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PALGRAVE SOCIO-LEGAL STUDIES
Edited by
Senthorun Raj · Peter Dunne
Palgrave Socio-Legal Studies
Series Editor
Dave Cowan
School of Law
University of Bristol
Bristol, UK
The Palgrave Socio-Legal Studies series is a developing series of monographs
and textbooks featuring cutting edge work which, in the best tradition of
socio-legal studies, reach out to a wide international audience.
Editorial Board
Dame Hazel Genn, University College London, UK
Fiona Haines, University of Melbourne, Australia
Herbert Kritzer, University of Minnesota, USA
Linda Mulcahy, University of Oxford, UK
Rosemary Hunter, University of Kent
Carl Stychin, University of London, UK
Mariana Valverde, University of Toronto, Canada
Sally Wheeler, Australian National University College of Law, Australia
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Acknowledgements
This project began its life as a conversation over cups of tea at the end of the
Socio-Legal Studies Association Conference in Newcastle in April 2017. As
legal scholars who use very different methodological approaches in our work
but who are both deeply invested in LGBTIQ rights, we wondered what
might be gained if we tried to combine our different approaches (as queer
as they might be together!) to address current issues facing LGBTIQ people
in the United Kingdom. From that brief chat, The Queer Outside in Law:
Recognising LGBTIQ People in the United Kingdom was born. In realising this
project, we have received support from a number of individuals and institu-
tions, without whose generosity, advice and support, we would not have been
able to produce this book.
At the beginning of the project, we benefited greatly from the support,
advice and mentorship of Professor Dave Cowan, who championed this
project and who provided invaluable advice as we navigated the proposal
review. We received extremely helpful comments and encouragement from
three anonymous reviewers. Their insights were beneficial as we structured
the project, and they have undoubtedly enhanced the final collection.
While completing this project (2017–2020), we have benefited from the
support of a number of educational institutions. Since 2017, Senthorun Raj
has been a lecturer at Keele University, which has been immensely generous
in contributing to the edited collection—particularly through their funding
and hosting of an authors’ workshop in June 2018. Peter Dunne began the
project as a Ph.D. student at Trinity College Dublin and took up an academic
v
vi Acknowledgements
position at the University of Bristol Law School in 2017. The authors are very
appreciative of the contribution of all three institutions, both for their support
of this project and the authors’ wider research activities.
Since the initial stages of the collection, we have benefited from the exceed-
ingly professional, supportive and patient partnership of the editorial staff at
Palgrave Macmillan. We could not have asked for better guidance and assis-
tance on this project, and we are immensely grateful for their knowledgeable
and understanding advice throughout. In particular, we owe a significant debt
of gratitude to Josie Taylor, Liam Inscoe-Jones and Hemapriya Eswanth.
We are grateful to our families (for putting up with us!), and to the
numerous friends and colleagues who have supported and encouraged this
work. In particular, we would like to thank Professor Chris Ashford and
Professor Stephen Whittle for their contribution, support and advice in
bringing this edited collection to fruition. Our final thanks go to the amazing
and fabulous authors, who have contributed to this edited collection. It has
been a deep honour working with you over the past three years. We are
consistently inspired by your commitment to excellence and your collegiality.
Thank you for being part of this project!
Contents
vii
viii Contents
Index 273
Notes on Contributors
ix
x Notes on Contributors
1 Introduction
In recent years, there has been significant social, political and academic debate
on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) rights in
the United Kingdom (UK). More than fifty years after partial decriminalisa-
tion of male same-sex intercourse in England and Wales, and with growing,
yet contested,1 awareness of gender and sexual diversity, many commenta-
tors have observed the supposedly swift expansion of sexual orientation and
gender identity protections in this jurisdiction. From marriage equality to
legal gender recognition, and from explicit non-discrimination guarantees to
inclusive foreign policies, laws in the UK are frequently cited as a model
1 Editorial,
“The Guardian View on the Gender Recognition Act: Where Rights Collide” Guardian.
