The Institute of Asia and Pacific Studies is pleased to host Ibtisam Ahmed who will present on 2 November on Challenging Section 377 in the Commonwealth of Nations: The Importance of Plurality and Context.
Abstract
Of the 72 countries in which same-sex intimacy is a criminal offence, 36 are in the Commonwealth of Nations. This shared illegality is due to the colonial legacy of the British Empire, which criminalised "unnatural carnal desires" under Section 377 in 1860. Since then, the entrenchment of colonial legal structures and the evolution of socially conservative social dynamics has led to the Commonwealth being the single most homophobic international bloc of countries in the world.
With the 2018 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting scheduled to be held in the UK, LGBTQ+ organisations worldwide are gearing up for a fight to have this outdated law overturned. But in a bid to overturn a colonial legacy that was aimed at standardising acceptable forms of desire, it is important to avoid recreating a top-down model of monolithic liberation. After providing a history of the law, this presentation will consider three important strands in the campaign to ensure it is intersectional and truly emancipatory:
- Avoiding neo-colonial dynamics by making sure that Western Commonwealth members provide solidarity but not saviourism
- Ensuring that terminology and concepts of sexuality are representative of the diversity present in the Global South, including a potential rejection of mainstream liberation techniques
- Reclaiming oppressed queer voices by focusing on appropriate groups that are not just representative of different countries but also of different intersections of class, religion, ethnicity, and other social factors relevant to each participating nation
Speaker biography
Ibtisam Ahmed is a final-year Doctoral Research Student at the School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham. His thesis interrogates the ways in which the British Raj was conceptualised as a political utopia, including in its policing of gender and sexuality. His article "Clothing the Other: The Use of Fashion in Pursuit of a British Imperial Utopia" has been published in the journal Sociology Study. The seminar he is presenting at IAPS is scheduled to be published as an article as part of a special edition of the Open Library of Humanities journal on utopianism.
He also has a forthcoming chapter in a book on global LGBTQ+ politics, with a focus on his home country of Bangladesh. Ibtisam has been actively involved in the global campaign to decriminalise Section 377, including being the Commonwealth Decriminalisation Campaign Coordinator for Nottinghamshire Pride, as well as being involved with various grassroots LGBTQ+ groups in Nottingham including the university's LGBT+ Network, QTIPOC Notts, and Out in Education.
All are welcome.