Sexual geopolitics: the ‘blue balls’ theory of terrorism

The ‘uncanny doubles’ of queer politics: Sexual citizenship in the era of same-sex marriage victories

“…If these challenges are common for transformative politics in general, the increasing salience of ‘sexual geopolitics’ (Caluya, 2012: 54–66) is a particularly significant challenge for sexual citizenship campaigns. The Intervention in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities was justified via a pathologizing of Indigenous sexuality and family relationships, positioning all Indigenous men as sexual predators, Indigenous families as essentially dysfunctional, and sidelining the agency of Indigenous women and communities (Moreton-Robinson, 2009; Watson, 2009).…”

“…The ‘war on terror’ has seen Arab and Muslim Australians also constructed as sexually deviant and threatening in public debate, including what Caluya (2012: 54) calls the ‘blue balls theory of terrorism’, which asserts that terrorism is caused by the sexual frustration of non-Western men. This focus on sexual dysfunction and/or deviance is discursively conflated with an intense moral panic centred on a series of brutal group sexual assaults in Sydney during 2000 which were reported as a ‘new race crime’ and widely interpreted as evidence of a hypersexualized, aggressive masculinity among young Arab-Australian men (Baird, 2009: 372–391; Ho, 2007: 290–298; Poynting et al., 2004).…”

“…As Judith Butler (2008) argues, such racialized framing of sexuality and sexual rights presents ‘a rather serious bind for those of us who have understood ourselves as advocating a progressive sexual politics’ (p. 3). The challenge for a feminist killjoy or for Warner’s ‘unmannerly wedding guest’, therefore, is to continue critique of and resistance to the ways in which ‘the sexual has become a privileged site for regulating non-western states’ (Caluya, 2012: 54) and cultural ‘others’, including Indigenous, Muslim and Arab Australians. This challenge is particularly pressing at the very time at which sexual citizenship claims for marriage equality are enjoying increasingly widespread public support.…”

“…The most well-known literature in this regard is academic and activist work which analyses the ways in which Israel’s marketing of itself as ‘the only gay friendly democracy in the Middle East’ can serve to ‘pinkwash’ the occupation of Palestinian lands and the development of an apartheid state (Puar, 2012). According to this analysis, sexual rights have emerged as weapons of war and tools of foreign policy (Caluya, 2012: 54–66). Ritchie (cited in Puar, 2012) argues that ‘the production of the Israeli Gay Tolerance/Palestinian homophobia binary is a recognized discursive tactic of the conflict today.’ Homonationalism has also been identified in the construction of terrorists as effeminate, emasculated and perversely racialized, versus progressive sexuality as a ‘hallmark of US modernity’ (Puar, 2007) during the ‘war on terror’ (Caluya, 2012: 54–66).…”

“…According to this analysis, sexual rights have emerged as weapons of war and tools of foreign policy (Caluya, 2012: 54–66). Ritchie (cited in Puar, 2012) argues that ‘the production of the Israeli Gay Tolerance/Palestinian homophobia binary is a recognized discursive tactic of the conflict today.’ Homonationalism has also been identified in the construction of terrorists as effeminate, emasculated and perversely racialized, versus progressive sexuality as a ‘hallmark of US modernity’ (Puar, 2007) during the ‘war on terror’ (Caluya, 2012: 54–66). Gay rights are framed as a nationalist issue also in countries such as Russia and Uganda, where the (re)criminalization of homosexuality and a winding back of recognition for queer families is justified by the claim that same-sex rights are a form of Western imperialism and decadence (A paper bird, 2014; Persson, 2014).…”