Andrew Delatolla. International Studies Quarterly. Volume 64, Issue 1. March 2020.

Introduction

In the summer of 2017, Pride of Arabia (POA), a network of LGBTQ+ individuals from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) took part, for the first time, in the London Pride celebrations. POA’s experience in London Pride was revelatory regarding the historic relational context of sexuality in governance and international politics. The individuals marching with POA were mostly first generation and second generation diaspora, from Morocco to Iran, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. The members, being from middle and upper-middle class strata of society, and reflecting their relative class privilege, were able to be physically present in London and engaged in discourses of Pride. However, a number of tensions related to race and gender were also evident throughout their participation. As explored in this article, POA’s participation in the London Pride march provides an entry point to understand inclusions and exclusions related to race, gender, and class within the context of sexual governance. The case of POA highlights these intersections produced by homocolonialism that mobilizes sexuality as a standard of civilization.

Although POA members were loud, assertive, and demanded recognition, they were pushed to the physical margins of the Pride march, trailing behind large corporate floats and state sponsors. The physical placement of POA in the parade was related to Pride in London sponsorship— larger sponsors, listed in categories depending on their economic support, were placed in prominent positions in the parade. Despite community groups being interspersed, these were—with few exceptions—visible and recognized charities, sporting clubs, or state bodies. The inability of POA to participate on the same scale, economically and politically, contributed to their physical peripheralization, with corporate sponsors and recognized and established community groups being showcased with priority.

The placement of POA at the end of the parade, although not the last group to march, signified their position in the outskirts of the “respectable” LGBTQ+ movement. They did not fit comfortably within the primarily white and Western LGBTQ+ cultures on display. For example, they marched with their faces covered with keffiyehs (the checkered scarves) and veils/hijabs, some dressed provocatively in leather and spandex while adorning masks, and others remained covered in abayas (the long—often black—robes worn by women) and thobes (the long—often white—robes worn by men) (author’s fieldwork 2017). Their use of customary dress, politicized—in the West—as a form of gender oppression and a symbol of patriarchy, produced a tension in a space of supposed sexual and gender liberation, highlighting the problems with conversations regarding Arab and Muslim integration and participation in Western liberal society. Their engagement in the parade presented a challenge to the politicized symbolization of cultural dress as oppressive and socially, politically, and economically inhibiting (Bilge 2010; Chakraborti and Zempi 2012).

Additionally, a further tension was produced by the conscious decision of POA members to cover their faces and mask their identities. This was a symbolic challenge to homonormative LGBTQ + politics relating to practices of “coming out,” a politic of presence and visibility in order to partake in society and the economy. By masking their identities the members of POA challenged this practice, reflecting on the queer social and political practices in the non-West and diaspora communities in Western states, ultimately presenting challenges and alternatives to a homonormative standard (see Rahman 2010; Rahman and Valliani 2016, 2019).

By masking their identities, it can be argued that POA members were concerned with the taboo of queerness in Middle Eastern, Arab, and/or religious social and political circles; however, such an argument is reductive. More than a matter of social norms, the masking of their identities was a reflection of the struggle to participate in dominant Western and neoliberal norms of LGBTQ+ acceptability while maintaining other cultural and social markers of identity. Their presence embodied a different kind of LGBTQ politics: a varied assemblage of contemporary discourses regarding sexuality—including association with Pride—and cultural social customs. By engaging in such politics, including a refusal to “come out” and perform within a homonormative context, they were excluded from the Western capitalist gaze, limiting their ability to inhabit LGBTQ+ spaces in the homonationalist-West. Their peripheralization in London Pride was a manifestation of exclusions that referenced intersections of racial and gendered expectations of the Arab/Muslim male and female, from which POA members referenced and consciously subverted in their participation.

As Jasbir Puar (2013) and Momin Rahman (2014a) argue, dominant Western LGBTQ+ politics and culture has normalized the homosexual through heteronormative state and economic institutions and structures, producing homonormativity. This has regulated contemporary Western LGBTQ+ identities and politics, leading to critiques of the “gay international,” whereby its expansion into the global south constitutes a form of homocolonialism. Together, they produce a form of sexual governance that has become a standard of civilization, one that is historically relevant, intersecting with race, gender, and class. By considering sexual governance and, in particular, homosexual governance, as a standard of civilization this article pushes homocolonialism beyond current discussions of a gay internationalism and homonationalism (Puar 2013; Rahman 2014a, 2014b). It requires scholars to think about histories of sexual governance within a larger context of global politics, international social reproduction, and the connections between the local and the global that impact different bodies differently

POA’s engagement with London Pride revealed a significant tension that has a history embedded in imperial and colonial governance regarding race, gender, and class. This tension, explored here, references the practices of imperial and colonial governance dating back to the late eighteenth century, which established institutions and structures of governance that reorganized society into racialized, gendered, and classed categories. The governance of sexuality was embedded in institutions and structures that intersected with race, gender, and class, becoming central to Western imperial and colonial governance. Here, anything other than the heteronormative framework that was deemed civilized conflicted with European practices of social and economic production and reproduction. This helped develop hierarchical classifications, aiding in the expansion of the European civilizing project.

This article makes three interrelated arguments: first, that contemporary politics and governance of sexuality, and homosexuality in particular, is embedded in a historical standard of civilization; second, that sexuality as a standard of civilization has been produced in relation to global power dynamics; third, that these dynamics have intersected, and continue to intersect, with gender, race, and class in different ways and in different contexts. This standard of civilization is not only used as a benchmark to measure the level of civilization of a society, but also as a tool that reinforces Western hegemony through notions of progress, leading to exclusions that traverse the international to the individual (Gong 1984; Donnelly 1998; Bowden 2004, 2005). Its practical deployment in establishing a hierarchy of Western white, masculine, and industrialized superiority in relation to raced, gendered, and classed communities throughout history can be conceptualized as heteroturned-homocolonialist. Heterocolonialism was applied to liberate the homosexual from deviant tendencies by creating constraints and regulations, while homocolonialism— applied to liberate the homosexual from legal and social oppression—has displaced and continues to displace indigenous queer politics by reinforcing a neoliberal and colonialist conceptualization of homonormativity.

