‘Saving Muslim queer women from Muslim hetero-patriarchy’. Savior narratives in LGBTI youth work

Abstract

Across different cultural and national spaces, the meanings of citizenship, nationalism, modernity, colonialism, and sovereignty are being negotiated in debates about antihomosexuality in Europe. In this text we analyze and discuss a poster campaign aimed at youth produced by the national lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersexual (LGBTI) rights organization in Finland (Seta), and a discussion at a seminar on rainbow youth, where the poster was addressed. We pay close attention to one poster in particular, which displays an image of a woman, who is marked as Muslim, kissing another woman who is marked as Finnish. The image conveys a colonialist savior motif whereby European patriarchy shows itself saving a brown woman from brown hetero-patriarchal masculinity. Spivak's postcolonial deconstructive approach implies a critique of certain forms of masculinity studies which are blind to the ways in which rescue narratives may be racist.

Nationalism as competing masculinities: homophobia as a technology of othering for hetero- and homonationalism

“…Third, and this is key for the argument made here, is that the inclusion of homosexuals within the imagining of the nation is made possible on the back of the (racialised) Othering process of other non-western cultures. The ultimate homophobic Other is then represented as one of an orthodox, hetero-patriarchal masculinity which is sexually backwards and repressive to both homosexuals and women and is therefore positioned as less than the western new modes of inclusive/hybrid masculinities (Jungar and Peltonen 2015).…”

‘In Sweden, girls are allowed to kiss girls, and boys are allowed to kiss boys’: Pride Järva and the inclusion of the ‘LGBT other’ in Swedish nationalist discourses

“…Increasingly, ‘white queers [are thus] saving brown queers from brown straights’ (Ahmed, 2011: 126). LGBT and women’s rights organisations have perpetuated these dominant themes around racialised and Muslim communities and sexual rights in the European context (El-Tayeb, 2012; Haritaworn, 2008; Haritaworn et al., 2008; Jungar and Peltonen, 2015; Petzen, 2012). They have been criticised by queer-of-colour organisations for speaking about migrants and racialised Europeans, rather than with them (Haritaworn et al., 2008: 88), and for cashing in on growing anti-Muslim sentiments in the process of moving LGBT rights into the focus of a wider public (Petzen, 2012: 107).…”

“…In fact, their recurrence is to some extent what makes Pride Järva at all ‘possible’. Central among these are notions of Sweden as a particularly progressive country with regard to gender equality and LGBT rights (described as ‘Swedish gender exceptionalism’ (Keskinen et al., 2009; Martinsson et al., 2016)), descriptions of homophobic hate crimes with racialised/Muslim perpetrators (Haritaworn, 2010), as well as so-called rescue narratives (Bracke, 2012; Jungar and Peltonen, 2015), all of which can be found in statements by politicians and activists beyond the right-wing part of the political spectrum. I argue that Sjunnesson builds on and extends them by adding a ‘protector’ narrative particular to right-wing political actors, revolving around the notion of ‘leftist political correctness’ silencing LGBT concerns about immigrant homophobia.…”

A Critique of Our Own? On Intersectionality and “Epistemic Habits” in a Study of Racialization and Homonationalism in a Nordic Context

“…During the two-hour discussion the panellists invoked several tropes and figures of othering, highlighting problems of different customs and norms regarding gender-based violence, gender politics and cultural understandings and customs of gender equality, in a manner that reinforced images of a "civilized West" and the "uncivilized rest" typical to neonationalist rhetoric in Finland and elsewhere (Keskinen, 2018). The abstract figure of "queer refugees" circulated in the discussion in a manner that reiterated Eurocentric notions of "Muslim cultures" and saviour narratives of saving brown queers from brown hetero-patriarchy, to paraphrase Spivak's analysis of colonial discourses (Jungar & Peltonen, 2015. The audience was asked not to interrupt during the two-hour-long discussion.…”