Feminism, Queer Theory, and Sexual Citizenship

Maxine Eichner

The terms of full membership in society have, in the United States, as elsewhere, been
conditioned on citizens conforming to a specific set of sexual norms. Some of these terms of
sexual citizenship have been explicitly encoded into U.S. law. These have included, among
many others, the historical ban on immigration of homosexuals, 1 criminal proscriptions on the
act of sodomy, 2 the now rarely enforced bans on sex outside of marriage, 3 and the still enforced
criminal prohibitions on prostitution. 4 Other sexual norms have largely been enforced extra-
legally through social sanctions. For example, the widespread disapproval of sex by unmarried
women in the early twentieth century led to the ostracizing of unmarried pregnant women from
polite society. 5

In the last few decades, the terms of sexual citizenship have undoubtedly changed. The U.S.
Supreme Court boldly announced, in the landmark case of Lawrence v. Texas in 2003, that states
could no longer criminalize sodomy, whether homosexual or heterosexual. 6 Four state supreme
courts have now struck down state laws banning same-sex marriage, and three of these states are
now authorizing such marriages. 7 In addition, three states, Maine, New Hampshire, and

1
See Immigration Act of 1917, Pub. L. 64-301, 39 Stat. 874, 875 (1917) (repealed 1990) (excluding individuals
from entering the United States who had a “constitutional psychopathic inferiority”); Immigration and Nationality
Act of 1952, Pub. L. 82-414, 66 Stat. 163 (1952) (repealed 1990) (excluding “aliens afflicted with a psychopathic
personality”); S. Rep. 81-1515, at 345 (1950) (clarifying that “psychopathic personality” language was intended to
apply to “homosexuals and sex perverts”); Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, Pub. L. 89-236, 15(b), 79 Stat.
911 (1965) (repealed 1990) (amending the act to include “sexual deviation” as a medical ground for denial of entry
into the United States). The practice of statutory exclusion of homosexuals ended when Congress passed the
Immigration Act of 1990, which withdrew the phrase “sexual deviation” from the act. See Immigration Act of 1990,
Pub. L. 101-649, 104 Stat. 4978 (1990).
2
Sodomy laws were in force in every state prior to 1961 (see Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558, 572 [2003]) and
were upheld as constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986). In the last
quarter of the twentieth century, however, most state sodomy laws were either repealed or declared unconstitutional
by state supreme courts.
3
See William N. Eskridge, Jr. and Nan D. Hunter, Sexuality, Gender, and the Law (New York: Foundation Press,
2004), at 98, 111.
4
See, e.g., Conn. Gen. Stat. § 53a-82 (2007); Haw. Rev. Stat. § 712-1200 (2007).
5
See Angus McLaren, Twentieth Century Sexuality (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), at 44; Regina G. Kunzel, Fallen
Women, Problem Girls: Unmarried Mothers and the Professionalization of Social Work (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1993), at 51-52.
6
Lawrence, at 558.
7
See Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health, 798 N.E.2d 941 (Mass. 2003); In re Marriage Cases, 183 P.3d 384 (Cal.
2008); Kerrigan v. Commissioner of Public Health, 2008 Conn. LEXIS 385 (2008); Varnum v. Brien, 2009 Iowa
sup. LEXIS 31 (April 3, 2009). Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Iowa are now allowing same-sex marriage. The
California Supreme Court declared same-sex marriages legal in May 2008, but same-sex wedding ceremonies
abruptly came to a halt when voters passed Proposition 8 to amend the California Constitution to disallow same-sex

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1451059

Vermont, recently adopted same-sex marriage legislatively. Almost all citizens now engage in
sex before marriage, 8 and most teenagers are sexually active. 9 Furthermore, while women
bearing children out of wedlock is still controversial, society is now far from a consensus that it
is morally wrong. 10

What critical theory should we use to analyze and evaluate the norms of sexual citizenship in
these early years of the twenty-first century? Until the recent advent of queer theory, analyses of
sexuality had been conducted largely through the lens of feminist theory, which analyzed sexual
citizenship primarily in terms of gender. A dominant strand of feminist theory, as it developed in
the 1980s, saw the terms of sexual citizenship as intimately connected with gender inequality in
society. In this view, women’s and men’s sexuality, as they live it, come to track these
oppressive norms of sexual citizenship, and become the central mechanism of gender inequality
in contemporary society. In the last few decades, queer theory has contested analyses of sexual
citizenship that are exclusively focused on gender, arguing, instead, that theoretical scrutiny
should focus on the marginalization of particular sexual practices and those who engage in them.
In doing so, queer theory has produced far more positive assessments of the role of sexuality in
citizens’ lives. Sexual practices, in the work of queer theorists, are associated with freedom, or
at least a means of resistance to repressive norms, rather than the mechanism of citizens’
subjection.

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 in this chapter 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
part, 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. The third part
of this chapter turns to consider some troubling tendencies of the queer theories that have
developed, and argues that these characteristics threaten the theoretical gains that this mode of

marriage on November 4, 2008. At the time this chapter went to press, cases challenging the amendment were
pending before the California Supreme Court.
8
Lawrence B. Finer, “Trends in Premarital Sex in the United States 1954-2003,” 122 Pub. Health Rep. 73 (2007)
(finding that by age forty-four, 95 percent of respondents had had premarital sex and concluding that “almost all
Americans have sex before marrying”).
9
See Leslie J. Harris et al., Family Law (New York: Aspen, 2005), at 290 (75 percent of teenagers report having
intercourse before age twenty).
10
See Lydia Saad, “The Cultural Landscape: What’s Morally Acceptable?,” Gallup Poll News Service, June 22,
2004 (49 percent of respondents believe that having a child out of wedlock is morally acceptable, while 45 percent
believe it is morally wrong).

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1451059

theory potentially offers. Specifically, the tendency to valorize all sexual activity as liberatory
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.

