Queers and citizens: One and the same?

Question 1

Bell & Binnie: What is sexual citizenship?

Answer 1

Access to rights, recognition, and belonging as a citizen is shaped by norms around sexuality and gender. What counts as a “good citizen” is deeply tied to sexual identity and norms

Challenging the idea that citizenship is neutral or legal

For example, access to pregnancy easier for single women or lesbians than gay men

Question 2

Bell & Binnie: What do they criticize about traditional LGBTQ+ rights movements?

Answer 2

Critique the focus on assimilationist goals that enforce heteronormativity and respectability and exclude more radical queer lives.

Question 3

Bell & Binnie: What is the problem with privatizing sexual citizenship?

Answer 3

It limits sexual rights to the private sphere (marriage/home), excluding public and erotic forms of queer life

Question 4

Bell & Binnie: What role does urban space play in sexual citizenship?

Answer 4

Cities can offer visibility and political space for LGBTQ+ people but also exclude through gentrification, commercialization, and sanitization of queer spaces

Question 5

Bell & Binnie: What is the “pink economy”?

Answer 5

The commodification of LGBTQ+ identities and politics, where rights and visibility are tied to consumerism rather than justice or liberation

Question 6

Bell & Binnie: How is sexual citizenship connected to neoliberalism?

Answer 6

Neoliberalism shifts citizenship from state-based entitlements to market-based rights, making people “earn” rights through consumption and normativity

Question 7

Bell & Binnie: What is dissident sexual citizenship?

Answer 7

A form of citizenship that embraces difference, eroticism, and political resistance rather than conforming to heteronormative ideals. It goes against the norms of sexual citizenship

Question 8

Bell & Binnie: Why is the public/private divide important?

Answer 8

Because mainstream rights are often granted only when LGBTQ+ life is privatized, denying public expressions of sexuality or radical identity

Question 9

Bell & Binnie: What is the main tension between liberal and queer politics?

Answer 9

Liberal politics seek equality through assimilation, while queer politics resist norms and fight for the right to live and love differently

Question 10

What do Bell & Binnie propose instead of norm- based citizenship?

Answer 10

They call for a radical, pluralist form of queer politics that embraces difference, eroticism, public visibility, and collective action and challenges citizenship as heterosexualized

Question 11

Bell & Binnie: What would a queering of the citizen entail?

Answer 11

It means rejecting recognition based on heteronormative, respectable norms, and instead making space for radical, messy, and erotic lives. It challenges the systems (like heteronormativity, privatization, and consumerism) that restrict how citizenship is defined.

Question 12

Brandzel: What is citizenship?

Answer 12

Citizenship is more than legal status; it includes practices, institutions, and ideas. It’s a normative discourse that claims to be universal, but in doing so, it ignores and reinforces differences.

Question 13

Brandzel: How does citizenship function as a double discourse?

Answer 13

1. Source of political organizing, national belonging, and claim to equality
2. Erases and denies its own exclusionary and differentiating nature

Question 14

Brandzel: What is his critique of citizenship?

Answer 14

It is used to justify discriminatory treatment of non-citizens as a way to safeguard the rights and benefits of citizenship -> naturally exclusive and discriminatory

Question 15

Brandzel: What is a primary site for the production of normative citizenship and why/how?

Answer 15

Marriage law - marriage is used to control whether people are let into heteronormative society, upholding control of who they recognize and who they don’t

Question 16

Brandzel: What is the disagreement between gay and lesbian rights advocates and queer theorists over same-sex marriage that represents a debate regarding citizenship?

Answer 16

According to gay rights advocates, marriage will move queer people toward full equality and transform the institution of marriage, disrupting the vehicle through which the state has gendered, racialized, and sexualized its citizenry

Queer theorists argue that marriage equality is assimilationist and privileges some families over others, renewing distinctions between good and bad. Marriage is inherently patriarchal and oppressive and should therefore be abolished. Marriage equality appeals to normalcy and the “likeness” of queer to heterosexual people, highlighting that it is premised on gays and lesbians being “good citizens”

Question 17

Brandzel: What are 3 negative consequences of gay marriage?

