LGBTQ

Citation:

Serrano-Amaya, José Fernando. 2018. Homophobic Violence in Armed Conflict and Political Transition. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Author: José Fernando Serrano-Amaya

Annotation:

Summary:
This book argues that homophobia plays a fundamental role in disputes for hegemony between antagonists during political transitions. Examining countries not often connected in the same research—Colombia and South Africa—the book asserts that homophobia, as a form of gender and sexual violence, contributes to the transformation of gender and sexual orders required by warfare and deployed by armed groups. Anti-homosexual violence also reinforces the creation of consensus around these projects of change. The book considers the perspective of individuals and their organizations, for whom such hatreds are part of the embodied experience of violence caused by protracted conflicts and social inequalities. Resistance to that violence are reason to mobilize and become political actors. This book contributes to the increasing interest in South-South comparative analyses and the need of theory building based on case-study analyses, offering systematic research useful for grass root organizations, practitioners, and policy makers. (Summary from Palgrave Macmillian)

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction

2. Sex, Violence and Politics: The Research Problem

3. Armed Conflict and Sexual Para-politics in Colombia

4. Homophobia in Apartheid and Post-apartheid South Africa

5. The Chiaroscuro of Sexual Politics

6. Telling Truths About Violence

7. Gender and Sexual Orders Making the New Society

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Gender-Based Violence, LGBTQ, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Post-Conflict, Sexuality, Sexual Violence, Violence Regions: Africa, Southern Africa, Americas, South America Countries: Colombia, South Africa

Year: 2018

Citation:

Maier, Nicole. 2020. "Queering Colombia's Peace Process: A Case Study of LGBTI Inclusion." The International Journal of Human Rights 24 (4): 377-92.

Author: Nicole Maier

Abstract:

In August 2016, Colombia's government announced that they had reached an agreement with the country's largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). This peace deal was historic in Colombia's more than half-century long armed conflict; however, Colombian voters rejected it. A revised version was ultimately passed through a congressional vote. Despite the intense domestic criticism of the peace talks, they have been praised internationally and revered as a model for the world, particularly with regard to their efforts surrounding victims of the armed conflict. This article focuses on one particular group of victims, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) individuals. The experience of LGBTI people in armed conflicts has historically been one of exclusion from peace processes. This article explores how Colombia's peace process has approached the LGBTI experience through interviews with LGBTI activists and analyses of collaborative civil society efforts. The actions taken by LGBTI organisations reveal the critical role of truth and memory initiatives and capacity building. While much work has been done, Colombia is left with many unanswered questions about what a post-conflict society will look like for LGBTI victims of the armed conflict.

Keywords: LGBT, victim, Colombia, armed conflict, transitional justice, peacebuilding

Topics: Armed Conflict, Civil Wars, Gender, Governance, Post-Conflict Governance, Justice, Transitional Justice, LGBTQ, Post-Conflict, Peacebuilding, Peace Processes, Sexuality Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Colombia

Year: 2020

Citation:

Tschantret, Joshua. 2018. "Cleansing the Caliphate: Insurgent Violence against Sexual Minorities." International Studies Quarterly 62 (2): 260-73.

Author: Joshua Tschantret

Abstract:

Why do insurgents target certain groups for extermination? Despite a great deal of attention to the targeting of civilian ethnic minorities, comparatively little scholarship exists on insurgent violence against sexual minorities (lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transsexual individuals). This article maintains that the decision to target sexual minorities follows three distinct logics: two strategic and one ideological. First, insurgents face an incentive to outbid rivals by targeting sexual minorities when homophobic violence is politically and socially legitimated. Second, territorial control creates an incentive for insurgents to signal their ability to selectively punish, which they can accomplish through homophobic violence. Third, revolutionary ideologies provide legitimation for exclusionary violence in the pursuit of transforming society. Statistical analysis of insurgent violence against sexual minorities from 1985 to 2015 lends strong support for these arguments. Process tracing of the spread of violence against sexual minorities in Iraq and Syria clarifies the strategic causal mechanisms. When progovernment militias targeted perceived homosexuals with impunity, antigay violence was adopted by insurgent groups seeking to legitimize their claims to power; violence then quickly spread to competing insurgents. Two additional cases from Latin America demonstrate that ideology plays an important role in influencing which groups embrace homophobic violence even under these strategic constraints.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Conflict, LGBTQ, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militias, Sexuality, Violence Regions: MENA, Americas, South America, Asia, Middle East Countries: Colombia, Iraq, Peru, Syria

Year: 2018

Citation:

Margalit, Alon. 2018. "Still a Blind Spot: The Protection of LGBT Persons during Armed Conflict and Other Situations of Violence." International Review of the Red Cross 100 (907-909): 237-65.

