Sexuality Politics In Rural And Urban India: A Talk With Elisabeth Armstrong

Three active campaigns organizing around sexuality in India have gained international attention. First, the long-term campaigns against honor killing in rural North India have finally reached the Indian national stage. Second, the spontaneous and to many surprising upsurge of young women's and men's protest against the Delhi gang rape of a woman on December 16, 2012 continues to galvanize protests and legal changes. Third, the immediate reaction to the Supreme Court's decision to reinstate section 377 of the Indian penal code, a British-era law that makes gay sex illegal, that was overturned in a lower court in 2009. These three campaigns are all central to the Indian women's movement, yet do not organize the same constituencies of women and men. This talk will look at the linkages within the Indian women's movement as well as the sites for contention and disagreement that these campaigns reveal.
Dr. Elisabeth Armstrong is visiting faculty member at AUB's CASAR and an Associate Professor in the Program for the Study of Women and Gender at Smith College. Her first book, The Retreat from Organization: US Feminism Reconceptualized, was published in 2002 by SUNY Press. She just launched her book on the praxis of organizing in the AIDWA called Gender and Neoliberalism: The All India Democratic Women’s Association and Globalization Politics to be published by Routledge and Tulika Press.