Sexual Citizenship Research Articles

Repensar la relación entre seguridad y ciudadanía: La regulación europea de la trata de mujeres con fines de explotación sexual como caso de estudio

Este articulo parte de la securitización de la trata de mujeres con fines de explotación sexual en la Unión Europea para repensar la relación entre seguridad y ciudadanía. Los estudios críticos de seguridad han comenzado a abordar esta relación recientemente, centrándose en analizar los procesos de securitización de la ciudadanía, así como su uso en procesos de securitización, e identificando la constitución de la comunidad política como el ámbito más claro en el que ambas confluyen. La securitización de la trata, sin embargo, cuenta con tres especificidades que nos obligan a repensar el concepto de ciudadanía, así como su relación con la seguridad: el contexto transnacional en el que tiene lugar, la importancia del género y la sexualidad en los procesos de inclusión y exclusión a los que da lugar, y la existencia de una red transnacional de defensa de las personas trabajadoras del sexo que se sirve del concepto de ciudadanía para luchar contra dicha securitización. El artículo, por tanto, propone introducir tres innovaciones en el marco teórico empleado por los estudios críticos de seguridad para abordar la relación entre seguridad y ciudadanía, adecuándolo así al caso específico de la trata: primero, propone situar dicha relación en el contexto de globalización en el que actualmente opera; segundo, traer a colación los conceptos de ciudadanía sexual y de género, y en particular, el debate surgido en torno a su relación con las prácticas orientalistas e imperialistas de las democracias liberales occidentales; y tercero, recuperar la dimensión ambivalente de la ciudadanía para resaltar su potencial emancipatorio.

On Dream Making and Aspired Migration of Queer Bodies

In looking at the relationship between the body and the state when it is at its most vulnerable, in the sites of imagination and its making, this paper will explore how queer bodies imagine movement in the advent of a neoliberal discourse of rights, laws, and citizenship. What is it in the apparatuses of the neoliberal moment that washes over the processes of dreaming of a “somewhere else,” shaping the potentialities of movement, the spaces we can imagine and create, and the spaces that seem unreachable? The notion of citizenship will be a primary focus in my research, particularly sexual citizenship, as an incarnation of the state’s capacity to fix the subject to rigid structures and dispositifs of control.

Yes, we fuck! Challenging the misfit sexual body through disabled women’s narratives

Southern European society has been described in sociological literature as ableist, patriarchal and male-oriented. Under such conditions, many disabled women face multiple oppressions on grounds of gender, disability, class, age, sexual orientation, ‘race’ and ethnicity. The social construction of the impaired body as passive and dependent is conducive to a process of desexualization, presenting disabled people as inadequate for a full intimate life. The dominant biomedical model reinforces this process. This article draws on selected works in feminist disability studies to argue that rather than a body which is unfit, or does not fit, the ‘misfit’ is instead a cultural failure in accommodating and cherishing diversity. The authors also suggest that the desexualization of disabled women is replicating, as well as resulting from, historical tendencies to dehumanize and infantilize women. The empirical data is drawn from a larger project ‘Disabled Intimacies? Sexual and Reproductive Citizenship of Disabled Women in Portugal’. Biographical narrative interviews with disabled women are analyzed to explore the notion of ‘misfit’ sexual bodies. Theirs are stories of counter-norms and the struggle for sexual fulfilment and recognition. The women’s discussions of sexuality point to a need to change the ways that disability and intimacy are addressed in mainstream scholarly literature, institutions and the state. Narrow, heteronormative and ableist understandings of sexual intercourse and the linear character of mainstream stories of intimacy are shown as hindering the prospect of the recognition of disabled women as sexual citizens.

