Workshop: Diversity and Transformation Sexual orientation Socialisation in the academy as microcosm of society: rights, choice and identity Robert J. Balfour

Today’s discussion … This talk moves from: the broad conceptions of community, and self in terms of community, democracy, citizenship, rights, and with reference to the university context… the extent to which rights provide for choices in terms of freedom of identity (of which one component is sexuality).

Mapping: what about us/ me/ them? What is a minority? To which minority community do I belong? To which majority community do I belong? Religion, gender, race, class. Which minorities are powerful? Which are less powerful? Concepts for diversity as part of transformation: Law and Human Rights: citizen and alien; Post-Colonialism and Feminism: subject- position and sub-altern. Sociology: class and community.

Community is an imaginative act... Benedict Anderson (2006) described what it means to create, and be part of, an imagined community: regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. (2006, 6-7). Community involves imagining and action: Belonging Excluding Protecting

How democracies have (not) worked as failures of imagination...! Democracy has been variously defined throughout history as either the benevolent rule of a few, to popular or mob rule. Democracies have seldom embraced the notion of absolute equality for all persons. Common examples of this include: The exclusion of sectors (like slave populations) from rights to self ownership, marriage, association; Exclusions of classes of the population from suffrage on the basis of property or taxation; Exclusions have also been extended to persons of colour in South Africa prior to 1994; Further exclusions have sometimes applied in terms of gender, for example in 19 th Century Imperial England.

Democracy is contested.... Contestation derives from struggles for power, between privileged and less privileged groups. Three arguments: First, the term ‘democracy’ suffers from vagueness and overexposure. Too rarely defined or qualified, ‘democracy’ is relentlessly deployed in a variety of contexts, cultures, and states. At times, it seems as if it can be made to fit any argument or outcome including arguments to exclude sectors of a population. (Robson 2007, 409).

Democracy and the sexual.... Second, the term ‘sexual’ is similarly problematical. There exist important divergences regarding what constitutes ‘the sexual’ or ‘sexual behaviour.’ Further, even if we could agree on boundaries so that all situations could be confidently labelled either ‘sexual’ or ‘not sexual,’ doubt would remain. Is sexuality a desirable freedom vital to a democracy? (Robson 2007, 409).

And finally, “Sexuality and State...” Lastly, the relationship between sexuality and democracy may seem more obscure than vital. Yet the democratic state, like other state forms, seeks to associate itself with certain forms of sexual arrangements (marriage, family and values like loyalty, fidelity, community). This association implicates specific organs of the state, including the judiciary, in struggles to assess on what terms to exercise control ( Robson 2007).

The Constitution, rights… and dignity? In Africa, researchers Bratton, Mattes, and Gyimah- Boadi found that South Africans were much more likely than other nationalities to be able to offer multiple definitions of democracy… The purpose of most democracies is to protect the rights of citizens. Hannah Arendt defines citizenship as the right of citizens to rights. People judge the quality of a democracy in terms of its ability to secure the basic economic and social rights for a minimally decent human life.

The Constitution and freedom... The attempt to define ‘sexual freedom’ is as vexing as characterizing ‘democracy.’ Example 1 : The requirement of ‘two’ raises several important concerns, based as it is on the dyad-model of ‘coupling’ that extends into marriage and anxieties around polygamy. Perhaps even less understandable is distress regarding solitary sexual activities, as exhibited by recent cases in the United States upholding criminal prohibitions of the distribution of ‘sex toys,’ except by medical prescription (Robson 2007, 415).

The Constitution and freedom... Example 2: The neo-liberal extension of protection for sexual acts only to adults is also disquieting, although we have long been accustomed to laws based on a capacity to contract. These laws impose a bright-line rule based upon a person’s age; the ability to vote is a good example. Yet if we compare the voting age of 18 in South Africa and the United States to the age of sexual consent in those nations, there is dissonance.

Contrariness and Constitutions.... Thus, in South Africa: despite the identification of the disparity in age of consent laws for heterosexual and homosexual acts as inconsistent with the then-interim Constitution (version 1994)….. ….the criminal law continues to prohibit same- gender acts with persons under the age of 19, while prohibiting opposite-gender acts only with persons under the age of 16.