October 17, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/17/the-guardian-view-on-
the-gender-recognition-act-where-rights-collide.
S. Raj (B)
Keele University, Newcastle-Under-Lyme, UK
e-mail: s.raj@keele.ac.uk
P. Dunne
University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
e-mail: pd17563@bristol.ac.uk
of global “best practice” for protecting the rights and freedoms of LGBTIQ
communities.2
Challenging such narratives of unidirectional progress, this edited collec-
tion explores the concept of the “queer outside” in UK law. Through seven
substantive chapters, the collection uncovers the myriad ways in which UK
law and policy continues to distort, marginalise, suppress and erase queer
identities. Despite highly publicised movements for reform, there are still
large sections of the UK’s queer population who remain untouched by legal
advancements. Queer asylum applicants, some intersex, transgender and non-
binary populations, and LGBTIQ persons within the criminal justice system
remain—despite recent progress—in many ways strangers to the law. The
various contributions to this collection identify the often unseen lacunas in
existing legal protections, and they ask whether and how UK policy makers
can establish more inclusive queer rights frameworks.
The collection also analyses how assimilating queer experiences into pre-
existing legal structures has obscured, re-moulded and, ultimately, excluded
those queer lives, which transgress heteronormative and cisnormative3 social
conventions. Whether intentionally or not, the processes through which UK
law and policy acknowledges binary trans individuals, and seeks to advance
intersex rights, have not only ignored the reality of lived experience; they have
even reproduced and further entrenched the marginalisation of bodies, sexu-
alities and genders which stretch beyond commonly accepted social norms.
The contributions to this collection address the unforeseen consequences of
moving inside legal protection and reflect upon the potential benefits of
choosing to remain an “outsider” in UK law.
As we write this introductory chapter, the UK has recently exited from
the European Union, after 47 years of membership, and is now facing a
global pandemic. The question of Brexit has exhausted political and legal
commentators over the past five years. As editors of the collection, a key
issue for us, but one which has received comparatively little attention, is
2 See Leslie Moran, “What Kind of Field Is ‘Law, Gender and Sexuality’? Achievements, Concerns and
Possible Futures”, Feminist Legal Studies 17 (2009): 309, 310. This has also been considered in the
context of legislative debates, see Carl Stychin, A Nation by Rights: National Cultures, Sexual Identity
Politics, and the Discourse of Rights (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998); Carl Stychin,
Governing Sexuality: The Changing Politics of Citizenship and Law Reform (Oxford: Hart, 2003);
Carl Stychin, “Same-Sex Sexualities and the Globalization of Human Rights Discourse”, McGill Law
Journal 49 (2004): 951. For a discussion of the transnational activist mobilisation of law and policy,
see Ryan Thoreson, Transnational LGBT Activism: Working for Sexual Rights Worldwide (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2014).
3 “Cisnormativity” refers to a belief in the normality, appropriateness and generality of identifying
with the gender that one is assigned at birth.
Queering Outside the (Legal) Box: LGBTIQ People in the United Kingdom 3
how the UK’s relationship to the EU has influenced (and may still poten-
tially impact) the lives of sexual and gender minorities.4 In many ways, the
EU has been positioned as the quintessential legal “outsider”—shaping (and,
according to some politicians, corrupting) the “inside” of UK law and policy.
Yet, the “outside” influence of the European Union has also played a vital role
in advancing LGBT5 rights in this jurisdiction. It has established minimum
guarantees,6 which the UK government has been required to respect and,
until 31 December 2020, it will retain a floor of protection under which the
UK Parliament cannot legislate.7 Thinking about the complexity of the UK
and the European Union’s entanglements around LGBT(IQ) rights, catalysed
partly by Brexit, has allowed us to approach broader issues about sovereignty,
alliance, rights, and in/exclusion by pulling into view what is inside and
outside the parameters of state law.
