The Health Care Closet: Sexual Politics & American Health since the Rights Revolutions of the 1960s

What impact did the lack of a universal health care system available to all have on the sexual politics of the United States since the 1960s? In my forthcoming book, which I will share with you in this talk, I seek to understand how that nation’s unique system of for-profit, private health insurance through employment combined with a limited and parsimonious welfare state predicated on categories of “deserving” poor to shape the ways in which sexual minorities became political subjects over the past half century.

The sexual liberation movements of these decades, both in the United States and elsewhere, focused on sexual and bodily autonomy, but the US was distinctive in its reliance on a health care marketplace to realize full sexual citizenship. The resultant centrality of the question “who pays” shaped the relationship between individual agency and collective responsibility in rights politics.

My exploration of an emerging crisis in health care access through the lens of sex and gender offers suggestive insights into the impact of market economics on sexual identity and activism at a critical point in the reshaping of political economy in the United States.

All welcome - booking not required. View information on accessibility in the South Wing.

The UCL Health Humanities Centre draws together staff from different disciplines, departments and faculties engaged in teaching and research on matters relating to health, illness and well-being.

Image: Photo by Martha Dominguez de Gouveia on Unsplash