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Queer Anti-Racist Activism and Strategies of Critique: A Roundtable Discussion

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Notes

  1. For further information see: http://www.safraproject.org.

  2. Stacy Douglas is a PhD student at Kent Law School (UK), a Steering Committee member for the Kent Centre for Law, Gender and Sexuality and part of the Organising Committee of the Postgraduate and Early Careers Scholars Network (PECANS). Stacy is also a member of Communities of Resistance (CoRe), a London-based organisation fighting to stop prison expansion in Britain.

    Suhraiya Jivraj is co-founder and former co-ordinator of the Safra Project and a Lecturer in Law at Oxford Brookes University. She is also a member of the Decolonize Queer working group, which is an academic-activist transnational network working on issues of sexuality/gender from a post-colonial perspective.

    Sarah Lamble is a lecturer in Law at Birkbeck College, University London and a member of the Bent Bars Project, which coordinates a letter writing program for queer, trans and gender nonconforming prisoners in Britain.

  3. This event is discussed at length in the Introduction to this Special Issue and is also mentioned in Sara Ahmed’s contribution, ‘Problematic Proximities: Or Why Critiques of Gay Imperialism Matter’.

  4. In an unpublished paper, Johanna Rothe analyses the hate blogs, many of which were subsequently taken down. Among other epithets, the authors and dissenters were described as ‘fascists,’ ‘jihadists,’ ‘lunatics,’ ‘fanatics,’ ‘wankers’ and ‘loser academics’ with obscure, ‘computer-generated’ names, who ‘infect our public halls’ and should be ‘hoover(ed) up’, together with the book and the other ‘tongue twisting gobbledygook’.

  5. The email contained two direct references to the law: ‘The sustained series of untrue allegations against me in this book constitute, in the opinion of my lawyer, ‘grave malicious libels of the most serious kind because they appear deliberately calculated to defame and discredit.’… I would be very grateful if you could get in touch with me so that we can discuss how this matter can be resolved without recourse to the courts.’

  6. That this kind of bullying can be effective with bigger publishers and more powerful authors is illustrated by the fate of Scott Long, who published an article in a Routledge journal, which was critical of the Iran campaigns by Peter Tatchell, Doug Ireland and other western activists. Long’s critique resulted in a similar witch-hunt and may have contributed to his resignation from his position as LGBT coordinator at Human Rights Watch.

  7. In April 2010, Arizona passed Senate Bill 1070, which introduced the ‘Support our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighbourhoods Act’, and gives police broad power to check immigration status of anyone suspected of being an ‘illegal’ immigrant. The act also created new crimes and tougher penalties related to immigration law enforcement. While the constitutionality of the Act is currently before US courts, several other states have introduced similar legislation. See: National Conference of State Legislators, ‘Arizona’s Immigration Enforcement Laws’ available at: http://www.ncsl.org/default.aspx?tabid=20263.

  8. See for example: Incite! Women of Color against Violence (2007).

  9. ILGA refers to the international lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex association. http://www.ilga.org. Accessed 27 April 2011.

  10. HIVOS is a humanist institute for development cooperation based in the Netherlands. http://www.hivos.nl. Accessed 27 April 2011.

  11. Wendy Brown (2005).

  12. See Gayatri Spivak (1988), Rinaldo Walcott (2009) and Carlos Decena (2011).

  13. For details of the events surrounding Butler’s speech, see SUSPECT’s press release from 21 June 2010, ‘Judith Butler turns down Civil Courage Award from Berlin Pride: ‘I must distance myself from this racist complicity’. http://nohomonationalism.blogspot.com/2010/06/judith-butler-refuses-berlin-pride.html. Accessed 19 Dec 2010.

  14. SUSPECT is a non-funded grassroots organisation of queer and trans migrants, Black people, people of colour and allies, which was established in early 2009 with the aim to monitor the arrival and effects of hate crimes debates in Germany, and to counter the racist, punitive and neo-colonial turn in sexual and gender politics.

  15. See: http://nohomonationalism.blogspot.com.

  16. There are of course other groupings who are organizing outside this model: trans and queer groups, including Kurdish ones, are creating their own political spaces.

