InterSEXionality and the Strategy Question

Abstract

This essay is the foreword for a Symposium on InterSEXionality: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Queering Legal Theory. Professor Nice’s essay offers a roadmap for the symposium, which focuses on the intersection between relationships of sexuality, sexual orientation, sex, gender, race, and class. She suggests the scholarly connoisseur will find something of interest in the electic collection of papers ranging from Nan Boyd’s bar culture, Pat Cain’s re-telling of transsexuals’ stories, Mary Ann Case’s films, Karen Engle’s legal texts, Martha Ertman’s inter-doctrinal borrowing, Katherine Franke’s globe-trotting, Karla Robertson’s sexual descriptions, Jane Schacter’s caution, Susan Sterett’s history, to Frank Valdes’ passion. Professor Nice highlights how each contributor weighs in differently on the question of what strategies will best serve to end subordination. By contesting fundamental presumptions about classes of people, classifications of traits, and intersections among these classes and classifications, as well as by questioning the validity of any categorization, all of these approaches “queer” legal theory.

Keywords: queer legal theory, sexual orientation law, gender, class