quote:

Some people originating from Europe’s former African and Muslim-majority colonies, scapegoated as agents of prejudice, have been rejecting the European model of lesbian/gay emancipation. Houria Bouteldja of France’s Party of the Natives of the Republic (Parti des indigčnes de la République, PIR) caused fierce debate in 2012-13 when she refused to champion the “white agenda” of same-sex marriage. It’s too simplistic to typecast Bouteldja as a Muslim homophobe. She argued that while there are same-sex practices in French immigrant neighborhoods, they do not imply the existence of a universal gay identity. She rejected the charge that a refusal to come out is evidence of homophobia. Instead she portrayed many LGBTQI immigrants’ choice for a cross-sex marriage, with either a straight or a closeted lesbian/gay partner, as a legitimate act in defense of a family and community order threatened by racism. Bouteldja declared that unlike issues of unemployment, police harassment, discrimination, or housing, same-sex marriage “does not concern me” as an immigrant. Few immigrants showed up for the big demonstrations for or against same-sex marriage, she said, because they knew that even if it passed its impact in immigrant neighborhoods would be minimal.[3]

And though Bouteldja’s views are by no means universally shared in immigrant communities, she and her party are not alone. Another French person of immigrant origin, Madjid Ben Chikh, rejected the invisibility that Bouteldja would impose on him as a gay man, but endorsed her dismissal of the “white” gay agenda

[...]

Both in Eastern Europe and in communities of immigrant origin in Western Europe, anti-LGBTQI prejudice, however vicious the forms it takes, needs to be seen as partly a form of resistance to what Jasbir Puar has called “homonationalism”: the instrumentalization of LGBTI[10] rights as a tool of imperial domination.[11] Images of exuberant gay sexuality and celebration have been enlisted as icons of the kind of freedom the so-called ‘West’ has to offer, to contrast with the “backwardness” and repression that are attributed to Eastern Europe, the Islamic world, and immigrants. And many LGBTQI people have embraced this iconography. The upshot of this homonationalism, or at least its intended upshot, is what’s been called a “seemingly seamless articulation of queerness with an imperial nation state.”[12] Particularly, but not only, in countries like the Netherlands[13] and Denmark, as scholars like Paul Mepschen have observed, where both same-sex partnership rights and anti-immigrant sentiment are strongly developed, homonationalism has been key to consolidating and taming lesbian/gay identity. In Europe more generally, acceptance of LGBTQI people has become “the sign of the European Union’s benevolence” and a sign of European superiority.[14]

European ideologies of secularism strike a particular chord among LGBTQI people. Condemnations of religiously-motivated homophobia and transphobia fall on fertile ground in our communities. Resentment of religious bigotry runs deep for many LGBTQI people, particularly among those of us who suffered from it during our own Catholic, Protestant or Jewish upbringings. Indignation at anti-LGBTQI persecution on the part of fundamentalist regimes and movements elsewhere can seem like a logical consequence of opposition to Western Europe Christian bigotry. When this leads to support for LGBTQI people who are taking the initiative to organize themselves in Eastern Europe or in Muslim communities, it can be welcomed as an expression of solidarity.

But a problem arises when white Western Europeans’ resentment is projected away from their own context and experience and focused on the rest of the world, on the prejudiced “others.

NikkolasKing posted:

Perhaps it is not a perfect analogy but in my experience, this reminds me of how I have seen some feminists campaign against the burqa.

rudatron posted:

It's a stupid term for stupid people. I can understand the sentiment that same-sex marriage isn't relevant to you if you have more pressing concerns, but the portrayal of gay acceptance as specifically 'white' (and therefore imperialist) is a way to excuse and apologize homophobia in non-white communities.

You get exactly the same thing when it comes to feminism, where some non-white actors appropriate anti-colonialism to defend the local patriarchal values. It's bullshit.

Maintaining a belief in universal rights is not 'projection', it's conviction to an ideal of universalism. Conversely, the belief in 'racial relativity', which is effectively what's being argued here, is nothing but tribalistic identity politics. That it uses anti-colonialist rhetoric to justify itself is just the little dash of poetic irony, for flavor.

edit:

Part of the problem is that it's a somewhat understandable rejection of 'superiority', which unfortunately ties into the kind of elitist nonsense that has affected a lot of people, especially on the left, fairly recently (and of which DnD in particular is filled with).

That idea being that holding prejudicial views is a kind of moral failing, or demonstration of your lack of virtue.


That works *air quotes* well enough *air quotes* for domestic politics in the US, where the people it's applying to are white rednecks. The problem comes when you apply it internationally, and that's where it hits up against another third-rail, racism.

And so the only result is that, rather than holding everyone to the same standard, you end up making special exception after special exception. Because that's easier than challenging the original assumptions of the theory, that the problem is a result of 'inferiority' (and let's get real here - when liberals talk about their political opposition, the default assumption is of inferiority).

