The Reluctant Queer

Abstract

In “The Locations of Homophobia,” Rahul Rao (2014, 174-175) invites us to complicate our examination of homophobia by turning our analysis inwardly. Whilst I maintain the bearing of the sexed (read: homophobic) colonial legacies on the contemporary discourse surrounding sexuality, including homophobia, across much of the MENA region, I agree with Rao on the importance of turning our analytic gaze inwardly in order to account for the agency of “local actors” in sustaining homophobic narratives and practices. Three concrete location(s) of homophobia are identified in this paper: the role of the Lebanese ruling-class elite in the neo-liberalization (read: depoliticization through economization) of same-sex desire, the alien rhetoric of local LGBT activism, and the “fractal orientalism” (Moussawi 2013) that reproduces Beirut as an LGBT haven. I conceptualize the “reluctant queer” in relation to each in order to challenge mainstream global media’s depictions of Lebanon as exceptionally LGBT-friendly, particularly where LGBT activism is concerned.

Teaching homocapitalism with Rahul Rao’s out of time the queer politics of postcoloniality: navigating against queer inclusivity as a way of shoring up capital

“…In Uganda, for example, 'communicative and financial imperatives of working with a transnational "non-profit industrial complex" have steered local Kuchu organisations away from community-based work towards an increasingly narrow agenda focused on the courts, media, and fundraising' (Rodriguez cited in Rao 2020, 166). Rao's text encourages students to explore global politics through the experiences of activists on the ground and in the Global South and contributes to queer activists' refusal to create hierarchies between different struggles (Allouche 2019;Ritchie 2010) and to place the question of sexual liberation before poverty alleviation or national liberation and other decolonial struggles.…”