Just published: Wendy O’Brien examines Australian legal reform in the context of International Norms on the Right to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity
Deakin Criminologist Dr Wendy O’Brien’s latest research has been published in an edited collection, Queering Criminology, edited by Angela Dwyer, Matthew Ball and Thomas Crofts. Wendy’s chapter is entitled ‘International Legal Norms on the Right to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity: Australian Reforms Contextualised’.
Chapter Abstract
At a time when the international momentum for sexual orientation and gender identity rights is strong it is important that scholars and activists remain vigilant to ensure that the discourses framing sexuality rights do not intentionally, or inadvertently, deepen incursions on the rights of individuals of sexual and bodily diversity. This chapter offers a critical examination of selected Australian case law and legal reform for the putative progress t offers sexual minorities. Identifying the entrenched binary determinism at the heart of the law, this chapter echoes the call of queer criminology, concluding that challenging invisibility is but part of the project. Queer scholars need also remain vigilant about the law’s constitutive power, and its role in producing sexual minorities as objects of pathology, perversion and criminality.
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