Philosopher and critical theorist Nancy Fraser associates the rise of group identities with the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the “post-socialist” age, when it came to replace class interests1. The realm of development followed a parallel evolution, as its “lighthouse was erected”2 following World War II, and its framework has since redefined global relations to a large extent. In the late 1950s, social activists and field-workers who had become involved in the development sector attributed the failure of early projects to the use of top-down approaches3. As a result, and because involving locals proved to be more cost-efficient to the sector, development grew increasingly concerned with participation mechanisms. Consequently, social movements and development work became intertwined in a feedback loop of continuous mutual, but unequal, influence, where the development sector retained much of its power despite appearing to concede some of it. Within this bilateral dynamic, the development sector4 has contributed to rigidifying identity-based politics in how it channels stakeholder participation, distributes funding, and conceives its policies, programming, and beneficiaries.
The development realm values practicality; it requires a level of clarity and measurability that is bound to turn complex intersectional experiences, which are located on a continuum, into legible, categorical labels. Over time, experiences of transness and disability became collapsed into rigid identity categories like “trans people” and “people with disabilities”5. While identity-based approaches to organizing present some advantages such as community-building and focused interventions, they also pose significant limitations. First, identity-based organizing is often confronted with the arbitrariness6 of its categorizations, which can be a source of exclusion, oppression.
