The politics surrounding what is generally described as ‘sexual orientation and gender identity’ (SOGI) have received an astounding degree of public and international attention in recent years. Countries across the globe have implemented substantial equality provisions in order to prove that they are ‘modern’ or ‘Western’ enough, while others responded with pushback in the form of homophobic legislation and persecution. To complicate matters further, much of the homophobia in those states was institutionally embedded by the same colonizing powers that now lead the way in LGBT rights promotion. Sexual rights have become points of contention, eliciting domestic culture wars and international diplomatic rows. The status of sexuality politics in international relations (IR) has not only been elevated, but also impacted apparently SOGI-unrelated policies (such as foreign policy, health care, or labor markets) and thus created new avenues for looking at the construction of conventional IR...

Collections of reflections on Queer International Relations, with contributions by Cynthia Weber, Amy Lind, V. Spike Peterson, Laura Sjoberg, Lauren Wilcox, and Meghana Nayak

Article first published online: 3 SEP 2015 DOI: 10.1111/isqu.12212 This article outlines two theoretical and methodological approaches that take a queer intellectual curiosity about figurations of “homosexuality” and “the homosexual” as their core. These offer ways to conduct international relations research on “the homosexual” and on international relations figurations more broadly, e.g. from “the woman” to “the human rights holder.” The first approach provides a method for analyzing figurations of “the homosexual” and sexualized orders of international relations that are inscribed in IR as either normal or perverse. The second approach offers instructions on how to read plural figures and plural logics that signify as normal and/or perverse (and which might be described as queer). Together, they propose techniques, devices and research questions to investigate singular and plural IR figurations – including but not exclusively those of “the homosexual” – that map international phenomena as diverse as colonialism, human rights, and the formation of states and international communities in ways that exceed IR survey research techniques that, for example, incorporate “the homosexual” into IR research through a “sexuality variable.”

The ‘Sexualities in World Politics: How LGBTQ claims shape International Relations’ is a peculiar work which discusses the impact of LGBTQ politics on the study of International Relations (IR) through LGBTQ experiences to the IR system. This book contains an introduction, eight chapters and a conclusion edited by Manuela Lavinas Picq and Markus Thiel. The eight chapters are based on different themes and written by different authors which helps in collaborating vibrant and insightful ideas about inclusion of the LGBTQ community in mainstream politics. The focus of the book is on the subtitle- ‘How LGBTQ claims shape International Relations’, rather than on the title which talks about Sexualities in World Politics. The editors in the introductory chapter introduce the LGBTQ terminology under the startling acronym LGBTIQQ2SA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, transgender, intersex, queer, questioning, 2-spirited, and allies) along with different elements of LGBTQ perspectives which ...

Queer IR’s momentum in the past four years has made it inconceivable for disciplinary IR to make it ‘appear as if there is no Queer International Theory.’ The ‘queer turn’ has given rise to vibrant research programs across IR subfields. Queer research is not only not a frivolous distraction from the ‘hard’ issues of IR, but queer analytics crack open for investigation fundamental dimensions of international politics that have hitherto been missed, misunderstood or trivialized by mainstream and critical approaches to IR. As queer research is making significant inroads into IR theorizing, a fault line has emerged in IR scholarship on sexuality and queerness. Reflecting the tensions between LGBT studies and queer theory in the academy more broadly, the IR literature on (homo)sexuality largely coalesces into two distinct approaches: LGBT and Queer approaches. The article will lay out the basic tenets of queer theory and discuss how it diverges from LGBT studies. The essay then turns to the books under review and focuses on the ways in which they take up the most prominent issue in contemporary debates in queer theory: the increasing inclusion of LGBT people into international human rights regimes and liberal states and markets. The article finishes with a brief reflection on citation practices, queer methodologies and the ethics of queer research.

The term queer theory came into being in academia as the name of a 1990 conference hosted by Teresa de Lauretis at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a follow-up special issue of the journal differences. In that sense, queer theory is newer to the social sciences and humanities than many of the ideas that are included in this bibliographic collection (e.g., realism or liberalism), both native to International Relations (IR) and outside of it. At the same time, queer theory is newer to IR than it is to the social sciences and humanities more broadly—becoming recognizable as an approach to IR very recently. Like many other critical approaches to IR, queer theory existed and was developed outside of the discipline in intricate ways before versions of it were imported into IR. While early proponents of queer theory, including de Lauretis, Judith Butler, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Lauren Berlant, had different ideas of what was included in queer theory and what its objectives ...

Responding to efforts to ‘resurrect’ International Relations theory, this article suggests that the study of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) – and, more controversially perhaps, queer – global sexuality politics can bring new and transformative insights to the discipline. The study of this global sexuality politics is replete with ideas and approaches that can and should be integrated with IR theory. The article first considers the general absence of global sexuality politics within IR, and why this is significant for theorising the international. It then surveys some recent scholarship which shows how the study of global sexuality politics can speak to and within IR.

In theorising "gay rights as human rights", International Political Theory necessarily engages a fraught terrain: the real world politics of rights for lesbians, gays, bisexuals, trans* and queer people is deeply contested. While now recognised by the UN and leading democratic states (if still incompletely and often haphazardly), LGBTQ 1 rights are denied in many other quarters. Empirical research in global sexuality politics demonstrates the value of human rights in securing protections for LGBTQ people; at the same time, it highlights the ambiguities associated with the universalizing claims of this rights politics. In this chapter, I discuss how the use of LGBTQ rights claims highlights the need for critical theoretical approaches to human rights. These approaches consider the practice of human rights-specifically here of LGBTQ rights-in the context of real world politics. Theorists are required to go beyond normative and abstract claims, such as the one made famous by Hilary Clinton at the UN, that "gay rights are human rights"; they are also required to consider the politicized and sometimes antithetical use to which such claims are put in the foreign policies of states and the behaviour of other international actors. The practice of gay rights by states and other agents, like the practice of other human rights, can be caught up in a politics which undermines the emancipatory impetus of the initial social movement.