands and conditions according to a global register in order to make them more relevant and comprehensible to the global audiences; b) the way these processes are working within a particular power relationship in which global civil society actors establish themselves as the agents for change in other people’s lives. This leads to the sublimation of localized voices and the kinds of lives they want to pursue as their demands are translated to fit a global register of human rights or religion. For instance, there is a shift from considering same-sex relations as private intimacies to considering same-sex relations according to the way they appear in public registers of sexuality, such as in claims for same-sex marriages. The process of solidarity in distant places, cast in this manner, pushes those others to cross borders within their own societies in order to become part of the global discourse. This can have dramatic implications for those people and their circumstances, as the Malawi case shows, which create questions of responsibility for global actors. This responsibility is the outcome of the fact that people’s identification with a particular sexuality and the enactment of that sexuality mean that they will be marginalized and in most cases discriminated against because of those enactments.

Another central issue is the socio-political context of these discussions. The present context of the emergence of politics of sexuality in the global civil society sphere raises questions about changing political relations at the global level. The global politics of sexuality represents a socio-political clash in which global civil society actors are claiming agency. This clash is also described as ‘the sexual clash of civilizations’ (Fassin, 2010: 510). While the clash becomes apparent in contexts such as Uganda and Malawi, the nature of the discussion and political actors wielding power says much more about other places. The clash is not only promoting a human rights discourse but implicitly it is also globalizing a particular kind of homophobia. The clash can be seen as a struggle for power to establish the boundaries of acceptable behaviour in the global political arena. It is about the shifting of global politics from formal power relations of political economy to relations of moral economy where zones of uncivilized practices are highlighted and challenged by civil society actors. The latter complement the former. When global civil society groups establish solidarity links with people across the globe they also legitimate particular ways of being and living as a pre-condition for becoming a member of the global age. These debates are also setting measures of being modern and the nature of good life in general (Graff, 2010). A new measure of civility is created on the basis of a politics of sexuality and in the process they point out homophobia as an important barrier in people’s lives. In this a global category of homophobia is used to interpret reactions to global politics of sexuality in different contexts and it is not clear how far global actors account for their own impact in the creation of this homophobia they identify and try to counter. The point is not to claim that homophobia does not exist in many contexts, that it is not important, but rather to point out that in most cases these debates on sexuality conducted by global actors hide the particularities of homophobia in different places under their own global concerns. The question of how far the impact of global actors is instrumental in producing a differentiated kind of global homophobia remains unanswered and largely unaddressed.