Thinking Queer Activism Transnationally

Contributors include Karma R. Chávez, Daniel B. Chávez, Ryan Conrad, Dani D’Emilia, Rafael De La Dehesa, Elisabeth L. Engbretson, Deborah Gould, Lindsey Green-Simms, Fatima Jaffer, Hana Masri, Year Montero, Brenna Munro, Gema Pérez-Sánchez, Lucas Platero, Jasmine Rault, Ghadir Shafie, Ryan Thoreson, Ruth Vanita, and Di Wang

This issue of Scholar and Feminist Online, edited by Gema Pérez-Sánchez and Brenna Munro, theorizes and engages with queer activism across national boundaries and between the Global North and Global South. Grappling with ideas and issues including transnational solidarity, human rights, coalitional politics, im/migration, diaspora, borders, and imperalism, contributors offer examples of multi-directional, multi-vocal, strategic, and affective activist practices for a transnational queer activist agenda.

“In our historical moment, activism for gay, lesbian, and transgender rights, on the one hand, and political homophobia and the targeting of gender non-conforming people, on the other, are both in wide global production and circulation. Advocacy for gay rights in the Global South has increasingly become a new field of action for the Global North, reproducing what Teju Cole has called a ‘white savior’ structure that exacerbates the very questions of sovereignty that have often made LGBT rights in the Global South such a fraught, politicized issue. As many critics have pointed out, this vision of international activism, in which human rights discourse is imbricated with histories of imperialism, understands the West to be a separate entity from the rest of the world, existing in a more ‘forward-thinking’ modernity, and disavows the deep, ongoing entanglement of the Global North in the creation of homophobia and gender policing around the world. It also overlooks other varied, multidirectional histories of transnational activism around sexual orientation and gender expression. This special issue aims to bring into view some of the rich interdisciplinary work currently being produced on these alternative activist routes and forms.”

– Gema Pérez-Sánchez and Brenna Munro, “Introduction: Thinking Queer Activism Transnationally”