Around the world
Since its launching, in 2006, the Sexuality Policy Watch website has circulated relevant information on sexual politics trends, events and actors around the world. This investment has resulted in a rich archive of global and national sexual politics.
One main feature of this database is that it is not confined to specific areas or issues. It encompasses information on abortion, sexual and reproductive rights, sex work, sexual violence, gender and women’s rights, HIV and AIDs; and emphasizes materials and analysis that contribute to locate these issues in relation to the political economy of sexuality. Since 2013, key facts, events and trends are selected and highlighted in monthly announcements.
Politics meets biopolitics in the Brazilian catastrophe
Since our first special, we have read the pandemic through the lenses of biopolitics, as to analyze how its management has activated and even updated state mechanisms of surveillance and the large- scale management of the population. In the June 2020 issue, we devoted special attention to the debate provoked by the controversial article by […]
Read moreResearch: Politics of fear in Brazil: Far-right conspiracy theories on COVID-19
In this article, we present an analysis of narratives mobilised by extreme right-wing leader Jair Bolsonaro and his supporters in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil, from March to December 2020. Our research indicates that, throughout that year, despite changes in the categories used, fear was continuously mobilised by the Brazilian president connecting an […]
Read moreUnpack the reconfiguration of population policy in China – Cai Yping
In September 2021, the Chinese government releases the new policy guideline on women, namely “Program for Women and Development (2021-2030)”. In the area of “Women and Health”, it states to “reduce abortions for non-medical reasons” as one of the strategies to meet the health target. This language triggers the vigilance of many feminists and SRHR […]
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Putin’s Anti-Gay War on Ukraine
by Emil Edenborg In Vladimir Putin’s speech on February 24, announcing what would be a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine (in his official Orwellian euphemism, a “special military operation” in the Donbas region), a whole paragraph was dedicated to the West’s supposed undermining of “traditional values”: Properly speaking, the attempts to use us in their own interests never ceased until […]
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“Gender ideology” and anti-vaccine politics in Brazil: the misuse of the hotline run by the Ministry of Women, Family and Human Rights has been contested at the Supreme Court
On February 8th, 2021, the National Confederation of Workers in Education and the National Confederation of Workers in Health presented a petition to the Brazilian Supreme requesting judicial measures to be taken in relation to nefarious instrumentalization of the hotline run by the Ministry of Women, Family and Human Rights (MMFDH). The lawsuit interrogates the […]
Read moreAnti-gender politics and policies in Brazil: Submitted to the Mandate of the United Nations Independent Expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity
In order to more fully understand the political and policy atmosphere in relation to gender, sexuality and human rights in Brazil it is necessary to offer a sketchy bird’s eye view of the evolution of related politics and policies in preceding decades. One first aspect to be highlighted is that these political and policy domains […]
Read moreBrazil as a hub of anti-gender transnational politics (August – October 2021)
In September, Pope Francis visited Hungary and Slovakia, and in the latter country, in a conversation with a group of Jesuits, he repeated recommendations on the pastoral welcome of homosexuals while, at the same reiterating his criticism of “gender,” which, he said, is an abstract concept that “exerts a diabolical fascination because it is not […]
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Sexual Politics in Times of Pandemic: August-October 2021
Since July, when we published our last Special Edition, as you will see in this issue, a lot has happened in the pandemic and in the field of sexual politics. Once again, the pages that follow are quite dense, but we remind you that the sections are relatively autonomous and can be read separately.
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An interview with Massimo Prearo: The Zan Law failure, the neo – Catholic movement and Vatican’s Politics:
In the last Special Issue of last year we have done a brief assessment of Vatican politics. Concomitantly, we published an article by the Italian political scientist Massimo Prearo on Pope Francis’s speech act on same sex marriage that, in October 2020, had major media impact. Since then, in many other occasions, the pope has […]
Read moreVirginia and New Jersey governor election: compilation on sexual politics issues
Rough Night for Democrats Exposes the Party’s Weakness – NY Times Were the Ultra-Conservative “Mama Bears” Youngkin’s Secret Weapon? – Mother Jones Lessons From Virginia: You Can’t Ignore the Civil War – The Nation Opinion | One Lesson of Virginia? The Culture War Still Works. – Politico How did Republicans turn critical race theory into […]
Read moreRepublicans against Trump: compilation
Is Trump’s power over Republicans starting to slip? – BBC All the Republicans Who Won’t Support Trump – NY Times A Prominent Anti-Trump Republican Says He’s Leaving Congress, But Not Quietly – Mother Jones Lucrative fundraising points to small but strong Republican anti-Trump resistance – The Guardian Anti-Trump Republicans slam party for trivialising Capitol attack […]
Read moreASTRA Network’s brochure: Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights
The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the face of the world as we knew it. The lives of whole societies were put on hold, almost all works halted in order to focus on challenging one of the biggest global health crises in almost a century…. As ASTRA Network, we believe in experience-based policymaking. In this brochure, […]
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Paula Rego: yet the right to abortion
The Tate Britain Museum of Art is featuring a retrospective of the Portuguese artist Paula Rego, whose paintings and ideas SPW periodically revisit to illustrate local challenges, especially to women’s rights. In 2016, when two women died in Rio de Janeiro as a result of clandestine and unsafe abortion, Sonia Corrêa recalled the artist’s paintings […]
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Sexual Politics in Times of Pandemic: January-July 2021
First Words In the last 2020 edition of Sexual Politics in Times of Pandemic Special of 2020, we hypothesized that throughout 2021, with the arrival of vaccines, COVID-19 might no longer be our main topic. However, this has not been the case. Since then, south of the equator, infections have continued running their course and […]
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Celebrating “Nossos Corpos por Nós Mesmas” and Transnational Feminist Health!
After more than two years in the making, the first volume of “Nossos Corpos por Nós Mesmas,” has arrived! The book, a Brazilian Portuguese adaptation of “Our Bodies, Ourselves,” covers topics including anatomy and sexuality, birth control, abortion, body image, safer sex and violence against women.
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