WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.700 with Dennis Altman speaking on the topic of what is sexual liberation in the age of AIDS. 2 00:00:08.740 --> 00:00:14.240 My name is Ian Purcell. I'm a long-time member of the AIDS Council of South Australia 3 00:00:14.240 --> 00:00:22.000 and the Gay and Lesbian Counselling Service of South Australia. I was very pleased to be asked 4 00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:28.720 by Greg Mackie to introduce Dennis Altman to you today and to chair this session. 5 00:00:30.260 --> 00:00:37.500 Dennis Altman is Professor of Politics at La Trobe University and the author of 10 books, 6 00:00:37.860 --> 00:00:54.480 most recently Global Sex, which looks at the political economy of globalisation 7 00:00:54.480 --> 00:00:58.800 and its impact on sexuality around the world. 8 00:01:00.160 --> 00:01:09.700 Now, since about 1985, Dennis has been writing extensively about AIDS and sexuality. 9 00:01:10.760 --> 00:01:18.580 He has served on a variety of national and international advisory committees on HIV-AIDS, 10 00:01:19.660 --> 00:01:28.400 including the Global AIDS Policy Coalition. And since 2001, he has been President of the 11 00:01:28.400 --> 00:01:29.500 AIDS Society. 12 00:01:30.000 --> 00:01:31.800 He has also been President of the AIDS Society of Asia and the Pacific. 13 00:01:33.260 --> 00:01:40.660 However, my memory goes back further than 1985, and I remember that Dennis also has the distinction 14 00:01:40.660 --> 00:01:45.540 of being one of Australia's first public homosexuals. 15 00:01:46.440 --> 00:01:52.760 Now, I'm sure he was relieved when our fickle media passed the baton on to others, 16 00:01:52.900 --> 00:01:59.980 but indeed he was one of the first. And this came about, this part of his career, 17 00:02:00.000 --> 00:02:07.740 was launched as a result of the publication of his first book, Homosexual Oppression and Liberation, 18 00:02:07.780 --> 00:02:19.100 in 1971. Still regarded as a defining text of gay politics, this book and its author inspired 19 00:02:19.100 --> 00:02:28.480 Australia's burgeoning gay liberation movement. Indeed, right here in Adelaide in August 1972, 20 00:02:28.960 --> 00:02:29.980 in a book called Gay Liberation, it was published in the book, Gay Liberation, by Dennis Altman. 21 00:02:30.000 --> 00:02:38.620 In another hall, not too far from this spot, Dennis and Lex Watson, who was co-president of 22 00:02:38.620 --> 00:02:45.060 the Campaign Against Moral Persecution, or CAMP, New South Wales at the time, 23 00:02:45.140 --> 00:02:52.360 addressed a meeting of some 350 people at Adelaide University, most of them students. 24 00:02:53.140 --> 00:02:59.560 Now, this address so inspired one young student, Jill Matthews, 25 00:03:00.000 --> 00:03:04.720 today herself a distinguished academic at the Australian National University, 26 00:03:05.080 --> 00:03:11.920 that she jumped onto a table and said, right, all those not interested in forming a gay liberation 27 00:03:11.920 --> 00:03:19.480 group in Adelaide, you can leave, which they did. But about 100 people stayed, and the meeting 28 00:03:19.480 --> 00:03:27.120 broke up into small groups for brainstorming and consciousness raising. Those were the days. 29 00:03:27.380 --> 00:03:29.820 And that's how Gay Liberation, 30 00:03:30.000 --> 00:03:38.620 in Adelaide, began. But to return to the present, Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of Fear of Falling, 31 00:03:39.280 --> 00:03:47.280 in writing about Dennis's book, Global Sex, said, both sex and ideas about sex, 32 00:03:47.720 --> 00:03:54.740 its pleasures and its dangers, are being globalised, along with everything else. 33 00:03:55.240 --> 00:03:59.480 And there could be no better guide to the new world of sex, 34 00:04:00.000 --> 00:04:05.480 than Dennis Altman. I think you'll agree. Would you please welcome Dennis Altman. 35 00:04:13.400 --> 00:04:19.080 That's a little scary to be reminded that I have a small part in the history of Adelaide. 36 00:04:21.340 --> 00:04:26.160 I basically want to ask a sort of central question, and the central question is how much 37 00:04:26.160 --> 00:04:28.800 of the project of sexual liberation, 38 00:04:30.000 --> 00:04:35.440 which was a phrase used fairly widely at the end of the 60s, beginning of the 70s, 39 00:04:35.460 --> 00:04:41.080 do we want to rescue? How relevant is it in a rather different world? 