Second-Wave Feminist Theory and Sexual Citizenship

Contemporary theoretical work on sexuality first emerged from second-wave feminism. As

this movement took off in the 1970s, feminists began to interrogate the relationship between
gender and sexuality. In the 1980s, a particular position on sexuality that was developed largely
by radical feminists rose to prominence. This position saw dominant norms of sexual citizenship
as intricately tied to gender hierarchy, and saw women’s and men’s sexuality as conforming to
those norms. In its most sophisticated version, as presented in the work of Catharine
MacKinnon, sexuality is not problematic simply because it reflects women’s subordinate
position in society, but rather because it creates it. MacKinnon wrote that “sexuality is the
dynamic of control by which male dominance – in forms that range from intimate to institutional,
from a look to a rape – eroticizes and thus defines man and woman, gender identity and sexual
pleasure.” 11 Sexuality therefore serves as the prime mover of the system of gender hierarchy, the
method by which male dominance is institutionalized. 12 As MacKinnon starkly phrases it, “Man
fucks woman; subject verb object.” 13

Certain features of MacKinnon’s account of sexuality sound jarring to the contemporary

theoretical ear because her account rests on a conception of power that has largely fallen out of
favor. This theory of power, which is sometimes called the “dominance” model of feminism,
was developed by MacKinnon and other radical feminists in the context of their theorizing
sexuality. The dominance model responded to a conception of power that was widely held at the
time, which conceived power as something that some people possessed and wield consciously
for their own ends against others. As Max Weber describes this view, “we understand by
‘power’ the chance of a man or a number of men to realize their own will in a social action even
against the resistance of others who are participating in the action.” 14 Dominance in this

11
Catharine A. MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1989), at 137.
12
Ibid., at 127-31.
13
Ibid., at 124.
14
Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology (New York: Bedminster Press, 1968), at
926; see also Dennis H. Wrong, Power: Its Forms, Bases, and Uses (New York: Harper and Row, 1979), at 21
(stating that the dominant understanding of power is “the capacity to impose, or to threaten successfully to impose,
penalties or deprivations for noncompliance”).

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1451059

mainstream model is sustained from above, as the less powerful are forced to comply with the
edicts of those in power. Power’s effects, however, extend only to external obedience; they have
no impact on an individual’s interior wants and desires. In this view, the terms of sexual
citizenship may keep citizens from acting on particular sexual desires, but they do not affect the
desires themselves.

While liberal feminists generally accepted the mainstream model of power at the inception of
second-wave feminism in the 1960s and 1970s, radical feminists recognized its limitations.
Their dominance conception incorporated the mainstream model’s view that power is something
possessed by some and wielded against others: in the dominance model, men hold power and
intentionally wield it against powerless women. In contrast to the mainstream view, however,
power acts in the dominance model to construct the wants, needs, and even the very identities of
the women in its ambit. Male power is seen as univocal and completely totalizing, creating the
world, including women’s sexuality, according to its will. According to MacKinnon, “in
feminist terms, the fact that male power has power means that the interests of male sexuality
construct what sexuality as such means, including the standard way it is allowed to be felt and
expressed and experienced, in a way that determines women’s biographies, including sexual
ones.” 15 In other words, the norms of sexual citizenship are constructed by men, conform to
their interests, and are built to ensure gender inequality. Women’s sexuality is absolutely shaped
by these norms.

The dominance model made considerable gains for feminist theory by responding to serious
deficiencies in the mainstream view of power. The mainstream view, in holding that power
operated externally on individuals, failed to link power with women’s characteristics, aims, and
desires. It therefore allowed opponents of feminism to argue that women’s differences from men
justified their different and unequal treatment. In this view, these differences demonstrated that
women either were “naturally” the weaker sex (an argument also phrased in terms of how
women’s submissive nature led them to gravitate to certain roles), or women themselves were
responsible for the choices that left them in second-class positions in their relationships and in
society. The dominance model of power put forth by radical feminists effectively countered
these arguments. Under this model, gender hierarchy could no longer be justified by women’s
differences or desires. In Susan Bordo’s words, “the insistence that women are the done to, not
the doers, here; that men and their desires bear the responsibility; and that female obedience to
the dictates of [dominant gender norms] is better conceptualized as bondage than choice – was a
crucial historical moment” for feminism. 16 Under the dominance approach, it was no longer an
answer to feminist claims of oppression in the arena of sexuality that women participated
“voluntarily” in sexual relationships with men or found particular subordinating practices to be
arousing. And the dominance model of sexuality helped reveal the complex interplay between
women’s inequality in the sexual realm and in other realms; the motto of second-wave feminism
that the “personal is political” emanated from this recognition.

15
Mackinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State, at 129.
16
Susan Bordo, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1993), at 22-23.

4
 With that said, the dominance model also has considerable flaws when it comes to assessing
the terms of sexual citizenship in contemporary society and their relation to citizens’ lives. First,
in MacKinnon’s theory, all women are oppressed in the same totalizing manner, without regard
to differences in sexual orientation, race, class, and a host of other factors. 17 Yet gender is only
one of a number of cross-cutting axes of power when it comes to such norms. Accordingly,
while women who identify as straight may find themselves subordinated because of their sex,
they may also be privileged with respect to those who identify as lesbians, gay men,
transgendered persons, and other sexual minorities. The dominance model does not give us the
tools to think through the complexity of these axes.

Furthermore, MacKinnon’s view of power is so totalizing that it cannot conceptualize how

resistance to dominant norms is possible. If women are truly the passive victims MacKinnon
theorizes, they could never depart from such norms. This monolithic view of power also causes
MacKinnon to miss the myriad ways in which women, in actual fact, fail to comport with norms
of sexual citizenship that are grounded in gender hierarchy. In addition, because MacKinnon’s
theory cannot identify how resistance is possible, it cannot identify the conditions that would
foster or retard this resistance. In MacKinnon’s world, everything is unmitigatedly black, and
even partial escape from the dark forces of power becomes impossible.

On the other side of the coin, MacKinnon’s depiction of men as uniformly active oppressors
also raises problems. This conception undercuts dominance feminism’s own recognition of the
way in which systems of power create their subjects. Men, too, are as much the products of the
system of gender hierarchy as women. Recognition of this fact should (but does not) complicate
MacKinnon’s depictions of men as conscious creators of this system for their own interests. By
the same token, this theory cannot conceptualize the extent to which men resist unequal norms of
sexual citizenship, or the conditions that would promote this resistance.

Finally, the dominance account of power cannot conceptualize the complexity of

contemporary norms of sexual citizenship. While MacKinnon posits particular, totalizing norms
of sexual citizenship that dominate, the force of many such norms, for example those relating to
sex outside of marriage, those depicting women as submissive, and even those proscribing
homosexual sex, has diminished over time. What remains are norms with varying degrees of
force, about which multiple, competing discourses circulate. While many of these discourses
conform to dominant norms of gender and sexuality, certainly some are resistant, and many
contain some resistant elements. As Nancy Fraser states, “we live in a time of intense
contestation concerning gender, sexuality, and sexual difference. Far from being monolithically
patriarchal, the interpretation of these terms is at every point subject to dispute.” 18 The
dominance view gives us no guidance in analyzing the complexity of these forces.

17
See Kimberle Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women
of Color,” 43 Stan. L. Rev. 1241 (1991); Martha R. Mahoney, “Whiteness and Women, in Practice and Theory: A
Reply to Catharine MacKinnon,” 5 Yale J. L. and Feminism 217 (1993).
18
Nancy Fraser, Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the “Postsocialist” Condition (New York: Routledge,
1997), at 234.

