THE GLOBAL FIGHT AGAINST LGBTI RIGHTS
How Transnational Conservative Networks Target
Sexual and Gender Minorities
by Phillip M. Ayoub and Kristina Stoeckl
NYU Press. 376 pages, $35.
THE GLOBAL FIGHT Against LGBTI Rights is based on ten years of intensive research, including firsthand contacts with groups working both for and against strengthening LGBT rights. The discussion of how Russia has increasingly used hostility to sexual and gender diversity to mobilize support—as it has played out in their war against Ukraine—is particularly compelling. Phillip Ayoub and Kristina Stoeckl demonstrate that while there has been a remarkable growth of networks and political support around issues of sexual orientation and gender identity, this has been matched by organizing and networking efforts by those who oppose LGBT rights.
This development is summed up by the authors’ elegant metaphor of the double helix, in which both queer and homo/ transphobic organizations operate in competition, building links across countries that defy the traditional alliances of conventional international relations. While Vladimir Putin can quote British author J. K. Rowling in attacking trans rights, Tucker Carlson can praise Russia’s defense of “family values.”
Having cowritten (with Jonathan Symons) a book on global polarization around our rights in Queer Wars (2016), I appreciate how the authors have refined their analysis. The Global Fight contains a great many valuable firsthand observations of competing political and religious groups, and of the power of conservatives in both the U.S. and Europe to incite hostility towards our communities.
However, the book is unfortunately mistitled, as it is in no sense “global” in scope. Every now and then there is a passing reference to somewhere outside the North American and European axis—a nod to persecution in Uganda, a mention of decriminalization in Singapore—but this book gives the reader scant sense of how these debates have played out in the non-Western world. It only briefly acknowledges the leadership role played by countries and organizations in the Global South—for example, Brazil and South Africa—while also ignoring the ways in which the very contests they point to are played out today in countries outside the Atlantic world, such as Indonesia and Nigeria.
A further gap in this book’s coverage is the almost total silence about hiv/aids, which is acknowledged as fueling queer organizing in Eastern Europe, but not elsewhere. And yet, in many parts of the world, the AIDS epidemic served as the catalyst for a great deal of organizing and unprecedented research and discussion of homosexuality, along with sex work and intravenous drug use. Ayoub and Stoeckl are part of a growing number of social scientists who are taking debates about sexuality and gender into mainstream academic discourse. They are rightly critical of the failure of most scholars of international relations to grasp the significance of gender and sexuality. But they, in turn, have ignored the wealth of literature that has grown out of the AIDS epidemic, perhaps because they see it as confined to discussions of public health.
This book is aimed primarily at scholars of international relations. Those unaccustomed to academic language might find reading it demanding. But it is worth pursuing, because there’s a wealth of important material that’s even more relevant in the Trump era, what with its attacks on overseas development assistance. Certainly non-academics can benefit from the exploration of the way in which shoddy research is used to bolster extreme positions of hostility towards LGBT people.
I finished reading The Global Fight with major reservations, but within its limits it is an important resource, and it’s more relevant today than ever. As authoritarianism and intolerance seem to be on the rise globally, its insights may be of value to LGBT activists everywhere. _______________________________________________________
Dennis Altman is a professorial fellow at La Trobe Univ. in Australia.