40 00:04:42.080 --> 00:04:48.580 And I begin by noting the sort of common script which most people, when they talk about 41 00:04:48.580 --> 00:04:54.820 sexual liberation, often with the sort of nostalgia that our chair began with, 42 00:04:55.000 --> 00:04:59.740 um, tell a particular story whereby, um, the, 43 00:05:00.840 --> 00:05:07.980 um, the large cultural, social, political upheavals of the 1960s, uh, led to assaults 44 00:05:07.980 --> 00:05:14.560 on the dominant ways of organising sexuality and gender, out of which came the women's 45 00:05:14.560 --> 00:05:19.980 and gay liberation, um, at which point the script starts diverging and there's a left 46 00:05:19.980 --> 00:05:24.220 and a right-wing version, and of course in the right-wing version, this led inevitably 47 00:05:24.220 --> 00:05:29.900 to an explosion of pornography, um, the collapse of the traditional family, uh, the growth 48 00:05:29.900 --> 00:05:37.780 of, uh, divorce, um, and to great misery, um, among both adolescent boys and girls 49 00:05:37.780 --> 00:05:44.320 as they struggle, uh, to make sense of new rules which run against what conservatives 50 00:05:44.320 --> 00:05:50.640 would say, um, as natural. And that particular right-wing script seemed to get a particular 51 00:05:50.640 --> 00:05:58.580 boost, um, when the AIDS epidemic began, uh, in the mid-80s, uh, or was identified and 52 00:05:58.580 --> 00:05:59.880 named in the mid-80s. 53 00:05:59.900 --> 00:06:07.520 And there was, of course, um, a particular version which saw AIDS as the retribution, 54 00:06:08.140 --> 00:06:17.980 uh, for sexual permissiveness, for flouting, uh, natural ways of behaving, um, and a re-emergence 55 00:06:17.980 --> 00:06:24.080 of a way of talking about sex which emphasised danger rather than pleasure. 56 00:06:24.900 --> 00:06:29.880 That was essentially, of course, um, a particular script within the Westworld. 57 00:06:29.900 --> 00:06:34.800 Uh, we had echoes of it in Australia, although not as strongly as in the United States. 58 00:06:35.520 --> 00:06:41.220 In the last decade or so, I think the whole set of new scripts have come into the picture, 59 00:06:41.360 --> 00:06:47.700 and we are increasingly aware that sexuality, um, has to be thought of on a global scale. 60 00:06:48.420 --> 00:06:55.460 Uh, again, HIV becomes a central part of this, and I'm struck by the, both the awareness 61 00:06:55.460 --> 00:06:58.980 of HIV that has been present at this festival. 62 00:06:59.120 --> 00:06:59.880 Uh, and I have to say, I think it's a very important part of the history of HIV. 63 00:06:59.900 --> 00:07:05.240 Um, and I have to say, by some of the most, um, to be polite, offbeat, and to be impolite, 64 00:07:05.260 --> 00:07:09.840 sheerly stupid comments that I've heard made the festival about HIV. 65 00:07:10.360 --> 00:07:16.060 Um, but we're also aware of things like the growth of sexual tourism, the, the vast proliferation 66 00:07:16.060 --> 00:07:23.860 of net-based pornography, uh, the use of people smuggling, often, uh, for sexual purposes, 67 00:07:24.300 --> 00:07:29.620 um, increasing emphasis on international human rights, uh, 68 00:07:29.620 --> 00:07:36.400 as a way of protecting, uh, those people whose gender or sexuality places them at risk. 69 00:07:37.160 --> 00:07:43.100 And so I want to try and make sense of those shifts, um, and as I say, to ask, and to come 70 00:07:43.100 --> 00:07:48.620 back at the end and ask, was the project of sexual liberation, um, which was part of that 71 00:07:48.620 --> 00:07:54.460 whole change in mores at the end of the 60s, beginning of the 70s, is it still relevant today? 