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Citizenship 155

resolution to the conflict. However, in practical terms, it is also the case
that the women ’ s movement is, and arguably always has been, involved
in politics of both kinds. Not only in Scandinavia but in other liberal
democracies like Britain, there have been campaigns for quotas for women
MPs, for example. At the same time, there has been continual resistance
on the part of women to be subsumed under a particular categorization
of “ women. ” This resistance may sometimes result in demands for rights
to “ sameness, ” but if this is done in a context in which there are institu-
tional structures allowing for differences between the sexes in specifi c
contexts – such as the right to maternity leave, for example – while there
may be a tension between the two strategies, they are not necessarily
incompatible. Group rights for women may be necessary in specifi c cases,
but it is also necessary to disrupt assumptions about how individual
women live as individuals who happen also to be identifi ed as women.
Otherwise, group rights “ freeze ” identities, and prove too constraining,
both for those who do not easily fi t the group identities available, and
also in terms of the wider social change for which the women ’ s movement
has always aimed (Riley, 1988 ; Nash, 1998 ).

The gay and lesbian movement and queer politics

There is an obvious connection between campaigns for rights for women
and rights for sexual minorities insofar as both challenge the way in which
citizenship has historically been rooted in patriarchy. Both the feminist
movement and the lesbian and gay movement demand rights for individu-
als to live on equal terms outside the traditional nuclear family which has
structured citizenship rights in the past. It might be expected, therefore,
that feminists and lesbians and gay men would have a common cause
against “ compulsory heterosexuality ” which relegates those who do not
conform to inferior citizenship rights. However, although both move-
ments have used the term to analyze society, in practice, the relationships
between the three groups have been much more complex. There have been

conflicts between gay men and radical feminists who have opposed what
they take to be a masculine, libertarian lifestyle; gay men and lesbians,
who often have very different lifestyles and sexual practices; and between
“ political lesbians, ” who see themselves as the vanguard of feminism, and
other lesbians, who may or may not be feminists and who resist the de -
sexualizing of lesbianism by political lesbians (Edwards, 1994 ). These
differences have meant that it has generally proved impossible to present
a united front. In recent years, however, feminists and those who identify
as “ queer ” have come together to some extent, at least theoretically.