Family and Homosexuality in Chinese Culture: Rights Claims by Non-heterosexuals in Hong Kong

Family of origin is one of the less-studied areas to have been investigated during the rights-claiming process by non-heterosexuals. This paper discusses how family of origin plays a significant role in the claiming of rights (such as the authority to make health care or medical treatment, funeral arrangement and inheritance) by non-heterosexuals in Hong Kong. Because of the functional specificities of Chinese families and their perceptions of homosexuality, Chinese non-heterosexuals are eager to introduce their sexuality to their family of origin rather than participate in a more separated approach to coming out. This process constitutes a “coming home” approach to coming out as a member of a gender or sexual minority group. The negative effects of exclusion and ignorance not only affect the mental health of non-heterosexuals in Hong Kong but also shape and create social barriers to the claiming of rights. Findings from this study reveal that family of origin is a significant factor deterring non-heterosexuals from considering, planning or taking action to claim sexual citizenship rights.

The legal grading of sexual citizenship: sentencing practices in Norwegian rape cases

This article maps and discusses the legal processing of rape cases in Norwegian appellate courts. Drawing on data from a multivariate regression analysis and a qualitative frame analysis, we examine the significance of space, accuser-convict prior relationship, the social context, accuser-convict marital relationship status, and convict racial background for grading of sentences in rape cases. The data-set consists of 176 rape cases that were processed in 2011 and 2012. Excluding acquittals and controlling for the application of relevant legal provisions, we find that sentences are reduced by 30% if the rape occurs in a private space as opposed to a public space. If the rape occurs at a party or is committed by a perpetrator who is a member of a racial majority, we find that sentences are reduced by 20%. A prior relationship between the victim and the perpetrator reduces sentencing by 18%. Results regarding victims of marital rape are inconclusive. The study concludes that sentencing is stratified according to the public/private divide, prior relationship, social context and race. Despite progress made on behalf of victims of domestic violence and a gradual implementation of stricter sentencing in line with legislative intentions, the legal processing of rape cases is permeated by race and gender discrimination.

Paradoxes of an assimilation politics: media production of gay male belonging in the Canadian ‘vital public’ from the tainted blood scandal to the present

Canadian media discourses on gay men’s sexuality and political inclusion serve as a rich site for understanding current tensions in debates on sexual citizenship under biopolitical regimes. This paper addresses how public health reporting in one health news media source, Canada’s leading newspaper The Globe and Mail, discursively produced contiguous understandings of the moral, social and biological dimensions of gay male subjectivity and sexuality within the context of HIV risk discourses. Specifically, we critically examine the newspaper’s coverage of what constitutes the public good when national blood supplies are at stake. Our analysis reveals a profound dichotomy in which gay men – as sexual subjects and subjects of rights – are recalibrated following the political and economic investments of bourgeoisie communities of interest. However encompassing the securing of legal social rights might be, gay men’s sexuality is resistant to a reformatting under a heteronormative regulatory regime, as the social traumas caused by HIV continue to cast a shadow on sexual behaviours that purportedly risk leakage of contamination into the body politic

Queer sensibilities: notes on method

ABSTRACTThis note characterizes queer methods developed in the humanities in ways that may be useful in social science and law. Since it is antithetical to queer theory’s resistance to fixity to concretize queer methods into a metatheory, this note characterizes these methods as queer sensibilities. Queer sensibilities are useful for analyzing queer bodies in public spaces – physical spaces and democratic spaces – especially in research programs concerned with sexual citizenship. This note connects queer sensibilities to sculptures of Charles Ray. His work serves as both a metaphor for and substantive example of methods that replicate heteronormativity by erasing pubic queerness. Queer sensibilities leverage insights for how law and culture construct norms of sexual citizenship. At the heart of this note is a queer perspective on the extent to which men’s naked and queer bodies enter the dialogic of sexual citizenship, when heteronormativity censors such bodies and silences sexual expression.

