Queering Citizenship and America

American citizenship is not what it seems. It is easy to see the advertised external
implications of granting citizenship, however, below the surface lies a tangled web of
repercussions that paradoxically conflict with the strongest principle of which citizenship is
based on: the production of inclusion. To queer citizenship means to examine these
contradictory effects current citizenship brings and as AL Brandzel puts it, Conceive a
citizenship that does not require universalization, false imaginaries, or immersion in and
acceptance of the progress narrative of U.S. citizenship (198). By crafting an imaginary other,
American citizenship serves not only as a legal status but as a strong policing force for
maintaining normal life and creating ideological boundaries instead of granting equality
inclusiveness derived from excluding those who do not comply.
While citizenship appears innocent enough in its norm-reinforcing elements today, it is
not hard to find many instances in history where it has been used as a force of assimilation. The
1887 Dawes Severalty Act conferred citizenship on Native American men only when they
emerged as property-owning heads of households. The federal government granted
citizenship to those who adopted the habits of civilized life. Native American women could
only earn citizenship through marriage to a male citizen (Brandzel 175). Those Native
Americans who did not desire to conform would become the constructed other in terms of
society and in relation to those who did conform. To be included in American society for Native
Americans at the time, it did not matter if you were an upstanding person, if you did not commit
crimes, etc. but rather that you followed the government-decided norms of American behavior.
For some - those who conform to the American societal norm for instance - citizenship is,
indeed, a legal status that allows the participant equality and inclusivity in the country and its
community. For others, citizenship exists to alienate and create a constructed other which
those who do not conform are used as a foil to those that do. And those that do conform receive

the benefits of inclusion. It is this inclusion through exclusion that supports the idea that
citizenship has more negative implications than meets the eye.
In, Queering Citizenship, Brandzel observes how marriage relates to citizenship, and like
it, reinforces a certain norm of behavior that helps construct the society of which citizenship
allows one to become a part of. With each regulation of behavior and limitation of rights, the
government furthered its creation of ideal society. For instance, its persecution of the
polygamous Mormons and the denial of womens rights limited the possibilities for ways of life
that did not conform to the governments set standard which, in turn, helped promote the
constructed, as Brandzel puts it, American family (177). Further, same-sex marriage is also a
trending topic in todays American society. As women now have much more similar rights to
those of men, the denial of both female and male same-sex marriages exists to maintain the
societal norm of heterosexual marriage and with it, the financial (tax-breaks, etc.) and societal
(acceptance) benefits that come from marriage. Brandzel observes that discussions of same-sex
marriage often elide queer theorists critiques both of same-sex marriage and of appeals to the
state. She suggests that citizenship itself is necessarily exclusive, privilege, and normative
and that advocacy for same-sex marriage reifies and reproduces these effects (Brandezel 172173). The avocation for equal marital rights allows the reinforcement of a systematically-flawed
trope in citizenship: the inclusion of some derived from the exclusion of others. For instance,
those who choose to stay unmarried for a plethora of reasons (including those who lack the
funds), those who are asexual, or simply those who desire to live a different lifestyle. Giving
government benefits and societal acceptance to another single category of people once again
leaves out others who choose to not participate. Those who abstain are indeed citizens, but not
complete citizens or full members of society in the eyes of the government. This is not a

government acknowledged fact, but when observing the rights and benefits distribution it is
obvious that all are not equal. Eric Foner emphasizes that the political community (of which
citizenship includes membership to) is consciously imagined. He goes on to say that those in
power have the ability to define the nation and determine where the boundaries of inclusion and
exclusion lie. Thus the history of citizenship becomes a controversy over its constructions and
exclusions (77). With the granting of rights, the government then gets to decide who to include
and exclude and construct a society for which it thinks conforms to their own imagined design.
While queerness typically refers to gay and lesbian, Brandzel points uses David L. Engs
approach to queer theory to say, Queerness includes all who are displaced from normative
regimes and practices, for example, nonwhite or racialized others (191). Queerness in that
regard applies directly to the concept of citizenship. Citizenship exists to posit normalcy in
American society. Anything that is oppositional to this normativity is once again cast into the
shadow of the other. Queer theory, while extremely multifaceted, is especially useful in the
argument that citizenship should not be used as a tool for societal assimilation. Judith Butler
goes as far as saying that gender, in itself, is merely a performative act. She says:
That the gendered body is performative suggest that it has no
ontological status apart from the various acts which constitute its
reality. This also suggests that if that reality is fabricated as an
interior essence, that very interiority is an effect and function of a
decidedly public and social discourse, the public regulation of
fantasy through the surface politics of the body, the gender border
control that differentiates inner from outer, and so institutes the
integrity of the subject. In other words, acts and gestures,

articulated and enacted desire create the illusion of an interior and

organizing gender core, an illusion discursively maintained for the
purposes of the regulation of sexuality within the obligatory frame
of reproductive heterosexuality (Butler 136).
Gender becomes real because people internalize the views of those around them in in the social
discourse. In a sense, gender serves no purpose other than to regulate sexuality not for the sake
of reproductivity, but merely within the frame of reproductivity. With this newfound view of
gender and its application to heteronormativity that society so is so greatly composed of, we gain
the ability to further deconstruct not only normalized heterosexual marriage, but also the overall
insignificance of citizenship as a whole. I speak now of citizenship as T.H. Marshall states is, a
status bestowed on those who are full members of a community rather than citizenship merely
as a set of rights and privileges (Brandzel 176). A concept which so easily excludes based on
sexual preference should not be seen as bettering a nation. The very foundations of American
citizenship and its exclusion of women in the early stages were a precursor to the exclusion
based on gender and sexual orientation. Marshall makes an important distinction: the status is
bestowed only to those that are full members of a community. This American community and
the citizenship that constructs it is self-fulfilling in the fact that it will continue to promote
benefits for those that fall under its standards for normalcy and exclude those that do not if no
intervention occurs. Only arguments such as Butlers have the ability to see past the artificial
surface of citizenship and attack the core components that are the basis of citizenship. One of the
most crucial problems of this examination is that the majority of citizens would rather reap the
benefits than expose a fundamental problem in the underlying infrastructure.

To queer citizenship, as Brandzel states, we need to work to conceive a citizenship

that does not require universalization, false imaginaries, or immersion in and acceptance of the
progress narratives of U.S. citizenship (198). The society America has created for a supposed
betterment of the nation has several gaping flaws as it continues to draw on exclusivity to bolster
its support for those included. By remaining active participants in a society which advocates an
imaginary norm, citizens fail to escape the ideological bubble which encloses them. Not only is
the mainstream ideology unjust in its regulations and limitations, but also creating behaviors and
attitudes that extend beyond America and the benefits of its so-called normal citizens. When
examining the concept of citizenship queering it allows one to see it not only as an inclusive
status but as an influencer of exclusive behavior and a tendency towards this government
imposed and imaginary universal norm.

Works Cited

Brandzel, Amy L. "Queering Citizenship." GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 11.2
(n.d.): 171-204. Web.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge,
1990. Print.
Martellone, Anna Maria. "Freedom, Race and Citizenship in American History." Towards a New
American Nation?: Redefinitions and Reconstruction. Staffordshire, England: Ryburn
Pub., Keele UP, 1995. 76-91. Print.