What does the term ‘Homonationalism’ mean and how is it used?

What exactly is homonationalism?

You may have heard the word homosexuality used recently in politics and public discussion.

Actually just a few days ago spike He published an article claiming that homosexualism was “on the rise” and suggesting it was linked to the fact that “gay voters across Europe are moving to the right.” But what exactly does this term mean?

The term was first coined by Rutgers University professor and gender studies scholar Jasbir Puar in his 2007 book. Terrorist groups: Homosexualism in queer timesGoogle says usage of the phrase has skyrocketed over the past 20 years, but has not yet reached its peak.

Although the specific meaning of the term is highly nuanced, especially in the historical context in which Puar first used the term, the term broadly refers to the selective acceptance of LGBTQ+ people as a way to promote nationalist ideology and behavior.

The Oxford Encyclopedia of Communication summarizes this expression as “a simultaneous complicity in the growing support for LGBT rights by (primarily Western) countries and the association of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals with nationalist politics.”

Puar coined the term while analyzing how the United States sought to justify invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and other Second and Third World countries during the War on Terror in the early 2000s after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

During the election campaign, the US government sought to thwart widespread criticism by appropriating pro-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and building a narrative that Muslim-majority countries were inherently homophobic.

In most historical examples, Puar points out, Western countries have used homophobic rhetoric to justify Islamophobia by positioning Western “modernity” and liberal democracy as inherently superior compared to non-Western countries.

How does the government use homoeroticism?

It is important to emphasize that progress on LGBTQ+ rights is not a prerequisite for homosexualism. In fact, countries that use this tactic often have a poor track record on LGBTQ+ rights, despite claims to the contrary, and rarely take meaningful action to actually improve things. For example, same-sex marriage remained illegal in the United States nearly 15 years after the War on Terror began.

Homonationalism also typically extends support only to white, cisgender, gay, or bisexual men and tends to ignore more marginalized groups, such as non-white queer women and transgender and non-binary people.

Although this tactic has been most prominently used against Muslims, Western countries have also used it to justify their actions against Muslims in Africa, Eastern Europe, and Asia.

In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, political scientist Emil Edenborg warned against Ukrainians using homophobic rhetoric to dehumanize Russians, arguing that positioning LGBTQ+ rights as “evidence of ‘our’ national superiority” reflects the problematic nature of Russian nationalism.

Recently, the term has been used specifically when discussing the legitimacy of Israel’s war in Gaza after the October 7, 2023 attacks.

The Israeli government intensified its homophobic rhetoric after the attack, using it as a tactic to justify continued operations in Gaza that have killed at least 71,200 Palestinians, including 20,000 children.

In November 2023, the official Israeli State

Same-sex marriage is currently illegal in Israel, where 56 percent of the population considers same-sex marriage to be morally wrong.

Homonationalism is also associated with pinkwashing (defined as the act of a nation-state or private institution promoting LGBTQ+ rights to deflect attention from human rights abuses) and femonanationalism (an unrelated term that describes how nationalist ideology sides with feminist discourse to legitimize racism and Islamophobia).

Critics of homosexualism argue that it inadvertently conflates LGBTQ+ groups living in countries that use the tactic with nation-states, and that its use often obscures their complex experiences.

Some have argued that to criticize homophobic rhetoric, we need to consider how colonialism, racism, and class influence Islamophobic and nationalist ideologies, rather than assuming that tactics are solely related to gender and sexuality.