‘Did queer Muslims even exist?’ – racialised grids of intelligibility in Swedish LGBTQ contexts

ABSTRACT

This article explores racialised grids of intelligibility around gender identity and sexuality in white Swedish LGBTQ contexts. By analysing personal stories shared on a separatist Instagram account by and for LGBTQ people racialised as non-white and/or Muslim, the article identifies some of the predominant narratives through which they become intelligible, both to other people and to themselves. Four frameworks are particularly recurring: the notion of them being victims of a ‘hateful other’, strong expectations to come out, exotification and tokenism (both sexualised and otherwise), and a general lack of representation. I argue that all of these revolve around notions of LGBTQ people racialised as non-white and/or Muslim as never quite belonging and thus never quite recognisable. They are instead frequently situated between white, gender-equal and LGBTQ-friendly ‘Swedishness’ and threatening, LGBTQ-phobic racialised ‘others’, made intelligible only in relation to either of these.

KEYWORDS:

• LGBTQ
• intelligibility
• race
• migration
• Swedish gender exceptionalism
• queer

Introduction

Today no racialised [people] are visible during Pride. We have been erased and replaced by a white and commercialised festival where (for the most part) white cis-gays are the only ones who count, and where the aim no longer is to be treated as people with human rights, but only ‘to be able to love whom you want’. E N O U G H. We’ve had it with this peace & love bs. […] It is time to take back our spot in the fight and to make ourselves heard. It’s time for us to show that we exist. It is time to organise and fight for ourselves, who have been forgotten.¹ (inaugural administrator entry)

In November 2015, three young Swedish activists started an Instagram account, a ‘separatist platform by and for LGBTQ people who are racialised’, in order to ‘give visibility to racialised people and their personal experiences of growing up and living outside heteronormativity and/or cisnormativity as “blatte ²” in Sweden/the West’. Their initiative points to a wider social phenomenon: The various ways in which LGBTQ³ people racialised as non-white and/or Muslim are perceived and made intelligible in relation to LGBTQ rights featuring ever more prominently in discourses on immigration across Western European contexts (El-Tayeb, 2012; Haritaworn, 2015; Jivraj & de Jong, 2011; Jungar & Peltonen, 2015).

As previous research shows, LGBTQ rights have increasingly become political markers of ‘Western values’: tolerance, gender equality, sexual liberation and general social progressiveness (Butler, 2008; Dhawan, 2013; Mepschen, Duyvendak, & Tonkens, 2010). A variety of actors in a number of countries construct them as being under threat from the LGBTQ-phobic backwardness ascribed to communities racialised as non-white and/or Muslim (El-Tayeb, 2011; Haritaworn, 2010; Jungar & Peltonen, 2015; Kehl, 2018). This rhetoric puts people who are both racialised as non-white and/or Muslim as well as LGBTQ in precarious positions: they become ‘exceptions to the rule’ (Bracke, 2012), facing assumptions that being both LGBTQ and racialised as non-white and/or Muslim are mutually exclusive. They also feature in ongoing processes of racist and Islamophobic othering. As they are embraced into Western European societies as the ‘good [racialised] other’ (Sabsay, 2012, p. 611), various dangerous ‘bad others’ are (re)produced – communities racialised as non-white and/or Muslim are constructed as being not queer-friendly enough, while those challenging assumptions about what it can mean to be e.g. queer and Muslim are too queer (El-Tayeb, 2012; Haritaworn, 2015; Puar, 2007). The power that rests with these normalizations of certain bodies and experiences (Puwar, 2004) means especially young people might be unable to make sense of their own experiences or feel the need to adjust the ways in which they perform their sexuality and gender identity in order to become intelligible as ‘proper sexual subject’ in white, Western European contexts (Douglas, Jivraj, & Lamble, 2011).

By taking a closer look at the experiences of young LGBTQ people racialised as non-white and/or Muslim within predominantly white Swedish LGBTQ contexts, this article investigates some grids of intelligibility that make up the ‘field of the recognisable’ (Butler, 2015, p. 34) in these contexts. How are LGBTQ bodies racialised as non-white/and or Muslim and their experiences made intelligible? Which assumptions around their sexuality, race and gender identity do they face and which positionalities are thus suggested as ‘liveable’ for them? It does so through an analysis of experiences shared on a separatist Instagram account, identifying predominant grids of intelligibility for LGBTQ people racialised as non-white and/or Muslim within white Swedish LGBTQ contexts.

The next section introduces the concept ‘grids of intelligibility’ as well as some specificities of the Swedish context with regard to race, sexuality and gender, followed by a discusses of methodology and ethical considerations. The article then identifies four major ways in which LGBTQ people racialised as non-white and/or Muslim are made intelligible in predominantly white Swedish LGBTQ contexts: As the victims of a hateful other, through the coming out narrative, via exotification and tokenism, and via experiences of lacking representation. I argue that all of these revolve around notions of LGBTQ people racialised as non-white and/or Muslim as never quite belonging, never quite recognisable. They are instead frequently situated between white, gender-equal and LGBTQ-friendly ‘Swedishness’ and threatening, LGBTQ-phobic racialised ‘others’, made intelligible only in relation to these.

