Sexual Justice Organizing in the Intersection of Homonationalism and Homophobic Nationalism

• In Event: 191 - Minority Fellowship Program (MFP) Research Session: Issues in Global Inequalities, Experiences, and Activism

Abstract

Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009, 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. It also sparked a newfound, dialectic relationship between Americans and Ugandans about the history of such identities and the future goals for LGBTIK-identified people. This research primarily draws upon social movement theory and queer, feminist theories of sexual citizenship and homonationalism. I ask how the interaction between homophobic nationalism, the domestic process of making a “straight” state, and homonationalism, the process through which dominant nations deploy a normativized, nationalist homosexuality for global legitimacy, affect the social movement strategies of kuchu organizers in Uganda. Using ethnographic observation in New York City and Kampala, Uganda and interviews with ten kuchu activists, this work explores the opposing, but duly harmful processes of homonationalism and national homophobia.

Author

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