72 00:07:55.540 --> 00:07:58.760 There's a wonderful quote, uh, from, 73 00:07:58.760 --> 00:08:03.880 from that BBC television program, some of you will remember, called This Life. 74 00:08:04.200 --> 00:08:08.400 And you may, those of you who remember it, uh, will remember there were two of the characters 75 00:08:08.400 --> 00:08:10.480 in it were Millie and Annie, and Anna. 76 00:08:10.860 --> 00:08:16.600 Um, and Millie at one point said, there should be somewhere safe and uncomplicated for women 77 00:08:16.600 --> 00:08:22.120 to go for uninvolved sex, to which Anna said, there is, it's the 1960s. 78 00:08:22.520 --> 00:08:28.620 Um, and that I suppose sums up that sort of nostalgic sense of what sexual liberation 79 00:08:28.620 --> 00:08:33.520 meant, uh, both to women and men, uh, in the 1960s. 80 00:08:33.760 --> 00:08:39.960 Now, of course, there's always a great danger, uh, as one gets older, of becoming too nostalgic 81 00:08:39.960 --> 00:08:42.940 for the glories of the past. 82 00:08:43.120 --> 00:08:49.460 And a generation of which, um, Ian and I are part, uh, I think risks becoming a new version 83 00:08:49.460 --> 00:08:55.020 of the RSL, constantly, um, sort of talking about the, the glories that, you know, the 84 00:08:55.020 --> 00:08:58.600 young are too, too inexperienced and raw to have had, to have experienced. 85 00:08:58.620 --> 00:09:05.260 Um, it's worth remembering that this particular view around sexuality is not confined to Western 86 00:09:05.260 --> 00:09:05.980 societies. 87 00:09:06.520 --> 00:09:13.720 Um, there's a lovely quote, uh, from an anthropologist, Carol Jenkins, uh, who has worked a lot in 88 00:09:13.720 --> 00:09:18.580 Papua New Guinea, who says, the myth of the golden age of sexual restraint circulates 89 00:09:18.580 --> 00:09:20.680 among Papua New Guinea's elders as elsewhere. 90 00:09:21.060 --> 00:09:26.700 And almost every man and woman in an opportunistic sample of over 400 people believe that sexual 91 00:09:26.700 --> 00:09:28.600 behaviour had increased in life. 92 00:09:30.280 --> 00:09:38.340 You could put few 93 00:09:49.500 --> 00:09:57.180 gone through two, at least, quite distinct eras. One in which there was something of a withdrawal, 94 00:09:57.360 --> 00:10:04.760 a retreat from the language of sexual liberation, and now the current generation, particularly, 95 00:10:04.760 --> 00:10:10.980 or the current era, particularly in Western countries, where in rather different ways, 96 00:10:11.420 --> 00:10:18.240 the restraints on sexuality seem again to be removed, although they're being removed in 97 00:10:18.240 --> 00:10:22.820 ways that are much more commercial, and much more tied to things like, 98 00:10:23.480 --> 00:10:30.080 how many naked bodies can you squeeze into one big brother household, than they are by this sort of 99 00:10:30.080 --> 00:10:35.860 political agenda of the movements of the late 60s and early 70s. 100 00:10:37.060 --> 00:10:43.640 I think to make sense of these changes, though, we have to talk about, as Ian suggested, 101 00:10:43.940 --> 00:10:48.080 and as I've tried to do in Global Sex, we have to talk about the reality that we, 102 00:10:48.240 --> 00:10:56.140 live in a world of huge and increasing gaps between the minority of people, of whom we are part, 103 00:10:56.400 --> 00:11:04.080 who live in a rich, basically safe and stable world, and the majority of people who do not. 104 00:11:04.660 --> 00:11:12.040 One of the things, looking back, that was most naive about the liberationist period of the late 105 00:11:12.040 --> 00:11:20.880 60s, early 70s, was the inability to connect sexuality and economics. To some extent, of course, 106 00:11:20.880 --> 00:11:26.020 there was discussion about this, particularly in the women's movement, and often revolved around 107 00:11:26.020 --> 00:11:32.500 questions of who did the housework. It clearly revolved around questions of equal pay for women, 108 00:11:32.580 --> 00:11:41.640 of economic privileging of men, etc. It didn't, on the whole, take into account that once one 109 00:11:41.640 --> 00:11:42.020 moved from the middle of the world to the middle of the world, there was a lot of discussion about 110 00:11:42.020 --> 00:11:50.000 the first world. These sorts of inequalities and gaps were much larger, and gender and sexuality 111 00:11:50.000 --> 00:11:57.420 were part of, but only part of them. I'd repeat the point I made yesterday in the panel on gender. 112 00:11:57.660 --> 00:12:03.900 There is still, I think, a really regrettable attempt to think of sex and gender as something 113 00:12:03.900 --> 00:12:10.240 you stick over in a separate place. We let the serious people go and talk about economics, 114 00:12:10.600 --> 00:12:11.900 globalization, politics. 115 00:12:12.020 --> 00:12:16.320 And then, you know, we have these slightly fringe events where we talk about sex and gender. 