[lgbt-india] Euro Letter # 114


TENSIONS IN THE STRUGGLE FOR SEXUAL MINORITY RIGHTS
Que(e)rying political practices in Europe

New book by Nico J. Beger

Tensions in the struggle for sexual minority rights is the first
queer and poststructuralist reading of political rights concepts in
the specific European transnational context. In the last thirty
years Europe has seen the rise of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender movements fighting nationally and transnationally for participation rights in society. In addition academic theorists have increasingly paid attention to the epistemological and ontological roles gender and sexuality play in modern politics. However, in the political process of arguing for rights the cen-trality of those roles is mostly hidden from view in official institutional and movement discourses.

This book investigates the conceptual themes of lesbian, gay, and transgender rights and lobby politics in Europe and their open and hidden relations to binary and hierar-chical orders of dominance. It contributes to an under-standing of the conditions upon which politics of inclu-sion, participation, social justice, and equality rest and why struggles for sexual minority rights have been so dif-
ficult and slow.

Tensions in the struggle for sexual minority rights illuminates how the paradigms of political discourses consti-tute, consolidate, and contest the meaning and cultural significance of gender and sexuality in modern, democ-ratic, capitalist European societies.

The book is important for academics and students with an interest in gender and sexuality in the field of Law, Cul-tural Theory, Philosophy, and Political Science and for political activists with an interest in queer theory.

Nico J. Beger teaches academic courses on gender and sexuality theory in Amsterdam, and currently coordinates the EU Civil Society Contact Group, the joint body of the EU social, environment, development, and human rights NGO platforms.