The invisibilisation of lesbians and bisexual women in LQBTQ NGOs in Mexico

The current context in international development and sexuality – which has primarily focused attention on issues such as HIV and consequently men who have sex with men – points to the lack of policy activity and scholarship on bisexual women and lesbians in politics and development. This thesis argues that this is reflective of how heteronormative and patriarchal systems have permeated research and development projects by excluding large parts of the LGBTQ movement and queer issues, and therefore bisexual women and lesbians. As such, this research presents an analysis of how lesbians and bisexual women negotiate gender and sexuality dynamics in NGOs that advocate for LGBTQ rights in Mexico. Additionally, the research identifies the causes of marginalisation for lesbians and bisexual women within said organisations. The theoretical foundations of this research are borrowed from feminist theory and queer theory, including Latin-American scholarship and feminist development approaches. These theories and approaches offer a framework to understand the marginalisation of women generally and invisibilisation of bisexual women and lesbians in the development arena. From this theoretical position, this work is based upon a qualitative investigation of women involved in LGBTQ NGOs in the specific case of Mexico. The method used was deductive/inductive and I employed semi-structured interviews with lesbians and bisexual women involved in these organisations in Mexico, producing a rich account of how gender and sexuality dynamics are experienced, lived and negotiated. Results have shown that gender dynamics are problematic and inequitable in LGBTQ NGOs in Mexico; due to a hierarchisation of LGBTQ identities that privelege those that are culturally intelligable as men or perform masculinity. Thus, bisexual women and lesbians have to build their own exclusive spaces, attempting to develop their agendas and access funding. However, this is difficult given the lack of interest among sponsors in funding lesbian and bisexual women's agendas, resulting in the lack of NGOs advocating for lesbians and bisexual women exclusively. Finally, the hypervisibilisation of issues related to HIV/AIDS and reproductive rights do not leave space for lesbians’ and bisexual women’s issues in the arena. This leads to the conclusion that the unequal power dynamics exercised in this realm are not only sociocultural or symbolic, they permeate tangible fields causing marginalisation that is shaped by different factors that are greater than the LGBTQ arena. These factors are systems of oppression that shape society in general, such as phallocentricity and heteropatriarchy, as well as the market and its interests, which also results in the silencing of lesbians’ and bisexual women’s voices