This argument builds on an existing and developing scholarship, on sexual governance and global LGBTQ+ politics, contributing to it by considering the intersections between sexuality, gender, race, and class from the nineteenth century to the contemporary period. Furthermore, it draws attention to the impact of nineteenth century developments as being consequential to understanding contemporary international politics (Mitzen 2013; Buzan and Lawson 2015). By understanding how contemporary governance of sexuality is tied to modernity and histories of colonialism, it is possible, for future research, to further engage in critical in-depth interventions regarding structural international benchmarks, standards, and norms specifically with regards to LGBTQ+ rights.

This article uses a number of historic and contemporary examples to illustrate how sexuality as a standard of civilization has, and continues to, intersect with race, gender, and class in different ways and in different contexts. To do so, it draws from observations and discussions recorded in substantial field notes from ethnographic research conducted by the author. This research reflects the author’s engagement and work with POA, from its establishment in March 2017, the decision to participate in the 2017 London Pride March, and into its second book club event in July 2018. Additionally, it draws from informal conversations with representatives of the Canadian and UK embassies recorded in field notes from fieldwork conducted at Tokyo Pride in 2018. This research provides insight to the production of inclusions and exclusions related to the politics and framing of sexuality as a standard of civilization. This research is triangulated with travel diaries and historic accounts of sexual intimacies in the non-West by Richard Burton, Edward Lane, and Charles Sigisbert Sonnini; literature and art; as well as secondary source research on sexual governance and LGBTQ+ rights practices. By engaging in triangulation, using a diverse set of materials, it is possible to make critical temporal and geographic connections that explore continuities related to the politics of sexuality and the intersections of race, gender, and class.

This article begins by discussing the scholarship on the standards of civilization, building on critical interventions in this area by David Fidler (2001), Anne Phillips (2018), and Ann Towns (2009), among others. It subsequently discusses the colonial encounters between the West and the Middle East and North Africa, focused on issues of civilization and the governance of sexuality and, in particular, homosexuality. Building on the discussions of these encounters, the article then examines the justifications of colonial governance of sexuality before discussing the liberal transformation regarding homosexuality. The normative production of the “West” as a morally superior civilization, occurring in the nineteenth century and within the twenty-first century, exists within a discursive framework of modernity that intersect with racial, gendered, and economic civilizational hierarchies. In analyzing this transformation and the development of contemporary LGBTQ+ rights as a standard of civilization, the article discusses its international, national, and local consequences.

The Standard of Civilization in Colonial Governance: Race, Gender, and Sexuality

The transformations of the Enlightenment and industrialization were used as the intellectual and material evidence of European superiority and progress in the interactions with the global south. This helped facilitate notions of progress and development that was unique to a “European civilization,” thus justifying expansion and domination, leading to imperial and colonial governance, seen as necessary in its moral vocation. The belief that European, and subsequently Western, civilization represented human and social progress, combined with the moral vocation of the civilizing project, led to the development and application of a standard of civilization—a normative tool that justified political exclusions to the benefit of European states at the expense of polities in the global south.

International law was central to the discussion of the classical standard of civilization, where the ability to accede to international law in the nineteenth century framed relations between European states and other polities. International law excluded polities that had not developed or progressed to the “civilized” standard established in and by European states. The categorization of civilized states relied on a number of qualifiers, including sociopolitical norms and ideas, institutions, and particular forms of economic engagement that provided the ability of states to participate as equal members. This established a global binary between the civilized and the uncivilized, those that had achieved progress and those that had not. This exclusive club of civilized nations wielded authority over uncivilized states—particularly through imperialism and colonialism—and established benchmarks to maintain authority over others (Fidler 2001, 138). These benchmarks comprised a series of tests framed by European morality, values, norms, and institutions. Only once the subjects of the civilizing project were recognized as fulfilling the requirements of a civilized nation would they be able to assert their rights internationally (Gong 1984).

Discussing the institutional tests, Gerrit Gong (1984) argues that a polity had to have an organized bureaucratic system to govern and deploy an army for self-defense. The polity also had to develop a system of law that mimicked the European system—it had to be centralized, codified, and administered fairly and equally across the territory and populations; it had to be able to engage in diplomacy, abide by international law, and adapt Western norms, customs, and morals (also see Fidler 2001, 141).

To understand why some polities were unable or failed to achieve the standard, why some polities more civilized than others, or why some were more capable of undertaking modernization reforms to facilitate accession to the European standard, race—as a biological marker of civilizational capability—was employed. As Jack Donnelly describes, the central test of the standard of civilization was whether a “government [was] capable of controlling white men [and] under which white civilization can exist” (1998, 4). The inability of governments in the global south to govern white men was embedded in the notion that white men viewed themselves as “the guardians and organizers of the human race” (Fidler 2001, 138). White men saw themselves as progressed, developed, and rational, engaged in a set of universal moral values that justified their civilizing projects (Donnelly 1998, 6; Linklater 2017; Hobson 2004).

