Hostname: page-component-76dd75c94c-lntk7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-30T09:25:01.172Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Negotiating Social Norms and Relations in the Micromobilization of Human Rights: The Case of Burmese Lesbian Activism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Lynette J. Chua
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article provides the first sociolegal analysis of lesbian rights activism in Myanmar. It elucidates the processes through which a group of lesbian activists navigate sexual and gender norms that oppress lesbians as sexual minorities and as women while they use human rights discourse to carry out micromobilization work, organizing constituents and building up grassroots participation in Myanmar. It analyzes how the collective deployment of human rights encompasses resistance against social norms that pose organizing obstacles for activists and the negotiations of social relations to counter them. These micromobilization processes shape whether and how activists adopt human-rights-based strategies and tactics. Bringing together law and society scholarship and social movement studies, the article highlights the importance of understanding human rights mobilization by marginalized populations who face multiple, overlapping forms of oppression and contend with plural sources of power.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 41 , Issue 3 , Summer 2016 , pp. 643 - 669
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2016 

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

Adam, Barry D., Duyvendak, Jan Willem, and Krouwel, André. 1999. Gay and Lesbian Movements Beyond Borders? National Imprints of a Worldwide Movement. In The Global Emergence of Gay and Gay and Lesbian Politics: National Imprints of a Worldwide Movement, ed. Adam, Barry D., Duyvendak, Jan Willem, and Krouwel, André, 344–72. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Albiston, Catherine. 2010. Institutional Inequality and the Mobilization of the Family and Medical Leave Act: Rights on Leave. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Allen, Lori. 2013. The Rise and Fall of Human Rights: Cynicism and Politics in Occupied Palestine. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Armstrong, Elizabeth A., and Bernstein, Mary. 2008. Culture, Power, and Institutions: A Multi‐Institutional Politics Approach to Social Movements. Sociological Theory 26 (1): 74–99.Google Scholar
Aspinall, Edward, and Farrelly, Nicholas. 2014. Introduction. South East Asia Research 22 (2): 163–69.Google Scholar
Atuahene, Bernadette. 2014. We Want What's Ours: Learning from South Africa's Land Restitution Program. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Barclay, Scott, Bernstein, Mary, and Marshall, Anna‐Maria, eds. 2009. Queer Mobilizations: LGBT Activists Confront the Law. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Bessette, Jean. 2013. An Archive of Anecdotes: Raising Lesbian Consciousness after the Daughters of Bilitis. Rhetoric Society Quarterly 43 (1): 22–45.Google Scholar
Best, Rachel Kahn, Lauren B. Edelman, Linda Hamilton Krieger, and Scott R. Eliason. 2011. Multiple Disadvantages: An Empirical Test of Intersectionality Theory in EEO Litigation. Law & Society Review 45 (4): 991–1025.Google Scholar
Blackwood, Evelyn. 2005. Transnational Sexualities in One Place: Indonesian Readings. Gender and Society 19 (2): 221–42.Google Scholar
Blackwood, Evelyn. 2007. Regulation of Sexuality in Indonesian Discourse: Normative Gender, Criminal Law and Shifting Strategies of Control. Culture, Health & Sexuality 9 (3): 293–307.Google Scholar
Blackwood, Evelyn. 2010. Falling into the Lesbi World: Desire and Difference in Indonesia. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press.Google Scholar
Bob, Clifford, ed. 2009. The International Struggle for New Human Rights. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Boellstorff, Tom. 2009. The Emergence of Political Homophobia in Indonesia: Masculinity and National Belonging. In Homophobias: Lust and Loathing Across Time and Space, ed. Murray, David A. B., 123–45. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Brown, Stephen. 1999. Democracy and Sexual Difference: The Lesbian and Gay Movement in Argentina. In The Global Emergence of Gay and Gay and Lesbian Politics: National Imprints of a Worldwide Movement, ed. Adam, Barry D., Duyvendak, Jan Willem, and Krouwel, André, 110–32. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Brown, Wendy. 2004. “The Most We Can Hope For …”: Human Rights and the Politics of Fatalism. South Atlantic Quarterly 103 (2/3): 451–63.Google Scholar