5
 By the middle of the 1980s, the dark depiction of sexuality by MacKinnon and other
dominance feminists, and particularly their attempt to pass statutes banning pornography, 19
prompted considerable resistance within feminism. “Sex-positive” feminists, who included
academics from an array of disciplines in the academy as well as feminist sex radicals outside of
the academy, charged that depicting women’s sexuality as shaped solely by male coercion and
oppressive norms of sexual citizenship told an incomplete and misleading story. 20 This story,
they asserted, obscured the ways in which women’s exercise of their own sexuality could be
liberatory, or at least resistant, to dominant gender norms. It also missed the ways in which sex
could be a valuable source of women’s pleasure. 21 These pro-sex voices gained traction in some
areas of the academy, but very little in other areas, including feminist legal theory. 22 In the
aftermath of this battle, sex-positive feminists began to call for analyses of sexuality that broke
away from gender as their organizing principle. The resulting branch of sexuality study came to
be called “queer theory.”

Queer Theory and Sexual Citizenship

One of the critical turns in the conversation regarding sexuality came in a 1984 essay by
Gayle Rubin called Thinking Sex, which was published in a collection of essays by sex-positive
feminists. 23 Rubin stated,

I want to challenge the assumption that feminism is or should be the privileged site of a
theory of sexuality. Feminism is the theory of gender oppression. To automatically assume

19
MacKinnon co-wrote a significant number of works with writer Andrea Dworkin, including on the campaign
against pornography. See Andrea Dworkin and Catharine A. MacKinnon, Pornography and Civil Rights: A New
Day for Women’s Equality (Minneapolis, MN: Organizing Against Pornography, 1988). MacKinnon and Dworkin
also drafted antipornography ordinances that were adopted in three municipalities: Minneapolis, Minnesota;
Indianapolis, Indiana; and Bellingham, Washington. However, none of the ordinances was ever implemented
because their constitutionality was successfully challenged. See Hudnut v. American Booksellers Ass’n, 598 F.
Supp. 1316 (S.D. Ind. 1984), aff'd per curiam, 771 F.2d 323 (7th Cir. 1985) aff'd mem., 475 U.S. 1001 (1986);
Sheryl Rakestraw, “Current Event: ACLU v. Reno,” 10 Am. U.J. Geender Soc. Pol’y and L. 521, 523—24 (2002);
Ann Scales, “Avoiding Constitutional Depression,” in Drucilla Cornell, ed., Feminism and Pornography (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2000), at 318, 333 n.2.
20
See Kathryn Abrams, “Sex Wars Redux: Agency and Coercion in Feminist Legal Theory,” 95 Colum. L. Rev.
304-05 (1995).
21
Ibid., at 311 (quoting Amber Hollibaugh, “Desire for the Future: Radical Hope in Passion and Pleasure,” in Carol
S. Vance, ed., Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), at 403).
22
Kathryn Abrams provides a thoughtful discussion of the reasons that sex-positive feminism gained so little sway
in some feminist theorizing, including in the legal academy. Abrams, “Sex Wars Redux,” at 315-20.
23
See Gayle Rubin, “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality,” in Vance, Pleasure and
Danger, at 307.

6
 that this makes it the theory of sexual oppression is to fail to distinguish between gender, on
the one hand, and erotic desire, on the other. 24
According to Rubin, gender certainly is one axis of power intimately implicated in sexuality, but
not the only axis. Another critical axis involves the encouraging of certain sexual practices and
the punishment of others. Rubin argued that those who sought to practice disfavored forms of
sexuality – drag queens, homosexuals, sex workers, lesbians – were oppressed in a manner that
could not be adequately captured through a feminist lens. Rubin therefore insisted that “an
autonomous theory and politics specific to sexuality must be developed.” 25
Six years later, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s The Epistemology of the Closet moved the
conversation regarding sexuality still further along the path toward queer theory. Whereas Rubin
affirmatively sought to claim a space in analyses of sexuality for sexual minorities, such as gays
and lesbians, Sedgwick entirely rejected identity politics, even where sexual orientation was the
identification at issue. For Sedgwick, the labels “gay” and “straight” are themselves the products
of norms of sexuality that oppressively distinguish citizens based on the gender of their sexual
partners. These norms are premised on the problematic assumption that gender – one’s own or
that of one’s partner – should matter tremendously:

It is a rather amazing fact that, of the very many dimensions along which the genital activity
of one person can be differentiated from that of another (dimensions that include preference
for certain acts, certain zones or sensations, certain physical types, a certain frequency,
certain symbolic investments, certain relations of age or power, a certain species, a certain
number of participants, and so on) precisely one, the gender of the object choice, emerged
from the turn of the century, and has remained, as the dimension denoted by the now
ubiquitous category of “sexual orientation.” 26
Rather than making claims on behalf of one’s identity as homosexual, she argued that the
distinction between gay and straight must itself be interrogated as a source of oppression.
Sedgwick contended that both feminism and gay and lesbian studies, by accepting gender and
sexual orientation as the lenses through which to view norms of sexuality, “[give] heterosocial
and heterosexual relations a conceptual privilege of incalculable consequence.” 27

What followed was the proliferation of a vast array of works of queer theory that develop
many of the themes laid out by Rubin and Sedgwick. For one thing, they move away from
assessing norms of sexual citizenship through a gender lens and instead focus on the way that
these norms marginalize those who engage in disfavored sexual practices. For another, this work
is generally sex-positive in nature. As queer theory has developed, this pro-sex position has
extended to embrace not only marginalized sexual practices, but projects that advocate “old-
fashioned” heterosexual sex, as well. Thus Janet Halley suggests that Duncan Kennedy’s work

24
Ibid., at 308.
25
Ibid., at 309.
26
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, The Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), at 8.
27
Ibid., at 31.

7
is queer “because of its embrace of male heterosexual erotic interests.” 28 In this work, sexual
practices – both transgressive and not-so-transgressive – are seen as a means of both resistance
and liberation. As Elisa Glick explains, contemporary queer theorists “encourage us . . . to fuck
our way to freedom.” 29

Queer theory also follows through on the anti-identity turn made by Sedgwick to reject the
identity politics that feminism and gay and lesbian activism had promoted. This rejection is
premised on principles of poststructuralist theory, which posit that prevailing power relations
replicate themselves through the way in which we see the world – in other words, through shared
patterns of language and thought called “discourse.” The categories through which we see the
world – including the male/female binary and the heterosexual/homosexual binary – are, in this
view, discursively constructed, rather than stemming from the essence of the categorized objects
themselves. The simple fact that we consider particular categories to be important – including
whether one is a man or woman, heterosexual or homosexual – is a function of the normalizing
power of particular modes of thought. More broadly, poststructuralists, including queer
theorists, point out that universalizing accounts of truth, which assume that particular concepts
and ideological constructions are timeless and universal, paper over difference, complexities, and
ambiguity. They seek to displace such narratives by more localized explanations that govern
particular cultures at particular times.

