From silence to Pride? A feminist visual narrative analysis of the Swedish Armed Forces’ Pride campaigns

Abstract

State militaries increasingly communicate their acceptance of LGBTQIA+ individuals through glossy visuals online. This article takes the Swedish Armed Forces as its case since, through their military marketing, they have suggested not only their protection of LGBTQIA+ rights but also their status as a ‘queer’ force for almost a decade. While the gendered representation of the Swedish military is unstable, the narrative of Nordic states’ ‘progressiveness’ is particularly sticky in international politics. Through a feminist visual narrative analysis of SAF’s Pride campaigns, the author identifies patterns and tensions in the ‘queer’ Swedish military narrative and argues that the Pride campaigns mark attempts at normalizing cis-heteronormativity while consolidating the Swedish nation ‘brand’ as internationalist, feminist and LGBTQIA+ friendly. In the process, they (re)produce conventionally ‘queer’ subjects: the patriot and victim, which through wider discourses of neoliberalism and homonationalism rely on ‘Western’ notions of what it means to be LGBTQIA+ in Sweden and beyond.