The relevance of Sade for society today

Sade is still relevant today for academia, politics and sexual citizens because of his strong criticism of religious and secular (“Enlightened”) thought. In his presentation, nature is not good but violent; his work is a criticism of dichotomies of gender (male versus female), sexuality (hetero versus homo) and of private and public and of clear-cut identities; there is no unity of love and sex and laws should not restrain pleasure.Keywords: Sade, relevance, controversy, politics, enlightenment-----Bibliography: Hekma, Gert: The relevance of Sade for society today, INSEP, Vol. 4, Issue 1-2016, pp. 9-18. https://doi.org/10.3224/insep.v2i1.25761

Towards EU Sexual Risk Regulation: Restrictions on Blood Donation as Infringement of Active Citizenship

AbstractCase C-528/13, Léger v. Ministre des Affaires sociales, de la Santé et des Droits des femmes; Établissement français du sang [2015] ECLI: EU:C:2015:288 (Fourth Chamber).In the case of Léger commented on, the Court of Justice of the European Union dealt with a blanket ban on blood donation for men who had sexual relations with other men (MSM) in France. The Court found that such restrictions can be justified in light of specific epidemiological context and scientific knowledge available in Member States. The judgment, therefore, sheds lights on the boundaries of public health justifications, discrimination of gay and bisexual individuals, as well as the rising scope of EU sexual risk regulation. The present annotation argues that the Court has undermined the principle of non-discrimination and shows how the matter of blood donations should have been treated instead as a prerequisite of active sexual citizenship.“[T]he sanguine substance is intimately tied to both identity and public culture. Blood is a metaphor of life and of death; it fosters insider and outsider relations; it has economic clout and emblematic significance; these primal fluids are far from natural, organic, or self-evident, being imbued with cultural connotations reflecting imagined connectedness, tentative securities and demonstrable anxieties.”Jefrey A. Bennet

Riotous Flesh: Women, Physiology, and the Solitary Vice in Nineteenth-Century America

The history of masturbation is not exactly untouched territory. Thomas W. Laqueur's Solitary Sex (2003) traces its broad arc from ancient Greece and Rome, where self-pleasuring featured relatively little on the social and cultural landscape, to the great fear of the eighteenth century, when onanism, as it was then termed, became viewed with considerable revulsion. By the early twentieth century, masturbation was seen as a stage of psychosexual development, a sign of immaturity rather than a disease. More recently, masturbation has gained qualified acceptance—though elements of taboo remain. Sexual historians have written about the mainstreaming of masturbation, and it is considered a principal strand of modern sexuality, including female sexual autonomy. Nineteenth-century America has been somewhat neglected in a historiography that either confines itself to other places and times or that focuses on masturbation's alleged and exaggerated effects. April R. Haynes's approach is entirely different. She deals with nineteenth-century America, which, she points out, has a different sexual history than that of Europe. Rather than being distracted by the various ailments and debilities attributed to solitary sex, Haynes highlights the role of the American female moral campaign societies and popular reform physiology lecturers in spreading the condemnation of masturbation in the 1830s and 1840s. Their criticisms were not in the name of hostility to sex, Haynes stresses. These women knew all about female sexual passion, and reform physiology was concerned with advice on healthy sexuality. Rather, their campaign against masturbation was motivated by encouragement of female self-control and what we would now term greater sexual agency—“virtuous restraint,” as she puts it (p. 94). “The framework of sexual citizenship demanded sexual conformity as proof of civic virtue” (p. 82). This association of the campaign against masturbation with sexual citizenship and women's rights (both of these links are claimed by Haynes) adds complexity to what is normally glossed over in terms of phobic stereotypes.

Social Workers’ Roles in Supporting the Sexual and Relational Health of Children with Disabilities

The purpose of this study was to understand social workers’ roles in meeting the sexual and relational health needs of children (aged 3–11) with disabilities. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 12 social workers from a range of practice settings. A phenomenological lens privileged the perspectives of social workers in their definitions of disability and sought to convey the meaning they assigned to their experiences of working with children in practice concerning matters related to sexual and relational health. Social workers enacted a broad definition of disability and often came to work with youth in contexts labeled as sexually problematic. In the provision of sexual health services, social workers embodied commonly adhered to roles including as practitioners, enablers, advocates, brokers, and managers. Services are needed that promote positive sexuality and relational health among children with disabilities. It is important that social workers be proactive advocates for the full inclusion of people with disabilities as equal sexual citizens.

Rethinking Sexual Citizenship.