116 00:12:16.740 --> 00:12:23.120 And it seems to me that if there is an agenda now, it ought to be to bring those two together. 117 00:12:25.180 --> 00:12:31.000 I was struck by Ian's mention of Jill Matthews in his introduction. Interestingly, 118 00:12:31.860 --> 00:12:36.280 I have about four names written in my notes for today whom I was going to quote, 119 00:12:36.360 --> 00:12:41.280 and one of them is, in fact, Jill Matthews, who some time ago wrote an article in which 120 00:12:41.280 --> 00:12:42.000 she argued that sex and gender were two different things. And I think that's a very good point. 121 00:12:42.000 --> 00:12:47.380 that talking about sex involved talking about pleasure, fear, and obligation. 122 00:12:48.280 --> 00:12:56.160 And the questions of fear and obligation, which were not particularly strong in the 123 00:12:57.420 --> 00:13:02.460 countercultural days of sexual liberation, came, of course, to the fore very much 124 00:13:02.460 --> 00:13:11.420 with the onset of HIV-AIDS in the early 1980s. And as I've just mentioned, there was, I think, 125 00:13:11.420 --> 00:13:22.560 a major shift in the way in which cultures imagined sexuality once it became clear that AIDS was 126 00:13:22.560 --> 00:13:30.680 essentially a sexually transmissible disease, which created, in turn, a whole set of responses. 127 00:13:32.180 --> 00:13:39.720 To quote from Susan Sontag, who's talking, of course, about and out of her American experience, 128 00:13:39.720 --> 00:13:47.400 in the US, sexual behaviour pre-1981 now seems for the middle class part of a lost age of innocence, 129 00:13:48.420 --> 00:13:53.340 innocence in the guise of licentiousness. After two decades of sexual speculation, 130 00:13:53.420 --> 00:13:59.420 of sexual inflation, we are in the early stages of a sexual depression. Looking back on the sexual 131 00:13:59.420 --> 00:14:05.860 culture of the 1970s has been compared to looking back on the jazz age from the wrong side of the 132 00:14:05.860 --> 00:14:09.700 1929 crash. Now, in one sense, this is a very important point, but it's also a very important 133 00:14:09.720 --> 00:14:14.420 point, because this is a very odd language to come from a woman who kept on telling us we shouldn't 134 00:14:14.420 --> 00:14:20.280 use metaphor in talking about illness. I can't resist at least, you know, one cheap jive against 135 00:14:20.280 --> 00:14:26.200 Susan Sontag. Every festival should have it. But there is a sense in which, of course, she was 136 00:14:26.200 --> 00:14:36.880 pointing to a cultural shift that the AIDS epidemic seemed to be suggesting. And across the board, 137 00:14:36.960 --> 00:14:39.700 including within gay communities, which in Western Australia, in the early 1980s, was a very, very, 138 00:14:39.700 --> 00:14:44.920 few Western countries were both the most affected and the fastest to respond and to 139 00:14:44.920 --> 00:14:52.820 mobilise. There were different responses to the argument that sexual permissiveness, 140 00:14:53.060 --> 00:14:58.220 the sexual revolution, licentiousness, to use the very loaded term that Sontag has used, 141 00:14:58.660 --> 00:15:08.320 had in fact led to a rapid spread of HIV and therefore was putting large numbers of people 142 00:15:08.320 --> 00:15:09.260 at risk. 143 00:15:11.260 --> 00:15:16.340 it's interesting if we look back that in fact in those countries of which we were one 144 00:15:16.340 --> 00:15:22.900 where people were less inclined to take a moralistic position less inclined to say the 145 00:15:22.900 --> 00:15:29.560 problem is there's too much sex rather than to try and find ways to make sex safe 146 00:15:30.340 --> 00:15:38.620 in countries like Australia as I say we were much more successful in slowing HIV AIDS than in a 147 00:15:38.620 --> 00:15:45.240 country like the United States where there was a much stronger moralistic agenda what stands out 148 00:15:45.240 --> 00:15:53.280 if you compare our two countries in the response to HIV is that a language of moralism and repression 149 00:15:53.280 --> 00:16:00.560 is actually a very bad public health so that for example closing gay bath houses which was the 150 00:16:00.560 --> 00:16:06.940 response in a number of American cities did not at all slow down the rate of HIV transmission 151 00:16:06.940 --> 00:16:08.420 quite possibly 152 