This edited collection brings together a number of queer lawyers and
legal scholars to reflect upon how the above socio-legal issues and parame-
ters manifest in their work and to consider the impacts, which law has on
the lives of LGBTIQ people in the UK. In preparing their chapters, we
asked each of the contributors to consider three overarching questions. First,
what does it mean to be “queer” when pursuing inclusion in a legal system?
Second, why might those (queers) who are relegated to the “outside” of law
wish to remain there? Finally, how does law feature in the construction of
what it means to be “queer” and an “outsider”? The chapters in this edited
collection reveal how our authors have understood and responded to these
questions against a broad range of backgrounds, including asylum processes,
legal gender recognition, criminal justice and equality law.
This introductory chapter briefly explains how, as editors, we have under-
stood and addressed key ideas in this collection—including our approach to
“queerness” (Part II), “law” (Part III) and the notion of the “outside” (Part
IV). Drawing upon the extensive literature in this field, the chapter acknowl-
edges the contested constructions to which these concepts have been subject
4 See Carmelo Danisi, Moira Dustin and Nuno Ferreira, “Queering Brexit: What’s in Brexit for Sexual
and Gender Minorities?,” in Gender and Queer Perspectives on Brexit, edited by Moira Dustin, Nuno
Ferreira and Susan Millns, 239–272 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).
5 We use “LGBT” rather than “LGBTIQ” here because the rights of intersex and queer people
generally have not been incorporated or explicitly addressed (yet) through laws in the UK. See Fae
Garland and Mitchell Travis’ contribution [Chapter 7] in the collection.
6 See e.g. P v S and Cornwall Case C-13/94 [1996] ECR I-2143; Council Directive 2000/78/EC
of 27 November 2000 establishing a general framework for equal treatment in employment and
occupation; Directive 2006/54/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 5 July 2006 on
the implementation of the principle of equal opportunities and equal treatment of men and women
in matters of employment and occupation (recast) (see particularly Recital 3 to the Preamble).
7 See Jonathan Cooper et al., “Brexit: The LGBT Impact Assessment”, Gay Star News, April 2018,
https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/files/154151661/PETER_DUNNE_PURE_VERSION.pdf.
4 S. Raj and P. Dunne
and reflects upon how such shifting interpretations can enrich our explo-
ration of law. In the final section, Part V, we set out a roadmap for the seven
chapters which are to follow; dividing these contributions into two broad
themes: (i) colonising, protecting, and punishing queer outsiders in law; and
(ii) queering the outsides of legal gender and sex. Part V gives a brief overview
of the main topics and concerns to be addressed in the contributions to this
collection.
2 Framing Queer(ness)
This collection engages theoretically and empirically with what it means to be
both “queer” and an “outsider” within the context of “law”. These key terms,
while dynamic and generative of various critical debates in the chapters that
follow, warrant some initial (loose) definitions.
The chapters in this collection take a capacious approach to theorising
what queer can and might mean. Despite its vernacularisation as a personal
identification (e.g. “I am queer!”), queer also carries a history of social stigma,
one that is weighted by the marginalisation and alienation of those who fail
to conform to social expectations of sex(uality) and gender.8 Yet, the negative
affect associated with the word also carries possibilities of reimagining how
we might live in the world. Eve Sedgwick notes that queer refers to:
8 Heather Love, Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2009), 2.
9 Eve Sedgwick, Tendencies (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), 8.
10 Robyn Wiegman and Elizabeth Wilson, “Introduction: Antinormativity’s Queer Conventions”,
Differences 26, no 1 (2015): 1, 1. Queer theory has various disciplinary and theoretical commit-
ments, particularly relating to what it means to engage with “the social”. For a brief but insightful
discussion of this debate in queer theory, see Robyn Wiegman, “Sex and Negativity; or What Queer
Theory Has for You”, Cultural Critique 95 (2017): 219.
