Zein Murib's "Terms of Exclusion"

Zein Murib is an Associate Professor of Political Science and affiliated faculty in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Fordham University. Murib's research and teaching interests are informed by feminist and queer theory and located at the intersection of scholarship on gender and sexuality, interest groups and social movements, and marginalized political identities in US politics.

Murib applied the “Page 99 Test” to their new book, Terms of Exclusion: Rightful Citizenship Claims and the Construction of LGBT Political Identity, and reported the following:

My book forwards the argument that what I call "rightful citizenship claims" only bring those members of the group who can compellingly argue that they are being denied rights to which they are owed as citizens over the finish line. This strategy neglects those who are either not citizens or, more perniciously, those whose citizenship is shaped by laws and norms that afford them only what scholars refer to as "partial citizenship." This includes Black, Latine, Asian, Native, Arab members as well as people with disabilities. Excluding these members from political agendas helps to consolidate group membership as proximate to the prototypical normative citizen, or White men. With respect to the LGBT group, this means that it is only White gay men (and some lesbians) who fully enjoy rights wins.

On page 99 I advance this argument by explaining how Black and Third World lesbian feminist thinkers challenged their exclusion from White feminist spaces by putting forward a vision of political praxis that views difference is a resource to be harnessed, not an obstacle to overcome.

Visit Zein Murib's website.

--Marshal Zeringue