The future of queer liberal politics

Question 1

Saleh: What is queer liberalism?

Answer 1

A depoliticized, sanitized LGBTQ+ politics that centers a “common identity” and essentialist queer rights, often through a white, Western lens

Question 2

Saleh: What are the 2 problems with queer liberalism?

Answer 2

It ignores intersectional oppression such as racism, colonialism, and the marginalization of non-white, non-Western queers.

Instead of challenging existing hierarchies, systemic racism, colonial border regimes, and unequal mobility, queer liberalism focuses narrowly on legal inclusion and a universalized LGBTQ+ identity reflecting white, Western experiences

Question 3

Saleh: Why are Pride parades described as the “epitome of queer liberalism”?

Answer 3

They privilege white gayness, inclusion and visibility, reproduce racialized migration regimes (often taking place in highly restrictive and racialized border control countries like Denmark), and promote the image of the “good gay” aligned with Western secular ideals, vilifying Muslims

Question 4

Saleh: How are Muslim identities framed within queer liberalism?

Answer 4

As incompatible with queer liberal ideals, further marginalizing Muslim queer individuals

Question 5

Saleh: What alternative does he propose?

Answer 5

Radical, intersectional queer politics focused on anti-racism, de-colonialism, and dismantling structures of oppression

Question 6

Saleh: What does Saleh mean by race being “awkwardly relegated to an addendum to refugeeness or sexuality”?

Answer 6

Race is sidelined or “forgotten” in queer asylum discourse -> racial dynamics in migration are ignored despite being deeply intertwined (i.e., with two queer migrants detained because of lack of passports, not because they were black -> but “queerness” erases “race”)

Question 7

Saleh: How does queer liberalism reproduce hierarchies among refugees?

Answer 7

By determining deservingness based on conformity to Western queer norms (identity categories, visibility, coming out etc.)

Question 8

Saleh: What are “marginal mobilities”?

Answer 8

Complex, non-linear migration paths shaped by intersecting oppressions like racism, heteronormativity, and colonialism

Mobility is heavily influenced by gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, citizenship status, religion, and ability -> compound each other to create different scales of mobility

Question 9

Saleh: How does queer liberalism uphold border regimes?

Answer 9

By reinforcing restrictive ideas of citizenship by promoting legal and normative inclusion rather than dismantling border regimes

Question 10

Saleh: What is the problem with the idea of the West as a safe haven for queer people?

Answer 10

It masks the structural violence embedded in border regimes -> LGBTQ+ migrants face non-linear, difficult journeys shaped by racism, surveillance and systemic oppression

Question 11

What are some alternative mobility routes for asylum seekers?

Answer 11

Small to big cities

From “homophobic Europe” to Berlin and other more accepting destinations

Going through multiple countries to reach destination country

Question 12

Snorton & Haritaworn: What is “trans necropolitics”?

Answer 12

A form of power where states and institutions marks some fraction of a population for death while it deems other fractions suitable for life-enhancing investment

Question 13

Snorton & Haritaworn: How are the deaths of trans people of color mobilized politically and by whom?

Answer 13

Trans deaths act as a resource for the development and dissemination of many different agendas:

For activism and legal reform (hate crime laws) or state narratives, often benefiting more privileged (white, Western, middle-class) trans subjects

Both trans advocates and anti-immigrant groups use the deaths of trans people, as well as queer groups who sustain their queerness by adding subjects who appear even queerer

Question 14

Snorton & Haritaworn: How does the media contribute to trans necropolitics?

Answer 14

Focus on trans deaths in sensational ways, using outdated or pre-transition photos to highlight transness, while ignoring everyday trans lives and systemic marginalization

Question 15

Snorton & Haritaworn: What is the relationship between biopolitics and necropolitics?

Answer 15

Biopolitics regulates life and inclusion, whereas necropolitics exposes how some bodies are excluded and only valued in death

Question 16

Snorton & Haritaworn: What role does racism play in trans necropolitics?

