Living well and sexual self-determination: Expanding human rights discourse about sex and sexuality

Abstract

This work argues that a reformulated capability approach expands the horizons established in earlier and contemporary classical rights-based approaches to gay rights and reproductive rights, by raising the threshold from recognizing an individual’s right to non-interference against the state or other entities to recognizing a shared responsibility to support everyone’s capacity to fulfill their potential. The “right to choose” thus comes to be cast not a right to be left alone, but as a social responsibility to provide for each individual’s fulfillment of our ergon, usually “function,” but really more like one’s work in being alive.