In his new book, Stefan Vogler deftly unpacks the politics of the techno-legal classification of sexuality in the United States. His study focuses specifically on state classification practices around LGBTQ people seeking asylum in the United States and sexual offenders being evaluated for carceral placement—two situations where state actors must determine individuals’ sexualities. Though these legal settings are diametrically opposed—one a punitive assessment, the other a protective one—they present the same question: how do we know someone’s sexuality? We asked him a few questions about it. Your book concerns the techno-legal classification of sexuality. For the unfamiliar, what does that mean? By “techno-legal classification” I mean the ways that law, science, and technology come together to make decisions about how to classify and categorize sexual subjects. We often think we know what sexuality is because of common sense—the old “I know it when I see it” idea. However, what I show in the book is that what “sexuality” means actually varies across institutional contexts, and that variation is often at least partially attributable to the kinds of knowledge or expertise that inform that area of law. A biological understanding of sexuality generally means that one believes we can find the “cause” of sexuality—whether it is […]
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