Gayness between nation builders and money makers: From ideology to new essentialism

Abstract

This chapter explores the question of what supporting the rainbow flag, gay friendliness, and homo-tolerance really mean for the contemporary LGBTQI movement. Through a tour that starts in today’s Sweden, back to the late 1990s in New York’s Chelsea district and making a stopover in Amsterdam, the chapter illustrates the development of the essentialist views at work in the commercialization of contemporary LGBTQI cultures. This particular brand of essentialism, which depicts gayness as both universal and beyond issues of class, with experiences and a history that everyone is expected to share, transforms the once-progressive fight against homophobia into a pernicious Islamophobia by way of what Jasbir Puar calls “homonationalism.” Through a series of vignettes based on journalistic interviews with politicians supported by the work of scholars and astute on-the-ground observations, this chapter exposes what problems crystallizing around symbols like the rainbow flag can present and the reasons why it is important to find new ways to challenge the essentialism that has transformed parts of LGBTQI movements into a conservative brand of homonationalism. It is a call to revisit understandings of sexuality and gender anew as a means for transcending the commercialization and essentialization of the concept of “gayness” that is all-too prevalent in LGBTQI culture in parts of Europe and the US.