Active citizenship and the governmentality of local lesbian and gay politics

Abstract

Abstract:This paper explores the relationship between new forms of speakability and continuing unthinkability in the context of British local government lesbian and gay work, particularly post-1997. The paper argues new municipal speech acts ushered in progressive modes of sexual citizenship; at the same time, local government's refusal to think hard, deeply or critically, limited the modes of active citizenship made possible. The paper addresses the easing out of active citizenship through an analysis of local government's self-care and its intensification of firewalls e firewalls which restricted the possibility of certain non-state forces guiding from 'a distance'.

Unknowable Bodies, Unthinkable Sexualities: Lesbian and Transgender Legal Invisibility in the Toronto Women's Bathhouse Raid

“…Noting the relatively few cases of criminalized lesbianism is not to suggest that female-female eroticism has been unregulated by the state; such legal silences may constitute a deliberate attempt to regulate lesbian sexuality through denial of its existence (Mason, 1995: 71;Robson, 1992). Family law rulings, welfare provision, civil service and military employment mark other areas where lesbians have been highly regulated by the state (Millbank, 1997;Arnup, 1989;Kinsman, 1996 Mossop, 1993;Vriend, 1998;Egan, 1995 Where lesbians do appear before Canadian courts, they are constituted as disembodied, desexualized legal subjects (Valverde, 2006 (Cooper, 2006). Sexual orientation itself tends to be desexualized in Canadian law, treated more like a socio-cultural group than a sexual identity (Valverde, 2006: 106;Boyd and Young, 2003).…”

Governmentality as Epistemology

“…Little wonder, then, that norms are questioned relatively infrequently, by relatively few people. Consequently, norms persist, although minority actions and voices can possibly connect and become scaled up (Cooper 2006), and therein offer important clues toward possibilities of transformational (govern)mentalities. Even when such upscaling does not occur, self-transformation is conceptualized as an important act; it "counts" (Foucault 2000g, 2004.…”

Introduction to the Special Issue: EuroBiReCon: (Inter)National Research Frontiers

“…In a special issue on sexual citizenship it is noted that work that focuses on the relation between the state and bisexuality is rather absent (Bell & Binnie, 2006;Cooper, 2006). Studies on bisexual citizenship, or that take into account the relation between the state and bisexuality, are on the rise.…”