Between institutionalization, homonationalism and anti-gender mobilisations: Challenges, complicities and contradictions in contemporary LGBTIQ* politics and LGBTIQ* activism

Abstract

In the last decades, we can observe some tremendous shifts regarding the legal and socio-political inclusion of LGBTIQ* populations in several European countries, including the passing of same-sex marriage laws, and various legislative reforms in terms of employment, hate crime and access to goods and services. On the other hand, anti-gender politics and anti-queer rhetoric (re)surface (not only) across Europe, challenging the institutionalization of LGBTIQ* rights. However, this panel aims to question, and explore in more detail, whether anti-gender politics with its anti-queer and anti-democratic stances can be so neatly opposed to ‘progressive’ LGBTIQ* politics, as some recent (EUropean) discourses suggest. Hence, this panel sheds light on some of the historical intersections and contemporary convergences between LGBTIQ* inclusion policies, anti-gender mobilizations and homonationalist rhetoric from different perspectives, geopolitical localities and analytical angles. By investigating different political actors, strands of mobilization and analytical dimensions of LGBTIQ* politics and activism, this panel wants to complicate an alleged opposition between anti-gender and pro-LGBTIQ* politics and explore some of the more subtle complicities and collusions between related argumentative strategies and political developments: How did certain (homonationalist or homonormative) trajectories of LGBTIQ* inclusion policies pave the way for anti-gender mobilizations? How was the institutionalization of (certain) LGBTIQ* rights enabled by the marginalization of BIPOC, trans* and inter* populations and related political claims, as well as by a ‘cisgendering’ of gays and lesbians? How do these exclusionary trajectories intersect with (some) anti-gender arguments? How does a growing privatization and individualization of anti-LGBTIQ* violence relate to a (neoliberal) de-democratization and authoritarianization of society? And what does this mean with regard to legislative and political reforms, such as hate crime laws or anti-discrimination policies? How can we grasp the relationship between homonationalism, de-democratization and LGBTIQ*political claims for a ‘strong’ punitive/carceral of state?

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