The Politics of Sexual Citizenship: Negotiating Acts of Citizenship Among Non-Heterosexuals in Hong Kong

The notion of sexual citizenship has been developed over the past two decades, and its discussion has been expanded to other regions. This article investigates the claiming of rights by non-heterosexuals in Hong Kong to achieve two objectives: to articulate the importance of the rights claiming process, particularly regarding how non-heterosexuals are being transformed to become claimants through rights claims, and to extend the notion of sexual citizenship in East Asia, particularly in the Hong Kong context. The findings show four distinctive characteristics of sexual citizenship in Hong Kong. Non-heterosexuals are found to have faced different struggles and barriers before or during the process of claiming rights, including restricted welfare rights access in various social institutions. Furthermore, the development of sexual citizenship in the Hong Kong local context is found to be limited.