Where the Personal is (Geo)Political: Performing Queer Visibility in Georgia in the Context of EU Association

ABSTRACT

This article examines the interplay between the European Union’s (EU) interventions fostering LGBT+ rights in Georgia, and the visibility-raising strategies of local queer activists. The growing antagonism between the EU and Russia over their “shared neighborhood” crystallizes the idea of a value-based divide between the West/EUrope and the East/Russia on LGBT+ issues—with Georgia occupying a liminal position therein. The paper puts forward the concept of geopoliticization to unpack how the discursive construction of LGBT+ equality as a geopolitical issue shapes Georgian queer activists’ visibility strategies, and to interrogate the outcomes these processes produce.

List Of Interviews

Table

Acknowledgments

I am sincerely grateful to the activists and experts who took the time to share their knowledge and insights with me. I thank colleagues at the Centre for EU Studies, particularly Fabienne Bossuyt, Marjolein Derous, Jan Orbie, and Olga Burlyuk, for their most valuable comments on earlier drafts of this article; the organizers of the panel “The Changing Politics of Gender in Times of De-Democratisation” of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) Joint Sessions 2020, for organizing an individual feedback session despite the event’s postponement in light of the pandemic; Koen Slootmaeckers for his suggestions in finalizing this piece, and the two anonymous reviewers for providing extremely helpful feedback.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. IDAHOT is an international campaign established in 2004 to draw attention to the violence and discrimination experienced by sexual and gender minorities. May 17 commemorates the World Health Organization’s decision to declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1990.

2. Although the EU’s LGBT equality agenda is increasingly contested internally, this has not weakened the commitment to promote these norms in its external action, as confirmed by officials interviewed (Interview 2; 11; 12; 13).

3. After the Russo–Georgian War of 2008 Moscow recognized the independence of the separatist entities of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The dominant discourse in Georgia portrays Russia as “occupying 20 percent of the country.”

4. It is not uncommon for Georgian lesbian, bisexual, and trans women activists to work under a feminist umbrella as this is considered “safer” (Interview 7).

5. The anti-discrimination law’s implementation was significantly improved in 2019 through amendments that strengthened the Public Defender’s mandate. Still, experts cited a general lack of legal literacy, lack of trust in the judiciary, and fear that reporting crimes will result in forcible coming out, as factors limiting its effectiveness (Interview 10; 17). Regarding the first National Human Rights Strategy, “measures to tackle hate crime […] were mostly unimplemented” (Donald and Speck 2020, 14). In February 2020, the Strategy was amended to include a separate chapter on sexual orientation and gender identity rights (Interview 2; 16).

6. ILGA-Europe did not financially support the first Tbilisi Pride due to both safety concerns and the dissenting position of some of its Georgian member organizations (Interview 8; 10; 14). Nevertheless, the event mobilized donors like the Council of Europe, the German Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom South Caucasus, the Eurasian Coalition for Male Health, and Human Rights House Tbilisi (Kuenning 2019).

7. Mass protests exploded in Tbilisi on June 20, 2019, after Sergei Gavrilov, a member of the Russian Duma who was visiting Georgia through the Interparliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy, sat in a chair reserved by protocol for the Head of Parliament and delivered a speech in Russian. Georgians took to the streets demanding the government’s resignation. As a reaction to excessive police violence to disperse the demonstrators, the protests continued for several weeks.

8. On the level of legislation protecting LGBT rights, Georgia currently scores much better than other EaP countries (and some EU member states) on the ILGA-Europe Rainbow Map, although attitudes toward queer people remain overwhelmingly negative.

9. Notwithstanding its emphasis on improving the legal framework, the EU has so far failed to push Georgia to adopt a legal gender recognition framework, despite the government’s having committed to doing so in several international fora (Interview 10; 17).

10. Since the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic, which exposed the queer community’s lack of access to basic socio-economic services, the Georgian government is unprecedentedly cooperating with two community-based NGOs to provide support packages and relief services for queer people. Funded by the UNDP at the time of our interviews, this mechanism is expected to be taken over by the EU Delegation (Interview 16). The pandemic also led to renewed cooperation within the movement, setting political and interpersonal conflicts aside (Interview 14; 17).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Special Research Fund (grant number BOF.STG.2018.0006.01).