This book explores the relationship between social movements, sexual citizenship and change in Southern Europe. Providing a comparative analysis about LGBT issues in Italy, Spain and Portugal, it disc

This paper explores transformations in institutional norms about same-sex sexualities across four European countries: Bulgaria, Norway, Portugal and the UK. Focusing on the period from the late 1960s to the present day, it examines both endogenous, path-dependent nationally specific factors at work in the changing regulation of same-sex sexualities, particularly the campaigns of lesbian and gay movements, and exogenous influences exerted by processes of Europeanization and transnationalization. Three processes of normative change are discussed: the legitimation of same-sex sexual practice; the protection of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) people; and the recognition of intimate relationships. We argue that there has been a radical shift in the landscape of heteronormativity in Europe, with the emergence of a new European norm of “homotolerance” and the progressive normalization of same-sex sexualities: a process of “homonormalization”.

Southern European society has been described in sociological literature as ableist, patriarchal and male-oriented. Under such conditions, many disabled women face multiple oppressions on grounds of gender, disability, class, age, sexual orientation, ‘race’ and ethnicity. The social construction of the impaired body as passive and dependent is conducive to a process of desexualization, presenting disabled people as inadequate for a full intimate life. The dominant biomedical model reinforces this process. This article draws on selected works in feminist disability studies to argue that rather than a body which is unfit, or does not fit, the ‘misfit’ is instead a cultural failure in accommodating and cherishing diversity. The authors also suggest that the desexualization of disabled women is replicating, as well as resulting from, historical tendencies to dehumanize and infantilize women. The empirical data is drawn from a larger project ‘Disabled Intimacies? Sexual and Reproductive Citizenship of Disabled Women in Portugal’. Biographical narrative interviews with disabled women are analyzed to explore the notion of ‘misfit’ sexual bodies. Theirs are stories of counter-norms and the struggle for sexual fulfilment and recognition. The women’s discussions of sexuality point to a need to change the ways that disability and intimacy are addressed in mainstream scholarly literature, institutions and the state. Narrow, heteronormative and ableist understandings of sexual intercourse and the linear character of mainstream stories of intimacy are shown as hindering the prospect of the recognition of disabled women as sexual citizens.

(2013). Reproduction and citizenship/reproducing citizens: editorial introduction. Citizenship Studies: Vol. 17, Citizenship and Reproduction / Reproducing Citizens, pp. 901-911.

In 2010, Portugal became the eighth country worldwide to approve same-sex civil marriage. Such legal change is a recent addition to the achievements that have put Portugal at the forefront of sexual citizenship rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in Europe. This article investigates the political path of LGBT rights in this Southern European, majority Catholic, and post-dictatorship country, exploring the role of the Portuguese LGBT movement in contributing to change. This research highlights how the state is willing to compensate – via legal recognition – queer sexual encounters to the extent that they willingly embrace the dominant values of respectability and normalcy. In this respect, the approval of same-sex marriage offers the opportunity to discuss issues of agency, citizenship, recognition, and normativity. The paper begins by contextualizing sexual citizenship in democratic Portugal, providing an analytical account of the LGBT movement. In the second section, I suggest that a ‘politics of containment’ has characterized much of recent public discussion about sexual and reproductive rights, and I provide some examples. In the last section, I discuss the political and cultural implications of same-sex marriage law, with a particular focus on issues of normalization and homonationalism – that is how the state can actively contribute to the creation of the acceptable ‘normal gay’ with the compliance of LGBT activism.

This article explores law and social policy regarding trans* activism amongst trans* and non-binary social movements, and academic research addressing trans* in the UK and Portugal. In considering different possibilities for theorising gender diversity, this article positions a politics of difference and embodied citizenship as fruitful for synergising the issues under discussion. The authors consider recent law and policy shifts around gender recognition in each country and examine the gaps and the connections between policy developments, activism and research around trans*. Though each country has divergence in terms of the history of trans* activism and research, the article identifies significant similarities in the claims of activist groups in the UK and Portugal and the issues and questions under consideration in academic research on trans* and non-binary.