Senthorun Raj & Peter Dunne 
The Queer Outside in Law 
Recognising LGBTIQ People in the United Kingdom

This book contributes to current debates about “queer outsides” and “queer outsiders” that emerge from tensions in legal reforms aimed at improving the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer people in the United Kingdom. LGBTIQ people in the UK have moved from being situated as “outlaws” – through prohibitions on homosexuality or cross-dressing – to respectable “in laws” – through the emerging acceptance of same-sex families and self-identified genders. From the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in the
Sexual Offences Act 1967, to the provision of a bureaucratic mechanism to amend legal sex in the
Gender Recognition Act 2004, bringing LGBTIQ people “inside” the law has prompted enormous activist and academic commentary on the desirability of inclusion-focused legal and social reforms. Canvassing an array of current socio-legal debates on colonialism, refugee law, legal gender recognition, intersex autonomy and transgender equality, thecontributing authors explore “queer outsiders” who remain beyond the law’s reach and outline the ways in which these outsiders might seek to “come within” and/or “stay outside” law. Given its scope, this modern work will appeal to legal scholars, lawyers, and activists with an interest in gender, sex, sexuality, race, migration and human rights law.  

Table of Content

Chapter 1: Queering Outside the (Legal) Box: LGBTIQ People in the United Kingdom.- PART I: Colonising, Protecting, and Punishing Queer Outsidersin Law.- Chapter 2: Queer Legacies of Colonialism.- Chapter 3: Death Zones, Comfort Zones: Queering the Refugee Question.- Chapter 4: The DSSH model and the Voice of the Silenced:Aderonke Apata: The Queer Refugee: I am a lesbian.- Chapter 5: Vulnerable and Threatening: varieties of exclusion for incarcerated Queer prisoners.- PART II: Queering the Outsides of Legal Gender and Sex.- Chapter 6: Genders that don’t matter: Non-binary people and the Gender Recognition Act 2004.- Chapter 7: Queering the Queer/Non-Queer Binary: Problematizing the “I” in LGBTI+.- Chapter 8: The Best Place on the Planet to be Trans? Transgender Equality and Legal Consciousness in Scotland.- Chapter 9: Coming Inside and/or Playing Outside: The (Legal) Futures of LGBTIQ Rights in the United Kingdom.

About the author

Senthorun Raj is Lecturer in Law at Keele University, UK. His recently published monograph,
Feeling Queer Jurisprudence: Injury, Intimacy, Identity (Routledge, 2020), uses emotion to navigate legal interventions aimed at advancing the rights of LGBT people.





Peter Dunne is Senior Lecturer at the University of Bristol Law School, UK, and an Associate Member of Garden Court Chambers. He is currently researching the intersections of law, sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics.