‘Rainbow Statelessness’ difference and being assimilated into mainstream structures since ‘[d]e-gaying gayness [can] fortify homophobic oppression’. 19 Concepts of ‘sexual citizenship’ — or as Ken Plummer prefers it, ‘intimate citizenship’ — reconfigure the public/private divide, focusing on the decisions people have to make over the control (or not) over one’s body, feelings, relationships; access (or not) to representations, relationships, public spaces, etc.; and socially grounded choices (or not) about identities, gender experiences, erotic experiences. It does not imply one model, one pattern or one way. 20 Citizenship, with this expanded and more figurative meaning, advances a symbolic, rather imprecise, notion that is largely synonymous — or intertwined — with the social institutions of marriage and family, as well as reproduction and consumption practices. Following the Butlerian doctrine in queer theory, 21 many have considered citizenship as socially constructed and performed: something that we do rather than have. 22 This perhaps explains the lack of attention within ‘sexual citizenship’ discourses towards those who do not possess it in the formal, legal sense. Indeed, sexual citizenship has been understood in many ways, but rarely has it dealt with the question of the official absence of the legal bond to any state per se — ie statelessness. The prominent discourses around the concept preoccupy themselves with marginalisation and assimilation of certain subjectivities within the structures of citizenship without sufficiently considering those who are excluded outside its confines: ie stateless persons. One further explanation for the absence of interest in statelessness within studies of ‘sexual citizenship’ may be that ‘its development has remained mainly outside of law’, as observed by pioneer in the field and sociologist, Diane Richardson. 23 In their review of Brenda Cossman’s 2007 work, 24 Ruthann Robson and Tanya Kessler critique her and other sexual citizenship theorists for using metaphorical concepts of citizenship that are ‘too elastic to be useful in legal theorizing’. 25 They argue that ‘failing to address formal legal status erases individuals who do not have access to even the basic rights of citizenship’, adding that sexual citizenship ‘must be grounded in the legal consequences of sexual minorities’ access and denial of access to citizenship’. 26 More recent work on ‘trans citizenship’ has also recognised the need to ‘focus on the legal aspects of citizenship when considering the policy implications of gender diversity’, arguing that aspects of social citizenship are, for trans people, ‘intertwined with legal citizenship’. 27 Sharing Robson and Kessler’s concern about conceptions of sexual citizenship that 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 Leo Bersani, Homos (Harvard University Press 1995) 5. Ken Plummer, Telling Sexual Stories: Power, Change, and Social Worlds (Routledge 1995) 151 (emphasis in original). Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Routledge 1990). Engin Isin, ‘Performative Citizenship’ in Ayelet Shachar et al (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship (Oxford University Press 2017) 500. Richardson (n 13) 210. Brenda Cossman, Sexual Citizens: The Legal and Cultural Regulations of Sex and Belonging (Stanford University Press 2007). Robson and Kessler (n 1) 535. ibid 535, 539. Roman Kuhar, Surya Monro and Judit Takács, ‘Trans* Citizenship in Post-Socialist Societies’ (2018) 38(1) Critical Social Policy 99, 108 (emphasis added). 68