Sexuality and Transsexuality under the European Convention on Human Rights: A Queer Reading of Human Rights Law

This book undertakes a critical analysis of international human rights law through the lens of queer theory. It pursues two main aims: first, to make use of queer theory to illustrate that the field of human rights law is underpinned by several assumptions that determine a conception of the subject of human rights as gendered and sexual in specific ways.

This gives rise to multiple legal and social consequences, some of which challenge the very idea of universality of human rights. And second, the book proposes that human rights law can actually benefit from a better understanding of queer critiques, since queer insights can help human rights to further approach its aim of universality. In order to achieve these main aims the book focuses on the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, the leading legal authority in the field of international human rights law.

The use of queer theory as the theoretical approach for these tasks serves to deconstruct several aspects of the Court's jurisprudence dealing with gender, sexuality, and the nuclear family, to later suggest possible paths to reconstruct such features in a queer(er) and more universal manner.