Intelligibility, racialisation and Swedish gender exceptionalism

Following the work of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, I am interested in the ways in which we have to perform and produce ourselves as particular, seemingly coherent subjects in order to be recognisable and therefore deserving of rights (Butler, 1993; Foucault, 1978). Being intelligible to individuals, groups and institutions as well as to ourselves is a condition for at all being able to bring oneself into (social) existence. While Butler’s earlier work stresses moments of resistance and instability in these acts of subjection (Butler, 1993), her more recent writings point out the importance of ‘norms of recognition’ (Butler, 2015, p. 34) that make up the boundaries of the ‘field of the recognisable’ (Butler, 2015, p. 34), creating and (re)producing violent hierarchies between those who are more and those who are less intelligible in certain social contexts. Looking at these norms as grids of intelligibility helps us understand how certain experiences and identities are assigned legitimacy and relevance, while others remain unacknowledged, delegitimised or even vilified. An intersectional perspective draws our attention to the ways in which these grids are (among other things) shaped by issues of race, gender and sexual orientation. In the Swedish context, particularly processes of racialisation clearly sharpen the ways in which grids of intelligibility around gender and sexuality create ‘the right kind of queers’. Racialisation, the social construction and ascription of race to certain bodies, includes hierarchies and domination (Grosfoguel, Oso, & Christou, 2015), the creation of constitutive outsides (Haritaworn, 2015; Laskar, 2007; Yuval-Davis, 2006) and the objectification of those racialised as non-white as the oppositional (potentially dangerous) other of whiteness and its privileges (Ahmed, 2007b, p. 161). Acknowledging that racialisation processes apply to everybody (i.e. whiteness does not exist in a position of neutrality or ‘non-race’ (Ahmed, 2007a)), this article uses the term ‘racialised’ in two different ways. In the quotes, it is directly translated from the Swedish ‘rasifierat’, a self-identifier used by Swedish activists of colour. The analytical term ‘racialised as non-white and/or Muslim’ allows for the nuanced engagement with how the ascription of race (in the sense of having a body that is racialised as non-white) and the ascription of religion (as ethno-cultural signifier of ‘foreignness’ (El-Tayeb, 2008)) make LGBTQ people (un-)intelligible in different ways.

Sweden is a particularly interesting context for exploring grids of intelligibility around sexuality, gender and race, because of longstanding narratives describing it as exceptionally progressive with regard to gender equality and sexual rights (Dahl, 2011; Martinsson, Griffin, & Nygren, 2016). They predate, overlap with and reinforce more recent homonationalist and homonormative narratives (Kehl, 2018), and are employed to define various notions of ‘Swedishness’. This ‘Swedish gender exceptionalism’ (Dahl, 2011; Martinsson et al., 2016) is frequently accompanied by ideas of ‘bad patriarchies’ located in distant places and racialised bodies (Keskinen, Tuori, Mulinari, & Irni, 2009, p. 5). Constructing gender equality and LGBTQ inclusiveness as a Swedish ‘national trait’ is thus closely linked to racialisation processes that inscribe certain people as white, Swedish, feminist and LGBTQ-friendly, whereas others are marked as non-white and/or Muslim, non-Swedish, non-gender-equal and LGBTQ-phobic (Cuesta & Mulinari, 2018; de los Reyes & Mulinari, 2005; Hübinette & Lundström, 2014). Trans-, bi- and homophobia are thereby located outside normative white Swedishness, projecting them instead onto communities racialised as non-white and/or Muslim. The way in which these communities are talked about as second, third, even fourth generation immigrants (El-Tayeb, Haritaworn, & Bacchetta, 2015; Gilroy, 2006) shows that racialisation in Western European contexts often includes the ascription of migration to certain bodies racialised as non-white – they are constructed as ‘never at home’ in these societies (Tudor, 2018). The Swedish term blatte describes the experience of being assigned this position as an ‘eternal migrant’ (El-Tayeb, 2011, p. xxv), even if you are a Swedish citizen, born and raised in Sweden.

Material, method and ethical considerations

This article analyses experiences shared on a Swedish-based Instagram account created as a separatist virtual space by and for LGBTQ people racialised as non-white and/or Muslim with around 4 600 followers at the time of writing. While it is used for information sharing, organising and emotional support, its main function is that of a so-called ‘relay account’ (sw. stafettkonto). By having a different person write about their experiences of being LGBTQ and racialised as non-white and/or Muslim every week, the account aims to provide particularly young people with a variety of stories to identify with. Existing research stresses the community- and identity-building potential of social media platforms, especially for members of minority groups (Gray, 2009; Lucero, 2017; Marino, 2015). Positive representation of marginalised identities and the ability to claim identification with multiple social groups allows them to positively affirm their unique (intersectional) positioning within society (Tynes, Schuschke, & Noble, 2016, p. 33), thus to a certain extent countering the negative social effects of occupying a stigmatised identity (Howarth, 2006).

While Instagram was developed for the sharing of pictures, my analysis relies on the texts being posted in the picture captions as this is where the writers describe in their own words crucial experiences of being racialised as non-white and/or Muslim while being LGBTQ in a white Swedish context. The writers are in their late teens up to early thirties, predominantly living in urban parts of Sweden. They are refugees, children to immigrants or racialised Swedes, or adopted into white Swedish families. Their entries show various specific ways in which race, religion, sexuality and gender intersect, while also containing re-appearing common themes.

