The Queer Outside in Law

"This collection is a crucial reminder that LGBTIQ+ rights in the UK (and beyond) have been anything but achieved, and the narrative of linear 'progress' on the queer rights front is simply a myth. Many battles remain to be fought and won, and we need the critical voices in this collection to help us identify ways in which we can do precisely that" - Nuno Ferreira, Professor of Law, University of Sussex, UK.

"This landmark collection provides an important contribution to queer legal scholarship. Raj and Dunne have assembled a terrific line-up of authors providing important insights into the ways that law has sought to transform queers from 'outlaws' into 'in laws.' In doing so, the collection problematises the powerful ways - both in civil and criminal law - that law can seek to surround, suffocate, and silence identities and the struggle that can then ensue. This is therefore a collection about struggle and power, and serves as an important primer forall those who seek to explore and challenge the impact of law on contemporary queer citizenship" - Chris Ashford, Professor of Law, Northumbria University, UK.

This book contributes to current debates about "queer outsides" and "queer outsiders" that emerge from tensions in legal reforms aimed at improving the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer people in the United Kingdom. LGBTIQ people in the UK have moved from being situated as "outlaws" - through prohibitions on homosexuality or cross-dressing - to respectable "in laws" - through the emerging acceptance of same-sex families and self-identified genders. From the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in the Sexual Offences Act 1967, to the provision of a bureaucratic mechanism to amend legal sex in the Gender Recognition Act 2004, bringing LGBTIQ people "inside" the law has prompted enormous activist and academic commentary on the desirability of inclusion-focused legal and social reforms. Canvassing an array of current socio-legal debates on colonialism, refugee law, legal gender recognition, intersex autonomy and transgender equality, the contributing authors explore "queer outsiders" who remain beyond the law's reach and outline the ways in which these outsiders might seek to "come within" and/or "stay outside" law. Given its scope, this modern work will appeal to legal scholars, lawyers, and activists with an interest in gender, sex, sexuality, race, migration and human rights law.
Senthorun Raj is Lecturer in Law at Keele University, UK. His recently published monograph, Feeling Queer Jurisprudence: Injury, Intimacy, Identity (Routledge, 2020), uses emotion to navigate legal interventions aimed at advancing the rights of LGBT people.
Peter Dunne is Senior Lecturer at the University of Bristol Law School, UK, and anAssociate Member of Garden Court Chambers. He is currently researching the intersections of law, sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics.

Chapter 1: Queering Outside the (Legal) Box: LGBTIQ People in the United Kingdom.- PART I: Colonising, Protecting, and Punishing Queer Outsidersin Law.- Chapter 2: Queer Legacies of Colonialism.- Chapter 3: Death Zones, Comfort Zones: Queering the Refugee Question.- Chapter 4: The DSSH model and the Voice of the Silenced:AderonkeApata: The Queer Refugee: I am a lesbian.- Chapter 5: Vulnerable and Threatening: varieties of exclusion for incarcerated Queer prisoners.- PART II: Queering the Outsides of Legal Gender and Sex.- Chapter 6: Genders that don t matter: Non-binary people and the Gender Recognition Act 2004.- Chapter 7: Queering the Queer/Non-Queer Binary: Problematizing the I in LGBTI+.- Chapter 8: The Best Place on the Planet to be Trans? Transgender Equality and Legal Consciousness in Scotland.- Chapter 9: Coming Inside and/or Playing Outside: The (Legal) Futures of LGBTIQ Rights in the United Kingdom.