Bumiller, Kristin. 1988. The Civil Rights Society: The Social Construction of Victims. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Cheesman, Nick. 2015. Opposing the Rule of Law: How Myanmar's Courts Make Law and Order. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cho, Joo‐hyun. 2008. The Sexual Politics of Difference in Post‐IMF Korea: Challenges of the Lesbian Rights and Sex Workers' Movement. In East Asian Sexualities: Modernity, Gender and New Sexual Cultures, ed. Jackson, Stevi, Jieyu, Liu, and Juhyun, Woo, 141–61. New York: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Chua, Lynette J. 2014. Mobilizing Gay Singapore: Rights and Resistance in an Authoritarian State. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Chua, Lynette J. 2015. The Vernacular Mobilization of Human Rights in Myanmar's Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Movement. Law & Society Review 49 (2): 299–332.Google Scholar
Chua, Lynette J., and Gilbert, David. 2015. Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Minorities in Transition: LGBT Rights and Activism in Myanmar. Human Rights Quarterly 37 (1): 1–28.Google Scholar
Chua, Lynette J., and Gilbert, David. Forthcoming. State Violence, Human Rights Violations, and the Case of Apwint in Myanmar. In Gender, Violence and the State in Asia, ed. Barrow, Amy and Chia, Joy L. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Collins, Patricia Hill. 1990. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Correa, Sonia, Petchesky, Rosalind, and Parker, Richard. 2008. Sexuality, Health and Human Rights. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cowan, Jane K. 2006. Culture and Rights After Culture and Rights . American Anthropologist 108 (1): 9–24.Google Scholar
Crenshaw, Kimberle. 1989. Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum 139–67.Google Scholar
Crouch, Melissa. 2013. Asian Legal Transplants and Lessons on the Rule of Law: National Human Rights Commissions in Indonesia and Myanmar. Hague Journal of Rule of Law 5 (2): 146–77.Google Scholar
Currier, Ashley. 2009. Deferral of Legal Tactics: A Global LGBT Social Movement Organization's Perspective. In Queer Mobilizations: LGBT Activists Confront the Law, ed. Barclay, Scott, Bernstein, Mary, and Marshall, Anna‐Maria, 21–37. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Currier, Ashley. 2012. Out in Africa: LGBT Organizing in Namibia and South Africa. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Dale, John G. 2011. Free Burma: Transnational Legal Action and Corporate Accountability. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Dave, Naisargi N. 2011. Indian and Lesbian and What Came Next: Affect, Commensuration, and Queer Emergences. American Ethnologist 38 (4): 650–65.Google Scholar
Duarte, Ángela Ixkic Bastian. 2012. From the Margins of Latin American Feminism: Indigenous and Lesbian Feminisms. Signs 38 (1): 153–78.Google Scholar
Einwohner, Rachel, L., Hollander, Jocelyn A., and Olson, Toska. 2000. Engendering Social Movements: Cultural Images and Movement Dynamics. Gender and Society 14 (5): 679–99.Google Scholar
Engel, David. 2012. Vertical and Horizontal Perspectives on Rights Consciousness. Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 19 (2): 423–55.Google Scholar
Engel, David, and Munger, Frank W. 2003. Rights of Inclusion: Law and Identity in the Life Stories of Americans with Disabilities. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Englund, Harri. 2004. Towards a Critique of Rights Talk in New Democracies: The Case of Legal Aid in Malawi. Discourse Society 15 (5): 527–51.Google Scholar
Esterberg, Kristin G. 1994. From Accommodation to Liberation: A Social Movement Analysis of Lesbians in the Homophile Movement. Gender and Society 8 (3): 424–43.Google Scholar
Felstiner, William L. F., Abel, Richard L., and Sarat, Austin. 1981. The Emergence and Transformation of Disputes: Naming, Blaming, Claiming …. Law & Society Review 15 (3/4): 631–54.Google Scholar
Freeman, Jo. 1973. The Tyranny of Structurelessness. In Radical Feminism, ed. Koedt, Anne, Levine, Ellen, and Rapone, Anita, 285–99. New York: Quadrangle.Google Scholar
