LGBTQ+ People in Militaries, Wars and Post-War Settings

The Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights created this bibliography to provide a guide to the landscape of research-based knowledge of LGBTQ+ people in militaries, wars and post-war settings.

The existing literature on LGBTQ+ people and armed conflict divides roughly into two categories. The first, and the focus of much of the academic research, concerns LGBTQ+ individuals’ experiences serving in state militaries. Much of this research addresses the United States military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, but the policies of and experiences in other countries are examined as well. While some of the literature focuses on the experiences of LGBTQ+ service members themselves, including the complex ways they are impacted by militaries’ longtime dependence on and production of specific ideas about gender, other literature focuses on military institutions, addressing the imagined and actual impacts of LGBTQ+ inclusive policies on operational effectiveness and unit cohesion.

The second focus concerns the experiences of civilian LGBTQ+ people in war and postwar settings. Here, the existing literature examines issues such as: the persecution of LGBTQ+ individuals (for example, in Colombia, Iraq, and Russia); homophobic sexual violence and torture committed against men; and the experiences of LGBTQ+ refugees and asylumseekers. Academic research on this topic is still relatively scarce. Therefore, although Consortium bibliographies are primarily focused on academic research, in this case we have decided to include sections for non-academic resources including reports from human rights organizations, newspaper articles, and blog posts.

Entries in this bibliography include citations, and, insofar as possible, abstracts or summaries. Books usually are only briefly summarized, but often include the table of contents.