'We're queer, we're here! (Get used to it!)' is a cherished and powerful refrain in gay and lesbian movements. Sexual dissidents have been written out of historical texts and continue to be invisibilised in contemporary ones, so this assertion is often a necessary starting point in struggles for rights, resources and social justice. That analysis seems to hold true in the field of international development. Its chief architect, John Maynard Keynes, may have enjoyed queer activities throughout his lifetime, but from the moment that the Bretton Woods institutions were founded, dominant development discourses represented the Third World as an exclusively heterosexual space. Micro- and macroeconomic theories, social programmes and policies of the UJorldBank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and collaborating partners assumed and imposed a heteronormative outlook on the South, and effectively conspired with other forces (local forms of nationalism, patriarchy, homophobia, etc) to deny the existence of, and/or actively condemn, anyone and any acts that did not subscribe to it.
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