  17. Jessica Geen ‘Stickers declare ‘gay-free zone’ in ease London (14 February 2011). http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2011/02/14/stickers-declare-gay-free-zone-in-east-london/. Accessed 27 April 2011

  18. This point is made by Pav Akhtar in his statement ‘The EDL and Islamphobia should have no place in the LGBT community’ (27 April 2011). http://liberalconspiracy.org/2011/04/27/the-edl-and-islamophobia-should-have-no-place-in-the-lgbt-community/. Accessed 27 April 2011.

  19. As mentioned in the editorial of this special issue, the English Defense League (EDL) is an anti-Muslim nationalist organisation in the UK.

  20. Imaan press release (15 April 2011). http://www.imaan.org.uk/. Accessed 27 April 2011.

  21. ‘Safra Project statement on East End Gay Pride’ (13 March 2011). http://safraproject.org/newsviews.htm. Accessed 27 April 2011. See also Decolonize Queer statement ‘From gay pride to white pride? Why marching on East London is racist’ (15 March 2011). http://www.decolonizequeer.org. Accessed 27 April 2011; and Bent Bars statement ‘Why Bent Bars will not be marching at the East End Gay Pride’ (14 March 2011). http://www.co-re.org/joomla/index.php/bent-bars-news. Accessed 27 April 2011.

  22. Lesbians of colour ‘BASTA, le racisme et la xénophobie au nom de la lutte contre l’homophobie!’ (12 April 2011). http://www.espace-locs.fr/. Accessed 27 April 2011.

  23. Palestinian Queers for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions statement ‘ITB, Take Apartheid and Pinkwashing Out of Your Fair’ (10 March 2011). http://pqbds.wordpress.com/. Accessed 27 April 2011. See also Puar in this issue.

  24. Sokari Ekine, ‘Laws that criminalise same sex intimacy are making a mockery of our democracies’. (31 May 2010). http://www.blacklooks.org/2010/05/laws-that-criminalise-same-sex-intimacy-are-making-a-mockery-of-our-democracies/. Accessed 27 April 2011.

  25. Paul Canning. ‘Malawi government threatens pro-LGBT groups, activists over foreign aid withdrawals.’ (22 April 2011). LGBT Asylum News. http://www.sdgln.com/news/2011/04/22/malawi-government-threatens-pro-lgbt-groups-activists. Accessed 3 May 2011. See also Thom Chiumia ‘Bamusi blasts NGOs, donors on gay promotion’. (6 April 2011). http://www.nyasatimes.com/national/bamusi-blasts-ngos-donors-on-gay-promotion.html. Accessed 3 May 2011.

  26. Informal discussions between Sokari Ekine and local activists.

References

  • Brown, Wendy. 2005. Freedom’s silences. In Edgework, 83–97. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

  • Decena, Carlos. 2011. Tacit Subjects: Belonging, Same-Sex Desire, and Daily Life Among Dominican Immigrant Men. Durham: Duke University Press.

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  • Incite! Women of Color against Violence. 2007. The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.

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  • Spivak, Gayatri. 1988. Can the subaltern speak? In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. C. Nelson, and L. Grossberg, 271–313. Urbana/Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

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  • Walcott, Rinaldo. 2009. Queer Returns: Human Rights, the Anglo-Caribbean and Diaspora Politics, Caribbean Review of Gender Studies, vol. 3. http://sta.uwi.edu/crgs/november2009/journals/Walcott.pdf. Accessed 27 April 2011.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Safra Project, London, UK

    Tamsila Tauqir

  2. Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany

    Jennifer Petzen

  3. Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, Helsinki, Finland

    Jin Haritaworn

  4. London, England

    Sokari Ekine

  5. Faculty of Social Sciences, K.U.Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Sarah Bracke

  6. School of Law, Birkbeck College, University of London, London, UK

    Sarah Lamble

  7. School of Law and Social Sciences, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK

    Suhraiya Jivraj

  8. Kent Law School, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK

    Stacy Douglas

Authors
  1. Tamsila Tauqir
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  2. Jennifer Petzen
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  3. Jin Haritaworn
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  4. Sokari Ekine
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  5. Sarah Bracke
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  6. Sarah Lamble
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  7. Suhraiya Jivraj
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  8. Stacy Douglas
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Correspondence to Tamsila Tauqir.

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Tauqir, T., Petzen, J., Haritaworn, J. et al. Queer Anti-Racist Activism and Strategies of Critique: A Roundtable Discussion. Fem Leg Stud 19, 169–191 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10691-011-9179-0

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