Feminism, Queer Theory, and Sexual Citizenship

GENDER EQUALITY: DIMENSIONS OF WOMEN'S EQUAL CITIZENSHIP, J. Grossman and L. McClain, eds., Cambridge 2009

UNC Legal Studies Research Paper No. 1451059

19 Pages Posted: 13 Aug 2009 Last revised: 6 Aug 2010

See all articles by Maxine Eichner

Maxine Eichner

University of North Carolina School of Law

Date Written: 2009

Abstract

In this chapter, I assess the roles that both feminist theory and queer theory should play in theorizing contemporary norms of sexual citizenship, and the relationship between these norms and citizens’ lives. My discussion proceeds in four parts. In the first, I consider the feminist discussion of sexuality that developed in the 1980s, and the dissension in the feminist movement that sowed important seeds for queer theory. I also assess the strengths and weaknesses of the theories that feminists created. In brief, I argue that the dominant feminist accounts of this era significantly advance the theorization of power’s effects on citizens. They failed to grasp, however, that oppressive norms of sexual citizenship are neither monolithic nor all-powerful and the ways that they are, in fact, contested in citizens’ daily lives. In the second and third parts, I discuss the development of queer theory and the features that mark this mode of theorizing. Some of the shifts between the feminist and queer theory modes of theorizing, I contend, offer conceptual advantages for understanding contemporary sexuality. Yet much queer theory displays a troubling tendency to valorize all sexual activity as liberatory. In doing so, it oversimplifies both existing norms of sexual citizenship and their relationship to citizens’ lives. This tendency, interestingly, is the obverse flaw of feminist theory’s: while feminist theory overstates the effects of oppressive norms of sexuality in citizens’ lives, queer theorists understate them.

Finally, in the last section, I discuss how current norms of sexual citizenship and their relationship to citizens’ lives might be better theorized, and consider the roles that feminist and queer theory can play in this process.

Keywords: feminism, queer theory, sexuality

Suggested Citation

Eichner, Maxine, Feminism, Queer Theory, and Sexual Citizenship (2009). GENDER EQUALITY: DIMENSIONS OF WOMEN'S EQUAL CITIZENSHIP, J. Grossman and L. McClain, eds., Cambridge 2009, UNC Legal Studies Research Paper No. 1451059, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1451059 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1451059

Maxine Eichner (Contact Author)

University of North Carolina School of Law ( email )

Van Hecke-Wettach Hall, 160 Ridge Road
CB #3380
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3380
United States

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