The account is particularly interesting because of its continuity, its relevance within the activist community and the issue of access. Since 2015, it has continuously been filled with content, providing a richness of experiences and a somewhat stable reference in notoriously volatile social media settings (see Kozinets, 2015). The administrators have organised or participated in various events on being both LGBTQ and racialised as non-white and/or Muslim, becoming a recurring voice with regard to how these experiences are described within the wider Swedish LGBTQ community. Additionally, the account’s privacy setting is ‘open’, which means anybody can read it without the administrators’ admission. It also enables reading without actively having to ‘follow’ the account, an important option for anybody who for various reasons might not want to be visibly associated with LGBTQ issues (Marwick & Boyd, 2018). As white people are not allowed to post or comment, the account provides a separatist but not completely closed virtual space (see Collins, 2009). At a public event in 2018, the administrators encouraged the audience to widely share the account, stating that one of the reasons for its existence was to raise awareness about the experiences of racialised LGBTQ people beyond the limited group who already followed the account and recognised themselves in the stories shared. This openness was crucial for me when conducting this research.

Reflecting on the ways in which my own whiteness might impact the questions I ask and the conclusions I draw, I decided to limit my analysis to those parts of the material explicitly dealing with the experiences of LGBTQ people racialised as non-white and/or Muslim in the context of white LGBTQ communities. Expectations about gender and sexuality of course exist beyond these specific contexts, and the writers are exposed to and engage with a variety of those. While the writers touch upon these other experiences in their posts, they are not the focus of this article.

Privacy in virtual spaces is experienced and negotiated contextually, mainly through ‘the ability to strategically control a social situation by influencing what information is available to others’ (Marwick & Boyd, 2018, p. 1158). Research on social media, especially on sensitive topics like sexuality, thus requires particular attention to privacy and data protection (Markham & Buchanan, 2012). Most writers post with an identifiable name, including links to personal accounts on other platforms. Those writing anonymously usually state that they are not ‘out’ and fear being discovered. While feminist researchers have argued against anonymising research material in order to enable authors to maintain full ownership of their stories (Luka & Millette, 2018), this study follows the (re-)appearance of grids of intelligibility throughout all the posts rather than individual narratives, looking at the account as a collective entity. I therefore decided to anonymise all material by removing user names and publication dates, a decision that was sanctioned by the account’s administrators.

The analysis is based on around 700 entries published by 86 different writers between November 2015 and December 2017. All were exported manually from the account, and a first selection was done to exclude posts not describing experiences related to being LGBTQ and racialised as non-white and/or Muslim in the context of majority white LGBTQ contexts. By way of several close readings, I analysed the remaining 676 entries with a theoretically informed coding system (see Bazeley, 2013). Based on the assumptions that intelligibility functions according to norms creating hierarchies between those who are more and those who are less intelligible within certain contexts (Butler, 1993, 2008) and that these norms are both racialised, (cis-)gendered and sexualised (Douglas et al., 2011; Haritaworn, Kuntsman, & Posocco, 2013; Sabsay, 2012), I identified instances where the writers shared experiences of being made intelligible (by others or themselves) through norms and expectations based on sexuality-gender-race in relation to a white majority society. Using the NVivo software for qualitative data analysis, I organised these experiences into to broader themes, which generated a number of recurring narratives and figures. Four of them were so recurring that the majority of writers referred to at least one of them: The oppositional narrative of the LGBTQ victim and the racialised hateful other, the coming out as a LGBTQ identity milestone, experiences of exotification and tokenism in white LGBTQ communities, and a general feeling of there being a lack of representation of LGBTQ people racialised as non-white and/or Muslim. By maintaining long quotes, I try to give as much space as possible to the writers’ own voices.

Being the victim of the ‘hateful other’

I know that not all blattekids have had the luck I’ve had, but I still get so tired of all white people who are always worried about how my family reacts to finding out that I am queer. (W 12)

For a lot of us, white LGBTQ-spaces are incredibly unsafe because our existence is constantly being questioned. […] How can you be both Muslim and gay??? What do your parents say about you being gay??? (W 11)

I am so bothered by having to ‘come out’ etc. I constantly get the question about whether I am open and what my parents think. (W 65)

Throughout, it becomes clear that one underlying assumption is that communities racialised as non-white and/or Muslims are inherently negatively predisposed against LGBTQ identities and LGBTQ rights, frequently expressed by questions about ‘what your parents think’ with regard to writers being LGBTQ. Two major themes make up the frame of intelligibility with regard to this assumption: the ‘rescue narrative’ (Bracke, 2012) and the ‘hateful other’ (Haritaworn, 2015). The rescue narrative, a well-established practise of othering (see Abu-Lughod, 2002; Jungar & Peltonen, 2015) describes LGBTQ people racialised as non-white and/or Muslim as in need of liberation and protection from their own communities and the oppressive societal structures which are said to exist in migrant ‘ghettos’ (El-Tayeb, 2012, p. 80). Various LGBTQ organisations have been criticised for perpetuating these themes, and for rendering LGBTQ people racialised as non-white and/or Muslim into exceptional, but voiceless figures, always only portrayed as in need of help (El-Tayeb, 2012; Haritaworn, 2015; Jungar & Peltonen, 2015).