The link here with Sedgwick’s argument should be clear: arguing for full sexual citizenship
on behalf of gays and lesbians assumes the importance of categorizing people based on their own
gender and the gender of their sexual partner. Yet the assumption that anything of significance
should turn on these categories is part of the problem. It is this very position that distinguishes
queer theory from gay and lesbian studies and gives the movement its name. As Richard
Thompson Ford puts it:

Queer denotes not an identity but instead a political and existential stance, an ideological
commitment, a decision to live outside some social norm or other. At the risk of (the
certainty) of oversimplification, one could say that even if one is born straight or gay, one
must decide to be queer. 30
Or, as put more colorfully by the anonymous authors of a pamphlet circulated in London in
1991, “queer means to fuck with gender. There are straight queers, bi-queers, tranny queers, lez
queers, SM queers, fisting queers.” 31

28
Janet E. Halley, Split Decisions: How and Why to Take a Break from Feminism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2006), at 171.29 Elisa Glick, “Sex Positive: Feminism, Queer Theory, and the Politics of
Transgression,” 64 Feminist Rev. 19, 19 (2000).
29
Elisa Glick, “Sex Positive: Feminism, Queer Theory, and the Politics of Transgression,” 64 Feminist Rev. 19, 19
(2000).
30
Richard Thompson Ford, “What’s Queer About Race?,” 106 S. Atlantic Q. 477, 479 (2007).
31
Quoted in Nikki Sullivan, A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory (New York: New York University Press,
2003), at 44.

8
 Queer theory’s critique of identity is linked to its theory of sexuality, which it also derives
from poststructuralism. Michel Foucault, who began to lay this theory out in the first volume of
The History of Sexuality, argued against the view that individuals possess a natural, instinctual
sex drive that society has wrongly repressed and for which the appropriate remedy is to liberate
individuals to express that drive. 32 To the contrary, Foucault argued that sexuality is, at its base,
not some natural urge, but, like sexual and gender identity, discursively constructed. He
contended that a complex matrix of discourses surrounding norms of sexual citizenship
constructs particular types of sex as normal and other types of sex as deviant, and at the same
time creates both normalized and deviant subjects. The discourse surrounding psychiatry, for
example, was instrumental both in delineating the boundaries of homosexuality and in
pathologizing it by treating it as a mental illness. This view of the relationship between power
and sexuality rejects claims by gay and lesbian activists that the central harm of homophobia and
heterocentrism involves forcing gays and lesbians to “cover up” their “real” identity in order to
comport with dominant norms of sexual citizenship. Instead, it is the fact that citizens identify as
either homosexuals or heterosexuals that demonstrates the normalizing power of dominant
discourses regarding sexual citizenship and limits the possible lives that these citizens can lead.

As this discussion of sexuality reveals, there are significant differences between the
poststructuralist and the dominance feminist conceptions of power. In contrast to MacKinnon,
Foucault sees both women’s and men’s sexuality as an effect of power. For Foucault, power in
modern society operates primarily as a productive force that shapes all humans – turning them
into women and men, heterosexuals and homosexuals – by molding their desires and self-
concepts. As such, power operates in everyday interactions, where it “reaches into the very grain
of individuals, touches their bodies and inserts itself into their actions and attitudes, their
discourses, learning processes and everyday lives.” 33

Foucault’s understanding of power offers several advantages over the dominance feminist
model for analyzing norms of sexual citizenship. For one thing, it gives us a better
understanding of how norms of sexual citizenship influence citizens’ daily lives. As Foucault
explained it, through their discursive circulation in society, these norms influence how citizens
see their own identity, and make some ways of life and sexual practices conceivable and
pleasurable, while they marginalize others or make them altogether inconceivable.

Foucault’s model also offers a more satisfying explanation for how dominant norms can
change or otherwise be resisted. Because power produces particular subjects with particular
capacities, it gives rise to the possibility for action and resistance. Furthermore, by conceiving of
power as operating at the micro level, rather than as a totalizing force that permeates throughout
society, the poststructuralist model better grapples with the multiplicity of voices on contested
issues such as sexual citizenship, rather than insisting that there is some monolithic viewpoint
into which women are indoctrinated. Consideration of the welter of discourses that circulates

32
See generally Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, An Introduction (New York: Pantheon Books,
1978).
33
Michel Foucault, “Prison Talk,” in Colin Gordon, ed., Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings,
1972-1977 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), at 37, 39.

9
around sexuality and their effect on citizens enables theories to grapple with how to foster
resistance around these discourses.

Considering Queer Theory and Sexuality

Queer theory’s adoption of the poststructuralist conception of power opens the door to
significant gains in theorizing sexuality. Some of these gains, however, have been foreclosed by
the uncritical pro-sex stance that so much of queer theory assumes. Although this pro-sex stance
generally appears alongside the poststructuralist conception of power in works of queer theory,
there is no intrinsic tie between these two positions. In fact, on close examination, there is
considerable tension between them. Certainly queer theory came by its pro-sex position
honestly, given that its progenitors were, on the one hand, sex-positive feminists seeking a mode
of theorizing that departed from dominance feminism’s bleak view of sexuality, and, on the other
hand, gays and lesbians who sought to end proscriptions on homosexual conduct. And in fact,
some of the less persuasive parts of Foucault’s own work, from which queer theory draws
heavily, link a pro-sex stance – or at least a position supportive of “bodies and pleasure” – with
resistance. 34 In generally attaching a positive valence to sex, however, queer theory sacrifices
poststructuralism’s promise of yielding more nuanced, textured analyses of sexuality that grapple
with the complexities of power in this area.

