ABSTRACT
Contemporary social and geo-political positionings of Ireland’s abortive and queer subjects were crystallized through two of our most recent constitutional referenda: Marriage Equality, 22 May 2015, and Repeal of the Eighth Amendment, 25 May 2018. In both referenda constructions of the sexual citizen were to the fore; indeed, the sexual citizen took on a particular spatial form during the hard-fought, often contentious (across opposing sides and within the same side) campaigns. They raised interesting questions about constructions of sexual citizenship and evidenced increased levels of politicization, resistance, and dissent through commitments to social and sexual justice. However, the campaigns were not unproblematic. They also evidenced a hierarchy of sexual citizenship and sexual citizens’ bodies variously positioned in relation to constructions of the “good” (moral and responsible) sexual citizen. This chapter asserts that the multiple and varied performances of sexual citizenship (including performances by those excluded from this geo-political construct) during these campaigns provide an interesting interrogative lens in two regards; they prompt a consideration of the spatialities of sexual citizenship in Ireland as they relate to questions of socio-spatial in/justice, and they expose particular constructions of the sexual citizen in relation to the notion of “goodness” and in particular the “good” citizen subject and the good m/Other citizen.