Author: Alon Margalit

Abstract:

This article draws attention to the situation of LGBT persons during armed conflict. Subjected to violence and discrimination outside the context of armed conflict, the latter aggravates their vulnerability and exposure to various abuses. Despite important progress made with respect to their protection under human rights law, a similar effort is largely absent from the international humanitarian law discourse. This article accordingly highlights some of the norms and challenges pertaining to the protection of LGBT persons in time of war.

Keywords: International Humanitarian Law, LGBT, sexual orientation, gender identity, armed conflict, protection, discrimination, non-refoulement, sexual violence

Topics: Armed Conflict, Conflict, Gender, International Law, International Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law (IHL), LGBTQ, Security, Sexuality, Sexual Violence, Violence

Year: 2018

Citation:

Bilić, Bojan, and Marija Radoman, eds. 2019. Lesbian Activism in the (Post-)Yugoslav Space: Sisterhood and Unity. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Authors: Bojan Bilić, Marija Radoman

Annotation:

Summary:
This book intertwines academic and activist voices to engage with more than three decades of lesbian activism in the Yugoslav space. The empirically rich contributions uncover a range of lesbian initiatives and the fundamental, but rarely acknowledged, role that lesbian alliances have played in articulating a feminist response to the upsurge of nationalism, widespread violence against women, and high levels of lesbophobia and homophobia in all of the post-Yugoslav states. By offering a distinctly intergenerational and transnational perspective, this collection does not only shed new light on a severely marginalised group of people, but constitutes a pioneering effort in accounting for the intricacies – solidarities, joys, and tensions – of lesbian activist organising in a post-conflict and post-socialist environment. With a plethora of authorial standpoints and innovative methodological approaches, the volume challenges the systematic absence of (post-)Yugoslav lesbian activist enterprises from recent social science scholarship. (Summary from Palgrave Macmillian)

Table of Contents:
1.Introduction: Recovering/Rethinking (Post-)Yugoslav Lesbian Activisms
Bojan Bilić

2.Yearning for Space, Pleasure, and Knowledge: Autonomous Lesbian and Queer Feminist Organising in Ljubljana
Teja Oblak and Maja Pan

3.Cartographies of Fear and Freedom: Lesbian Activists in the First Belgrade and Zagreb Pride Parades
Sanja Kajinić

4.Sisterhood Beyond Borders: Transnational Aspects of Post-Yugoslav Lesbian Activism
Irene Dioli

5.Breaking the Silence: Lesbian Activism in Macedonia
Irena Cvetkovic

6.Searching for a Lesbian Voice: Non-Heterosexual Women’s Activism in Montenegro
Marina Vuković and Paula Petričević

7.(In)Visible Presences: PitchWise Festival as a Space of Lesbian Belonging in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Adelita Selmić and Bojan Bilić

8.Conclusion: Discovering the Lesbian in Us—On Our Ongoing, Never-Ending Struggles
Marija Radoman

9.Epilogue: Collecting Fragments—Towards (Post-)Yugoslav Activist Archives
Bojan Bilić

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Women, Governance, LGBTQ, Nationalism, Post-Conflict, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Rights Regions: Europe, Balkans, Central Europe, Eastern Europe Countries: Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia, Yugoslavia (former)

Year: 2019

Citation:

Gabbard, Sonnet D’Amour. 2017. “Old Ties and New Binds: LGBT Rights, Homonationalisms, Europeanization and Post-War Legacies in Serbia.” PhD diss., The Ohio State University.

