just want to say that countries like sweden and austria deporting brown and black gay men and forcing them go back to uganda or afghanistan or other nations that kill and jail people for being gay because those men don’t “look or act feminine/gay” is a blatant example of racialized homophobia. and this is why i keep reiterating that orientalism is dangerous for lgbt people of color, why i keep saying that homonationalism plays such a huge role in the oppression of lgbt people of color – and i say this bc it’s not just cishet whites who spread these homophobic and racist stereotypes about what “looking gay” entails, but it’s also white gays who back them up by talking about how “inherently homophobic” nonwhite / nonwestern people are, and how nonwhite / nonwestern people are “failing” to live up to some gay Gold Standard of appearance / gender non conformity and gender expression / gayness itself. fuck all white people, gay or straight, for putting the lives of nonwestern lgbt poc and nonwhite lgbt refugees at risk.
I’m sorry but WHAT THE FUCK IS GOIN ON??
Sweden is deporting an openly gay Ugandan football player back to Uganda, which is a country that criminalizes homosexuality and where gay people can be killed for being out. This is very similar to when Austria rejected a gay Afghani teenage boy’s asylum petition on grounds that he didn’t “look or act gay, so he’d be fine in Afghanistan”. Essentially both incidents highlight the how state violence, racism, imperialism, and homonationalism all coincide to oppress LGBT people of color / LGBT immigrants and refugees / LGBT nonwesterners.
I also want to say that yes it absolutely is the fault of the countries of origin for being violently homophobic, but 1) in Uganda’s case for instance, growth of homophobia within the culture came about as a result of white / Western christian missionary propaganda (many Christian missionaries still go to post-colonial nations and in addition to trying to convert local populations they obviously spread homophobic rhetoric) and 2) we absolutely shouldn’t try to justify or minimize the very real danger of homophobia and its perpetrators in nonwestern countries by blaming everything on colonialism, but the fact remains that these countries haven’t been able to cultivate the types of LGBT rights movements we see in the west because colonialism stifled that growth and progress. Like you can clearly see how overtly homophobic western countries still are, and most of them never experienced colonialism or imperialism – and so if even they have taken this long to have solidified LGBT rights movements, imagine how long it will take a country that only gained independence within the last 75 years.
england is terrible at this as well, the partner of a friend of mine was almost deported last year, and we only managed to save her because the church community rallied round but it was like panic stations for three days, we didn’t know where she was or what or do and she would be killed if she went back to uganda but they just took her – absolutely terrifying
LGBT refugees in the Netherlands are also dealing with this kind of bullshit.
QueerAnarchism 