00:16:08.420 --> 00:16:08.600 indeed 153 00:16:08.620 --> 00:16:14.040 increased it because it made it harder to access people and provide information, just as the 154 00:16:14.040 --> 00:16:19.920 refusal of the United States to provide universal needle exchanges, which was one of the most 155 00:16:19.920 --> 00:16:26.000 successful public policy initiatives in Australia, also ensured that the US has had a major 156 00:16:27.840 --> 00:16:34.940 needle-induced epidemic, which we in Australia have largely escaped. And I want to come back to 157 00:16:34.940 --> 00:16:41.500 that theme at the end, but I want to sort of just note before I do that I think we've now moved into 158 00:16:41.500 --> 00:16:47.540 what I'd say is a third era, namely a sense in which sexuality is now yet again being talked about 159 00:16:49.040 --> 00:16:55.780 in terms that moral conservatives would probably link to permissiveness, licentiousness, 160 00:16:55.840 --> 00:17:03.800 promiscuity, but I think in a rather different way. The sexual politics or sexual, the talk about 161 00:17:03.800 --> 00:17:04.280 sexuality, 162 00:17:04.940 --> 00:17:12.600 since the 1990s, is a talk which has a huge emphasis on consumption and pleasure and very 163 00:17:12.600 --> 00:17:18.220 little emphasis on politics. A shorthand way of thinking about this, I think, is to compare 164 00:17:18.220 --> 00:17:24.360 the French author, Catherine Millet, who was out here recently for the Sydney Writers Festival and 165 00:17:24.360 --> 00:17:29.740 who's famous for having written a not very interesting or good book, and I'm now of course 166 00:17:29.740 --> 00:17:34.640 being judgmental and moralistic, but anyway, about her sexual escapades with vast numbers 167 00:17:34.640 --> 00:17:34.920 of women. And I think it's a very important thing to think about. And I think it's a very important 168 00:17:34.920 --> 00:17:35.100 thing to think about. And I think it's a very important thing to think about. And I think it's a very 169 00:17:35.100 --> 00:17:39.920 a multiple partners in the Bois de Boulogne, compare Catherine Millet with Kate Millet 170 00:17:41.340 --> 00:17:47.800 30 years earlier, and there is a huge difference, not just in what they're saying, but in the fact 171 00:17:47.800 --> 00:17:56.360 that the current discussion of sexual pleasure is denuded of a political dimension. I think the 172 00:17:56.360 --> 00:18:02.680 same comments could be made if you think about a program like Sex in the City, which in one level 173 00:18:02.680 --> 00:18:04.900 is, of course, making a very strong political point, but it's a very strong political point, and 174 00:18:04.920 --> 00:18:09.140 about the fact that women can have sexual pleasure 175 00:18:09.140 --> 00:18:13.720 in ways that are not encumbered by traditional assumptions, 176 00:18:13.980 --> 00:18:17.900 but on the other hand never takes it beyond that assertion 177 00:18:17.900 --> 00:18:20.260 to any sort of political analysis. 178 00:18:22.300 --> 00:18:24.600 Well, having said that, though, as a sort of background, 179 00:18:24.820 --> 00:18:27.620 what I really want to move on to is to ask the question 180 00:18:27.620 --> 00:18:30.740 about how relevant is any of this discussion 181 00:18:31.500 --> 00:18:34.420 in what I like to call the majority world. 182 00:18:34.920 --> 00:18:36.820 And I take that phrase quite intentionally 183 00:18:36.820 --> 00:18:38.700 from the New Internationalist magazine, 184 00:18:39.860 --> 00:18:44.040 which insists on reminding us that the majority of the world is poor, 185 00:18:44.940 --> 00:18:46.900 is marked by huge inequalities 186 00:18:46.900 --> 00:18:50.880 and is marked by lack of basic human rights, 187 00:18:51.840 --> 00:18:55.140 almost always basic lack of human rights 188 00:18:55.140 --> 00:19:00.620 that rest upon very marked and often very brutal gender inequality. 189 00:19:01.380 --> 00:19:03.480 And I want to make the assertion 190 00:19:03.480 --> 00:19:04.900 that for most of us, 191 00:19:04.900 --> 00:19:06.400 for most women in the world particularly, 192 00:19:07.360 --> 00:19:09.840 sexual liberation may well be the right to say no. 193 00:19:11.200 --> 00:19:14.340 And therefore one of the big shifts that I think is needed, 194 00:19:14.460 --> 00:19:17.000 if we're going to talk about sexual liberation as relevant, 195 00:19:18.340 --> 00:19:22.780 is to recognise that without equality 196 00:19:24.520 --> 00:19:30.880 there can be no sharing of sexual pleasure. 