Hey Professor!

Hey, Professor Caroline Light! You partnered up with PBHA to speak at an event where you discussed sex and citizenship.  How exactly are those two concepts related?

Depending on who you are and where you stand, sex and citizenship can be inextricably linked. But first, we need to define what we mean by “sex”—if we mean, for example, physiological factors characterizing one as male or female, then we can think about the ways in which women might experience national belonging differently from men. The fact that women had limited access to the vote until suffrage was granted in 1920, that until quite recently women could not have their own credit lines without the approval of their husbands or fathers, the fact that women still earn substantially less than men on average. And of course race and class influence one’s access to the rights and privileges of citizenship in concrete ways as well, usually in conjunction with notions of sex difference. If we mean “sex” as sexual orientation and/or erotic desire, we should consider how dominant understandings of what constitutes “natural” as opposed to “unnatural” sex frame one’s rights to privacy and free expression.