Palestine, the global LGTBQ community, and the future of activism.
The global LGBTQ community has now reached a point that celebrations of Pride mark the month of June across the world. Yet this also begs a number of pressing questions, including whether a global queer community exists in the first place, what is exactly meant by “pride,” and what types of events are privileged this month? Furthermore, who has the ability to define these terms and to make these decisions? Examining the contemporary intersection of queer rights and the question of Palestine provides insights on the promise—and limits—of global LGBTQ politics.
Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique », my book on the transnational queer Palestinian solidarity movement, was published by SUP in 2020. In it, I examined events relevant to the movement reaching the year 2018. Thus, while much has remained constant over the past four years, much has also changed significantly.
My ethnography revealed the potential of global queer solidarity across lines of difference. There are shared struggles against patriarchy, homophobia, racism, and colonialism that tie LGBTQ activists together despite disparate geographies and positionalities. At the same time, the realities in Palestine are similar to contexts elsewhere, in that queer agency is intimately connected to socioeconomic status, political and religious ideologies, family and education background, urban and rural divides, and other factors. These conditions shape whether one is able to lead a life free from structural and physical violence in the face of homophobia. While privileged queer people in Ramallah and New York each benefit from the forces of cosmopolitanism, the former must contend with life under military occupation while the latter live under a sovereign state.