The failure of societies in the global south to become civilized, despite the efforts of European imperial and colonial governance, was explained by biological justifications that relied on pseudoscientific characterizations and categorizations of gender and race (McClintock, Mufti, and Shohat 1997; Anderson 2007; McCarthy 2009; Hobson 2012, 2015; Linklater 2017; Delatolla and Yao 2018). While the international political system has undergone structural and institutional transformations since the nineteenth century, the classical conception of a standard of civilization retains contemporary relevance. In particular, the language of nineteenth century hierarchies including civilized nations and barbarian and savage peoples has been redeveloped to correspond with discourses of the contemporary period. Brett Bowden (2004), noting that language of weak, failing, or failed states has discursive and practical equivalence, finds similarities between these old hierarchies and Robert Cooper’s (1996) divided world (also see Gruffydd Jones 2013). Here, the modern state has become a symbol of progress, development, and international participation, tethering society to the institutions and structures of the state to measure sociopolitical progress.

In addition to the parallels between the language of imperialism and colonialism and that of international development, international human rights have also been considered to be part of a contemporary standard of civilization (Donnelly 1998). With regards to gender, Anne Phillips argues that the “the status of women [was] a crucial marker of society’s level of civilization” (2018, 2; Storr 1997). Similarly, Ann Towns has argued that female political empowerment has become tied to notions of civilized societies and notes that “Western civilization” prides itself on these advancements. In contrast, societies that have not paralleled advancements in female political empowerment are denigrated as not having progressed, often labeled as culturally backward. Towns argues that female empowerment as a standard of civilization represents a shift from the classical conception of civilized society, where, historically, female participation in economics and politics was once viewed as characteristic of an uncivilized society (2009, 682).

Within the context of these hierarchies, a clear civilizational division based on “scientific” racism and a unique construction of gender were deployed. Because of the biological conditions of the populations in the global south and the characteristics awarded to these conditions, the inherent inability to achieve the European standard became a fact of the natural world. The color line that separated the civilized from the barbarians and savages became embedded in discourse and practice, intersecting with gendered and sexual characteristics, facilitating civilizational hierarchies (Hobson 2004; Hobson 2012; Du Bois 2015). This is evident in discussions on representations of the nation through depictions of female and feminine figures (McClintock 1995, 352–70). Here, the nation, as a liberated subject, depended on male and masculine rationality, the latter being responsible for managing social and economic production through state governance. However, this was not afforded to the colonies, where anticolonial revolution was depicted as illiberal and in contestation with the European civilizing project. As such, the brown male was viewed as a barbarian and a fanatic, unable to govern or support national liberation, resulting in the brown female requiring saving from the grips of brown patriarchs (Brown 1992, 8–11; McClintock 1995, 352–70; Spivak 1988). Colonial powers required that the colonized “others” replicate their oppressors, not only by adhering to institutional norms of governance and order, but also by engaging with cultures of respectability that had roots in uniquely Western frameworks of race and gender (McClintock et al. 1997). In this context, the classical conceptualization of the standards of civilization can be expanded into moral and normative practices.

These characteristics of race and gender, as useful tools to measure a society’s level of civilization, also intersected with sex and sexuality. According to European settlers, colonizers, and explorers, the ability to engage in morally respectable practices with regards to gender and sexuality was predetermined based on environmental and racial biological factors, or whether the indigenous populations had souls at all (Horsman 1975; Hobson 2012). The barbaric and fanatical brown male, unable to submit himself to the requirements of modernity, was depicted as a destructive force, whose enlarged sexual organs prevented him from being rational. As Fanon states, “in relation to the Negro, everything takes place on the genital level” (1986, 157). This is manifested by the main character, Mustapha Sa’eed, in Tayeb Salih’s novel, Season of Migration to the North, when he declares that he will “liberate Africa with [his] penis” (1969, 120). Where the black man was thought of and described as a barbaric sexual being, unable to gain control of his own consciousness, the “oriental” female was depicted as promiscuous and casual. In contrast, the black female was depicted as masculinized and void of sexual characteristics (McClintock 1995, 370–89; Ford 2008, 1104–108). Enslaved African women in the United States, for example, were not depicted, or seen, as possessing feminine characteristics. Instead, they were depicted as masculine, muscular, aggressive, and strong (Phillips 2018, 2). Given that the uncivilized required saving, they were subordinated within a European constructed hierarchy that utilized, governed, and disciplined race, gender, and sexuality (Khanna 2007, 159, 167). As such, they were unable to assert agency against the civilizing project without being characterized as barbaric. Although not as prevalent in the scholarship on modernity or colonial governance, sexuality and, in particular, homosexuality was, and continues to be, used as a standard of civilization, one that intersects with race, gender, and class.

In parallel to the argument made by Phillips (2018) and Towns (2009), homosexuality, once seen as a perversion and a marker of barbarity and savagery, has since become accepted and normalized within the context of liberal Western society and governance. This has resulted in tethering homosexuality, like gender, to norms of a civilized, progressed, and developed society. As outlined below, the transformations regarding sexual governance relates to social production and reproduction. It relies on the ability of the contemporary LGBTQ+ community to engage in parallel heteronormative state structures, what is termed the homonormative, providing space for national engagement and reproduction, the homonational. While the homonormative and homonational are still framed through different categories, they are consistent with the traditional or customary norms, structures, and institutions of the (hetero)normative and (hetero)national. This follows from the argument made by Rahman, that, unlike Puar’s (2013) suggestion, homocolonialism is not limited to interventions in the governance of sexual exceptionalism but the configuration and characterization of civilizations (2014b, 42–48, 118–55). Rather, sexuality and sexual governance was, and is, tied to notions of civilized production and reproduction. By building on the existing literature on the standards of civilization, this article historicizes and critiques contemporary governance of sexuality in global politics, tying these developments to historically produced intersections with race, gender, and class.

