4. Moments of Movement Intersection in India: Informing and Transforming Bodies in Movements

The terrain of social movements around gender and sexuality in India has shifted dramatically since the 1990s. It is vastly different from the 1970s and 1980s when the autonomous feminist movement was one of the only ones that addressed these issues. Today the queer, sex worker and transgender movements are also working for gender and sexual justice and are important interlocutors for the autonomous feminist movement. In this chapter I examine moments of what I call “movement intersection”, when movements actively challenge, contest and cooperate with each other. In particular I examine how these moments of intersection inform and transform understandings as well as practices around gender and sexual justice of the movements that intersect.