Taking the poststructuralist conception of power seriously, sexual activity is not

appropriately valenced as intrinsically positive, as many queer theorists would have it, just as it
is not as negative as dominance feminists portrayed it. Sexuality, instead, is a discursive creation
that, in itself, is neither good nor bad. Once we discard the notion that sexuality is some natural,
innate drive that society wrongfully causes us to repress, we must discard the view that sexual
performances, by themselves, are liberating. Likewise, the simple fact that sex is pleasurable
should not, for queer theory, make engaging in the activity good or liberatory in any
uncomplicated sense. 35 As Foucault recognizes, power forms subjects in a way that can make
subjection feel good. (And if, as MacKinnon argues, the purpose of sexual pleasure is to enforce
hierarchy, there is even less reason to consider the argument in favor of pleasure sufficient.) A

34
Foucault unconvincingly sought to distinguish between, on the one hand, a pro-sex stance and, on the other, a pro-
bodies and pleasure stance, precisely because he recognized the problems with the argument that a pro-sex stance is
liberatory: “We must not think that by saying yes to sex, one says no to power; on the contrary one tracks along the
course laid out by the general deployment of sexuality. It is the agency of sex that we must break away from, if we
aim – through a tactical reversal of the various mechanisms of sexuality – to counter the grips of power with the
claims of bodies, pleasure, and knowledge, in their multiplicity and their possibility of resistance. The rallying point
for the counterattack against the deployment of sexuality ought not to be sex desire, but bodies and pleasures.”
Foucault, History of Sexuality, at 157. The quotation might lead an astute reader to conclude that Foucault was a
better positive theorist of the workings of power than he was a normative theorist of freedom. For more discussion
of Foucault’s distinction between desire and pleasure, see inf. n. 36.
35
For example, Janet Halley cites with approval the analysis of pro-sex feminists who, in her words, affirm that
“danger [connected to the risk of sexual violence] was real, and really bad. But they tended to say it was bad not
because it realized male dominance, but because it deterred women from being sexually adventurous, from seeking
and finding pleasure.” See Halley, Split Decisions, at 117.

10
politics that strives for freedom and self-determination accordingly needs a more nuanced set of
precepts than “if it feels good, do it.” 36

To the extent that queer theorists’ pro-sex views are motivated by the notion that dominant
norms of citizenship generally marginalize sexuality, and that all acts of sex therefore transgress
these forces, these theorists read these cultural forces in an overly simplistic light. While clearly
some discourse surrounding sexual citizenship opposes sexual activity generally (at least ouside
of marriage), there are, as MacKinnon pointed out, 37 many other strands that do exactly the
opposite and communicate the message that sex is just daring and risky enough to be titillatingly,
not-quite-so off limits, and that everyone should be doing this wonderful, naughty thing. In other
words, the taboo surrounding sex generally (as opposed to particular forms of sex) is only skin-
deep; the simple fact of engaging in sexual behavior, in and of itself, should not be deemed
liberatory or even resistant. In fact, the blanket view that performances of sexuality are
emancipatory is exactly the kind of universalizing narrative that queer theorists properly reject in
other settings. Treating sexual activity as positive, without paying attention to the context of the
performance, how it functions in a particular time and place, and how that performance is likely
to be interpreted, attributes a positive essence to sexuality beyond its social meanings. Sex
therefore comes to serve, in queer theory, as an unshakeable ground – inherently liberatory and
intrinsically resistant to whatever needs to be resisted.

Properly framed, however, sexuality is a product of a complex of interwoven, sometimes

conflicting, discourses. Any given performance of sexuality can draw on narratives that largely
reinforce existing power relations, undercut them, or contain both dominant and transgressive
strains to varying degrees. Simply performing sexual acts is not necessarily resistant; we need to
know more about the performance to make this judgment. The tendency in queer theory to see
all acts of sexuality as transgressive, ironically, mirrors the flaw that queer theorists and pro-sex
feminists correctly critiqued in earlier feminist theory. Dominance feminist accounts flatten the
terrain of gender hierarchy when they see all acts of sex as similarly subjugating without
recognizing the ways in which some can, at the very least, contain some resistant elements.
Queer theorists, however, make the obverse mistake when they see all sex as liberating.

The positive valence accorded sex is sometimes justified in queer theory by the claim that
sex interrupts the illusion of stable identity, clean boundaries, and neat ethical logic enforced by

36
Foucault himself sought to answer this argument by claiming that although the term desire carried heavy
discursive baggage, the term pleasure was more open as a discursive matter and hence carried possibilities for
freedom, agency, and self-creation: “That term [desire] has been used as a tool … a calibration in terms of
normality. Tell me what your desire is and I will tell you who you are, whether you are normal or not, and then I can
qualify or disqualify your desire. The term pleasure on the other hand is virgin territory, almost devoid of meaning.
There is no pathology of pleasure, no ‘abnormal’ pleasure. It is an event ‘outside of the subject’ or on the edge of
the subject, within something that is neither body nor soul, which is neither inside nor outside, in short a notion
which is neither ascribed nor ascribable.” Michel Foucault, “Le Gai Savior II,” Mec Magazine, July-August 1988, at
32. While the term pleasure may, as Foucault asserts, allow for more linguistic mobility than the term desire, it
seems far-fetched to argue that the circumstances that give someone sexual pleasure are not shot through with
cultural baggage. 37 See MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State, at 133.
37
See MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State, at 133.

11
Western ideology. For example, Janet Halley praises queer theory’s “willingness to affirm
sexuality as carrying an appetite for deep threats to integrated selfhood, its willingness to lose
touch of propositional ethical logic to do so, its plunge into a profoundly irresolvable
problematic of desire, and its fragmentation not only of the self but of the gendered self.” 38
Halley’s description of sexuality derives from a provocative 1987 essay by Leo Bersani. In that
essay, Is the Rectum a Grave?, Bersani, a literary theorist and French literature professor, argues
against the view that homosexual sex has any predictable, beneficial political effects. As Bersani
puts it, “While it is indisputably true that sexuality is always being politicized, the ways in which
having sex politicizes are highly problematical.” Of the claim by gay rights activists that
homosexual sex promotes egalitarian politics, he states, “To put the matter polemically and even
rather brutally, we have been telling a few lies.” 39

Toward the end of the essay, however, in a far more conjectural section, Bersani speculates
that sex still has some considerable value when it comes to resisting the normalizing tendencies
of modern Western society. He adapts Freud’s theories to argue that the way the human body is
constructed makes it “almost impossible” for sexuality not to be associated with starkly divided
roles of mastery and subordination. Bersani conjectures, however, that at the root of human
sexuality is the yearning to transgress this stark polarization. He borrows from Freud the
possibility that “sexual pleasure occurs whenever a certain threshold of intensity is reached,
when the organization of the self is momentarily disturbed by sensations or affective processes
somehow ‘beyond’ those connected with psychic organization.” 40 Sexual pleasure, in this view,
involves moving beyond this bounded dichotomy to escape limits.

Despite the overall brilliance of Bersani’s essay, this particular argument has little to
recommend it from a poststructuralist perspective. Bersani’s quest to locate, after Freud, some
deep, intrinsic meaning to sex is undercut by poststructuralism’s recognition of the problems
with essentialism and grand narratives. If sexuality is a construct of power, its meaning should
be discerned through particular narratives, rather than seeking ahistoric rationales, as Bersani
does. The notion, moreover, that the value of sex lies in its exploding of the fantasy of human
identity, even if it were accurate, is a mighty thin edge on which to balance a whole political
platform valorizing sex. At most, the “exploding” of human identity at the point of orgasm is
momentary. Bersani not only provides us with no arguments that its effects are more than
transitory, in the rest of the essay, he argues against the proposition that sex has any predictably
positive effects.