(Homo)Sexuality and the Colonial Encounter

Modernity in Europe is typically discussed as a period of rupture from previous disorder. It is often framed by a narrative of the European man moving from chaos to order, from darkness to light, and from fanaticism to civilization. Although scientific reason and secular politics became part of Western discourse following the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution, modern European knowledge continued to be informed by a foundational Christian understanding (Calinescu 1987, 61–64). Toward the mid-nineteenth century, during the protestant revival, much of Europe, including Britain, held the belief that to become closer to god, one had to be a productive individual and engaged in earthly work and economic production—a result of capitalist industrialization and the rise of bourgeoisie (Weber 2013, 104–6; Gorski 1999). This facilitated widespread views that the homosexual, an individual engaged in sodomy, was a new species, an “alien strain” that could not engage in earthly duties, including biological reproduction and economic production. Thus, the homosexual limited the social reproduction and the advancement of civilization, a conclusion that relied, not only on a religious interpretation of worldly labor, but a natural-biological, or scientific, constraint (Foucault 1978, 36–50; Hoad 2000; Somerville 2000; Weber 2016, 48–72). This sentiment was subsequently exported to the colonies, justified as part of the “moral vocation” of the civilizing project in imperial and colonial governance (Hobson 2004). This section examines the interactions between the West and the Middle East and North Africa regarding homosexuality and considers the various ways it intersected with gender and race.

Despite legal and moral frameworks in Europe that constrained acts of sexual deviance and, in particular, homosexuality, there is evidence of the queer or homosexual body in the global south being eroticized and fetishized through the orientalist gaze. Joseph Boone describes how historic textual evidence reveals “a fascination with the Near and Middle East’s rumoured homo eroticism” dating back to the Crusades (1995, 92), when translations of Arabic sex manuals were collected by Europeans and fantasies of the harem were depicted in art, poetry, and pornography (Kiernan 2015, 139). Similarly, the nineteenth century and the “rediscovery” of the Orient by Europeans led to increased artistic engagement with the “Oriental” subject. Often, these engagements depicted the Orient with narratives and images of the sexualized male and female bodies, pushing the boundaries of acceptability by painting lavish scenes that conflicted with European norms of gender and sex (Said 1979, 182– 90, 313–15). With the “rediscovery” of the Orient, and its subsequent sexualization, there was a renewed focus on homosexuality, particularly male homosexuality.

In contrast to male homosexual encounters, there exists a relatively small amount of evidence on female homosexuality. Where there are descriptions, they have been primarily produced through a heterosexual male gaze. What is available on female homosexuality has a tendency to focus on the harems or the inability of brown males to manage the affairs of the household. The former, according to Richard Burton, were “hot-bed[s] of Sapphism and tribadism” (Burton 1885–1888, v. 10, 345). Burton also states that, in Damascus, away from the harems, “every woman past her first youth has a girl who she calls ‘Myrtle’” (Burton 1885– 1888, v. 4, 234). With regards to the latter, Edward Lane, in his descriptions of female sexuality in Egypt, states that “it is believed that [women] possess a degree of cunning in the management of their intrigue [that] the most prudent and careful of husbands cannot guard against” (Lane 1890, 275; Kabbani 1986, 52–53). These descriptions were produced through an orientalist lens by depicting the harem as a geography of sexual immorality or through the framework of Western sexual-gendered social norms. Such depictions reflect “general Western representational [tendencies] whose ‘carefully chaotic’ arrangement had been orchestrated solely to satisfy the ‘isolated gaze’ of a European viewer” (Mitchell 1988, 1, 9; Boone 1995, 93). For example, Lane, describing queer female relations within the framework of Western gender roles, points to a failure on the part of the husband, who, in the context of Europe, would have maintained legal and moral ownership over his wife (Rosaldo, Lamphere, and Bamberger 1974; Geddes and Lueck 2002, 213). This conditioned a gendered European dynamic of modernity, prioritizing masculine governance in society, where failure to imitate this dynamic is explained as a consequence fanaticism and inability to become civilized.

The masculine heteronormative gaze was not only deployed to comment on and analyze female sexuality in order to measure levels of civilization, but was used to disparage male homosexual or queer relations for a similar purpose. John Hindley, commenting on Persian literature, writes that it is concerned with “disgusting object[s]” that have feminized the masculine gender. Hindley continues that feminization has been done “for reasons too obvious to need any formal apology” (1800, 33). Similarly, Boone references the writing of Charles Sigisbert Sonnini (1807), who argued that Egypt is particularly affected by “the passion contrary to nature” that excludes the role of women. He describes these acts as a “horrid depravation,” which “is generally diffused all over Egypt: the rich and poor are equally infected with it” (1995, 94). Sonnini’s revulsion of homosexuality, however, should not be considered separately to his racial worldview, noting that Egypt “was formerly . . . inhabited by an infinitely superior race of people than it is at the present day” (Sonnini 1800, 607). The intersection of sexuality with gender and race as a framework to understand Egyptian civilization, or the lack thereof, helped justify the civilizing project.

