On the Road to Equality? Gender, Sexuality and Race in Sociological Meta-Narratives on the Transformation of Intimacy
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Sociological grand narratives on the transformation of intimacy claim that accelerated processes of modernisation and detraditionalisation result in a diversification and democratisation of family forms and relationship patterns. While gay men and lesbians have been absent from most of such “post/modernisation theories,” they often get attributed a privileged position in the ones that include them in analysis. Lesbians and gay men are frequently represented as the pioneers of intimate and sexual democratisation. In this chapter, I argue that there are a variety of problems with this sort of analysis. The thesis of an enhanced egalitarianism at the heart of same-sex relationships rests on a reductive analysis of power that privileges gender at the expense of other social divisions. The exaggeration of the themes of choice and agency plays down the relevance of the power relationships around race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality and disability. Most post/modernisation theories either implicitly or explicitly construct “the West” as the motor of change. Racialised populations both within and outside the “West” are framed as “traditional” and backward. The discursive racialisation and spatialisation of the concept of modernity renders post/modernisation theories an inappropriate tool for the theorisation of post-colonial sexual and intimate cultures.