Sexualities, social justice and sexual justice

Social justice and sexuality have characteristically been difficult bedfellows. Dominant approaches to social justice, whether liberal or radical, have often been located within modernist framings. These have characteristically emphasized the remedying of material inequality and disadvantage, and/or the assertion of human rights, conceived in more or less universalistic terms, sometimes more individualistically, sometimes more collectively. In this situation, even when gender inequalities and the gendered nature of social justice are highlighted, these framings do not always attend to questions of sexuality. In some structural power analyses, sexualities are seen as secondary to and derivative of class position and relations. Gender and sexuality, are intimately, indeed often if not always definitionally, interrelated with each other. Gender occurs along with sexuality, and vice versa. It is rather difficult to conceive of gender and sexuality without the other: without a concept of gender there could be, quite simply, no concept of homo- or hetero- sexuality.