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ESSAY
A Pride Too Proud: Challenging the Myth of Queer Progress
Part 1: The transphobic and homophobic Other
Khadijah Kanji
As pandemic-related physical distancing measures roll on into summer, Pride seasons across the country will feel a lot different than in years past. What we can count on being quite the same, however, is that Pride will be no less, well, proud. Like every year, Pride will operate as a space (even an online one) for 2SLGBTQ+ folks to showcase their non-normative genders and sexualities. But, as usual, Pride will also be an opportunity for politicians and corporations to proclaim their commitment to this mosaic of gender and sexual diversity. In other words, Pride will serve its parallel function of narrating Canada as a good place to be queer. Everyone these days, it seems, is proud to have Pride.
There is perhaps no one more useful for confirming this nationalist narrative than the âLGBTQ+ refugeeââsomeone who has achieved refugee status in Canada based on a SOGI (sexual identity and gender identity)-related claim of persecution. This time of year usually marks an uptick in LGBTQ+ refugee stories in Canadian mainstream media: âFive LGBTQ refugees describe why they came to Canada;â âDrag queen fled Iran, finding both freedom and a stage in Vancouver;â âHow Canada has been secretly giving asylum to gay people in Chechnya fleeing persecution;â âCanada: A safer haven for LGBT refugees;â read some of the headlines.
This media content reflects a dominant discourse, one that positions the âgoodâ of Canada (i.e. a âprogressiveâ country accepting of sexual, gender and racial diversity) in binary contrast to the âbadâ of elsewhere (i.e. places so extremely intolerant, from which refuge must be sought). As a social worker and researcher who has worked with LGBTQ+ refugees and asylum-seekers, Iâm concerned with the erasures required to uphold this simplistic binary.
These erasures both reflect and reproduce the very politics that oppress us, as queers, and as otherwise-marginalized people, in Canada and around the world.
A COLONIAL HISTORY
The historical roots of modern-day transphobia and homophobia in the so-called developing world lie in European colonialism, and particularly in the colonial projects of the British.
Indeed, âqueeringâ colonized populations was one mechanism of colonial domination. Specifically, by applying onto their subjugated populations myths of widespread sexual and gender perversion, colonizers effectively dehumanized their subjects, and rendered domination of them to be both natural, and an act of altruistic âcivilizing.â Legal codification supported this mission.
In a report for Human Rights Watch, Alok Gupta details the introduction of anti-sodomy legislation in India. As he describes, âIt was ⌠the first colonial âsodomy lawâ integrated into a penal code ⌠Its influence stretched across Asia, the Pacific islands, and Africa, almost everywhere the British imperial flag flew.â
And this colonial legacy remains. In a 2014 study, researchers Han & Mahoney found a positive correlation between having a British colonial origin, and a law criminalizing same-gender sexual relations: â57 percent of states with such a law have a British colonial origin. Almost 70 percent of states with a British colonial origin continue to criminalize homosexual conduct.â
Photo by George Becker/Pexels.
It is these imported forms of gender and sexual regulation that non-Western queers contend with todayâand, sometimes, seek refuge from in Canada. Meanwhile, the Europeans who exported it have largely overcome its most punishing features.
A NEO-COLONIAL PRESENT
Just as historical colonialism informs the global landscape of sexuality and gender even after its official end, the global economic power imbalances established through Western colonial reign have similarly enduredâso that the material excesses of the West are still financed through the material exploitation of the non-West.
A 2017 report from several NGOs, for example, calculated that sub-Saharan Africa is actually a net creditor to the rest of the world: while approximately $161 billion enters the continent annually via loans, remittances and aid, $203 billion also leaves each year through dodged taxes, repatriated profits, illegal logging/fishing/ trade in wildlife, and damages from climate change. Of course, none of this debt is collectible because our global economy hasnât been organized to recognize this form of theft. This is precisely how the Global North vs. Global South economic apartheid endures in entirely legal waysâa dynamic from which Canada benefits.
But what does this have to do with global transphobia and homophobia? A 2014 study by CityLab, based on data from a 2012 Gallup World Poll, found that intolerant attitudes towards gays and lesbians are inversely correlated with economic development. And logically so, since material deprivation breeds division and strife between those made to vie over meagre resources.
More fundamentally (and obviously), queers are housed in bodiesâand those bodies have material needs. When material deprivation is not only an aggravating factor for transphobia/homophobia but persists as a source of violence beyond transphobia/ homophobia, it is arbitrary to limit our concern with LGBTQ+ wellbeing to the persecution of queers as queers.
Yes, queers are oppressed by legal persecution and interpersonal violence due to their gender/ sexuality; they are also oppressed when denied the basic means of existence. Actualizing our gender and sexual identity is a moot point if we canât eat.
THE âWELCOMINGâ OF REFUGEES
While illogical, the distinction between socio-legal and economic sources of oppression is written into the very international legal definition of refugee. While those persecuted for identity are considered bona fide claimants, economic refugees and climate refugees (respectively, those seeking sanctuary from extreme poverty and the effects of climate change) are not. In 2017 alone, for example, Canada deported over 500 âeconomic migrantsâ back to Haiti.
Thirty-five percent of Haitians suffer from chronic malnutrition, a full half are malnourished, and food availability and economic prosperity is worsening with the progression of climate changeâthese conditions are no less life or death than those faced by refugees.
While the hypocritical recognition of refugees is illogical on moral grounds, it makes perfect sense within the logics of global capitalism.
The maintenance of Western economic supremacy requires the active production of extreme global poverty and environmental chaos. For instance, Canada helped to implement a âdestructive neoliberal economic restructuring programâ in Haiti, following the 2004 coup.
Furthermore, Canada contributes more per capita to climate change than any other G20 economyâand while Haiti is responsible for just a fraction of one percent of global carbon emissions, it will suffer from its effects more than almost any other nation. Western states simply canât affordâeither morally or practicallyâto recognize their own victims as refugees.
Providing haven to those persecuted for their identity, however, is much more palatable. Canadaâs so-called multiculturalist framework can easily accommodate all types of superficial difference.
The integration of âdifferentâ bodies need not disturb settler-colonial and racialized capitalist relations but can, in fact, fortify themâby populating the nation with settlers, expanding identity-based niche markets, and obscuring racial inequity through the presence of diversity.
Canadaâs concern for the well-being of LGBTQ+ refugees, however, is belied by its refusal to relinquish the global economic privileges that, in part, produce them.
The definitional violence of restricting the category of refugee translat...