You would think that those who’ve had the hardest time accepting me and my sexual orientation are my dad and my relatives in Morocco, but I’ll tell u. It’s fkn wrong. Let us criticise the queer world once and for all. In those chalk white queer spaces where everything that matters is to look sufficiently lesbian and to ‘free the nipple’. (W 30)

If there is one place where I’ve been treated badly because of my faith, gender and sexuality, it is among WHITE LGBTQIA+ people. They almost love to question my faith as soon as they get the chance. ‘Has your dad forced you?’ ‘Have you been brainwashed?’ ‘Will you be beaten at home otherwise?’ […] Like nooo this is something I believe. White LGBTQIA+ people can easily exclude a LGBTQIA+ person of faith, especially if they are poc. Because of course, of course we don’t belong in your world? […] Of course it is so much easier to be able to think that all POC of faith are narrow-minded homophobes? (W 48)

[My mum] thinks it’s great fun and important to support the LGBTQ-fight, but she also marches in the parade to destroy racist ideas about migrant parents not backing their queer children. Tired of unnuanced debates and reports about migrants and everyone in the förort, poc working class, being LGBTQ-phobes. That openness quietly equals ‘Western values’, whiteness and well-educated. As if being white, doctor, psychologist and journalist automatically turns people into some kind of unicorn tearing up from joy when seeing a rainbow flag. While the combination migrant, dishwasher, cleaner, dinner lady leads to you boo as soon as a dyke turns up. But mami says that no ‘viejas pitucas’ (old hags) who ‘worry about LGBTQ-immigrants’ while at the same time being blatant racists are allowed to lecture her or ascribe homophobic views to her. And she doesn’t let anybody do it either. (W 75)

The rescue narrative is to a large extent maintained via the notion of ‘the hateful other’, that is the racialised and/or Muslim migrant perpetrating violence against LGBTQ people (Haritaworn, 2010, p. 73). In various Northern European countries, specific education campaigns about tolerance have been directed towards communities racialised as non-white and/or Muslim (Haritaworn, 2015; Jungar & Peltonen, 2015). One Swedish example of these attempts to ‘teach the hateful other a lesson’ is Pride Järva, a ‘pride’ march organised by the Swedish populist right in 2016 and 2017. Taking place in the Northern outskirts of Stockholm, the marches were used to portray certain parts of Swedish cities as unsafe for LGBTQ people because of the ‘hateful others’ who live there. These areas (sw. förorten or orten) were built in the 1960s and 1970s, with their inhabitants often being both immigrants and racialised Swedes. The abbreviation orten, much like the term blatte, has been reclaimed by those who live there in order to tackle the stigmatisation accompanying it. Suffering from high unemployment rates and crammed living conditions, these areas (and their inhabitants) are regularly portrayed as chaotic, lawless and dangerous, while also marked as ‘unswedish’ (Kehl, 2018). Grids of intelligibility with regard to Swedishness as whiteness and Swedishness as LGBTQ friendliness converge here, externalising and othering communities racialised as non-white and/or Muslim as well as complicating the intelligibility of being both LGBTQ and racialised as non-white and/or Muslim in the Swedish context.

Expectations to come out

One much discussed issue throughout the posts is coming out. Coming out to oneself, but particularly coming out to others. While some speak of it as liberating, coming out is also described as a strong norm regarding what makes one intelligible as a ‘proper LGBTQ person’, to the extent that people feel pressured to do so.

People have gotten this idea that the best you can do is to come out to everybody you know and to be open with your sexuality at all times to show your pride. However, for many of us that would mean strained relations, to be thrown out from your community etc. So that’s why many decide not to come out. I myself have no plans whatsoever to ever come out to my family/community because it would be awkward and uncomfortable and no i rather not. (W 11)

I decided to post anonymously on this account partially because I come from a country where it is illegal to be anything else than straight. I still travel there sometimes to be able to meet my relative who are not allowed to come here (because of Sweden’s disgusting immigration politics) and I want to continue travelling there without risking the death penalty. I might also expose my relatives there for risks if I was to come out publicly, they can be connected to me. It’s sometimes been a problem in the white queer world I have moved around, and there’s been expectations that I should speak publicly about being queer/pan/bi/lesbian (whatever I might be defined as), and some people I’ve dated haven’t always been understanding. […]

The whole thing about how one absolutely has to come out to precisely everybody was putting a real strain on me a few years back. I was constantly worried and anxious about it and my mental health declined. How should I come out to my parents who follow a fairly strict interpretation of religion where LGBTQ people are not part of the picture. I knew then and I know now that if I was to come out to them it would end with me not having a home or a family left. I’m at peace with that thought today, and I am just waiting until I have economic stability first. […] But once again, what’s the deal with the whole coming-out culture that drives young people who are in unsafe environments to come out, that everything will be better if only they do it. I was in such bad shape when I was 16 years old because I wanted so very much to come out because I believed I was forced to do so. […] Today my parents know nothing and I have no problems with that, because I know that they and I are not ready yet. (W 50)

These entries stress the way in which coming-out is a norm in white Swedish LGBTQ circles that disregards different social aspects making it hard to comply with, such as destroying family relations or impacting upon one’s ability to travel. Another aspect of coming-out – showing your relationship openly (e.g. by holding hands or kissing) is described as being potentially unsafe in relation to a white majority society, especially when you are racialised as non-white and/or Muslim.

