Professor of Law Brenda Cossman Sexual Citizens sku-42080758

Sexual Citizens: The Legal and Cultural Regulation of Sex and Belonging is a hardcover by Professor of Law Brenda Cossman, listed under Gender & the Law Books as sku-42080758. Cossman argues that contemporary citizenship is sexed, privatized, and self-disciplined.

She examines how people once excluded as sexual outlaws have challenged that exclusion and gained entry into citizenship, while its terms have become more privatized and self-disciplined. Drawing on films, television, and legal decisions, she discusses gay men and lesbians, pornographers, hip hop artists, women selling vibrators, adulterers, and single mothers on welfare.

Her examples include Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Dr. Phil, Sex in the City, and Desperate Housewives, as well as appellate cases on sodomy and same-sex marriage, national welfare reform, and obscenity regulation. She argues that these representations shape who is treated as a good or bad sexual citizen according to codes of privatized, self-disciplined sex.