ABSTRACT
Sexual and gender-non-conforming people have long been punished for transgressing social norms. Yet in recent years, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people have begun to invest in the punishment of others. Whether sup port ing hate crime legislation, calling for more police in gentrified ‘gay neigh bourhoods’ or participating in police, prison and military recruitment cam paigns, LGBT organizations that formerly fought against criminalization are becoming increasingly complicit with state projects of policing, imprisonment and punishment (Agathangelou, Bassichis and Spira 2008; Spade 2011; Valverde and Cirak 2003). Given the popular support for hate crime legislation in North America and Europe, many LGBT communities now partly measure their citizenship status on whether the state is willing to imprison other people on their behalf (Spade and Willse 2000). As the more race- and class-privileged members of LGBT communities are ushered into new forms of neoliberal citizenship — where buying power, respectability and nationalism are the price of welcome — ‘lesbian and gay rights’ discourse has marked a striking shift away from previous critiques of the carceral state and towards a growing desire for punitive politics. 1
