Transgressive Mexicana sexualities and the promise of progress

Abstract

Latin American and Latina women's sexualities have often been represented, and theorized, along the terms of sexual morality, restraint and emancipation. In this article, I explore how sexual norms have changed for women in queer spaces in Mexico City over the past two decades. I suggest that sexual practices that were characterized as transgressive in 2000 became normalized in lesbian circles in the following decade, in the 2010s. Ten years of public discussions on sexual education, abortion, anti-discrimination laws, same-sex unions, and in lesbian circles on polyamory had taken place transforming gender and sexual subjectivities. Ultimately, as I reflect on change regarding gender and sexualities, I caution against the tendency of depicting social transformations in a linear process, which risks drawing on teleological narratives of progress.