ABSTRACT
Throughout the 1990s, feminist and queer scholars showed how the nation is inherently a heteronormative, monoracial project, inspired by masculinist, nationalist, patriotic, militarist and imperialist ambitions (Nagel 1998). Within its boundaries, ideas of citizenship as a set of civil, political and social rights have been based upon normative assumptions of gender and sexuality, that of male privilege and hegemonic heterosexuality (Anthias and Yuval-Davis 1992). This theoretical framework suggests that, on the one hand, women, acting under the socially pervasive “motherhood mandate” (Russo 1976), play a subordinated role as the “womb” and the cultural signifiers of the nation and thus have been both included and excluded from the general body of citizens (Yuval-Davis 1993, 1996, 1997; see also Pateman 1988). On the other hand, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer (LGBTQ+) people, historically perceived as a potential threat to the nation, have been denied certain rights and protections or have been granted the status of partial citizenship on the basis of a politics of tolerance and assimilation (Richardson 1998).
