Homonationalism, Orientalism, & Pinkwashing Understanding
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“[PuarusedHomonationalism]todescribea processthatoccuredinAmericanpoliticsafter 9/11.SheexplainsthatLGBTQ+rightsbecame awaytodemonstratetheircivilizationand humanityincontrasttothebarbarismand homophobia[...]oftheMiddleEast.
Thissimplisticnarrativeiseasytobuyintobut isisalsountrue.Prisonerswerestillbarbarically torturedbytheAmericangovernmentin Guantanmo.AndthereareQueerMuslims fightingforliberationintheMiddleEastand acrosstheworld.Racistconceptslike homonationalismcreatefalsebinaries.‘Gay’ and‘Muslim’becomeopposites[while] ‘Western’and‘Queer’becomesynonymous. Theseideascanbeusedtogeneratepublic supportintheWestforviolentprogramsof dronestrikes,wars,andimperalism.”
In a video for Novara Media, Shon Faye offers a helpful introduction to Homonationalism. She also touches on this in another video collaboration with Novara Media, titled ‘Gay Pride & Capitalism: What is Pinkwashing?’ as the two are deeply related.
Shon Faye for Novara Media, in a video titled
Scan the QR code to watch this video on Youtube:
Homonationalism describes the favorable association between a nationalist ideology and 2SLGBTQIA+ people or their rights. This term was coined by Jasbir K. Puar in her groundbreaking text Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times to describe a process she observed in the American empire after 9/11. This now describes a phenomenon we see emerge most often in the ‘West’ or Global North, with governments promoting their allyship with queer folks, while painting their enemies as queerphobic. This creates false binaries that say queer identities cannot exist alongside certain national or ethnic identities. This is false. Queer people exist & have been fighting for liberation all around the world, for centuries — and we always will.
@wgssa.utsc ☼ #StudentsAgainstRapeCulture
“Pinkwashing is a combination of the term 'pink' which someone, quite possibly Hitler, decided should represent gay people and the word 'white washing'. It has come to describe a process by which conservative and/or capitalist institutions profess support for [queer] rights in order to look progressive, modern, and tolerant.”
The above quote is also from Novara Media: “Gay Pride & Capitalism: What is Pinkwashing?”
Purplewashing refers to a similar process, but instead, sees the co-opting of feminist or ‘womens rights’ movements — weaponizing the work and stories of MaGes (marginalized genders), for profit. WGSSA firmly rejects ALL false binaries & colonial narratives that attempt to justify historical and ongoing violence.
Pinkwashing, Purplewashing, & Homonationalism are ALL tools weaponized by imperialist governments to profit off of, and justify historical & ongoing apartheid, military invasion + occupasion, ethno-religious, and other forms of colonial violence. In unlearning Homonationalism, Pink- and Purple-washing, it is useful to explore, Orientalism, as coined and utilized by Palestinian scholar Edward Said, as a "created body of theory and practice" which constructs images of the Orient or the East directed toward those in the “West” or Occident.
@wgssa.utsc ☼ #StudentsAgainstRapeCulture
Edward Said’s ‘Orientalism’ notes representations of the ‘East’ or the Orient as ‘exotic, feminine, weak, and vulnerable’ and names these as both reflecting and defining the West or the Occident as its ‘rational, masculine, and powerful’ opposite. This is yet another false binary, similar to homonationalist ideology, which attempts to say that queer identities cannot exist alongside certain ethnic, religious, and/or national identities. Pinkwashing weaponizes these false binaries to facilitate corporate & government profiteering off of apartheid, militarized invasion + occupation, reproductive and sexual violence, ethnoreligious, anti-Indigenous, and other colonial violence — both historically and today.
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