Some queer theorists move beyond the facile equating of sex of any sort with resistance,
instead valorizing only performances that are marginalized by dominant norms, such as
homosexual sex or sadomasochistic sex. The position that only certain kinds of sexual
performances are transgressive is certainly a better reading of prevailing norms of sexual

38
Ian Halley, “Queer Theory by Men,” 11 Duke J. Gender L. and Pol’y 7, 25 (2004).
39
Leo Bersani, “Is the Rectum a Grave?,” In Douglas Crimp, ed, AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988), at 206.
40
Ibid. at 217.

12
citizenship than that which sees all sexuality as marginalized. A few qualifications of this
position are in order, however. First, queer theorists should be cautious about overstating the
transgressive power even of sex that has been pushed to the boundaries of society. As Bersani
points out, there are many ways that performance that might, on first glance, appear to subvert
repressive norms of sexual citizenship can backfire, either failing to undercut such norms or even
reinforcing the status quo. To the contention that gay-macho style subverts the dominant order,
he responds: “It is difficult to know how ‘much mischief’ can be done by a style that straight
men see – if indeed they see it at all – from a car window as they drive down Folsom Street.
Their security as males with power may very well not be threatened at all by that scarcely
traumatic sight, because nothing forces them to see any relation between the gay-macho style
and their image of their own masculinity.” 41 What may be intended by the performers as
transgressive may not be read in that way by their audience, who may simply dismiss them as
deviants without realigning their views. Bersani’s cautions here echo Foucault’s own warnings
about how strong the recuperative forces of power are in Western society: even when subjects
think that they are resisting dominant norms of sexual citizenship, they are often unintentionally
reinforcing these very forces.

Second, queer theory’s support for marginalized forms of sexuality requires some more
developed normative theory of the appropriate terms of sexual citizenship than simply promoting
resistance for resistance’s sake. Without this, queer theory is like a teenager who invests all her
energy in rejecting every position taken by her parents, without thinking about her own goals.
There are many good reasons to favor easing the strictures on same-sex sexual relationships
beyond the simple fact that they are currently off limits. This may not be the case, however, for
all other currently disfavored forms of sexuality.

Sadomasochism, or S&M, a practice that many queer theorists have cheered, provides an
interesting example of this issue. While there is no question that sadomasochism transgresses
contemporary norms, it is worth thinking through whether the costs of this practice make this
particular transgression a worthy case to support. An identifying feature of sadomasochism – the
assignment of one partner to the dominant role, or “top,” and the assignment of the other partner
to the submissive role, or “bottom” – should give pause to those who seek to move toward a
society characterized not only by liberty, but also by increased equality. S&M’s queer theory
proponents sometimes seek to allay this concern by describing it as a strategic game that
involves only the temporary assumption of roles. The dominant or submissive natures of the
roles assumed, they assert, remain localized to the game and have little bearing on the larger
context of its practitioners’ lives. 42 As Nikki Sullivan points out, however, the empirical

41
Ibid., at 208. As Kathryn Abrams counsels, with a strategy reliant on subversion, “one is never sure ex-ante
whether it’s going to be successful in destabilizing dominant norms, whether it’s going to have a little effect, or
whether maybe it might even reinforce the status quo.” Zipporah Wiseman et al., “Roundtable discussion: Is
Subversion Subversive?,” 13 Tex. J. Women and L. 149, 152 (2003).
42
See, e.g., Ted Polhemus and Housk Randall, Rituals of Love: Sexual Experiments, Erotic Possibilities (London:
Picador, 1994), at 73-74 (S&M “is best understood as a sort of a game – an enclosed microcosm with its own rules
and territory – and as such . . . it is autonomous from real-life inequalities”). See also Michel Foucault, “Sex, Power,
and the Politics of Identity,” in Paul Rabinow, ed., Michel Foucalt: Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth (New York: New

13
evidence is unclear regarding how many couples involved in S&M actually do switch roles with
any sort of regularity or success. Some anecdotal evidence suggests that this proportion may not
be high. By the same token, there is evidence that at least a significant proportion of S&M
participants do carry some aspects of their roles into the rest of their lives. 43

The inequalities created by S&M, it could be argued, at least have the virtue of not being tied
to sexual orientation or gender. Even if this is true, however, one might question whether queer
theory should seek to aim still higher, toward a world in which no pervasive inequalities mark
the citizens. And there is some reason to question whether S&M truly does help blur the
boundaries between genders. While some proponents argue that its practices undercut both
hetero- and gender normativity because they focus on pleasures not based on the gender of one’s
sexual partner, 44 the myriad reports of S&M participants who repeatedly interact only with same-
sex partners or opposite-sex partners might cause us to suspect that the gender of one’s partner
still remains a salient component of the interaction for its participants.

What is more, encouraging S&M may reinscribe some of the very psychic injuries suffered
by women and sexual minorities that queer theory seeks to move beyond. As some critics of
S&M argue, the practice may reflect the internalization of homophobia and misogyny. In John
Rechy’s words, “gay S&M is the straight world’s most despicable legacy” because the gay male
sadist “transfer[s] his feelings of self-contempt for his own homosexuality onto the cowering
‘M,’ who turns himself willingly into what gayhaters have called him.” 45 Sheila Jeffreys, in
turn, argues that sadomasochism is a form of sexual abuse that embodies the eroticized
dominance and submission of gendered sexuality that MacKinnon discusses. 46 To the extent that
those enacting these roles – women and those who identify as sexual minorities – are reenacting
wounds they have suffered in a society that they seek to restructure, queer theorists would do
better to promote new and different roles, rather than encourage these roles.

Insofar as queer theorists might answer that this kind of reworking allows the constructive
reclaiming of damaged identities, the debate over cultural feminism offers useful advice. In the
1980s, cultural feminists similarly argued that qualities connected with women should be

Press, 1997), at 163-173 (the “S&M game is very interesting because . . . it is always fluid. Of course, there are
roles, but everybody knows very well that those roles can be reversed”).
43
See Sullivan, A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory, 154-58.
44
David Halperin, Saint Foucault (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), at 95; see also Foucault, History of
Sexuality, at 156.
45
John Rechy, The Sexual Outlaw (London: Futura, 1979), at 261.
46
See Sheila Jeffreys, “Heterosexuality and the Desire for Gender,” in Diane Richardson, ed., Theorising
Heterosexuality: Telling It Straight (Buckingham, UK: Open University Press, 1998), at 76. MacKinnon argues that
this eroticized dominance and submission can be enacted in both same-sex and heterosexual relationships, although
the eroticization of women’s submission always remains the template for the practice. See “Brief of Amicus Curiae
National Organization on Male Sexual Victimization,” Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Servs., 1996 U.S. Briefs 568
(Aug. 12, 1997).

