Queer Encounters with International Law

This incisive work maps the complex and often fraught intersections between queer identities and the global legal order, tackling everything from the criminalization of same-sex intimacy to the legal battles over gender recognition. Tamsin Phillipa Paige systematically examines how international law has historically pathologized LGBTQ+ people while also charting the hard-won progress and persistent challenges in areas like asylum law, hate crime legislation, and the fight to ban conversion therapy. The analysis moves beyond a simple critique of oppression to explore the nuanced ways queer communities navigate, resist, and reshape legal frameworks, offering a vital geographic and thematic breadth.

What distinguishes this text is its unflinching engagement with difficult topics within queer legal studies, including sex work, BDSM communities, and abolitionist critiques of the carceral system, refusing to shy away from internal debates for the sake of a sanitized narrative. This is essential reading for students of international law, human rights advocates, and anyone invested in understanding how legal systems are wielded both as instruments of control and as potential tools for liberation, ultimately reframing the very conversation about rights, justice, and personhood on a global scale.