Knowing what we do....(not) In South Africa presently: the anomalous situation exists that one could be criminally punished for having sexual relations with a same- sex partner aged 18… …although one could enter into a lawful marriage with her or him. The formulation of sexual freedom exposes the difficulties of demarcating it. In SA the State is ‘passive’. It is not charged with actively promoting sexual freedom, except when bounded by the concept of harm (Robson 2007, 417).

Demarcating the norm: sex & love... Prostitution - a test case on sex: The judgment of Constitutional Court Judges O’Regan and Sachs: central to the character of prostitution is that it is indiscriminate and loveless. The prostitute is not nurturing relationships or taking life-affirming decisions about birth, marriage or family. The ideal of a minority protection clause depends for its credibility on society defining what is acceptable for a minority to exist; thus normal society defines what is normal in its sphere of allowable difference.

My Constitution…for my values?...the heterosexual definition of marriage is the lifelong union between a man and a woman. …the definition is confused with the belief that marriage is a religious (theocratic) institution (rather than a secular, civil arrangement). In SA it is defined constitutionally as a secular matter. …thus an overwhelming majority of religious institutions right from the beginning of the struggle for same-sex marriage in South Africa (and elsewhere) vehemently opposed it. The Constitution mediates value systems (Barnard 2007, 509).

Can Secularism have Values...? Secularism is perceived wrongly as value-free, material, and thus amoral; Universities socialise us into knowledge, but also into values (awareness/ action). Knowledge without values is dangerous. The danger of totalitarianism (Arendt 1973): Example it seeks the destruction of private life. The success of totalitarianism depends on the concept of isolation…it is isolation that serves as the precursor to loneliness, and it is loneliness that provides the fertile breeding ground for terror (Example, the Holocaust).

Autonomy, identity and values... Appiah in The Ethics of Identity (2005, 45) and Cosmopolitanism (2006) argues… that…conceptions of autonomy (as a key feature of identity) are based on a false binary of self and other and distinctions made between full or partial autonomy of the agent do not cohere (2005, 52). Appiah draws upon psycho-social theory of identity associated with the work of Erikson and Gouldner stating that “ideas (and values) shape the way people conceive of themselves and their projects (their choices)” (2005, 66).

Autonomy, choice and identity? In South Africa we live in a liberal democracy. Liberalism typically favours the idea that individuals ought to have the autonomy of choice in terms of their identities. Dimensions of identity may not be entirely constructed and are not constituted out of will or desire.Example: A gay man or a black woman do not choose their desires and, thus according to Appiah, there are parts of identity which are not merely a matter of individual choice.

Rights, identity and protection from ‘society’…. The South African State contained and still contains within it structural forms rights to favour and protection (for example, affirmative action, the preference for poor, the protection of women and children). Appiah argues that the need for such measures arises from the fact that the simple right to human dignity is not sufficient protection in a State where a group or individual might still be attacked on the basis of not conforming to a group (Appiah 2005, 109).

University: passive or active agent? Jacques Rancière argues that… the rights of (people) and of the citizen are the rights of those who make them a reality. They were won through democratic action and are only ever guaranteed through such action. (2006, 74). The University must promote those values that enable freedoms to choose, and protection of communities. It must imagine and enact such values through the socialisation (the formal and hidden curriculum) of its members.

Acknowledgements & References Acknowledgements Colleagues and Students (for listening) The Office for Transformation and Diversity Institutional Office (for the opportunity) References Anderson, B Imagined Communities.(New ed.). Verso: London: New York. Appiah, K Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. New York: W.W. Norton and Company. Appiah, K The Ethics of Identity. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Arendt, H The Origins of Totalitarianism. London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Barnard, J Totalitarianism (same sex) marriage and democratic politics in post- Apartheid South Africa, in South African Journal of Human Rights 23(3) Bratton, M, Mattes, R. and Gyimah-Boadi, E Public Opinion, Democracy, and Market Reform in Africa, Neuva York: Cambridge University Press. 66. Rancière, J Hatred of Democracy. (Transl S. Corcoran), London: Verso Books. Robson, R Sexual Democracy in South African Journal of Human Rights 23(3)

Thank you