The anti-migrant right in the west has, of course, exploited this exact contradiction for it's own ends, but they're simply opportunists. They didn't create the original conflict, considering that they weren't exactly fond of homosexuals not too long ago.

The fix is simple: the cause is extrinsic, not intrinsic, and narrow-mindedness is the result of a lack of perspective, not malice. Universalism has no room for 'superiority'.

NikkolasKing posted:

Just to clarify, you believe it's elitist to try and be less judgmental? Sorry if that's not what you meant by the bolded part but that's how I read it.

Are you maybe arguing cultural or moral relativity isn't a thing and that by trying to be as "accepting" as possible, people are doing something wrong?

kustomkarkommando posted:

For the record homonationalism as a concept was developed by the current associate professor in woman studies at Rutgers and queer theory writer Jasbir Paur and is an actual thing that pops up in contemporary queer theory as a critique of how liberal accommodation for a narrow spectrum of queer behaviour is justified on chauvinistic grounds - kind of tied into homonormativity etc

I.e. it's not a dumb internet thing

Schizotek posted:

Jasbir Paur's take on homonationalism is conservatives using gay people as some sort of stalking horse for xenophobic bullshit, not that critiquing homophobia abroad is somehow bad you ninny.

kustomkarkommando posted:

Also the construction of kind of gay conservatism that sees an alien racialised inherently-homophobic other that must be contained and pushed back to preserve liberties deriving explicitly from an idea of a permissive western culture

Schizotek posted:

This is loving stupid and is weirdly predicated on the assumption that nonwestern cultures are somehow inherently homophobic, disregarding that the Ottomans beat the West to legalizing homosexual behavior by more than a century, and that there have been periods in Islamic societies where open homosexuality was tolerated. This is bordering on Maoist Third Worldism for crawling-up-own-rear end stupidity.

kustomkarkommando posted:

No ones not saying its dumb but you've people like Sebastian Chenu and disturbing (relatively informal) polls conducted by the French equivalent of grindr showing support for Le Pen among 18-29 year old gay men hovering around 43%

Schizotek posted:

This is loving stupid and is weirdly predicated on the assumption that nonwestern cultures are somehow inherently homophobic, disregarding that the Ottomans beat the West to legalizing homosexual behavior by more than a century, and that there have been periods in Islamic societies where open homosexuality was tolerated. This is bordering on Maoist Third Worldism for crawling-up-own-rear end stupidity.

Kopijeger posted:

states Monaco, Belgium and Luxembourg

TomViolence posted:

Isn't it pretty much this

NikkolasKing posted:

Just to clarify, you believe it's elitist to try and be less judgmental? Sorry if that's not what you meant by the bolded part but that's how I read it.

Are you maybe arguing cultural or moral relativity isn't a thing and that by trying to be as "accepting" as possible, people are doing something wrong?

Schizotek posted:

This is loving stupid and is weirdly predicated on the assumption that nonwestern cultures are somehow inherently homophobic, disregarding that the Ottomans beat the West to legalizing homosexual behavior by more than a century, and that there have been periods in Islamic societies where open homosexuality was tolerated. This is bordering on Maoist Third Worldism for crawling-up-own-rear end stupidity.

rudatron posted:

The goal isn't to do good, it's to advertise how good you are, and therefore, how justified whatever you do is.

Al-Saqr posted:

everyone pls read 'Desiring Arabs' and 'Liberalism in Islam' By Joseph massad before talking about homosexuality in the middle east thx.

Rodatose posted:

do you have a link or summary

Rodatose posted:

I think any time a "virtue signaling" argument is invoked, the person observing it is missing the intent of the person acting, calling their sincerity into question. The things people call "virtue signaling" is not about signaling virtue. It's about safety/trust signaling. People who have been marginalized in one way or another because of their identity may have understandable issues with trusting people - for instance, person b, who claims they are a friend of person a, turns on person a once a says they are gay. This sort of thing happens often throughout life and after enough times dealing with it, people look for the telltale speech or rhetorical signals of people who might hurt them emotionally or physically, while also using certain speech to signal to fellow marginalized people that they are safe and can be trusted. It's a matter of building a safe ingroup and excluding people who might endanger that ingroup.

Rodatose posted:

do you have a link or summary

A Buttery Pastry posted:

I think the argument is that it ignores the environments people inhabit, sort of the gay rights equivalent of being upper middle class/rich and looking down on poor people. Being upper middle class when your dad was too is no great triumph, and neither is not being (overly) prejudiced if that's the norm in your community.

Ytlaya posted:

The Insect Court posted:

https://newrepublic.com/article/62069/queer-theory

TomViolence posted:

Isn't it pretty much this

hakimashou posted:

A worldwide empire of Human Rights would be pretty good.

hakimashou posted:

A worldwide empire of Human Rights would be pretty good.

Flowers For Algeria posted:

Pretty rich coming from a supporter of apartheid.

Rodatose posted:

I agree with these things


doesn't seem like a very good book, despite the article being not very good