It’s simply not always safe to be open and out, but it gives me a feeling of safety and serenity to know that my partner understands. (W 31)

This entry describes the potential danger of hate-crimes that are motivated by both racism and homophobia, and the benefit of having a partner who instinctively understands this based on their own experience, making them less inclined to see somebody who strategically decides not to be open as a coward or oppressed. A sentiment that is echoed in another entry:

The few gay friends I had during that time pretty quickly no longer gave a shit about me since they couldn’t be bothered to hang out with a closet-boy who could not stand up for himself. (W 67)

White LGBTQ people, the entries indicate, expect you to be out, otherwise they will consider you a coward or refuse to date you. Mirrored in these posts are of course the writers’ own assumptions that white LGBTQ people can come out whenever and to whomever without experiencing any repercussions or anxiety – an assumption that to some extent re-inscribes the strict discursive binary between the ‘open’ white LGBTQ person and the ‘closeted’ person racialised as non-white and/or Muslim (Horton, 2017).

A further testament to people experiencing strong pressure to come out are the appeals to their readers that it is ok to not come out and that nobody should rush this step if they are not ‘ready’.

I am still working on becoming comfortable with my sexuality. Something which has been increeeeeeedibly helpful has been the mindset that I do not need to come out. I hate that expression, btw. It feels like its definite that all LGBTQI+ people at some point in their lives have to start writing on their foreheads that they are queer. I don’t feel the need to tell my parents, I don’t feel the need to tell the whole world that I am queer. What does it matter? Why can’t I just be without having to make such a big deal out of it? (W 41)

Sometimes I throw the closet door wide open and roll out all glittery. Sometimes I just have a toe outside the closet. And that’s ok. There should be space for being able to be as open or closed as oneself is comfortable with. You don’t have to be an encyclopaedia. You are 100% valid even if you are not ‘out’. (W 54)

Remember that none of you has to come out if you don’t want to or can’t. Sometimes it is safer not to do it. (W 9)

To all of you who haven’t come out and feel that you can’t cope or don’t need to, go ahead as usual, as long as you feel good. (W 57)

All of the entries point to coming-out as a crucial aspect when it comes to becoming intelligible as LGBTQ in white, Western contexts. Coming out has historically been used as a political strategy by activists in Europe and North America, creating the foundation for struggles for rights and recognition by making the existence of LGBTQ people publicly visible (Horton, 2017). This emphasis on ‘visibility via verbal disclosure’ (Horton, 2017, p. 2) requires and reproduces a subject that is ‘out and proud’. Dhawan describes this as a deeply developmental narrative, from closeted, ‘prepolitical’ same-sex acts to liberated, politicised, modern, gay identities (Dhawan, 2013, p. 201). This mirrors linear temporalities characterising the ‘West’ as more developed than ‘the Rest’ with regard to LGBTQ rights within which LGBTQ people racialised as non-white and/or Muslim play a central role (Butler, 2008). The process of coming out also plays to narratives around threat and protection – in order to be included into the safety of gay-friendly liberal-secular Western communities, LGBTQ people racialised as non-white and/or Muslim have to liberate themselves from the oppressive structures of collective identities. Jivraj and de Jong show how the focus on ‘speakability’ and dialogue ‘reinforces the perception of queer Muslims being “positioned in between”’ (Jivraj & de Jong, 2011, p. 145), thus once more strengthening the dichotomy between the LGBTQ-friendly West and homophobic Muslims. Additionally, coming out is seen as an ‘important means by which to achieve not only individual emancipation, but also broader social acceptance’ (Jivraj & de Jong, 2011, p. 149), raising the expectation that every LGBTQ person should want to come out.

Non-public ways of living and inhabiting LGBTQ identities are read as morally inferior or out of place (Douglas et al., 2011; Haritaworn et al., 2013; Jivraj & de Jong, 2011). Queerness that ‘both operationalizes and persists through [strategic] silence might be seen as constricting, oppressive, and backwards’ (Horton, 2017, p. 2) instead of acknowledging the need to manage different social contexts. El-Tayeb calls coming out a ‘decontextualized fetish’ according to which ‘queers of color are expected to catch up, to overcome their inherent cultural disadvantage’ (El-Tayeb, 2012, p. 89). The Instagram entries show that the coming out is a major frame of intelligibility in these young LGBTQ peoples’ lives, but also indicate that they relate to it by ‘working around it’, opening up alternative ways to the open/closeted and out-and-proud/silent dichotomies (see also Barglowski, Amelina, & Bilecen, 2018).