Even when queer social and political practices were being actively engaged in, or described in a fetishized manner by Western males, they were layered with a distinct understanding of race and the binary of civility-incivility. For example, T.E. Lawrence became enamored by Sheikh Ahmed, a 14-year-old water boy, also known as Dahoum. In a display of his affection for Sheikh Ahmed, Lawrence dedicated his involvement in the Arab conflict to him, writing “[t]o S.A. … I love you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands … to earn you Freedom” (Boone 1995, 98; Lawrence 1990, dedication). Lawrence’s amorous feelings toward the young water boy defied popular European revulsion of homosexual desire. Still, the framework he used to navigate his desire was based on ideas of race and purity. Lawrence believed “that the Arab race was a pure race and could not be copied or attained by Europe”; on the other hand, to manage his homosexual inclinations, Lawrence renounced the flesh (Boone 1995, 98). While Lawrence placed the Arab race above that of Europe in a civilizational hierarchy, which was uncharacteristic for the time, he relied on Christian ideals of purity to cope with his own sexual and racial impurity. Lawrence’s racialized civilizational framework was further revealed in Seven Pillars, when describing his brutal rape at the hands of the Turks at Der’a. For Lawrence, the violation he suffered by the Turks represented a validation of his racialized civilizational framework that separated the Turks from the Arabs. The former were perceived as vulgar rapists, while the Arabs, engaged in similar practices of sexual violence, were viewed as freedom fighters engaged in “clean” sex (Lawrence 1990, 442-45; Boone 1995, 97). Regardless of revulsion or inclination, from the intersections between race and sexuality, a civilizational standard was formulated, having implications for sexual governance.

The Logics of Sexual Governance

For the European explorer and colonizer in the nineteenth century, the queer in the global south often posed a dilemma. It was an object that was fantasized, a subject of eroticized orientalist discourse, as well as a subject that was depicted as savage that required saving (Levine 2004, 137; Stoler 1989, 635; Sturma 2002). Regarding sex and sexuality, it was believed that, without strict legal control and regulation, moral boundaries could be abrogated, which would be “devastating to the white race” and lead to the termination of the imperial project as a “moral vocation” (Levine 2004, 136). Individuals engaged in homosexual practices were, therefore, seen as a threat to the moral order of society, including production and reproduction. They needed to be freed from the queer practices that shackled them to barbarism and, in turn, enlightened in a manner that reflected the protestant revival of the mid-nineteenth century in Britain. In doing so, there were moral and political justifications: First, sexual deviation in the colonies threatened European, primarily British, imperial and colonial governance by corrupting colonial administrators (Aldrich 2001). Second, following the logic of Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (2013), by engaging in heteronormative institutions and structures, fulfilling a moral duty by generating economic production, and in relation to biological reproduction, it was believed that societies would become closer to God. The inability to assert control over colonized bodies endangered the colonizers’ cultures of moderation and rationality—informed by bodily shame—and the politics of empire. Ultimately, the inability to control sexual practices in the colonies was viewed as a failure of the civilizing mission that would damage the advancement of humanity.

As is apparent, the practices of sex and sexuality in the global south—and specifically the Muslim global south, according to Jeremy Bentham—did not maintain the same rigid boundaries regulating sex and sexuality as in Europe. Sexual governance, according to Khaled El-Rouayheb, was based on a distinction between expressions of love and sodomy. This was not the case for Western travelers and colonizers of the nineteenth century, who viewed the two as synonymous. Although sodomy was outlawed in prominent nineteenth century readings of Islamic law, expressions of love were not, and there was no overarching conception of “homosexuality” that necessitated the merging of sodomy and love (2009, 3-6). Despite El-Rouayheb’s argument being representative of the prominent interpretations of the Qur’an and various Hadiths by Islamic scholars at the time, there are discrepancies and contradictions. For example, it is noted by Jim Wafer that the Prophet himself appeared to acknowledge the beauty of the male physique and the possibility of male-male attraction, despite warning against it (1997, 88–90). Moreover, the threat of punishment for acting on such desires did not emerge from a fear of malemale love or affection, but was developed within the context of sodomy being used as a weapon of war—a form of brutal aggression meant to compromise a man’s masculinity (Wafer 1997, 91). Sodomy, as a weapon used to degrade and humiliate another man, led to the established a norm that it was, even exogenous to warfare, a threat to a man’s masculinity. The humiliation derived from this threat meant that it was uncommon for two adult men, during this period, to publicly acknowledge engagement in consensual intercourse. Instead, active or dominant males sought young boys who had not yet become “virile” to be the passive or submissive participant (Schmidtke 1999, 261). By engaging in pederasty, the threat of emasculation ceased, and those who sought male-male affection could embrace their desires without repercussion.

Despite differences in how gender and sexuality were understood in different geographies of Asia and Africa, there was a sense of fluidity in social and legal boundaries that was present prior to European imperial and colonial governance. As a civilizing project, imperial and colonial governance required a codified framework, based on the governing practices accepted in the metropole (Bowden 2004), making social relations and intimacies regarding sexuality either invisible or illegal. This was evident with regards to the concerns of the British colonial governments who feared their “soldiers and colonial administrators—particularly those without wives at hand—would turn to sodomy in these decadent, hot surroundings” (Gupta 2008, 16). Fearing that soldiers would succumb to the chaos prevalent in the global south, and in this case India, the British instituted the Indian Penal Code, “with the intention of both protecting Christians from ‘corruption’ as well as correcting and ‘Christianizing’ native customs” (Han and O’Mahoney 2014, 273). In addition to the logics underlying rationality of the civilizing project associated with logics of modernity, a Christian moral engagement with the social world informed the regulation of sex and sexuality in the colonies, not only among European soldiers and colonial administrators, but also with native populations.

While Britain has been subjected to much criticism regarding its role in the development of homophobic laws governing sexuality, France has mostly been spared. The French have evaded blame due to antisodomy laws being excluded from the Napoleonic code in 1806 (Rao 2014, 175; Kirby 2013, 61, 64). In agreement with Rahul, Enze Han and Joseph O’Mahoney (2014; see also Rao 2014, 269) argue that it was primarily, and almost exclusively, the British Empire that “was responsible for spreading laws that criminalized homosexual conduct amongst its colonies” (also see Tielman and Hammelburg 1993; Gupta 2008). Although French colonial administrations may have avoided establishing laws governing sexuality during the nineteenth century, the Vichy government, at the end of French imperialism, wrote new laws to be used against individuals engaged in homosexual conduct (Sibalis 2002). It was feared that anything less than an effort to “Christianize” or “modernize” native customs and knowledge would lead to a further breakdown in the moral order and function of society, ultimately hindering human progress and the civilizing project.

