Queer/Trans K’s

Terrorism

Terrorism and strict gender binaries are inextricably linked. Any discussion of the Terrorist and the security state must be first be engaged through an understanding of the Trans/Queer

Beauchamp 09

Toby, Assistant Professor, Gender and Women's Studies¶ PhD, Cultural Studies, UC Davis¶ Areas of Interest and Expertise:¶ Feminist and Queer Theory¶ Transgender Studies¶ Transnational Feminist Cultural Studies¶ University of California, Davis, USA Artful Concealment and Strategic Visibility: Article Transgender Bodies and U.S. State¶ Surveillance After 9/11 Surveillance & Society 6(4): 356-366.¶

On September 4, 2003, shortly before the two-year anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security released an official Advisory to security personnel. Citing ongoing concerns about potential attacks by Al-Qaeda operatives, the advisory’s final paragraph emphasizes that terrorism is everywhere in disguise: “Terrorists will employ novel methods to artfully conceal suicide devices. Male bombers may dress as females in order to discourage scrutiny” (Department of Homeland Security 2003). Two years later, the Real ID Act was signed into law, proposing a major restructuring of identification documents and travel within and across U.S. borders. Central components of this process include a new national database linked through federally standardized driver’s licenses, and stricter standards of proof for asylum applications. In response to both the Advisory and the Real ID Act, transgender activist and advocacy organizations in the U.S. quickly pointed to the ways trans populations would be targeted as suspicious and subjected to new levels of scrutiny. Criticizing what they read as instances of transphobia or anti-trans discrimination, many of these organizations offer both transgender individuals and government agencies strategies for reducing or eliminating that discrimination. While attending to the very real dangers and damages experienced by many trans people in relation to government policies, in many cases the organizations’ approaches leave intact the broader regulation of gender, particularly as it is mediated and enforced by the state. Moreover, they tend to address concerns about anti-trans discrimination in ways that are disconnected from questions of citizenship, racialization or nationalism. Nevertheless, by illuminating the ways that new security measures interact with and affect transgender-identified people and gender-nonconforming bodies, transgender activist practices and the field of transgender studies are poised to make a significant contribution to the ways state surveillance tactics are understood and interpreted. The monitoring of transgender and gender-nonconforming populations is inextricable from questions of national security and regulatory practices of the state, and state surveillance policies that may first appear unrelated to transgender people are in fact deeply rooted in the maintenance and enforcement of normatively gendered bodies, behaviors and identities. I argue here that transgender and gender-nonconforming bodies are bound up in surveillance practices that are intimately tied to state security, nationalism and the “us/them,” “either/or” rhetoric that underpins U.S. military and government constructions of safety. At the same time, the primary strategies and responses offered by transgender advocacy organizations tend to reconsolidate U.S. nationalism and support the increased policing of deviant bodies.

Essentializing the War on Terror masks the complex politics behind it – demonizes the enemy and forces them to further conform to acting as the “demon” – a feminist/LGBTQ critique is key to break out of it

Nadine Naber is at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Zeina Zaatari is at the University of California, “Reframing the war on terror: Feminist and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) activism in the context of the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon,” Cultural Dynamics, 2014, Vol. 26(1) 91 –111, http://www.academia.edu/6981816/Reframing_the_war_on_terror_Feminist_and_lesbian_gay_bisexual_transgender_and_queer_LGBTQ_activism_in_the_context_of_the_2006_Israeli_invasion_of_Lebanon._Cultural_Dynamics_2014_26_1_91-111_co-authored_with_Nadine_Naber

Developing such a feminist/LGBTQ critique is also essential precisely because of the framing of the war on terror’s militarized campaigns using post-racial discourse—a totalizing discourse that masks the intersection of multiple forms of oppression through a discourse and logic of obliteration and binarism (with us or against us). Communities threatened by militarized crises respond with the logic of emergency that inadvertently colludes with this campaign to flatten out social complexity and marginalize those whose experiences do not “fit” in binarized political hierarchies. Since 2004, a new generation of feminist and LGBTQ activists has formed various organizations and collectives in Lebanon. These activists refer to their work as grassroots and revolutionary, in one way or another. While distinct, their work, considered together, can be said to constitute a new feminist and LGBTQ social movement in Lebanon. Our research set out to explore the concepts of family, gender, and sexuality that circulate in this movement within the broader context of military invasion, civil conflict, and the politics of a nation-state structured by heteropatriarchy, sectarianism, classism, and racism. During the 2006 invasion, many of our interlocutors were involved in organizing among feminist, LGBTQ, and other progressive organizations, coalitions, and political parties.