Exotification, (de-)sexualisation and tokenism

Beyond being the victim of a hateful other, bodies racialised as non-white and/or Muslim are made intelligible in white LGBTQ contexts in Sweden through frames of exotified othering, both sexualised and non-sexualised. One recurring aspect is the way in which they feel they are read as tokens by white LGBTQ people.

I didn’t want white queers to look at me like some kind of sidekick, like ‘oh, she’s Arab AND lesbian, that’s a catch’. (W 33)

I’ve been working with LGBTQ issues since mid-2014. Megafonen⁴ was still hot. Orten became hotter. I have never been hit on by women as much as I was then. One friend put it like this ‘You are a trophy wife. You are blatte, activist, and from the förort. You are one of the best ways for all white anti-racists to get more anti-racist points by showing that they hang out with you in front of their white friends.’ (W 26)

Afterwards I heard that one person I had hung out with had talked about me as ‘orten-tjejen’ [the girl from the förort]. Yes, I think I know that you are reading this. I have a name. I am orten, but I am not ‘orten-tjejen’ from your bucket list whom you can brag about in front of your other white antiracists. (W 26)

When I came out as non-binary I realised that I got invited to white spaces which I earlier on not had been invited to, I was seen in a new light. […] Before I was just this angry, bitchy racialised girl who would constantly point out POC’s existence, rights and the damn shit we’re forced to go through in this society built on and by normative whiteness for white people. Now suddenly you include me in a whole new way. Why? Yes; identification with my sexuality. So I thought it was a little weird when these people contacted me and invited me to their space. And it got even more weird when I opened the door and saw that the space was constituted of only white people. I was the only blatte-queer person in the room. My first thought was: What the fuck is this? Am I some kind of damn trophy they think they’ve won and need to show like ‘LOOK!!! MY CIRCLES AREN’T SOOOO WHIIIIITE!!’ Neither me nor any other of my racialised LGBTQ-siblings are some damn addition to your circles supposed to make you look like something ‘better’. (W 52)

Research shows that particularly LGBTQ people racialised as Muslims have been made intelligible through the frame of the ‘token victim’ (Erdem, Haritaworn, & Tauqir, 2008, p. 78). ‘Tokenised’ LGBTQ people racialised as non-white and/or Muslim are in in this context again seen as ‘exceptions’ who have emancipated themselves from oppressive cultural context, thus re-inscribing the narrative of ‘the West’ as safe and progressive (Erdem et al., 2008; Jungar & Peltonen, 2015), constituting itself against threat of the ‘hateful other’. While it could be argued that the token inclusion described in the above quotes opens up spaces and opportunities to activists racialised as non-white and/or Muslim, the writers frame this distinctly as a particular version of exotification, where they are turned into an accessory in spaces otherwise dominated by white people (who might even gain extra credibility through their association with LGBTQ people racialised as non-white).

Beyond the issue of tokenism, sexualised exotification or fetishisation is a common grid of intelligibility. The writers are exposed to strongly racialised notions of masculinity or femininity, which are accorded value in very different ways.

Another thing you are often exposed to as blatte is exotification. I definitely feel very clearly how I am seen as exotic, as foreign, as the ‘masculine’ and ‘dominant’ blatte who should take control. I have several times gotten comments like that I ‘look dangerous.’ (W 4)

Sometimes the person I meet manages to get through the first date completely without exotifying me or saying something femmephobic; they save it till during or after [sexual] contact. ‘I think it’s unsexy with feminine guys, you blattar are more masculine with your beards.’ Girl please. ‘You Arabs are so … .’ When did I become ‘you [Arabs]’. When did I become representative for all Arab men? I’m here to get laid, not to talk about the Gulf War. (W 78)

I’m not your damn Persian prince you can ‘ride the flying carpet’ with […] Exotification. We blattar have all experienced it, right? (W 27)

Honestly, I don’t go clubbing much. One of the last times I was out it was at a queer club here in Stockholm. Almost everybody apart from me and my friends where white. White Swedes spoke English to me, complimented me in English, made me feel bad and quickly leave them because I couldn’t handle it. (W 63)

Exotification, when people treat you like a mango or a papaya because of the way you look, your ethnicity etc. Might seem like a small thing, but you who experience it do know that it is tough in the long term to be called things like ‘mocha caramel queen’, getting to hear ‘lets mix that coco with the cream’ etcetc. (W 58)

The way in which racialisation and exotification intersect in these examples show that the writers’ sexual orientation or gender identity is made intelligible based on highly stereotypical notions of racialised identities.

As a racialised person, especially as a Japanese person in the West I constantly get exotified and fetishized. East-Asian girls are always seen as straight and to be existing for (white) men […]. As East-Asian girl (as whom I get misgendered) I more frequently have my queer identity put into doubt than white girls. I am denied my own sexuality and my queerness. (W 63)

To constantly be sexualised [as an East-Asian woman]. To see East-Asian men be desexualised, denied a sexuality and representation because of that. (Or when mostly white people fetishize us as objects, as decorations and parts of their ‘aesthetic’). I am so tired of this bullshit. I’m not exotic, I’m exhausted. (W 63)