Queering Outside the (Legal) Box: LGBTIQ People in the United Kingdom 5
3 Stretching Law
In this collection, we understand “law”, like queer, through varied concep-
tual registers. We begin with the oft cited premise that law is a system of
rules, norms and regulations made by authorised state institutions (courts,
parliaments and governments).16 As Max Weber notes, law is commonly
understood from an external perspective as a coherent and calculable form of
“authority”.17 However, we do not limit our framing of law to positive rules
and formal structures—we explore how law materialises as a fluid expression
of governance, authority and power.
Michel Foucault, writing more broadly about the nature of power and
authority, offers an alternative to the Weberian approach of thinking about
law. His work emphasises an approach to law in terms of governance.
18 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality (Volume 1): The Will to Knowledge (New York: Random
House, 1978), 19.
19 Leonard Hammer, A Foucauldian Approach to International Law: Descriptive Thoughts for Normative
Issues (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 9.
20 Mariana Valverde, Chronotopes of Law: Jurisdiction, Scale and Governance (Abingdon: Routledge,
2015), 66.
21 Law and regulation are constituted by processes of temporality. See Emily Grabham, Brewing Legal
Times: Things, Form and the Enactment of Law (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016), 34.
22 James Boyd White, “Law as Language: Reading Law and Reading Literature”, Texas Law Review
60 (1981): 415, 415.
23 Ibid., 435.
24 Fleur Johns explains in detail why non-legality is a structuring device of (international) legal
thought. She urges us to focus on the “something else” of law in order to think more critically
about the violation, rejection, creation, and suspension of norms. See Fleur Johns, Non-Legality in
International Law: Unruly Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
8 S. Raj and P. Dunne
ways, this edited collection does draw upon and critique broader frameworks,
which impact the lives of LGBTIQ persons throughout the UK, we also
acknowledge that certain rules discussed within the seven chapters are limited
in their jurisdictional reach. In addition, we are aware that there may be situa-
tions where there remains uncertainty as to whether a particular rule or policy
is appropriately presented as “inside” UK law. In Chapter 6, for example,
Flora Renz discusses the binary nature of legal gender recognition rules.
While the Gender Recognition Act 2004 applies in all three UK jurisdictions,
there have historically been subtle differences between England and Wales,
Scotland and Northern Ireland, and the Scottish Government has recently
announced proposals to adopt an alternative legislative structure.26 Although
the judicial review in R (on the application of Christie Elan-Cane) and Secre-
tary of State for the Home Department 27 might ultimately lead to UK-wide
non-gendered passports, the applicant specifically instituted proceedings in
the English and Welsh courts. Similarly, in Chapter 8, the “gender reassign-
ment protections” in s. 7 of the Equality Act 2010 apply equally to England,
Wales and Scotland. Yet, Sharon Cowan (in Chapter 8) is explicit in empha-
sising the unique ways in which equality law is experienced in Scotland; and
it is useful to remember that separate LGBT non-discrimination rules still
apply in Northern Ireland.28
Aivan toisessa ympäristössä olisi se, mitä olin saanut kuulla hänen
elämästään ja luonteestaan, kiinnittänyt vilkkaasti mieltäni, mutta
suurempi viehätysvoima veti tällä kertaa huomioni pois tuosta
miehestä, jonka kolmenkymmenenviiden vuoden ikä jo näkyi liian
selvästi ja jonka pitkä vartalo, väkevät hartiat, ohimoilta
harmaantunut tiheä, ruskea tukka ja synkät kasvojen piirteet eivät
olleet omiaan voittamaan puolelleen nuoren tytön suosiota.
— Mennä muuanne?
— Minä palaan.
Genesvrier vastasi:
Hän hymyili:
— Mikä ihana hetki! sanoi Clairmont. Minusta tuntuu kuin aika olisi
seisahtunut, kuin huomispäivää ei tulisi, kuin ei minun koskaan
tarvitsisi lähteä. Sieluni väikkyy todellisuuden ja unen välillä, se on
täynnä runoutta, musiikkia, kuin jumaluudesta juopunut. Olen elänyt
tänä iltana unohtumattomia hetkiä.