Colonial administrators separated the civilized from the uncivilized, justifying the hierarchization of societies based on practices that were in conflict with a Western moral framework. In addition to rejection and revulsion of sexual deviancy, which helped guide imperial and colonial governance in the nineteenth and twentieth century, the governance of sex and sexuality meant that productive qualities could be ensured in the development and expansion of global markets and politics. The result was active engagement in separating the “normal” heterosexual and the “alien” or “perverse” homosexual, subjecting the latter “to scientific study and biopolitical management” (Weber 2016, 12). The queer, the homosexual, or the sodomite, could be fixed and reintegrated into society by engaging in a moral correction, active civilizing, and/or coercive governance.

Governance of sex and sexuality was therefore viewed as necessary to facilitate European political and economic expansion, which was achieved through heteronormative institutions of modern statehood. Without governing deviant sex or sexuality, reproduction would falter, negatively impacting future bodies that could contribute to the extraction of resources. Reproduction, tethered to material production and to “the glory of God,” resulted in the logic that material production coincided with social reproduction (Weber 2013, 104; Knopp 1992, 653). Apparent here was an intersection between sex, sexuality, and gender that was concerned with the male body and its feminization after engaging in homosexual practices. The framing of gender roles sustained the notion that the feminized male could not contribute to his productive worldly duties. Under such conditions, the male in the global south could not become engaged in civilization or the defense of the nation and existed outside of the heteronormative institutions practically and symbolically. The assumed consequence following from this worldview was that there was a potential for divine displeasure, but also evidence of the inability of the colonized nation to be emancipated and liberated, representing failure to attain the standard of civilization.

The queer body in the global south during the advent of European colonial expansion was often outwardly reviled and rejected. This was due to social and political practices that could not be framed within dominant heteronormative political and economic European practices. Concerns over sexual deviance in the global south were layered onto shifting gender norms and the development of racial hierarchies that aided in and justified European hierarchies of the civilized and uncivilized, the modern and the unmodern, and the rational and the fanatical worlds. To rectify and save uncivilized societies, a heteronormative conceptualization of the world was maintained. Unlike heteronormativity in Europe, the assertion of gendered and sexual rigidity in the global south was entangled in lower hierarchical relations regarding race. The “queer” or “homosexual” was a threat to colonial production, and, unlike the homosexual European, the homosexual from the global south had an additional civilizational deficiency related to race. As such, the development of imperial and colonial governance of the nineteenth and twentieth century was not only gendered and racialized, as discussed above, it also altered an indigenous knowledge of sex and sexuality.

It was within periods of colonial governance that legal codes displaced native and indigenous queer knowledges and practices and categorized them within frameworks of heterosexual/homosexual and normal/perverse of the metropole. Only under these conditions, with the replication of Western norms, structures, and institutions, could the global south become civilized. Similarly, contemporary logics of LGBTQ+ rights have become dependent on class dynamics, new categories of the normal/perverse, and racialized subjectivities that echo imperial and colonial histories. In parallel to colonial governance and the concept of modernity of the nineteenth century, the expansion of LGBTQ+ rights has been enshrined in discourses of modernity, “as a criteria for ‘progress.’” Rahman identifies the expansion of LGBTQ+ rights within the Western conceptual framework as “homocolonialist,” describing it as “the deployment of homonormative nationalism within a dialectic of respectability/otherness in a classic colonializing mode” (Rahman 2014a, 279; Puar 2013). Colonial engagements with sexual governance reflects an early form of heterocolonialism, which attempted to liberate the individual engaged in or tempted by homosexuality. This was done by eradicating homosexuality and reinforcing heteronormative nationalist structures. Although homocolonialism reverses the heterocolonialist impulse to eradicate the homosexual, it limits homosexuality to a neoliberal heteronormative context (producing the homonormative) as a form of liberation that is subsequently used as a civilizational standard.

Homonormativity as a Standard of Civilization

The liberal transformation in the West, particularly with regard to the LGBTQ+ community—and in a similar fashion to transformations regarding the status of women—has altered the standard of civilization regarding the governance of sexuality. LGBTQ+ participation, like female empowerment, has come to be defined within a narrow context of liberation that reflects a Western experience of production and reproduction. For the LGBTQ+ community, this has primarily centered on becoming a necessary part of developed Western capitalist economies, tethered to a narrative of progress based on secularized economic emancipation (Puar 2013; Rahman 2014a). As argued by John d’Emilio, in the emergence of free labor systems in the United States during the twentieth century, LGBTQ+ individuals were able to achieve liberation from oppressive systems that disciplined and governed sexuality through economic participation. In contrast to logics of colonial sexual governance, free laborers in the West were able to engage in capitalist markets independent from the heteronormative institutions of the nation-state (1983, 132). Similarly, Dennis Altman argues that “the ever-expanding impact of (post)modern capitalism is clearly redrawing traditional sex/gender orders to match the ideology and consciousness imposed by huge changes in the economy” (2001, 30). This transformation has led to an internationalization of LGBTQ+ rights, where the laws that were established during the European colonial and imperial enterprise have since been targeted by some Western states and Western-led organizations with the aim to liberate the LGBTQ+ community, a form of homocolonialism (McDuffie 2012; Bosia 2015; Slootmaeckers, Touquet, and Vermeersch 2016). The West’s liberalized relationship with the homosexual has been in relation to economic transformations that were no longer excessively marked by heteronormative gender binaries necessary for production and reproduction. However, this relationship privileged a (racialized) middle class, fortifying heteronormative structures and institutions through homonormativity and homonationalism.