Because I am East-Asian and are sometimes taken for a girl and sometimes for a guy I get very different reactions in public. When I one day get taken for East-Asian girl I get over-sexualised, while when I get taken as East-Asian guy I get totally de-sexualised. Being taken for an East-Asian guy has led to a lot of gender dysphoria for me. Because East-Asian guys are so de-sexualised by society I have felt ugly and disgusting and inadequate when people take me for a guy. […] No matter what I look like or what I get taken for, it’s seldomly on my terms because I am trans and East-Asian. (W 36)

Both hypersexualisation and de-sexualisation are central and long-standing narratives in the exotification and externalisation of bodies racialised as non-white in Western societies (Han, 2007; Laskar, 2007; Massad, 2007). Notions of ‘the other’ as both sexually exciting and dangerous are closely connected to European colonial history, and, yet again, position ‘civilised’ white societies in opposition to communities and individuals racialised as non-white (Laskar, 2015). Laskar demonstrates how images of racialised others were used to ‘steadily produc[e] counter-images and deterrents to the [Swedish] majority society’s ideals of gender, sexuality, class and race’ (Laskar, 2015, p. 138). The hypersexuality accorded to black bodies and Asian women, the dangerous masculinity ascribed to bodies orientalised as ‘Arab’ and the emasculation of Asian men as described in the Instagram entries above all function as a ‘constitutive outside’ (Haritaworn, 2015, p. 85) to a normalised sexuality ascribed to white bodies.

These grids of intelligibility portray the subject position of LGBTQ people racialised as non-white and/or Muslim as objects of desire, pity, or fascination by white LGBTQ people. Tokenism and sexualised exotification further re-inscribe LGBTQ people racialised as non-white and/or Muslim as externalised others, made intelligible in an oppositional relation to white LGBTQ people, who are therefore once more established as the main frame of reference for how sexuality and gender identity become intelligible in the Swedish context.

(Lack of) representation

For most of the writers, entering LGBTQ spaces in Sweden entails the instant realisation that these spaces are predominantly white. Some reference the fact that in white LGBTQ spaces, they are themselves read as threatening, based on their being racialised as non-white and/or Muslim. The ascription of LGBTQ phobia to racialised communities and racialised bodies follows them into these spaces, requiring a careful adjustment in order to make themselves less ‘threatening’. They describe this as turning themselves into a ‘nice blatte’ or ‘conscious blatte’, which marks them out as the ‘liberal exception’ from the homo-/transphobic racialised norm, and thus as legitimate and ‘safe’ in white LGBTQ contexts (Bracke, 2012; Erdem et al., 2008). This entails, one more conditional intelligibility on the terms of a white majority LGBTQ community, with entry being granted to those being queer in ‘the right way’.

Somewhere in between I came out and started hanging out with queers I realised that that it would not go smoothly. In these [LGBTQ] spaces I was clearly the black sheep. I could not identify as lesbian. In these spaces I was Arab. (W 33)

Because queer safe spaces in Sweden often have been dominated by and built by white LGBTQ-people they are also built according to that group’s needs and notions of where the danger is. WHO the danger is. Which body potentially is homo-, bi- or transphobic. Beyond POC-LGBTQs often not being read as LGBTQ because queerness in Sweden = openness/enlightenment and thus = whiteness, POCs are also seen as bearers of homo-, bi- or transphobia in a racist world view. To be allowed belonging to a ‘safe queer space’ in Sweden can therefore require different forms of adjustment from a POC. Through making oneself unthreatening though language, not taking up for much space, not being too many blattar at the same time, to be a ‘fin blatte’, assume the current queer norm, style, opinion, taste etc that whiteness has created. (W 75)

Sometimes it feels like queer-style is a guard. The focus is more on my crazy style than me being blattetrans. But it only works in the white queer world and sometimes in the white cis-heteronormative world. Because then you are seen as a conscious blatte and get cred for that. (W 25)

I stopped talking like I had grown up talking, avoided my friends from home because I knew that they never would understand. Did everything to fit in with queer white contexts but it always felt forced and wrong, I was never as comfortable as I was with other kids from the förort. (W 50)

‘The right kind of queer’ seems to always already be racialised as white, with norms around style and beauty being based on bodies racialised as white. Experiences and bodies of LGBTQ people racialised as non-white and/or Muslim are exotified in these contexts through the various frames of intelligibility discussed above. Many writers point out the general lack of representation as one of the reasons for why they were insecure about whether they can actually be LGBTQ while also being racialised as non-white and/or Muslim.

There are so many norms in the trans community that I know that I am not the only one who sometimes feels that they are not ‘sufficiently trans’. Just like hegemonic whiteness fucked with my brain and told me that I could not be non-binary if I wasn’t 175 cm tall and hade really pale skin. (W 36)

It was obviously also harder to realise because the few LGBTQ people I saw in the media or read about in school were all white. It would have felt less unthinkable and alien, and I had realised a lot earlier if I just had got to see people who looked like me, who had the same experiences as me, were lesbian and happy. But I didn’t get that, so I interpreted it simply as something that other people were, but never I myself. (W 32)

I was very religious during my early teens, wore niqab for a while, and during that period I avoided even thinking about my queerness. If I didn’t think about it, it did not exist. In my head Islam and LGBTQ were completely separated, I would never be accepted + did queer Muslims even exist? (W 50)

