Sexual Relations as International Relations

• In Event: Sexuality and the State: Borders, Boundaries and the Sexual Commons

Abstract

This paper explores the co-constitution of the state and sex in global politics. It puts forth an argument that state borders, the people who inhabit state borders, and the international status of states cannot be fully understood without reference to sex acts and sexual relationships. It does so by making a case across geography and across history that sex acts have been both independently significant and part of key webs of signification in the establishment, evolution, and status of states. To accomplish this, it has two interrelated substantive foci: dynastic reproduction and sex-based regulations on migration and citizenship. The first part of the paper, focuses on four major concepts: treaty marriages, treaty marriage consummations, treaty marriage offspring, and dynastic motherhood, taking Spike Peterson's argument that "making states is making sex" literally. It argues that telling the story of the constitution of early modern states borders cannot be done fully without reference to the role of sex acts in constructing and symbolizing those borders. The second part of the story shows that sex making states and states making sex continues today - arguing that states' sex-based rules for migration and citizenship (particularly judgments about which sexual relationships qualify for migration and citizenship exemptions) constitute state borders in a different way - on bodies rather than on land. Using these illustrative examples, this paper lays out a preliminary account of how sexed bodies signify and become symbols of the state, how sex acts and state birth and regeneration are related, and how sexuality and citizenship are intimately intertwined. It proposes both an account of the evolution of the co-constitution of sex and the state and a typology of sexual international relations through the development and reproduction of the state.

Author

• Laura Sjoberg, University of Florida