Zein Murib, PhD
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In Terms of Exclusion, Zein Murib looks at the LGBT community in the US as it formed into an identity-based social and political group. Drawing on an extensive archive of movement documents and publications, Murib argues that the strategic use of "rightful citizenship claims," or the assertion that lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender people are owed rights as citizens, created opportunities for the recognition of white, gender-normative, monogamously partnered gay men and lesbians at the expense of other community members. The rights wins made as a result of these opportunities are celebrated as evidence of progress, even while they simultaneously foreclose representation and political gains for those members whose cross-cutting identities challenge or elude the boundaries of normative citizenship. 

By focusing on the effects of mobilization tactics seeking assimilation, Murib shows that within-group marginalization is not an accident of political expediency or due to relatively fewer resources, but rather a discursive strategy employed by political actors to make a group palatable to lawmakers and the general public. Terms of Exclusion thus constitutes a significant revision to existing scholarship on LGBT politics in political science and joins a growing body of interdisciplinary work that focuses on how a seemingly benign strategy of political movements foregrounding citizenship claims entails silence and erasure for the most precarious members of the group.

​What People Are Saying
"Terms of Exclusion is a triumph of intersectional scholarship that reshapes our thinking of who gets elevated to represent 'a group' and who is relegated to the back -- or even left behind -- in the processes of brokering identity. It is among the most thoughtful books to date on US LGBT politics and activism."
- Phillip Ayoub, author of ​When States Come Out
"Driven by a desire to center the political interests and needs of those LGBT subjects most subject to violence and harm, Terms of Exclusion demonstrates why the need to think creatively and generously about the politics of membership is more urgent than ever."
- Cristina Beltrán, author of The Trouble with Unity and Cruelty as Citizenship
"The argument is tight, the tone is polite, but the critique this book offers is scathing. It invites us to move beyond a liberal politics of inclusion toward a more fundamental sense of living fairly and freely amidst all our differences -- and helps guide us toward that goal." 
- Susan Stryker, author of ​Transgender History: The Roots of Today's Revolution
"I bet I would love your book if I read it!" 
- Sam Trinité, age 9
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