To not see you own skin colour (in all its nuances) represented is one thing, and something all non-whites experience during their lives. […] However, to not see yourself represented with regard to sexuality is another thing. ARE there even ‘people like me’? ARE there at all black women, who love other women? (W 31)

The search results I find when I google ‘lesbian Latinas’ are links to pornhub, xvideo, xxnx. My sexual orientation and my ethnicity are therefore both individually and in combination with each other only material for men to jerk off to. How can you realise that you are lesbian, that you are allowed to be lesbian, that being lesbian is a real alternative if you never get to see it anywhere apart from distorted, overly sexualised and exploitative contexts? (W 43)

Sometimes it feels like the white culture is the only culture that has somewhat normalised non-straight relationships. Among non-white families this isn’t even a question. Or? Is there a lack of representation of non-white families with queer children that makes me feel this way? Is there an overrepresentation of white families with white queer children that makes me feel that the only families who accept and understand and love their child not matter what partner they chose is the majority of white families? (W 57)

So: representation is important! Here in Sweden, with white trans people and nonbinary people as the constant public face for all of us etc it is damn hard for us trans poc to make space for ourselves when we can’t see our existence mirrored in the queer or non-white spaces. (W 63)

These entries speak of a complete lack of representation with regard to being both racialised as non-white and/or Muslim and LGBTQ, and the ways in which this made the writers question their own identities. While the other narratives (the victim, the coming-out, the exotified other) make their experiences intelligible in certain specific ways in white LGBTQ contexts, these entries show that lack of representation in itself constitutes an important framework of (non-)intelligibility. It renders the positionality of being LGBTQ people racialised as non-white and/or Muslim impossible, to others, but also to themselves. This mirrors existing research on the importance of (positive) representation for identity formation (Phoenix, Howarth, & Philogene, 2015). Without exception, all writers expressed immense gratitude and relief about the fact that the Instagram account existed, as a place in which to find one’s identity represented and thus strengthened by the existence of other LGBTQ people racialised as non-white and/or Muslim.

Conclusion

The overall experience verbalised in the Instagram entries is one of being made intelligible as an ‘externalised other’, mapped out along various grids of intelligibility around race, religion, sexuality and gender. When entering predominantly white Swedish LGBTQ contexts, the young people posting on the account are made intelligible as non-Swedish, with Swedishness being closely connected to whiteness, in contrast to their being racialised as non-white and/or Muslim. Based on the close discursive relationship between Swedishness and gender/LGBTQ-equality (so-called Swedish gender exceptionalism) and its constitutive other, the LGBTQ-phobic immigrant community, they thus also become intelligible as potential victims of LGBTQ phobia ascribed to their own communities – the hateful other(s) (Haritaworn, 2015). Related to this is the noticeable importance accorded to the notion of ‘coming out’ as the quintessential act of asserting one’s own sexuality and gender identity, in relation to oneself and to others. With the coming-out as one of the most central frames of intelligibility for being LGBTQ in a Western European context (Horton, 2017; Jivraj & de Jong, 2011), their way of navigating their sexuality/gender identity is frequently interpreted (to a certain degree even by themselves) as a failure to liberate themselves, rather than a conscious strategy for handling various ways of ‘being LGBTQ’. They (and their racialised bodies) are also othered and exotified in both sexualised and non-sexualised ways that echo earlier historical renderings of the ‘exotic other’ (Laskar, 2015). They are made intelligible as the token racialised friend or hook-up, the fetishised exotic object of desire, or the desexualised body. Additionally, the experience of LGBTQ contexts being predominantly (even exclusively) white means that ‘the right kind of queer’ inhabiting these spaces comfortably is always already racialised as white, further exotifying rather than normalising racialised LGBTQ experiences. This lack of representation in itself constitutes an important grid of non-intelligibility to the extent that the writers question whether they can actually be LGBTQ if they are racialised as non-white and/or Muslim. The way in which they become an ‘impossible other’ even to themselves points towards the importance of analysing grids of intelligibility – they have severe consequences for individuals’ identities, personal well-being and sense of self (Jaspal & Cinnirella, 2010, 2012).

The prevailing grids of intelligibility that make up the ‘field of the recognisable’ (Butler, 2015) can therefore be seen to objectify LGBTQ person racialised as non-white and/or Muslim, making them intelligible either in relation to white, LGBTQ-friendly ‘Swedishness’ or threatening, LGBTQ-phobic racialised ‘others’. In the light of these findings, separatism (in the way this particular Instagram account practises it) can be considered an important political strategy used to deal with the lack of representation and to expand the grids of intelligibility available to LGBTQ people racialised as non-white and/or Muslim.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Katharina Kehl http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5279-0153

Notes

1 All quotes were translated from Swedish to English by the author.

2 Blatte is originally a racist slur, reclaimed as a self-identifier by some people racialised as non-white and/or Muslim in Sweden. I have therefore decided not to translate it.

3 LGBTQ as initialism for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer is problematised for not being representative of the actual variety present in non-hetero/non-cis communities and struggles. I chose this abbreviation because it represents the identities referred to most frequently in the research material.

4 A grassroot organisation founded by young people working for social justice in the disadvantaged areas of Stockholm.