Gilbert, David. 2015. Familial Transphobia and Kinship of Opens in Myanmar. Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia 18: http://kyotoreview.org/issue-18/familial-transphobia-kinship-opens-myanmar/ (accessed March 30, 2009).Google Scholar
Gilbert, David. Forthcoming. Trans Belonging in Transitional Yangon. PhD diss., Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.Google Scholar
Gilmore, Stephanie, and Kaminski, Elizabeth. 2007. A Part and Apart: Lesbian and Straight Feminist Activists Negotiate Identity in a Second‐Wave Organization. Journal of the History of Sexuality 16 (1): 95–113.Google Scholar
Goodale, Mark. 2007. Introduction: Locating Rights, Envisioning Law Between the Global and the Local. In The Practice of Human Rights: Tracking Law Between the Global and the Local, ed. Goodale, Mark, and Merry, Sally E., 1–38. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Greenhouse, Carol J., Yngvesson, Barbara, and Engel, David. 1994. Law and Community in Three American Towns. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Harney, Diane. 1999. Lesbians on the Frontline: Battling AIDS, Gays, and the Myth of Community. In Power in the Blood: A Handbook on AIDS, Politics, and Communication, ed. Elmwood, William N., 167–80. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Harriden, Jessica. 2012. The Authority of Influence: Women and Power in Burmese History. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Press.Google Scholar
Holzmeyer, Cheryl. 2009. Human Rights in an Era of Neoliberal Globalization: The Alien Tort Claims Act and Grassroots Mobilization in Doe v. Unocal . Law & Society Review 43 (2): 271–304.Google Scholar
Human Rights Watch. 2014. World Report: Burma. http://www.hrw.org/world-report-%5Bscheduler-publish-yyyy%5D/world-report-2014-burma (accessed July 10, 2014).Google Scholar
Hynes, Patricia, Lamb, Michele, Short, Damien, and Waites, Matthew. 2011. Sociology and Human Rights: Confrontations, Evasions and New Engagements. In Sociology and Human Rights: New Engagements, ed. Hynes, Patricia, Lamb, Michele, Short, Damien, and Waites, Matthew, 1–22. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ikeya, Chie. 2005. The “Traditional” High Status of Women in Burma: A Historical Reconsideration. Journal of Burma Studies 10 (1): 51–81.Google Scholar
Ikeya, Chie. 2011. Refiguring Women, Colonialism, and Modernity in Burma. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press.Google Scholar
Jackson, Peter. 1998. Male Homosexuality and Transgenderism in the Thai Buddhist Tradition. In Queer Dharma: Voices of Gay Buddhists, ed. Leyland, Winston, 55–89. San Francisco, CA: Gay Sunshine Press.Google Scholar
Jenness, Valerie, and Broad, Kendal. 1994. Antiviolence Activism and the (In) Visibility of Gender in the Gay/Lesbian and Women's Movements. Gender and Society 8 (3): 402–23.Google Scholar
Jitsuya, Nelly, and Sevilla, Rebeca. 2003. All the Bridges That We Build: Lesbophobia and Sexism Within the Women's and Gay Movements in Peru. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Social Services 16 (1): 1–28.Google Scholar
Kean, Thomas, Aung, Toe Wai, and Hammond, Clare. 2015. U.S. Embassy Urges Caution Following Attacks in Taxis. Myanmar Times, May 22. http://www.mmtimes.com/index.php/national-news/14616-us-embassy-urges-caution-following-attacks-in-taxis.html (accessed June 12, 2015).Google Scholar
Kennedy, David 2002. The International Human Rights Movement: Part of the Problem? Harvard Human Rights Journal 15:101–25.Google Scholar
Kollman, Kelly, and Waites, Matthew. 2009. The Global Politics of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Human Rights: An Introduction. Contemporary Politics 15 (1): 1–17.Google Scholar
Leachman, Gwendolyn M. 2014. From Protest to Perry: How Litigation Shaped the LGBT Movement's Agenda. UC Davis Law Review 47 (5): 1667–1751.Google Scholar
Lyons, Lenore. 2004. A State of Ambivalence: The Feminist Movement in Singapore. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.Google Scholar
Ma Khin Mar Mar Kyi. 2014. Engendering Development in Myanmar: Women's Struggle for San, Si, Sa . In Debating Democratization in Myanmar, ed. Cheesman, Nick, Farrelly, Nicholas, and Wilson, Trevor, 305–30. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.Google Scholar
Marshall, Anna‐Maria. 2003. Injustice Frames, Legality, and the Everyday Construction of Sexual Harassment. Law & Social Inquiry 28 (3): 659–89.Google Scholar
