Sexual Rights and Citizenship

Citizenship as a Concept

The concept of citizenship needs to account for the social positioning of different groups and their corresponding inclusion and exclusion from social processes. For example, research on citizenship and ethnicity has illustrated that traditional models of citizenship have failed to acknowledge ethnicity and nationality. Feminist work on citizenship has drawn attention to the ways that a traditional model of citizenship has neglected women's interests by focusing on the “public” (paid labor) rather than the “private” (domestic), thus marginalizing women's interests in the latter—for example, in unpaid caring work. Feminist scholars have also challenged traditional assumptions of the citizen as male.

Ruth Lister draws attention to the ambiguities of citizenship for feminism: On the one hand, citizenship offers the possibility of access to rights central to (liberal) feminist goals, yet, on the other hand, women have been historically excluded from citizenship debates and inequalities remain. Many commentators have revealed the ambiguities, tensions, and contradictions in pressing for rights within the existing heteronormative social order, while recognizing the necessity and pragmatism in working within existing frameworks of inclusion, rather than seeking to radically transform notions of who is and can be a citizen. This tension lies at the heart of many understanding and struggles over sexual rights and citizenship. Diane Richardson argues that traditional notions of citizenship imply, even enforce and regulate, heterosexuality so that the domain of citizenship, far from being neutral, is itself profoundly heterosexualized.

Sexual Citizenship

Writers in sexuality studies have addressed how traditional models of citizenship mask difference, discriminating against those who variously live outside the heterosexual norm. The concept of “sexual citizenship” has drawn attention to the relevance of sexuality, which has often been excluded from “public” notions of citizenship and relegated to the “private” sphere.

In one of the first discussions of “sexual citizenship,” David Evans maps the relationship between sexuality, morality, and the capitalist market. Economic capital becomes a prerequisite as well as boundary for inclusion, a form of consumer citizenship creating and sustaining disparities. Before the state can capitalize on the economic power held by some sexual minority groups—for example, middle-class gay men— minimal legal rights are granted at the expense of political and social transformation. Although the “male homosexual citizen” holds economic rights, he remains an “immoral” citizen, only partially accommodated and “tolerated.” Evans believes that “consumer citizenship” has led to the commodifica-tion of sexuality, sacrificing its political edge through the branding of sexual identity as “lifestyle.” Sexual minorities who hold little economic capital are further marginalized and granted neither economic nor political citizenship.

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