Answer 17

1. Has reduced the space for “deviant” sexual practices and intimacies, neglecting the right of others to reject marriage and participate in alternative family structures. Only validating those queer lives that conform to dominant norms
2. Has reproduced the myth of universal citizenship as a great equalizer -> adopting more and more people into citizenship until society is equal, ignoring that citizenship never creates equality
3. Has “confirmed” that queer people do not want to challenge the importance of marriage nor its gate-keeping benefits, but merely incorporates them into the norm, making them good citizens

Question 18

Brandzel: Why are “queer” and “citizen” antithetical concepts?

Answer 18

Queer people challenge what a “good citizen” is. While “citizen” is inherently exclusionary, within the norm and recognized by the state, “queer” encompasses people left outside of the norm - the excluded and non-normative people

Question 19

Brandzel: What does queer citizenship require?

Answer 19

Refusing:

1. To participate in the prioritizing of one group or form of intimacy over another
2. To participate in the differentiation of peoples, groups, or individuals
3. Citizenship altogether

Question 20

Brandzel: What is his main critique of same-sex marriage as a political goal?

Answer 20

It reinforces normative ideas of citizenship by seeking state recognition based on sameness to heterosexuals, rather than challenging the exclusionary nature of citizenship itself

Question 21

What alternative models of kinship or belonging exist (inspired by Brandzel)?

Answer 21

Non-state-sponsored kinship networks like friends and family

Question 22

Puar: What is homo-nationalism?

Answer 22

The incorporation of certain queer subjects into nationalist narratives to support imperialism and invasions by distinguishing the US as sexually liberated (good, patriotic gays) and other countries as sexually backward (bad, perverse gays)

Question 23

Puar: How are LGBTQ+ rights used to support US nationalism post-9/11?

Answer 23

By including “good gays” (white, patriotic, respectable) in military and culture, while depicting Middle Easterners as perverse and sexually deviant

Question 24

Puar: What does Puar mean by “imaginative geographies” and what roles does it play in homo-nationalism?

Answer 24

Cultural beliefs about national identity that persist despite factual contradictions - for example, the myth of US tolerance and multiculturalism.

It helps mask the tension between US as a heteronormative, patriarchal state and the US as a beacon of queer inclusion and sexual modernity and thereby justifies racial, sexual, and imperial hierarchies

Question 25

Puar: How does consumerism play a role in homo-nationalism?

Answer 25

Queer people are celebrated as good citizens when they contribute economically, esp. through international tourism (representing healing, strength and US values) and lifestyle expansion. This marginalizes poor or undocumented people who cannot participate in mainstream consumerism Serves to depoliticize queerness by folding it into capitalism

Question 26

Puar: How does South Park illustrate homo-nationalism?

Answer 26

It conflates queerness with terrorism and racialized bodies, showing how popular culture reproduces imperialist and sexual norms

Question 27

Puar: How does she critique liberal feminist explanations for terrorism?

Answer 27

They often reduce terrorism to failed masculinity or personal dysfunction, ignoring political, economic, and colonial contexts

Question 28

Puar: What is queer exceptionalism?

Answer 28

The idea that US queer rights are unique and superior, used to position the US as sexually advanced and justify intervention in "backward" regions

Question 29

Puar: How does homo-nationalism function as a "double-edged sword" for queer people globally?

Answer 29

It offers inclusion to some nationally while excluding others - esp. racialized, trans and poor subjects - and justifies the rejection of asylum seekers portrayed as "bad queers" from Global South

Question 30

Puar: Why is the inclusion of LGBTQ+ people in the military problematic?

Answer 30

It reinforces nationalist narrative that the US is tolerant and civilized while other nations are not, justifying military intervention

Question 31

Puar: Who are the "good" gays?

Answer 31

White, cis, gender-conforming, able-bodied, wealthy gays and lesbians, monogamous, documented