This document summarizes chapters 5 and 6 from the book Sexual Strangers by Shane Phelan. Chapter 5 discusses how bisexual and transgender individuals experience secondary marginalization within LGBT communities through rejection and appropriation. Chapter 6 examines how citizenship for LGBT individuals has relied on assimilation, and argues that citizenship must recognize strangeness through an active embrace of difference. The document provides an overview of the key points and arguments made in each chapter.

1. B Y : N I C O L E B U C C A L O
A REVIEW & SUMMARY OF SEXUAL
STRANGERS BY SHANE PHELAN

2. SHANE PHELAN
• Shane Phelan is an Associate Professor of Political
Science at the University of New Mexico.
• Author/editor of several books on
lesbian and gay politics
• Was the Chair of the American
Political Science Association‟s
Committee on the Status of Lesbians
and Gays in the Profession
• Assesses the status of GLBT scholars in the
profession; advances the research on LGBT
issues; develops curriculum materials; and
works to ensure tolerance toward LGBT
political scientists.

3. CHAPTER 5: STRANGERS AMONG “US”:
SECONDARY MARGINALIZATION AND
“LGBT” POLITICS
• LGBT – inclusive of initials only – problematic in the
sense that that‟s all it is.
• “‟Queer‟ offers greater inclusiveness to all these
groups by calling into question the very identities
initialed in LGBT” (p. 115).
• “In communities subject to advanced
marginalization, the access and privilege of some is
conditional on the secondary marginalization of
„the most vulnerable and stigmatized in their
communities‟” (p. 116)
• Secularity reading – minority of the minorities/disprivileged
of the disprivileged

4. CH. 5 CON’T
Rejection and Appropriation
• “Bisexuals and transgendered people appear as strangers
within lesbian and gay communities in ways startlingly similar
to how lesbians and gays appear in heteronormative
society” (p. 116).
• Bisexuals seems to fit – other times, they don‟t
• Judith Butler – Grieveable life & Lorraine Code – Unrecognizable
• Exclusion of B&T is result of 2 forces
• “First, the push to assimilate into existing cultural and legal
categories if facilitated by notions of sexual orientation as fixed
and binary” (p.118)
• “Second…is the assertion that gays and lesbians do not
challenge prevailing gender structures” (p.119).

5. CH. 5 CON’T
Paradigms and/of Exclusion
• Masculinity debunked, Womanliness debunked
• Therefore, “we are not just one sex or one gender, nor are
those we desire” (p. 122)
• Bisexuals “offer insight into the continued commitment to
ideas of a fixed orientation” (p.124)
• Epistemic privilege, standpoint

6. CH. 5 CON’T
Too Queer? Not Queer Enough?
• “LGBT” asserts common goal, however allows L & G
to deny charges of exclusion without actually
changing understanding or lives (p.125)
• Trans
• Literalizing and deliteralizing the body = too queer, not
queer enough
• Bisexuality
• not queer enough
• in-between
• threatens “born this way”

7. CH. 5 CON’T
Oscillating Agency
• Bisexuals: threat #1 = will choose man, threat #2 =
will choose same-sex lover, threat #3 = belie claim
that we can‟t help our desire
• Double agency = never self-identical “I am never
only one, self-contained and neatly bound” or loyal
to lovers and to femaleness/maleness (p.129)
Confronting the Stranger Within
• Suggests we begin from the perspective of bi and
trans to challenge traditional thoughts of sexuality
and gender

8. CH. 5 CON’T
• Clear boundaries hurt us more than they strengthen
us
• Appropriation – like saying we‟re a college who is
committed to diversity but doesn‟t host
programming, create new policies, or offer
resources to support that claim
Queer Communities, Queer Utopias
• New creation, remapping social world
• Non-identitarian utopian universalism

9. CHAPTER 6: QUEERING CITIZENSHIP
• “Citizenship for some depends upon the willingness
of the majority to acknowledge them as members.
This willingness in turn depends upon the
construction of a new hegemony, with new
readings of rights, equality, and membership” (p.
139)
• Question is not “queer or not” or “how to make
citizenship queer” – it‟s how do we queer
citizenship.
• Androcentric, patriarch, phallic foundations

10. CH. 6 CON’T
Straight Democracy
• Equality – “we‟re like you!” “We want the same
things you want from this American lifestyle”
• What happens to those who are “unrecognizable”?
• Thin Democracy vs. Unitary Democracy political
• Lesbian and Gay not just isolated – overlapping
identities
• Can‟t speak for the whole group
• Political changes must be accompanied by cultural
changes
• Cannot simply mean being included in hetero rules…we
need to challenge the hetero state.

11. CH. 6 CON’T
• Citizenship “must entail a recognition of
strangeness” and should “not be confused with
assimilation or simple tolerance”
• “It requires an active encounter with difference and
a willingness to understand differences as fruitful
and enhancing rather than as threats to bodily,
social or personal integrity” (p. 147)
State/Citizenship
• “Rights can only become real in people‟s lives
when they are sufficiently supported culturally to be
exercised” (p.147)

12. CH. 6 CON’T
• Citizenship strategies must combine legislative and
judicial campaigns with social activism and
education (p. 148)
• There has been no clear link between non-
discrimination laws and the level of cultural visibility
and activity in a given state
• We cannot conclude that state engagement has
strengthened civil society among lesbians and gays
but we can be sure it hasn‟t harmed it (p.151)

13. CH. 6 CON’T
• Quest to seek entry and end strangeness status is
flawed because current structures of citizenship are
inextricably bound with the generation of strangers.
(p. 152)
Queer Citizens
• Queer=non-straight work, positions, pleasures and
reading of people who either don‟t share the same
„sexual orientation‟ as that articulated in texts they
are producing or responding to or who don‟t define
themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual or straight
(p.153)

14. CH. 6 CON’T
• Strangers fill the gaps of the unknown – many of us
are becoming strangers even in our native
communities
Queer Citizenship
• Changes reliant on heterosexual responses and
changes to those lifestyles and meanings
• Put an end to phallic citizenship
• Queer kinship

15. STRENGTHS & WEAKNESSES
Strengths
• Does a nice job
discussing inclusion and
exclusion in the LGBT
community
• Deepens
understanding of queer
politics
• Speaks in layman's
terms!
Weaknesses
• Discusses overlapping
identities but not to
much extent
• Doesn‟t represent
transgender issues as
much as she does for
bisexuals

16. QUESTIONS
• What are your thoughts on the usage of the word
utopian in this context? “Queer communities should be
utopian, both in the drive for a better world and in the
knowledge that the dream will never fully take shape,
the day of reconciliation will never arrive” – Utopia is
generally considered an ideal, perfect place.
• What are different types of institutions that LGBT
community members are looking for citizenship of that
they currently don‟t have full access to? Does Queering
Citizenry (i.e. queering kinship and ending phallic
citizenship) apply for these institutions?