Human Rights at House Weblog

Jeremiah Ho, Colonizing Queerness, College of Colorado Legislation Overview (forthcoming 2023). Summary under.

This Article investigates how and why the cultural script of inequality persists for queer identities regardless of main authorized developments reminiscent of marriage, anti-discrimination, and employment protections. By concerning LGBTQ authorized developments as a part of the American settler colonial venture, I conclude that such victories are usually not liberatory or empowering however are makes an attempt at colonizing queer identities. American settler colonialism’s structural promotion of a normative sexuality illustrates how our settler colonialist legacy isn’t just a race venture (as settler colonialism is most generally studied) but additionally a race-gender-sexuality venture. Even in obvious strokes of progress, American settler colonialism’s eliminationist motives regularly privilege white heteropatriarchal constructions that dominate over non-normative sexualities.

By means of covert calls for upon queer identities to assimilate with the established order, such settler colonialist motivations are seen in the way in which Supreme Courtroom homosexual rights developments have facilitated a conditional however normative path to mainstream citizenship for queer identities. By using ideas from crucial race principle, queer research, and settler colonial principle, this Article illuminates on how the Courtroom’s circumstances are certainly a part of American settler colonialism’s sexuality venture and solutions why such authorized developments all the time seem monumental, however in the end stay within the management of a discriminatory establishment. Provided that queer authorized developments are accompanied by important shifts from the normative constructions of white settler heteropatriarchy will such victories reside as much as their liberatory claims. In any other case, such obvious progress will regularly try and marginalize—certainly, colonize—queerness.