197 00:19:31.100 --> 00:19:34.040 That in a world in which most people 198 00:19:34.040 --> 00:19:34.880 have very good sexual pleasure, 199 00:19:34.880 --> 00:19:35.640 there are very limited options. 200 00:19:37.620 --> 00:19:42.040 To talk about pleasure, liberation, freedom 201 00:19:42.040 --> 00:19:44.160 has a very different meaning 202 00:19:44.160 --> 00:19:47.360 to the way in which we would use those words 203 00:19:47.360 --> 00:19:49.440 in a country like Australia. 204 00:19:50.520 --> 00:19:53.400 And this of course is particularly true in a world 205 00:19:53.400 --> 00:19:56.980 in which the forces of neoliberal economics 206 00:19:56.980 --> 00:20:01.600 are turning more and more parts of life into commodities 207 00:20:01.600 --> 00:20:04.740 and are making us more and more 208 00:20:04.880 --> 00:20:09.740 individual purchasers and individual products. 209 00:20:10.100 --> 00:20:13.020 So that for large numbers of people in the world, 210 00:20:13.220 --> 00:20:17.400 their means of survival essentially comes about 211 00:20:17.400 --> 00:20:19.400 through selling themselves. 212 00:20:20.160 --> 00:20:21.840 Now this is of course not new. 213 00:20:22.400 --> 00:20:24.180 Those of you who, like me, 214 00:20:24.200 --> 00:20:26.080 rather like British costume dramas 215 00:20:26.080 --> 00:20:29.740 based on extremely long 19th century British novels, 216 00:20:30.600 --> 00:20:32.920 we've just had one and it's gone out of my head, 217 00:20:33.020 --> 00:20:34.780 but Daniel Deronda, 218 00:20:36.300 --> 00:20:38.440 the last month or so on the ABC, 219 00:20:38.780 --> 00:20:41.560 will know that of course for very many women 220 00:20:42.420 --> 00:20:44.280 in 19th century Europe, 221 00:20:46.740 --> 00:20:49.380 effectively prostitution was your only option. 222 00:20:49.600 --> 00:20:50.700 If you were lucky, 223 00:20:50.840 --> 00:20:52.640 prostitution meant you got married 224 00:20:52.640 --> 00:20:55.120 and you married well and you became respectable. 225 00:20:55.120 --> 00:20:56.040 And if you were unlucky, 226 00:20:56.260 --> 00:20:58.280 prostitution meant you were out on the streets 227 00:20:58.280 --> 00:20:59.060 turning tricks. 228 00:20:59.660 --> 00:21:01.080 At one level though, 229 00:21:01.200 --> 00:21:02.540 and I'm saying this quite deliberately, 230 00:21:02.940 --> 00:21:04.400 the choices available, 231 00:21:04.400 --> 00:21:05.160 available for women, 232 00:21:06.000 --> 00:21:08.500 were often not that different 233 00:21:08.500 --> 00:21:10.320 to the choices which today 234 00:21:10.320 --> 00:21:12.920 face very large numbers 235 00:21:12.920 --> 00:21:15.260 of both women and young men 236 00:21:15.260 --> 00:21:17.600 in many parts of the world 237 00:21:17.600 --> 00:21:21.300 where their only real means of survival 238 00:21:22.360 --> 00:21:24.460 is to sell themselves, 239 00:21:25.580 --> 00:21:28.260 where the sort of moralistic language 240 00:21:28.260 --> 00:21:29.860 around prostitution 241 00:21:29.860 --> 00:21:31.920 becomes largely irrelevant 242 00:21:31.920 --> 00:21:33.840 because we're talking about 243 00:21:34.400 --> 00:21:38.060 basic ways in which people have to survive. 244 00:21:39.620 --> 00:21:41.200 And of course talking about that 245 00:21:41.200 --> 00:21:44.880 is to immediately get us into talking about 246 00:21:44.880 --> 00:21:47.560 all the enormously complicated issues 247 00:21:47.560 --> 00:21:50.380 that the AIDS epidemic throws up. 248 00:21:50.680 --> 00:21:52.180 I don't want to repeat 249 00:21:52.180 --> 00:21:54.520 what I said a couple of days ago 250 00:21:54.520 --> 00:21:56.540 in the discussion on plague, 251 00:21:57.260 --> 00:21:58.980 except just to note that we live 252 00:21:58.980 --> 00:22:01.920 in a world where there's this extraordinary paradox. 253 00:22:02.400 --> 00:22:04.080 We know how to stop, 254 00:22:04.400 --> 00:22:05.460 the spread of HIV. 255 00:22:05.720 --> 00:22:07.040 It's actually not very difficult. 256 00:22:08.120 --> 00:22:10.300 We know how HIV is transmitted. 257 00:22:10.620 --> 00:22:12.860 There are reasonably effective ways 258 00:22:12.860 --> 00:22:14.280 of stopping that transmission. 