The limits of legislative change: Moving beyond inclusion/exclusion to create ‘a life worth living’

Abstract

While the spatializations of social exclusion have long been critically assessed, legislative responses to these exclusions have also been found to be limited. Addressing the exclusions of Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans* and Queer people, social inclusions in the form of equalities legislations have been used as a marker of ‘progress’ and development, creating neo-colonial geographic comparisons between the legal and policy regimes of different contexts. Taking a decolonial optic, this paper shows that even in one of the most progressive legislative contexts – England – equalities legislation is differentially implemented, and indeed resisted by some local government organizations creating what we term as an implementation gap. This paper uses liveability as an understanding of the importance of recognition that does not proscribe restrictions, while also seeking ‘a life that is a life’. It works across India and the UK to create transnational thinking that seeks commonalities without negating difference, showing that liveability enables both an articulation of Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans* and Queer people’s ongoing unease in England, and a counter-narrative to reductive readings of legislative oppression in India. In both countries, liveability refuses to negate the possibilities of legislation, but neither does it become beholden to them. Liveability, it is argued, has the potential to discursively unlink a naturalized linkage between sexual sub/ab/jects and a progress/backward binary. The paper concludes that liveable lives are fluid, contingent and can be precarious even with recognition. A decolonial optic refuses to place precarity in the ‘Backward Global South’ and recognition in the ‘progressive Global North’. Instead commonalities between Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans* and Queer lives query these assumptions and associated hierarchical politics of ‘saving’ ‘backward’ nations. This has the potential to deepen demands for social justice, in ways that do not abandon legislative reforms, but go beyond them to seek lives that are ‘worth living’, including through transnational interconnections and solidarities.

Sexualities and gendered intersectionalities

“…More broadly, this paper examines how experiences of (historic and continuing) social marginalisation may be amplified by the loss of such key sites of memory during disasters. In a world shaped by the threat of multiple, intersecting crises, this paper demonstrates the need, and potential, for moving beyond studies limited to the everyday lives of marginalised (or precariously included) social groups to consider the impacts of major crises on their capacity to make life 'liveable' (Browne et al, 2019).…”

More than happiness: Aliveness and struggle in lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer lives

“…India and the UK (where the academics and activists are based, are working with, and are familiar with each other) were chosen precisely because they offered an opportunity to cut into the progress/backward narrative that frames global discourses around sexuality rights, and move toward an understanding of sexual lives through a different frame, that is, liveability. We use the different geopolitical positionings of our respondents in India and the UK to help conceptualise liveability in ways that cannot be reducible to a single legislative context (see Browne et al., 2019). At the same time we aim to identify accounts of liveability that are sensitive to immediate context yet which resonate (but are not identical or universal) transnationally – which includes internally heterogeneous national contexts.…”

“…Recent literature on sexualities has explored the limits of legislative changes in some countries that are popularly imagined to be progressive (Browne et al., 2019; Duggan, 2003; Puar, 2013; Spade, 2015). It is clear when considering gender and sexual liberations that not all have ‘won’ and only some can have the ‘good life’ promised by new legislative orders.…”

Survival and liveability in #COVIDtimes: Queer women’s transnational witnessing of COVID-19

“…Indeed, we may make our lives more precarious in order to live them (e.g. coming out and/or seeking recognition as lesbian, and/or trans and losing family support, housing, and livelihoods) (Browne et al, 2019). As Sumita, a queer-feminist activist and co-researcher, said: ‘I cannot live the way I want to at this moment,…I live on hope, and that’s how I survive’ (in Browne et al, 2019).…”

“…coming out and/or seeking recognition as lesbian, and/or trans and losing family support, housing, and livelihoods) (Browne et al, 2019). As Sumita, a queer-feminist activist and co-researcher, said: ‘I cannot live the way I want to at this moment,…I live on hope, and that’s how I survive’ (in Browne et al, 2019). Here, as queer lesbian women who are also differently situated (privileged and vulnerable), we draw on edited communications between us to offer transnational witnessing into negotiating, surviving, and living in these #COVIDtimes.…”