Answer 16

Racism intersects with transphobia to produce greater vulnerability for trans people of color

Their deaths often reinforce racist narratives such as the homophobic migrant

Question 17

Snorton & Haritaworn: How was Tyra Hunter’s death used as an example?

Answer 17

To demonstrate how the medical establishment enacted a “biopolitics of disposability” and how trans women of color’s deaths are used as resources for the articulation and visibility of a more privileged transgender subject (“they” did not die in vain, but made it possible for “us” to come together today)

Question 18

Snorton & Haritaworn: What example does the article give from Germany?

Answer 18

The Berlin Drag Festival incident where migrant perpetrators (Turkish men) were framed as homophobic migrants and the non-binary body as deserving of protection

Question 19

Snorton & Haritaworn: What is the authors’ main critique of queer/trans advocacy?

Answer 19

Even well-intentioned activism can exploit the deaths of trans people of color, while failing to address the ongoing systemic forces that create their vulnerability

Question 20

Snorton & Haritaworn: Describe the paradox of trans necropolitics

Answer 20

Immobilized in life and barred from spaces designated as white (the good life, the Global North, the gentrifying inner city, university, trans community), it is in their deaths that poor and sex working trans people are color are invited back in and suddenly come to matter

Question 21

Shkliarevsky: What is his main argument against framing LGBTQ rights as human rights?

Answer 21

Sexuality and gender identity are forms of subjective self-expression, not part of “universal human nature” (as it is not unique to human either), and therefore do not qualify as absolute, universal human rights

The human rights approach arbitrarily assigns a special status to LGBTQ rights that privileges them vis-a-vis other non-fundamental rights, creating tensions and conflicts

Question 22

Shkliarevsky: How does he define human nature and human rights?

Answer 22

The capacity to create increasingly complex levels of mental organization -> this creative capacity is universal, absolute, and the true basis for human rights

Only rights that protect this capacity are human rights

Question 23

Shkliarevsky: How does he critique LGBTQ activism?

Answer 23

He claims it wrongly treats LGBTQ rights as non-negotiable human rights (and so does opponents), leading to unnecessarily and irresolvable social and political conflict

Question 24

Shkliarevsky: What are the 4 problems with his text?

Answer 24

He excludes sexuality and gender diversity as part of the human creative process (saying they are “mere inversions of the conventional forms of sexual orientation and gender differentiation”)

He promotes a regressive, status-quo preserving argument. He confuses how things are with how things should be -> why is it bad that LGBTQ+ rights makes some people angry and discuss something, what makes that destructive? Should we not discuss things that make us mad to improve society?

His arguments are ideologically biased and poorly citated

Sounds like LGBTQ people are the problem and if they would just talk to their opponents, everything would be fine (victim-blaming)

Question 25

Shkliarevsky: How does he critique current sexuality education and what is problematic about his claims?

Answer 25

He argues that it is too aligned with LGBT advocacy, poorly integrated with general education, and too focused on self-expression and rights discourse However, in many places sexuality education barely includes LGBTQ issues

Question 26

Shkliarevsky: What does he say about early gender transitions?

Answer 26

He critiques early transitions for children, arguing they cannot make informed decisions, and that these processes carry health, psychological, and financial risks

Question 27

Shkliarevsky: How does he critique "gender ideology"?

Answer 27

He equates it with right-wing populism as equally destructive

Question 28

Shkliarevsky: If LGBTQ rights are not human rights, what are they?

Answer 28

Civil rights -> important, but not absolute, universal, or non-negotiable

Question 29

Shkliarevsky: What advice does he give LGBTQ activists?

Answer 29

Create frames that are broad enough to include their interests as well as those of competing groups Stop relying on human/mental constructs, but use an approach that uses the process of creation as its main organizing principle

Question 30

Shkliarevsky: What do you think of this critique of anthropocentrism?

Answer 30

There is something to a general critique of anthropocentrism in rights discourses (i.e., only doing things that promote human beings' interests; how do we define humans along male norms, challenging Western notions of humanness) -> expanding rights But he uses it to narrow rights -> to exclude LGBTQ people from human rights, becoming a tool for exclusion and victim-blaming