Through the eyes of the beholder − In quest of queer approaches to legal writing on water and gender

Bored by the ever-repeating patterns of linear story-telling and dichotomous sex categorisation in the dialogue on gender and the human right to water, I explore research methods that accommodate queer visions of the issue. By ‘queer’ I mean the sense of self-contained, idiosyncratic, peculiar and open- ended visions on the water-gender nexus. I contrast queer approaches to the predetermined, hetero-normative perspectives on gender, which dominate the legal writing in international law. I propose a three-dimensional approach to writing about gender and the human right to water: thinking about gender and the human right to water in the form of power (and not sex); listening to a plurality of voices; articulating within the limits of one's own voice. Subsequently I point to the directions a queer approach in legal writing might lead to.