Multisexual citizenship and human rights : questioning the space of citizenship for LGBTI persons beyond liberty and equality

Abstract

The emergence of the human rights of individuals defined as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersexual (LGBTI) has caused a questioning of the reliability of a system of protection of human rights resting on heteronormativity and the enforcement of a strict male-female dichotomy. It has also pushed scholars to ask who is the contemporary subject of human rights. This thesis builds on the acknowledgement of this tension in order to investigate, in the context of the Council of Europe, the process by which LGBTI individuals are created as subjects of human rights. It is argued that law and politics play a concerted productive role in constituting the subjects that they wish to protect, thus promoting adherence to rigid identity categories in order to become intelligible before the law. This endeavour will be carried out by analysing both outstanding case law from the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) concerning sexual orientation and gender identity, as well as using ethnographic observation carried out at the Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe in 2010. The thesis analyses the process by which the subject of human rights is produced and granted legal intelligibility in Strasbourg. Simultaneously, it also explores viable alternatives to the categorisation of individuals in terms of sexual orientation and/or gender identities in the socio-juridical field. In this regard, citizenship represents the privileged domain of inquiry, where identities are articulated, rights are allocated and exclusionary practices are enacted. The concept of “multisexual citizenship” serves to explore models of citizenship that can transcend national borders, also encompassing multiple forms of identification and socio-political and cultural allegiances. As a result of this process of transformation of citizenship, an inevitable and radical metamorphosis of human rights is also anticipated, beyond the current narrow framework of formal equality and freedom.