Creating (im)moral citizens : gender, sexuality and lawmaking in Trinidad and Tobago, 1986

Since the 1980s, constructions of gender and the organization of sexuality have become subjects of acrimonious debate in the public arena of law-making in certain postcolonial states. Rooted in the process that led to the revision of the Penal Code of Trinidad and Tobago in 1986, and engaging with the pioneering work of Trinidadian scholar, M. Jacqui Alexander, this paper examines how gender and sexuality interconnected with nationalism and notions of modernity to generate "moral" and "immoral" citizens in parliamentary discourse and legal terrains, with particular implications for women and for persons who did not conform to normative sexual behaviours.