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Challenges heteronormativity and gender normativity in development
Introduction
Institutions in the global development industry, which I define as including multilateral institutions, bilateral aid agencies, state agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), play a pivotal role in governing people's sexual and familial lives.1 (Presumably heterosexual) women, as 'mothers', are often made hypervisible in development frameworks; people who do not fulfil prescribed gender roles, who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or otherwise 'queer' (LGBTQ), and people whose families are non-normative by western development standards, often remain invisible.2 Both of these strategies work, often in paradoxical ways, to govern intimacy and to reinforce the 'heterosexualization' of nation-states and the global development industry (Alexander, 2005).
For example, in liberal development discourse, a working class lesbian without children in a country such as Venezuela may appear as 'unproductive' because she does not fulfil a culturally and institutionally prescribed role in national development: She does not contribute to the reproductive imperative of development because she is not a mother; she is not seen as linked to 'the family', which is mostly defined in heteronormative and Eurocentric terms; she is often typically seen as asexual and therefore as not-in-need-of-intervention. She thus remains outside the project of development, through a strategy of invisibilization. The Venezuelan state reproduces this narrative, even in its current 'radical populist' version of 'endogenous development'. President Hugo Chávez (2000-present) has called on Venezuela's mothers to 'birth the revolutionary nation'. Poor (presumably heterosexual) mothers have been the primary targets of his oil revenue-funded anti-poverty policies, which comprise an important part of his goal to shift away from the global neo-liberal development model. Lesbian mothers, if visible at all, are visible through a heterosexual, maternalist lens. To date, sexual rights activists have largely failed to have their demands included in Venezuela's new constitution, and while many originally thought that they could play a significant role in Venezuela's 'new Left', those who choose to play a role must do so from within a conservative, heteronormative, traditional Leftist political framework. In general, activists focusing on sexual rights and/or gender justice have become increasingly marginalized since the inception of the Bolivarian revolution in 2000, with the exception of those who directly follow Chávez's ideological, heteronormative line.3 Thus, the question of...