ABSTRACT
Sexual citizenship To map the changing implications of the age of consent, this chapter employs the contested concept of 'citizenship'. Citizenship must be understood as a product of an individual's entire social existence, beginning with the civil, political and social rights identified by T.H. Marshall, but also including forms of cultural access, representation and belonging that go beyond rights (Marshall 1950). Recently, sexuality theorists have attempted to rework the term by coining 'sexual citizenship' and 'intimate citize~ship' (Evans 1993; Plummer 1995: 144-80; see also Carver, Chapter I of this volume). David Evans does not regard 'the sexual' as a new sphere in Marshall's schema, but as an aspect of citizenship cutting across these spheres. Alternatively, Ken Plummer's conceptualisation of 'intimate citizenship' covers a wider range of issues, but is proposed as an additional sphere in Marshall's original schema. For the purposes of this chapter, the term 'sexual citizenship' is used, since the age of consent issue is clearly 'sexual'. But the phrase is used simply to summarise all the sexual aspects of citizenship, without any intended adherence to Evans's conceptual schema (Waites 1996).