The inclusion of the homosexual into the story of Western civilization as a normalized and mainstream participant is one that is still restrained by exclusions where homosexuality intersects with gender, race, and class. In the illustrative example of POA, members were able to participate in London Pride thanks, in part, to their positions within class structures that made accessing visas for higher education and employment easier (author’s fieldwork, 2017). Nevertheless, they continued to experience gendered and racial exclusions. This was evident with regards to overt markers of identity, including customary dress and veiling, as well as issues related to visibility and coming out, impacting their participation in homonormative structures. Unaffected by these exclusions, the white economically productive homosexual has come to be viewed as “reproductive for [the] nation state,” in part due to the ability to engage in capitalist structures and heteronormative institutions. This form of inclusion relies on heteronormative structures that provides a legal framework for reproduction. It reconfigures queer society and politics into existing heteronormative, “productive institutions, structures of understanding, and practice orientations” to establish a parallel homonormative system of acceptability (Duggan 2003, 50; Clinton 2011; Peterson 2014) that is used as a benchmark to measure the level of civilization in the non-West.

By establishing a homonormative system of acceptability, as a global measurement of advancement, one that parallels heteronormative structures and institutions, the global south continues to be depicted as barbaric—a geography absent of progressive rights and embedded in violent traditions and cultural backwardness. In producing this standard of civilization, a homocolonialist framework is formed. Unable to engage in homonormative politics in the same manner as the West, the queer or homosexual in the global south exists exogenous to this standard and is erased or pushed to the fringes. Viewed as a new “alien strain,” the presence of the racialized and underdeveloped queer is an affront to established social, cultural, and economic boundaries. This reproduces colonial civilizational hierarchies that reassert the inability of these bodies to become normalized (Meyer 2015).

Homocolonialism—as an assertion of the “right way” to be queer—is apparent in three areas: the international, the national, and the local. With regards to the international, three examples are briefly discussed: Human Rights Watch (HRW), the United Nations Human Rights Office, and India. HRW (2017) uses the benchmark of marriage equality to reflect the geographic division between states with and without LGBTQ+ rights. In doing so, it separates civilized societies, engaged in a homonationalist production of LGBTQ+ rights from uncivilized societies. Critically, it foregoes a deeper analysis of existing and active queer communities that are engaged in politics and society in regions where marriage equality does not exist. By engaging in such an analysis, HRW simplifies larger dynamics of inclusion and exclusion. It ignores the depths to which marriage rights are accepted or rejected within society. Additionally, by simplifying acceptance to marriage equality, HRW reproduces the divided world by perpetuating the construction of the nonWest as savage or barbaric.

Similarly, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights’ publication “Born Free and Equal: Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in International Human Rights Law” (2019) actively discusses the limited legal protections for LGBTQ+ communities within Western peripheries and the global south. While it outlines the violence that LGBTQ+ communities in these geographies face, it fails to examine the continuation of violence against the LGBTQ+ communities in the West, despite legal protections. By focusing the discussion of violence on the Western peripheries and the global south, ignoring the violence that occurs in the West, the separation between the civilized West and the uncivilized “other” becomes evident, reproduced, and fortified.

Where the assertion of legal protections can act as a façade to cover ongoing forms of violence and are associated with civilized engagement to produce a standard of civilization, India has attempted to detach itself from being associated with the homophobic “third world” by decriminalizing homosexual relations (Rao 2014, 172). According to Rao, the decriminalization of homosexual relations is embedded in an attempt to distance the Indian state from the negative racialization of the global south as being socially, politically, and economically underdeveloped. By engaging in homocolonial standards, India has attempted to fulfil the requirements to attain global civilized status, regardless of continued social norms that limit LGBTQ+ freedoms.

The inability to engage in homonational transformations in the liberation of domestic LGBTQ+ communities facilitates a racialized depiction of the underdeveloped global south. In particular, this intersection of race and class is apparent with the treatment of LGBTQ+ asylum-seekers in Canada and elsewhere, reflecting homocolonialist assertions at a national level. Individuals applying for asylum based on gender identity or sexual orientation are required to provide evidence that they are, first, a sexual minority and, second, face persecution in their country of origin (Jordan and Morrissey 2013, 13–14). This has led to an increase of men using pornographic evidence to substantiate the validity of their asylum claims. The submission of pornographic evidence by, in large part, male asylum-seekers, has created a benchmark for what can be accepted as proof of sexual identity. This has had a negative impact on female asylum-seekers, who are less likely to engage in such practices and therefore more likely to be rejected (Lewis 2014, 960). This benchmark of proof reflects homocolonialist assumptions that the LGBTQ+ community share common global cultural practices and norms, inclusive of promiscuity “and that they will come out as gay or lesbian immediately upon arrival in the receiving country” (Lewis 2013, 179; Jansen and Spijkerboer 2011).