14
revalued and celebrated. 47 While many of the traits traditionally associated with femininity are
positive (e.g., emotion, compassion, empathy), feminists have come to realize that some traits
traditionally associated with femininity, such as timidity and weakness, are problematic to
celebrate. Instead, these traits should be recognized as not intrinsically “feminine,” but as
products of gender subordination, which would likely fade away in a restructured world without
gender oppression. Queer theory might learn from this inquiry and rethink its approach to S&M.
The same is likely true for queer theory’s celebrating the connection between sex on the one
hand, and shame, disgust, and subordination on the other.

Finally, queer theorists’ celebration of sexuality sometimes seems to confuse the theoretical
possibility that subjects can resist dominant norms of sexual citizenship with the belief that these
dominant norms no longer hold much power in citizens’ daily lives. 48 For example, Janet Halley
inveighs against the “grim resolution that the structural [i.e., dominance] feminists, in all their
consolidated knowledge, produce” in seeing the world in terms of their dark, totalizing vision.
She contrasts this with queer theory’s “delicious wonder at the . . . profound, almost delirious
complexity of sexuality as it is so variously lived” and says of this vision, “I like it better. I hope
you will too.” 49 For many of us, the world that Halley describes, in which rigid norms of sexual
citizenship hold little sway, is far preferable to MacKinnon’s vision of the world. Whether
Halley’s vision reflects the world in which we live, however, is at least partly an empirical
question that can be determined only with reference to citizens’ lives today: to what extent, in
actual practice, are citizens’ sexual lives constrained by rigid sexual norms? My own hunch is
that although there is more reason for cheer than there used to be, there is still a great deal of
work left to do before celebration is in order. Viewed in this way, while MacKinnon clearly
paints too dark a picture in conceiving of citizens’ lives as completely dictated by totalizing
norms, Halley likely paints too bright a picture. In our real world, most citizens conform to
gender norms in many ways and at least broadly to conventional norms of sexuality, whether or
not those conditions would hold in anyone’s ideal world. 50 In this light, Halley’s enjoyment of

47
See Ellen C. Dubois et al., “Feminist Discourse, Moral Values, and the Law – A Conversation,” 34 Buff. L. Rev.
11-12 (1985).
48
This mirrors a difficulty in Foucault’s own work. Foucault's early work leaves little room for subjectivity, socially
constructed or not, let alone for resistance. This is the Foucault who famously declared the "death of the subject,"
and who likened the concept of man, the self-possessed subject of humanist discourse, to "a face drawn in sand at
the edge of the sea," subject to being erased by the incoming tide. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An
Archaeology of the Human Sciences, translated by Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), at 387.
In his later work, however, Foucault asserts that “there are no relations of power without resistances; the latter are all
the more real and effective because they are formed right at the point where relations of power are exercised.” See
Michel Foucault, “Power and Strategies,” in Gordon, ed., Power/Knowledge, at 134, 142; see also John McGowan,
Postmodernism and Its Critics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), at 140. In this mode of theorizing,
Foucault seems to conceive resistant capacities as perpetual: because power will always be present, so will
resistance.
49
Halley, Split Decisions, at 207.
50
To take but a few limited examples, an international discussion group on sexual bondage revealed that 11 percent
of heterosexual females say they prefer the dominant sexual role, as compared to 71 percent of heterosexual men.
Twelve percent of male homosexuals report preferring the dominant sexual role. Judith Mackay, Penguin Atlas of
Human Sexual Behavior (New York: Penguin Books, 2000), at 20-21; see also New Strategist Publications,
American Sexual Behavior: Demographics of Sexual Activity, Fertility, and Childbearing (Ithaca, NY: New

15
“the profound, almost delirious complexity of sexuality as it is so variously lived” is, in the least,
premature. 51
Theorizing Sexual Citizenship Going Forward

How might we construct a critical theory that can better grasp and evaluate the complexity of
existing norms of sexual citizenship and their relationship to the lived reality of citizens? Such a
theory should build on the advances that the poststructuralist conception of power offers in
recognizing the role that discourse plays in constructing and replicating norms of sexual
citizenship, and determining how subjects see themselves, and the range of sexual possibilities
they see as desirable and realistic. Conceiving of these norms in discursive terms helps grasp the
complexity and contestation that surrounds them in contemporary life. Yet recognizing that
these norms are time-bound, contingent, and always subject to contestation, does not mean that
they are simply fictions with no grip on power. As Foucault stated, “we must not place sex on
the side of reality, and sexuality on that of confused ideas and illusions; sexuality is a very real
historical formation.” 52

Likewise, the recognition of the multiplicity of narratives that circulates about sexuality
should not eclipse the recognition that some narratives sound more loudly and circulate more
frequently than others. In addition, citizens are more likely to engage in some types of
performances than others. In other words, there are still dominant valences within these
discursive fields of power. MacKinnon was wrong when she depicted women as being
absolutely consigned to submissive sexual roles in today’s society and as having no access to
alternative scripts. She was right, however, in asserting that being sexually submissive is the role
of least resistance for women (pun intended) in contemporary society. By the same token,
heteronormativity may be contested by the sitcom Will and Grace and the movie Milk, but these
must be seen in the context of the hundreds of thousands of other cultural scripts that marginalize
gays and queers.

The discursive conception of power also points toward strategies for disrupting the norms of
sexual citizenship deemed problematic. As Steven Winter argues, conceiving power as inhering
in social relations, through subjects performing their roles in relation to others, recognizes that
“power [is] vulnerable to disruption . . . because the ‘powerless’ always have the power to
withhold or vary their performance.” 53 An adequate theory of sexuality must also recognize that
the normalizing aspects of power have real effects on subjects’ ability and desire to resist, and
must take into account the options, possibilities, and capacities afforded the individual by a given
social order. While there can be creative rereading of dominant norms, replacing the dominant
norms of sexual citizenship with such rereading takes more than imagination – it takes arduous
political and social work. The function of a critical theory of sexuality, then, is not simply to

Strategist Publications, 2006), at 66. Furthermore, only 6 percent of men and 11 percent of women are believed to
have had any kind of same-sex sexual contact. Ibid.
51
Halley, Split Decisions, at 207.
52
Foucault, History of Sexuality, at 131.
53
Steven L. Winter, “The Power Thing,” 82 Va. L. Rev. 721, 787 (1996).