Over the last two decades sexuality has emerged as a key theme in debates about citizenship, leading to the development of the concept of sexual citizenship. This article reviews this literature and identifies four main areas of critical framing: work that contests the significance of sexuality to citizenship; critiques that focus on the possibilities and limitations of mobilising the language of citizenship in sexual politics; analyses of sexual citizenship in relation to nationalisms and border making; and literature that critically examines western constructions of sexuality and sexual politics underpinning understandings of sexual citizenship. In order to progress the field theoretically, the article seeks to extend critiques of sexual citizenship focusing on two key aspects of its construction: the sexual citizen-subject and spaces of sexual citizenship. It argues for a critical rethink that encompasses a de-centring of a ‘western-centric’ focus in order to advance understandings of how sexual citizenship operates both in the Global North and South.

A luta pela cidadania (sexual): o dilema italiano entre “natureza e cultura”

Recent public debate in Italy has been noteworthy for its renewed focus on issues of gender and sexual citizenship. The discussion is well summarized and symbolized by two opposing political discourses that have been engaged in a lengthy struggle. On one side stands a neo-conservative Catholic movement that opposes the recognition of LGBTQ relationships and defends “the natural family”. On the other side there are the LGBTQ movements, which are claiming full civil, social and sexual citizenship. The present article analyzes this conflict, which was clearly illustrated by two public events held in Rome in June 2015 (Family Day and the Rome LGBTQ Pride). The paper, methodologically based on Critical Discourse Analysis, examines the most relevant political documents (manifestos and press releases) issued by the organizers of the two demonstrations, highlighting the existence of ambivalent discourses on the naturalization of sex and the universalization of social and sexual citizenship.

Santos, Ana Cristina (2013), Social Movements and Sexual Citizenship in Southern Europe.

Social Movements and Sexual Citizenship in Southern Europe constitui um estudo de grande folego sobre o associativismo Lesbico, Gay, Bissexual, Transgenero e Queer (LGBTQ) portugues, sendo que a autora ja anteriormente tinha lancado as suas bases em A lei do desejo. Direitos humanos e minorias sexuais em Portugal (2005), prosseguindo-o depois na sua tese de doutoramento, que a obra em analise largamente reflete. Nao sera doravante legitimo, para quem trate do tema, deixar de passar por Social...

Complex and creative intimate and sexual citizens: mapping a study that seeks to understand children outside the binary of sexual innocence or sexual contamination

This paper explores the rationale for an empirical study that examines the way children interpret the intimate relationships they experience in digital spaces. The design of the study recognizes children as agentic intimate and sexual citizens who are capable of documenting their thoughts and understandings in creative and entertaining ways through the construction of short films. To this end, the study acknowledges that sexuality is important in the lives of children while also highlighting the limitations that exist when sexuality, children, digital spaces and educational sites intersect. In response to this positioning, the study seeks to understand children’s experiences of the broader continuum of intimate relationships rather than a singular focus on sexuality. In developing this study, it has become clear that there are many boundaries that impede discourses, learning and explorations in educational spaces around the performative explorations and intimate investigations of children conducted in and through digital spaces.

Rethinking sexual citizenship: Asia-Pacific perspectives

The term ‘sexual citizenship’ was largely developed in the Anglophone capitalist liberal democracies of the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The concept is thus inflected by broader understandings of politics in these places. In this article, the author first considers the specificities of ‘sexuality’ and ‘citizenship’ in these Anglophone capitalist liberal democracies. She argues that we need to provincialize these local understandings, for configurations of sexuality and citizenship in the UK, North America, New Zealand or Australia are just as contingent and locally specific as they are in the Asia-Pacific region. She then considers whether the term ‘sexual citizenship’ can be transplanted into places in the Asia-Pacific region with different political and economic systems, welfare systems and social structures, distinctive cultural understandings of sexuality and citizenship and different taxonomies of sexes, genders and sexualities.