Marshall, Anna‐Maria. 2005. Idle Rights: Employees' Rights Consciousness and the Construction of Sexual Harassment Policies. Law & Society Review 39 (1): 83–123.Google Scholar
Martin, Fran, Jackson, Peter, McLelland, Mark, and Yue, Audrey, eds. 2008. AsiaPacifiQueer: Rethinking Genders and Sexualities. Urbana‐Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Massoud, Mark Fathi. 2013. Law's Fragile State: Colonial, Authoritarian, and Humanitarian Legacies in Sudan. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Massoud, Mark Fathi. 2015. Work Rules: How International NGOs Build Law in War‐Torn Societies. Law & Society Review 49 (2): 333–64.Google Scholar
McAdam, Doug. 1992. Gender as a Mediator of the Activist Experience: The Case of Freedom Summer. American Journal of Sociology 97 (5): 1211–40.Google Scholar
McAdam, Doug. 1999. Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930–1950, 2nd ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
McCann, Michael. 2006. Law and Social Movements: Contemporary Perspectives. Annual Review of Law and Social Science 2 (1): 17–38.Google Scholar
McCann, Michael. 2012. Expanding the Horizons of Horizontal Inquiry into Rights Consciousness: An Engagement with David Engel. Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 19 (2): 467–88.Google Scholar
Merry, Sally E. 2006. Human Rights and Gender Violence: Translating International Law into Local Justice. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Merry, Sally E., Levitt, Peggy, Rosen, Mihaela Çerban, and Yoon, Diana H. 2010. Law from Below: Women's Human Rights and Social Movements in New York City. Law & Society Review 44 (1): 101–28.Google Scholar
Merry, Sally E., and Stern, Rachel E. 2005. The Female Inheritance Movement in Hong Kong: Theorizing the Local/Global Interface. Current Anthropology 46 (3): 387–409.Google Scholar
Mogrovejo, Norma. 1999. Sexual Preference, the Ugly Duckling of Feminist Demands: The Lesbian Movement in Mexico. In Female Desires: Same‐Sex Relations and Transgender Practices Across Cultures, ed. Blackwood, Evelyn and Wieringa, Saskia E., 308–35. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Morgan, Phoebe A. 1999. Risking Relationships: Understanding the Litigation Choices of Sexually Harassed Women. Law & Society Review 33 (1): 67–93.Google Scholar
Morris, Aldon D., and Staggenborg, Suzanne. 2004 . Leadership in Social Movements. In The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, ed. Snow, David A., Soule, Sarah A., and Kriesi, Hanspeter, 171–96. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
Mujica, Rosa Alayza, and Meza, Mercedes Crisostomo. 2009. Women's Rights in Peru: Insights from Two Organizations. Global Networks 9 (4): 485–506.Google Scholar
Mutua, Makau. 2009. Human Rights NGOs in East Africa: Defining the Challenges. In Human Rights NGOs in East Africa: Political and Normative Tensions, ed. Mutua, Makau, 13–36. Kampala: Fountain.Google Scholar
Ofreneo, Mira Alexis P., and Casal de Vela, Tesa. 2010. Spheres of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Struggles: A Comparative Feminist Analysis. Gender, Technology and Development 14 (2): 197–215.Google Scholar
Osanloo, Arzoo. 2009. The Politics of Women's Rights in Iran. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Park‐Kim, Soo Jin, Lee‐Kim, Soo Youn, and Kwon‐Lee, Eun Jung. 2007. The Lesbian Rights Movement and Feminism in South Korea. Journal of Lesbian Studies 10 (3): 161–90.Google Scholar
Peletz, Michael G. 2012. Gender, Sexuality, and the State in Southeast Asia. Journal of Asian Studies 71 (4): 895–917.Google Scholar
Quinn, Beth A. 2000. The Paradox of Complaining: Law, Humor and Harassment in the Everyday Work World. Law & Social Inquiry 25 (4): 151–85.Google Scholar
Rajaram, N., and Zararia, Vaishali. 2009. Translating Women's Human Rights in a Globalizing World: The Spiral Process in Reducing Gender Injustice in Baroda, India. Global Networks 9 (4): 462–84.Google Scholar
Richards, Patricia. 2005. The Politics of Gender, Human Rights, and Being Indigenous in Chile. Gender and Society 19 (2): 199–220.Google Scholar
Robnett, Belinda. 1996. African‐American Women in the Civil Rights Movement, 1945–1965: Gender, Leadership, and Micromobilization. American Journal of Sociology 101 (6): 1661–93.Google Scholar