16
assert that dominant norms of sexual citizenship are being repeatedly transgressed, but to locate
the social, political, and legal conditions that will foster subjects’ ability to subvert norms
deemed oppressive in their everyday lives.

A revised theory of sexuality should also develop more nuanced readings of citizens’ sexual
performances. The fact that a citizen engages in sexual activity, it should be recognized, does
not, in itself, transgress societal norms in any way that should be considered liberatory, as queer
theory sometimes takes it. By the same token, neither is all heterosexual sex equally as
implicated in gender hierarchy, as some dominance feminists would have it. Instead, more
complex analyses are necessary to tease apart the normalizing and transgressive strands of these
performances. Brenda Cossman’s chapter in this volume provides as excellent example of the
more complex stories that need to be told. 54 Other feminist work during the past fifteen years,
particularly that of Kathryn Abrams, also presents more nuanced models of power and agency
that can be useful to developing such a sophisticated model of sexual citizenship. 55

Moreover, an adequate critical theory of sexuality needs a well thought-out conception of the
vision of the world it seeks to move toward. At this point, feminist theory has done a better job
than queer theory of thinking through what a restructured society should look like. 56 Feminists,
however, have not yet adequately theorized the role that sexual pleasure should play in
constructing the norms of sexual citizenship. 57 Queer theorists, meanwhile, need to engage in a
serious conversation about vision generally. The current conversation has been too focused on
transgression of existing norms; while this may suffice as a short-term strategy, it fails as a long-
term goal. A world with no norms (aside from transgression), it perhaps goes without saying,
would not only be impossible, but morally unpalatable. At the very least, consent would seem to
be one limiting norm that queer theorists should seek to hold on to, but it is not the only one. To
the extent that queer theorists really seek such unbridled freedom, feminism offers ready
objections. Lives directed only toward the goal of unbounded freedom ignore the condition of
dependency that marks all human lives. A society that seeks only to maximize liberty may also
impose significant costs on equality. This will be the case particularly where that liberty is
directed toward sexual pleasure, and, as in our society, that pleasure is tied to gender hierarchy.
An adequate theory of sexual citizenship must think about whether and how to incorporate other

54
See Chapter 13.
55
See, e.g., Abrams, “Sex Wars Redux;” Kathryn Abrams, “From Autonomy to Agency: Feminist Perspectives on
Self-Direction,” 40 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 805 (1999); Wiseman et al., “Roundtable Discussion,” at 150-51.
56
See, e.g., Linda C. McClain, The Place of Families: Fostering Capacity, Equality, and Responsibility (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2006) (arguing for goods of capacity, equality, and responsibility); Martha
Nussbaum, Sex and Social Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999) (arguing for developing human
capabilities); Martha Albertson Fineman, “The Vulnerable Subject: Anchoring Equality in the Human Condition,”
20 Yale J. L. and Feminism 1 (2008) (arguing for protecting vulnerabilities).
57
See Katherine Franke, “Feminist Justice, at Home and Abroad: Women Imagining Justice,” 14 Yale J. L. and
Feminism 307, 311 (2002).

17
relevant goods as well, such as those that Linda McClain argues have heretofore been
overlooked by queer theory, including safety and bodily integrity. 58

And what about the issue of which lens should be used to consider existing norms of sexual
citizenship – a feminist lens focused on gender, or a queer theory lens focused on the
marginalization of particular sexual practices? Clearly both have a place. Queer theory has
demonstrated that there are significant insights to be reaped from analyses of sexuality that do
not place gender front and center. 59 In addition, it has rightly called attention to the costs of
feminist measures to end sex inequality that might be imposed on other groups. 60 With that said,
while feminism cannot be the only lens through which to consider existing norms of sexual
citizenship, the same is true for queer theory. Gender, although a discursive fiction that is
inherently unstable and contested, and while always intertwined with other axes of power,
remains an important axis of power in our society that affects the lived reality of citizens. 61
Foreclosing discussion of a possible gender axis would risk missing the ways in which in these
discursive constructions still demarcate fault lines in sexuality.

The answer, then, is that no single lens – whether gender, queer theory, or some third lens –
should be deemed to have priority in assessing norms of sexual citizenship in contemporary
society. Whether there are conceptual gains to be made through feminist or queer theory
analysis can only be decided in the context of particular situations, by whether a particular lens
yields insights. In addition, as Cossman notes, given the ways in which discourses regarding
gender and sexuality often overlap in our society, the most productive points of analysis will
frequently be those that interrogate the intersections and contradictions between these two
strands. 62

Insofar as feminists and queer theorists have been engaging in an argument about which is
more primary, oppression based on sexuality or gender, this seems to be a particularly
unproductive discussion. 63 Often this conversation proceeds by inquiring whether gender is the
prime mover that creates sexuality, or sexuality the prime mover that creates gender, much like a
scholarly version of the chicken-and-egg question. When we are talking about the way in which
power works through social systems, there is no clear means to identify a prime mover or
primary constitutive factor. A debate about which came first seems as pointless as were the

58
Linda C. McClain, “Some ABCs of Feminist Sex Education (in Light of the Sexuality Critique of Legal
Feminism),” 15 Colum. J. Gender & L. 63, 87 (2006).
59
See, e.g., Brenda Cossman, Sexual Citizens: The Legal and Cultural Regulation of Sex and Belonging (Pala Alto,
CA: Stanford University Press, 2007); Halley, Split Decisions, at 348-63.
60
See Halley, Split Decisions, passim.
61
See Susan Bordo, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1993), at 222.
62
Brenda Cossman et al., “Gender, Sexuality, and Power: Is Feminist Theory Enough?,” 12 Colum. J. Gender and
L. 601, 617 (2003).
63
See, e.g., Halley, Split Decisions, at 123.

18
discussions in the late 1980s and early 1990s about which type of oppression – based on sex,
race, or ethnicity – was more fundamental.

Conclusion

Assessing the terms of sexual citizenship in the contemporary United States is a complex
and demanding task. In an era in which dominant norms regarding sexual citizenship are
regularly being contested and a multitude of discourses regarding these norms is endlessly
proliferated, a critical theory of sexuality must be able to discern shades of gray, instead of
simply black and white in interpreting these norms. It must also be sensitive to the multiple axes
of that run through these constructions of power, and be able to chart the intersections and
conflicts among these axes. Furthermore, it must be able to identify the conditions that would
undercut dominant norms deemed oppressive, which also requires it to develop some
constructive vision of the world it seeks. In such a world, sexuality should be neither
intrinsically a virtue nor a vice, but one possible piece in the rich, full lives of citizens.

19