Sexual citizenship in a comparative perspective: Dilemmas and insights

In this article, the author explores some of the key dilemmas that are involved in attempts to apply concepts such as ‘sexual citizenship’ in a cross-cultural perspective, with particular focus on Australia and other countries in the Asia-Pacific region. The concept of sexual citizenship can usefully be applied to gay and lesbian rights issues in Australia relatively easily. However, it is not quite so easy to apply this concept to some of Australia’s Asian neighbours. Any comparative analysis needs to take differing priorities, conceptions of sexuality, gender, identity, rights, state and civil society into account but, nonetheless, useful insights can be gained. The author argues that the concept of sexual citizenship is even more widely applicable if aspects of other conceptions of citizenship are incorporated into it, such as conceptions of ‘heteronormative’ citizenship and ‘affective’ citizenship.

Weddings and white dresses: Media and sexual citizenship in Japan

Representations of gender and sexuality in mainstream media operate to both shape the contours of, and contest the limits to, sexual citizenship. The ‘citational practices’ of media representations mould contemporary understandings of these limits. In this article, the author examines mainstream and social media reports of two separate same-sex wedding ceremonies in Japan; the first at a queer community event in 2007 and the second at a major theme park in 2013. Through citations and quotations, a multitude of voices are embedded in the media texts. In the 2007 case, increased media visibility is mitigated by citational practices that clearly mark the same-sex wedding as devoid of legal standing. Whereas media reports situate the 2013 ceremony in the context of marriage equality trends internationally, an instance of possible discrimination is emphasised as being a ‘misunderstanding’. Similarly, a microanalysis of a light news documentary of the ceremony uncovers citational practices that highlight the importance of ‘forgiveness’ or ‘tolerance’ for ‘mutual coexistence’ in society. Furthermore, the reporting confines the ceremony to a ‘fairytale’-like ‘foreign’ domain. The process of ‘othering’ issues of sexual citizenship is linked to a cyclical process since the 1950s wherein representations of queerness are posited as ‘new’ forms of being in Japan. Discourse surrounding sexual citizenship is thereby projected into a non-domestic, non-specific future time.

Civil Partnership and marriage: LGBT-Q political pragmatism and the normalization imperative

The last decade has seen significant change in LGBT-Q politics in many (neo)liberal democracies. In Ireland, Civil Partnership (CP) was signed into law in 2010. While LGBT-Q advocacy groups had been divided over the terms of CP, they presented a united front in favour of marriage and in May 2015, Ireland became the first country in the world to vote in favour of same-sex marriage in a constitutional referendum. This article begins from a personal moment as I sat in a television audience where a polarized debate – mainstream ‘progressive’ Left in favour of marriage equality versus ‘conservative’ religious Right against – ensued. It draws on interviews with five advocates in LGBT-Q politics and an analysis of print media related to CP and marriage from January 2010 until January 2014. This article inquires into the discourses and decision-making as CP and marriage emerged. It is anchored by the work of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler and others, focusing on the concepts of discourse, truth, normalization and equality. I demonstrate how the advocates adopted a politics of pragmatism and employed integrative, assimilationist strategies in line with consensus politics. I show how these approaches played their part in foreclosing radical sexual politics or broader kinship discussions. The article asserts that the advocates were motivated by how CP/marriage had the potential to achieve ‘real life’, large-scale cultural change through normalization. However, I demonstrate how mobilizing a politics of change based on normalization and sameness simultaneously (re)produces an ‘acceptable’ sexual citizen and reassigns ‘others’ as peripheral.

The ‘uncanny doubles’ of queer politics: Sexual citizenship in the era of same-sex marriage victories

In this article, the author explores the challenges for sexual citizenship campaigns as same-sex marriage emerges as a touchstone for progressive politics in Australia and beyond. Analysing popular media and public debate, she argues that there is much to be learned from recent critiques of liberal and colonial feminisms. Jasbir Puar argues that the ‘woman question’ is currently being supplemented or supplanted by the ‘gay question’ as a marker of a nation’s modernity, democracy and ‘civilization’. In the context of widespread support for marriage equality, an urgent challenge is how to respond to an emerging ‘homonationalism’ in public culture which positions the West on ‘the right side of history’ in contrast to homophobic Islam, and a liberal version of gay rights which obscures ongoing discrimination and injustice.