Constituting sexuality: rights, politics and power in the gay rights movement

Abstract

Human rights and sexuality are both complex, contested productions, the subject of much debate in the arenas in which they are deployed. In spite of this, the language of human rights is increasingly used in relation to sexual identity and LGBT issues, and rights have become a powerful means through which claims relating to sexuality and sexual orientation are made. Some campaigners have celebrated the linking of rights language with that of sexuality, arguing that it creates new and useful conceptual tools. Others, however, have questioned how helpful the role of rights, particularly international human rights, can be in such contested discourses as those which surround sexuality, and what impact appeals to international bodies can have on local understandings of both sexual subjectivity and sexual identity. In light of these concerns, this contribution explores the limitations of the gay rights discourse, its potentially creative capacity and the problems of both. It asks what the role of rights has been and should be in the creation of a visible, nameable sexual subject and what this might mean both for gay rights politics and for the way that we think about law, sexuality and marginality.