Sexing the Economy in a Neo-Liberal World Order: Neo-Liberal Discourse and the (Re)Production of Heteronormative Heterosexuality

Abstract

Sex and gender are not merely incidental to the formation and perpetuation of neo-liberal discourse, they are absolutely central to it. In this article I explore how neo-liberal discourse is predicated on a politics of heteronormativity that (re)produces the dominance of normative heterosexuality. The World Bank is an excellent example of this, reproducing a heteronormative discourse of economic viability through policy interventions that are intrinsically sexualised, that is, predicated on a politics of normative heterosexuality. Bank discourse, although articulated as value neutral, ‘straightens’ development by creating and sustaining policies and practices that are tacitly, but not explicitly, formulated according to gendered hierarchies of meaning, representation and identity. Thus, one effect of contemporary neo-liberalism's inherent heteronormativity is to associate successful human behaviour almost exclusively with a gender identity embodied in dominant forms of heterosexual masculinity.