At the Juncture of Homonationalism and Homophobic Nationalism: The Paradox of Transnational Sexual Justice Cooperation

• In Event: 090 - Section on Sociology of Sexualities Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 10. Producing Sexuality Discourse

Abstract

Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill, internationally referred to as the Kill the Gays Bill, has propelled Uganda to the forefront of global media. The attention earned by the proposed legislation opened avenues for transnational cooperation and communication between US-based Human (or more specifically, LGBTI) Rights organizations and Ugandan kuchu (K) activists – a Ugandan identity that encapsulates various identities of same gender loving or gender nonconforming peoples.

Using content analysis of legal texts, popular media, and organizational propaganda, combined with ethnographic interviews of LGBTIK organizations in both Uganda and the United States, I ask how homophobic nationalism, the domestic process of making a “straight” state, interacts with homonationalism, the process through which dominant nations deploy a normativized, nationalist homosexuality for global legitimacy. Jasbir Puar (2007) theorizes that homonationalism is both a form of discourse and a method of governing. Homonationalism is a recent development, with which Core nations create a homosexual citizen that contributes to national agenda. It serves to 1) “whiten” or Westernize the imagined homosexual; 2) racialize the terrorist and/or anti-homosexual; and 3) give leverage to powerful nations over weaker nations.

This paper seeks to accomplish the following:
1. Historicize Ugandan homophobic nationalism as a postcolonial manifestation
2. Outline the metamorphosis that homophobic nationalism experienced with the rise of homonationalism in the early 2000s.
3. Provide evidence for the lasting discursive effects of US homonationalism on Ugandan nation building.
4. Propose routes for sexual justice advocacy that do not rely on imperialism or white cultural formations of sexual diversity.

Author

• Sasha Maria Rodriguez, State University of New York-Stony Brook