Robnett, Belinda. 1997. How Long? How Long? African‐American Women in the Struggle for Civil Rights. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rosenblum, Darren. 2009. Queer Legal Victories: Intersectionality Revisited. In Queer Mobilizations: LGBT Activists Confront the Law, ed. Barclay, Scott, Bernstein, Mary, and Marshall, Anna‐Maria, 38–51. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Ross, Becki L., and Landstrom, Catharina. 1999. Normalization Versus Diversity: Lesbian Identity and Organizing in Sweden and Canada. In Women's Organizing and Public Policy in Canada and Sweden, ed. Briskin, Linda, and Eliasson, Mona, 310–46. Montreal: McGill‐Queen's University Press.Google Scholar
Santos, Boaventura de Sousa. 2015. If God Were a Human Rights Activist. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Sinnott, Megan. 2004. Toms and Dees: Transgender Identity and Female Same‐Sex Relationships in Thailand. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai'i Press.Google Scholar
Skidmore, Monique. 2004. Karaoke Fascism: Burma and the Politics of Fear. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Miriam. 1998. Social Movements and Equality Seeking: The Case of Gay Liberation in Canada. Canadian Journal of Political Science 31 (2): 285–309.Google Scholar
Speed, Shannon. 2009 . Gendered Intersections: Collective and Individual Rights in Indigenous Women's Experience. In Human Rights: An Anthropological Reader, ed. Goodale, Mark. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Stockdill, Brett C. 2003. Activism Against AIDS: At the Intersections of Sexuality, Race, Gender, and Class. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.Google Scholar
Subramaniam, Ajantha. 2009. Shorelines: Space and Rights in South India. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Swidler, Ann. 2013. African Affirmations: The Religion of Modernity and the Modernity of Religion. International Sociology 28 (6): 680–86.Google Scholar
Taylor, Verta. 1999. Gender and Social Movements: Gender Processes in Women's Self‐Help Movements. Gender and Society 13 (1): 8–33.Google Scholar
Taylor, Verta, and Rupp, Leila J. 1993. Women's Culture and Lesbian Feminist Activism: A Reconsideration of Cultural Feminism. Signs 19 (1): 32–61.Google Scholar
Taylor, Verta, and Nancy, Whittier. 1992. Collective Identity in Social Movement Communities: Lesbian Feminist Mobilization. In Frontiers in Social Movement Theory, ed. Morris, Aldon D. and Mueller, Carol McClurg, 104–30. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Than, Tharaphi. 2014. Women in Modern Burma. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Thayer, Millie. 1997. Identity, Revolution, and Democracy: Lesbian Movements in Central America. Social Problems 44 (3): 386–407.Google Scholar
Thoreson, Ryan R. 2014. Transnational LGBT Activism: Working for Sexual Rights Worldwide. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Van Dyke, Nella, and Cress, Ronda. 2006. Political Opportunities and Collective Identity in Ohio's Gay and Lesbian Movement, 1970 to 2000. Sociological Perspectives 49 (4): 503–26.Google Scholar
Waites, Matthew. 2009. Critique of “Sexual Orientation” and “Gender Identity” in Human Rights Discourse: Global Queer Politics beyond the Yogyakarta Principles. Contemporary Politics 15 (1): 137–56.Google Scholar
Wilson, Richard Ashby. 1997. Human Rights, Culture and Context: An Introduction. In Human Rights, Culture and Context: Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Wilson, Richard A., 1–27. London: Pluto Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, Richard Ashby. 2006. Afterword to “Anthropology and Human Rights in a New Key”: The Social Life of Human Rights. American Anthropologist 108 (1): 77–83.Google Scholar
Winnow, Jackie. 1992. Lesbians Evolving Health Care: Cancer and AIDS. Feminist Review 41:68–76.Google Scholar
Wolf, Deborah Goleman. 1979. The Lesbian Community. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Women's League of Burma. 2014. Same Impunity, Same Patterns. Chiang Mai, Thailand: Women's League of Burma.Google Scholar
Wong, Day. 2007. Beyond Identity Politics: The Making of an Oral History of Hong Kong Women Who Love Women. Journal of Lesbian Studies 10 (3): 29–48.Google Scholar
Wong, Yuenmei. 2012. Islam, Sexuality, and the Marginal Positioning of Pengkids and Their Girlfriends in Malaysia. Journal of Lesbian Studies 16 (4): 435–48.Google Scholar