The Canadian government’s practices with regards to LGBTQ+ asylum-seekers are in contention with their active promotion of Canada as an open and welcoming space for the LGBTQ+ community. Highlighting how global class structures intersect with sexuality to produce a standard of civilization, on March, 5, 2018, at the Tokyo Pride festival, the Canadian embassy was actively encouraging skilled immigration, marketing Canada’s liberal position on gay marriage and gay adoption. It was promoting Canada as a place of liberation, emancipation, and LGBTQ+ equality (author’s fieldwork 2018). The discourse used was emblematic of civilizational development in a society that had not yet acceded to a similar standard, despite its developed economy. Canada’s self-promotion as a place of opportunity for the LGBTQ+ community can be interpreted as an attempt to attract the “good” homosexual, where its treatment of asylumseekers highlights a peripheralization of the undesirable homosexual. Asylum-seekers, unlike the potentially economically productive Japanese immigrants, must provide evidence of discrimination and sexuality. Here, the targeting of Japan’s LGBTQ+ community at Tokyo Pride, on the other hand, is one that is predetermined by the existing inequalities within the Japanese sociolegal context, requiring no further evidence from the applicants. Additionally, with potential Canadian immigrants partaking in Tokyo Pride, evidence of sexuality was not required. For the Canadian government, the difference between the immigrant and the asylum-seeker was the ability of the immigrant to engage in homonormative and homonationalist production.

The Canadian examples highlight the projection of a standard of civilization, based on homonormative assumptions. It further points to how certain racialized, gendered, and classed communities are excluded or included in various scenarios. This has allowed for the development of a recognized standard for being queer that relates to expected homosexual practice, displacing an individual agency to engage with sexuality via a homocolonialist narrative that separates the “good queer” from the “bad queer.” This separation is intensified at a local level of analysis, where the good queer is engaged in economic production and reproduction, such as gay marriage, gay consumerism, and gay patriotism, contributing to national reproduction (Duggan 2003). Yet, continued denigration of racialized minorities, despite engagement in, and contributions to, economic development of the state, is emphasized by their containment to “ghettos” and banlieues. Arguably, where homosexuality has been accepted and normalized in French society, it has been due to economic participation, particularly among a secular liberal white middle class. In contrast, the experience of popular gay culture within ghettoized communities, according to Mignon Moore, is limited due to the existing class and racial divisions. This has negatively impacted racialized homosexual communities within their local communities as well as the predominant (white) LGBTQ+ community (2010, 315-16).

In the context of the banlieues, productive quality and capacity is viewed as peripheral, reflecting geographic and social marginalization. The civilized center views communities in the banlieues as those that offered emancipation, be it gender or sexual, yet refuse to engage in the practice of such rights. As such, racial, religious, and cultural excuses are provided to explain their disengagement from state norms and economic production, without considering their continued exclusions from social and economic civilized centers of society (El-Tayeb 2008; Wolfreys 2018). The banlieues become a location where civilization fails to penetrate, allowing for the reproduction of intersecting racist and classist stereotypes, defined by the absence of the homonormative West (see Chaumont 2009). Homonormativity and its (homo)colonialist exercise then becomes a standard of civilization, which continues to exclude and deny alternative or indigenous queer social, political, and economic practices as legitimate forms of participation.

Conclusion

This article has argued that the politics and governance of sexuality, and particularly homosexuality, has produced a standard of civilization—one that has facilitated, and continues to facilitate, a normative division of the world into advanced-civilized and backward-uncivilized societies. The boundaries of dominant Western LGBTQ+ cultures and politics—the advanced civilized—has limited the participation of negatively racialized, gendered, and classed communities. This was evident during POA’s engagement with London Pride. In the first instance, their inability, or unwillingness, to be visible subjects and therefore engage in homonormative practices and, in the second instance, the gendered and racialized dynamics of their identity markers led to their physical and normative peripheralization. As such, they did not assimilate into a predominantly white and Western LGBTQ+ culture engaged in homonationalist practices, nor were they willing to abandon the exogenously negatively constructed markers of cultural identities, including keffiyehs, veils/hijabs, abayas, and thobes. However, unlike asylum-seekers, the members of POA were able to maintain these markers of identity due to relative economic and political privilege. They entered and remained in the United Kingdom, primarily with student and work visas, and engaged in financially burdensome and lengthy immigration procedures. As such, they were not immediately subjected to the probing of the state in an effort to determine the validity of their sexual orientation or gender identity—a measurement of homonormativity executed in a homocolonialist manner against individuals seeking asylum.

The use of sexuality and homosexuality as a measurement of social advancement and civilization is not novel to contemporary global politics; rather, it has helped shape European interactions with the global south since, at least, the late eighteenth century. Throughout imperial and colonial interactions, between Europe and the global south, sexuality was determined as central to social and economic production and reproduction. This was evident in the implementation of laws against homosexuality, sodomy, and sexual deviance that sought to civilize and reorder societies in the global south. By constraining homosexual engagement, imperial and colonial administrators could protect their own officers from succumbing to the barbarism of these societies, protect labor and resource extraction, and civilize the global south. Under these conditions, heteronormativity was prized and scaled into structures and institutions of governance, producing a heterocolonial set of attributes. In the context of imperial and colonial histories, the politics and governance of sexuality was a measurement of civilization. To remain civilized, societies were forced to adhere to a heteronormative standard set in Europe.

After the mid-twentieth century and into the twenty-first century, the relationship between the politics and governance of sexuality and notions of civilization underwent a transformation. Beginning with Western states, LGBTQ+ rights soon developed to become synonymous with human rights. However, the critique, made in this article, is concerned, not with LGBTQ+ rights as human rights, but with the establishment of an emergent Western homonormativity that has encapsulated these rights. As such, the issue becomes focused on the specific cultural social, political, and economic practices associated with these rights that have lent itself to a homocolonialist frame of reference. This has, adversely, led to the reproduction of a “divided world,” the categorization of regions and states as civilized or uncivilized, with the latter as unable or unwilling to participate in a (homo)normative and (homo)national engagement. The division produced by using sexuality as a standard of civilization has further intersected with racialized, gendered, and class divisions, apparent in cases relating to asylum, immigration, and ghettoization. Where the members of POA had been able to overcome some of the class exclusions, they have, due to identity markers, continued to be racialized in precarious ways.