Author: Sonnet D’Amour Gabbard

Abstract:

My dissertation examines the historic links between the anti-war activists in Serbia with the current efforts and work for LGBT justice and rights. As an interdisciplinary scholar, my work integrates a variety of epistemologies across disciplines by putting anti-war and LGBT activists' experience in Serbia into conversation with one another to address unique vulnerabilities. Drawing from transnational feminist and queer critiques of governance, (homo)nationalism, and transnational sexuality studies, I consider how new nonheterosexual identity politics—with roots in anti-war activism—have surfaced in Serbia since the Kosovo War. I argue that it is at the intersection of anti-war and LGBT organizing that new and conflicting identity politics have emerged, in part as a reaction to a pro-war hyper-nationalism and neoliberal globalization.

Keywords: LGBT, Balkans, sexuality studies, feminism, transnational, global studies, international relations, development, Serbia, Yugoslavia, post-conflict, Transgender, lesbian, gay, pride parade, gentrification, Slavic studies, queer

Topics: Civil Society, Feminisms, Governance, Globalization, Justice, LGBTQ, Nationalism, Post-Conflict, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Rights, Sexuality Regions: Europe, Balkans, Eastern Europe Countries: Serbia

Year: 2017

Citation:

Gouliquer, Lynne, Carmen Poulin, and Jennifer Moore. 2018. "A Threat to Canadian National Security: A Lesbian Soldier's Story." Qualitative Research in Psychology 15 (2-3): 323-35.

Authors: Lynne Gouliquer, Carmen Poulin, Jennifer Moore

Abstract:

Before 1992, lesbians and gay soldiers were purged and discharged from the Canadian military for “reasons of homosexuality.” Those caught or suspected of homosexuality were subject to lengthy, humiliating, and degrading interrogations. This short story sheds light on this painful past. It is based on findings of a nationally funded pan-Canadian longitudinal study examining how Canadian military policies and practices influenced the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender soldiers and their partners. In total, 126 people were interviewed. While in the military, countless soldiers were investigated, numerous interrogated, many lost their careers, some committed suicide and others survived. Personal details have been changed to ensure the anonymity of the people, but it is their voices that tell this story. An official state apology was delivered November 28, 2017. Due to an impending class action court case, an agreement for compensation was also reached. Compensation and memorials will be forthcoming to those who were affected by the LGBTQI2+ purge campaign. To this day, no evidence exists that these soldiers were “ever” a threat to national security.

Keywords: Canadian military, discharged soldiers, homosexuality, interrogations, justice, LGBT, national security, purge campaign

Topics: Combatants, Justice, LGBTQ, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Security, Sexuality Regions: Americas, North America Countries: Canada

Year: 2018

Citation:

Livingston, Nicholas A., Danielle S. Berke, Mollie A. Ruben, Alexis R. Matza, and Jillian C. Shipherd. 2019. "Experiences of Trauma, Discrimination, Microaggressions, and Minority Stress among Trauma-Exposed LGBT Veterans: Unexpected Findings and Unresolved Service Gaps." Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy 11 (7): 695-703.

Authors: Nicholas A. Livingston, Danielle S. Berke, Mollie A. Ruben, Alexis R. Matza, Jillian C. Shipherd

Abstract:

Topics: Health, Mental Health, PTSD, Trauma, LGBTQ, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Sexuality Regions: Americas, North America Countries: United States of America

Year: 2019

Citation:

Dietert, Michelle, Dianne Dentice, and Zander Keig. 2017. "Addressing the Needs of Transgender Military Veterans: Better Access and More Comprehensive Care." Transgender Health 2 (1): 35-44.

Authors: Michelle Dietert, Dianne Dentice, Zander Keig

Abstract:

Keywords: gender identity discrimination, Transgender, U.S. military, Veterans Health Administration

Topics: Gender, Health, Mental Health, LGBTQ, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Post-Conflict Regions: Americas, North America Countries: United States of America

Year: 2017

Citation:

Ford, Shannon, and Carla Schnitzlein. 2017. "Gender Dysphoria in the Military." Current Psychiatry Reports 19 (12): 102.

Authors: Shannon Ford, Carla Schnitzlein

Abstract:

Keywords: Transgender, gender dysphoria, military, veteran, LGBT, mental health, open service

Topics: Gender, Health, Mental Health, LGBTQ, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries Regions: Americas, North America Countries: United States of America

Year: 2017