ABSTRACT
The early twenty-first century is a troubled, schismatic global world. Amongst the many major problems it confronts are those of inequalities, environmental crisis, religious conflict, the risks of a robotic and surveillance age, the renewed threat of nuclear war and a world being reorganized through major patterns of exclusion and expulsion (e.g. Sassen, 2014). Tucked well into all this is another less visible but just as important crisis: the global frictions over gender, sexualities and intimacies. How are we to live personal lives in these new worlds we are making? New fault lines are being drawn on many issues ranging from conflicts over gender equality and the enhanced status of women to conflicts over the rights and equalities of sexual minorities; from conflicts over reproductive practices, sexual violence, trafficking, abuse and the rights to ‘safe bodies’ to conflicts over gender pluralism (third sex rights), family diversities, AIDS and health rights, and sex education. Taken together these are major fields of contestation and conflicts. Complex as these divides are, we can see a potential for polarization between traditionalists who seek the maintenance of old values, usually religious; and progressivists, who seek change. How are we to advance on such conflicts? Here I have two imaginaries of hope: intimate citizenship (Plummer, 2003) and cosmopolitan sexualities (Plummer, 2015). For the rest of this article I want to explore some of the features of the latter.
