Challenging heterosexuality and nationalism through queerness.

As summer turns into autumn and winter the giddy joy that came with the season grows dim. This summer we celebrated Pride as usual. For the most part the festival is in accessible to me due to the cost. The other factor is that the festival does not speak much to me. Commercialism combined with a touristy feel make the event seem like one big giant party.

As a few LGBTQ friends and I walked past Manchester’s gay village on Pride Saturday and Sunday one of them remarked at the glut of rainbow flags in town in the shops of big business. Pride she claimed had lost the plot. I agree with her. It is wonderful that big businesses is supportive of the LGBTQ community but are they really? In a world where big business has taken over smaller business, exploits its workers a mere rainbow flag does not remedy the exploitation. As a black lesbian my friend saw the precarious peace she occupies in a homo-nationalist celebration.  Now that LGBTQ people are protected by the law of the land institutions that were once known (and still are) for their homophobia have jumped on a similar bandwagon.

Perhaps the most ironic one of these institutions was the Home Office and its support for LGBTQ people. For over a week now I have seen rather disturbing news of a young gay Ugandan friend being deported back to his country. This is not an isolated case, another friend I admire is in a similar situation for over a year. She is Nigerian and not lesbian enough. I am not comforted by the fact that the Home Office employs LGBTQ people. Both these people are Christian and members of the LGBTQ community. I mention their religion, as this is almost always a reason quoted by people of the faith and not to bash Africans and to justify the superiority of Britain. In more liberal Christian circles being tolerant of LGBTQ people is a sign of changing times in the nation, homophobia and transphobia is an African problem relegated to that continent alone. To non-Christians homophobia and transphobia in the global south is due to being trapped in religion and culture. Then of course there are cultural Christians to whom Christianity is an identity which is white and European. While the continent of Africa has some nations that have re criminalised homosexuality this takes on a nationalistic fervour. Homosexuality is imagined to be a western import corrupting the youth distancing them from good family values. Heteronormativity is invoked family is imagined to be a perfect situation where men and women marry in a lavish ceremony and produce the right amount of children. These ideas aren’t left unchallenged feminists and LGBTQ groups in these regions do challenge this idea. While Western Europe is imagined to be a safe haven for the community the rest of the world is thought of as backward lagging behind in social progress it does not have the same magnanimity to accept some of its citizens.

Intersectionality is lost in these debates, LGBTQ identity is thought of as the preserve of white lesbian and gay people (the the b’s, t’s and q’s don’t make it in this fantasy). That one can be non-white, LGBTQ, religious, disabled….. is never considered. White LGBTQ groups are notorious for their racism. The village in Manchester is perfect example of this which is very selective in its demographic. People of colour are not participants in this community only cab drivers and kebab makers, on the periphery. LGBTQ people are conceptualised through a homo-nationalistic lens, white, gay male and middle class, who then occupy the majority position in public forums. Terms like pink pound explain this situation perfectly. Revolutionary fervour and the precarious position the community occupies are lost in this celebration. It is wonderful that some sections of the community are in influential positions and have it easier than others however that sections acceptance has meant that homophbia and transphobia are thought of as a thing of the past, it happens everywhere else but here.

There is another way of looking at queerness and nationalism and that is through a black lesbian feminist perspective. Gloria Anzaldúa suggests another way that reaches out across national boundaries.

As a mestiza I have no country, my homeland cast me out; yet all countries are mine because I am every woman’s sister or potential lover. (As a lesbian I have no race, my own people disclaim me; but I am all races because there is the queer of me in all races.) I am cultureless, because as a feminist, I challenge the collective cultural/religious male derived beliefs of Indo-Hispanics and Anglos; yet I am cultured because I am participating in the creation of yet another culture, a new story to explain the world and out participation in it, a new value system with images and symbols that connect us to each other and to the planet.  Page 102- 103 Anzaldúa

In an era where nationalism is becoming a universal feature of all nations challenging notions of nationhood and homo-nationalism are pressing issues. Culture must be deconstructed.

Reference:

Anzaldúa, G. (1999) Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza . 2^nd edition. Aunt Lute Books. San Francisco