259 00:22:14.880 --> 00:22:16.660 In most parts of the world, 260 00:22:16.720 --> 00:22:18.520 people do not have access 261 00:22:18.520 --> 00:22:19.860 to either the knowledge 262 00:22:19.860 --> 00:22:22.200 or the very basic technology, 263 00:22:23.220 --> 00:22:25.060 namely condoms and clean needles, 264 00:22:25.380 --> 00:22:26.900 that would make that possible. 265 00:22:27.880 --> 00:22:30.060 What I do want to talk about today 266 00:22:30.060 --> 00:22:32.380 is the other side of that. 267 00:22:32.800 --> 00:22:34.240 And that is the way, 268 00:22:34.400 --> 00:22:39.040 in which one of the implications 269 00:22:39.040 --> 00:22:40.920 of the epidemic 270 00:22:40.920 --> 00:22:44.140 has been to open up 271 00:22:44.140 --> 00:22:47.220 a global discussion on sexuality 272 00:22:48.120 --> 00:22:52.060 and to force large numbers of countries 273 00:22:52.060 --> 00:22:54.400 and societies and cultures 274 00:22:54.400 --> 00:22:57.620 where the taboos against talking about sexuality 275 00:22:57.620 --> 00:22:58.740 were very strong 276 00:22:58.740 --> 00:23:01.780 to start coming to terms with them. 277 00:23:02.120 --> 00:23:03.560 And as I say, 278 00:23:03.580 --> 00:23:04.100 I think the, 279 00:23:04.100 --> 00:23:04.380 I think the, 280 00:23:04.380 --> 00:23:05.760 the tragic paradox 281 00:23:05.760 --> 00:23:07.520 is that whereas we know 282 00:23:07.520 --> 00:23:10.240 quite easily what can be done, 283 00:23:11.000 --> 00:23:13.300 in most parts of the world, 284 00:23:13.360 --> 00:23:15.820 the traditional invocations, 285 00:23:16.560 --> 00:23:17.600 whether it's in the name of religion 286 00:23:17.600 --> 00:23:18.620 or culture 287 00:23:18.620 --> 00:23:20.320 or the Asian way 288 00:23:20.320 --> 00:23:21.500 or the African way 289 00:23:21.500 --> 00:23:23.440 or our family, 290 00:23:23.640 --> 00:23:25.680 makes it extremely difficult. 291 00:23:26.040 --> 00:23:27.600 So that to talk today 292 00:23:27.600 --> 00:23:28.760 of sexual liberation 293 00:23:28.760 --> 00:23:30.320 in most parts of the world 294 00:23:30.320 --> 00:23:32.380 means effectively to argue for things 295 00:23:32.380 --> 00:23:34.360 that we have tended to now take for granted. 296 00:23:34.380 --> 00:23:39.280 The possibility of talking about sexuality 297 00:23:39.280 --> 00:23:41.240 openly in schools. 298 00:23:41.820 --> 00:23:46.260 The recognition that homosexuality exists. 299 00:23:47.660 --> 00:23:51.620 The need to accept some form of sexual diversity. 300 00:23:52.980 --> 00:23:54.640 And I think in the world we live in today, 301 00:23:55.520 --> 00:23:57.080 it's true and it's obvious 302 00:23:57.080 --> 00:23:59.420 that there is an increasing polarisation 303 00:23:59.420 --> 00:24:03.380 around precisely these sorts of questions. 304 00:24:03.380 --> 00:24:05.200 It's a polarisation 305 00:24:05.200 --> 00:24:06.820 that's often apparent 306 00:24:06.820 --> 00:24:09.960 in the realm of international relations 307 00:24:09.960 --> 00:24:12.620 where some of the bitterest debates 308 00:24:12.620 --> 00:24:15.600 are around measures 309 00:24:15.600 --> 00:24:17.520 to make available 310 00:24:17.520 --> 00:24:21.000 to the majority of the world's people 311 00:24:21.000 --> 00:24:22.780 knowledge, information 312 00:24:23.340 --> 00:24:24.900 and means 313 00:24:25.500 --> 00:24:29.180 of asserting some form 314 00:24:29.180 --> 00:24:30.700 of sexual autonomy. 315 00:24:31.780 --> 00:24:33.260 Whether we're talking about 316 00:24:33.380 --> 00:24:35.880 the right of an 11-year-old girl 317 00:24:35.880 --> 00:24:38.060 not to be married off by her father. 318 00:24:38.440 --> 00:24:39.960 Whether we're talking about 319 00:24:39.960 --> 00:24:40.960 the right of children 320 00:24:40.960 --> 00:24:43.540 not to be trafficked across borders 321 00:24:43.540 --> 00:24:46.100 and employed in the sex industry. 322 00:24:46.520 --> 00:24:48.000 Whether we're talking about 323 00:24:48.000 --> 00:24:49.680 the rights of homosexual men 324 00:24:49.680 --> 00:24:51.820 not to be beaten to death 325 00:24:51.820 --> 00:24:54.840 because they're engaging in homosexual sex, 326 00:24:54.980 --> 00:24:55.700 which literally happens 327 00:24:55.700 --> 00:24:57.080 in some parts of the world. 328 00:24:57.500 --> 00:24:59.060 Whether we're talking about 329 00:24:59.060 --> 00:25:02.900 the possibility of public information campaigns 330 00:25:02.900 --> 00:25:03.360 and campaigns, 331 00:25:03.380 --> 00:25:05.200 about the use of condoms, 332 00:25:05.840 --> 00:25:08.120 against which almost every organised religion 333 00:25:08.120 --> 00:25:10.480 in the world has struggled 334 00:25:10.480 --> 00:25:12.460 very hard to prevent. 335 00:25:13.400 --> 00:25:14.420 In all these cases, 336 00:25:14.440 --> 00:25:15.940 we're talking about issues 337 00:25:15.940 --> 00:25:17.580 that are fundamental 338 00:25:17.580 --> 00:25:19.580 to sexuality 339 00:25:19.580 --> 00:25:22.600 and fundamental to a politicisation 340 00:25:22.600 --> 00:25:23.760 of sexuality. 341 00:25:25.400 --> 00:25:26.480 And it strikes me 342 00:25:26.480 --> 00:25:28.340 that what we've seen 343 00:25:28.340 --> 00:25:30.640 in the last 30 years 344 00:25:30.640 --> 00:25:31.780 has been 345 00:25:33.380 --> 00:25:35.920 the emergence in most parts 346 00:25:35.920 --> 00:25:37.200 of the majority world 347 00:25:38.260 --> 00:25:39.560 and in, of course, 348 00:25:39.580 --> 00:25:42.260 particular and culturally specific ways 349 00:25:42.260 --> 00:25:44.500 of the sorts of debates 350 00:25:44.500 --> 00:25:48.220 that we had 30 years ago 351 00:25:48.220 --> 00:25:49.320 in Western countries 352 00:25:49.320 --> 00:25:52.780 summed up in that wonderful feminist slogan, 353 00:25:53.140 --> 00:25:54.760 the personal is political. 354 00:25:56.160 --> 00:25:57.900 And some of the strongest resistance 355 00:25:57.900 --> 00:26:00.140 to social change 356 00:26:01.340 --> 00:26:02.520 is, of course, 357 00:26:02.520 --> 00:26:03.360 the fact that we're not 358 00:26:03.360 --> 00:26:06.700 in areas to do with sexuality. 359 00:26:07.980 --> 00:26:08.380 And indeed, 360 00:26:09.140 --> 00:26:11.340 for very many repressive governments, 361 00:26:12.580 --> 00:26:15.080 maintaining the traditional restrictions, 362 00:26:16.300 --> 00:26:18.420 laws, restraints 363 00:26:18.420 --> 00:26:20.840 around sexual mores 364 00:26:20.840 --> 00:26:23.100 becomes central 365 00:26:23.100 --> 00:26:24.760 both to their rhetoric 366 00:26:24.760 --> 00:26:26.280 and to their behaviour. 367 00:26:27.460 --> 00:26:28.180 And what I've found 368 00:26:28.180 --> 00:26:29.480 extraordinarily interesting 369 00:26:29.480 --> 00:26:31.600 over the last decade or so 370 00:26:31.600 --> 00:26:33.140 as I've been very involved 371 00:26:33.140 --> 00:26:33.340 in the work of the National Council on Sexuality, 372 00:26:33.340 --> 00:26:33.520 and I've been working 373 00:26:33.520 --> 00:26:35.360 with AIDS organisations, 374 00:26:36.100 --> 00:26:38.340 particularly in Southeast Asia, 375 00:26:38.460 --> 00:26:40.020 but to some extent more globally, 376 00:26:40.300 --> 00:26:41.860 is the way in which 377 00:26:42.520 --> 00:26:44.380 people across the world 378 00:26:44.380 --> 00:26:46.040 are asserting 379 00:26:48.080 --> 00:26:50.020 concepts of sexual autonomy 380 00:26:50.020 --> 00:26:51.380 and of sexual rights 381 00:26:52.180 --> 00:26:54.120 in ways that grow out 382 00:26:54.120 --> 00:26:55.300 of their own experiences. 383 00:26:55.440 --> 00:26:56.720 And it's far too easy to say, 384 00:26:56.760 --> 00:26:58.760 you know, they've borrowed this from the West. 385 00:26:59.280 --> 00:27:00.740 Often we get deceived 386 00:27:00.740 --> 00:27:02.380 because the language, the rhetoric, 387 00:27:02.380 --> 00:27:03.640 the symbols 388 00:27:04.260 --> 00:27:06.280 appear to be Western, 389 00:27:06.440 --> 00:27:07.460 particularly, of course, American. 390 00:27:08.300 --> 00:27:09.540 So that, for example, 391 00:27:09.700 --> 00:27:10.560 two weeks ago, 392 00:27:10.600 --> 00:27:12.140 there were gay pride parades 393 00:27:12.140 --> 00:27:14.640 in places as far apart 394 00:27:14.640 --> 00:27:16.360 as Johannesburg and Zagreb, 395 00:27:17.140 --> 00:27:19.240 which seemed to just be imitating 396 00:27:19.240 --> 00:27:20.840 gay pride parades 397 00:27:20.840 --> 00:27:22.560 which began in the United States 398 00:27:22.560 --> 00:27:23.520 to commemorate 399 00:27:24.500 --> 00:27:26.780 the origins of the gay liberation movement 400 00:27:26.780 --> 00:27:27.500 in New York. 401 00:27:28.260 --> 00:27:30.020