CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2015
| Author | Cooper, William Gregory Alexander |
|---|---|
| Title | Patriotically Queer: LGBTQ Activist Strategies in Belgrade |
| Summary | Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) rights activists in Serbia must contend with strong anti-LGBTQ attitudes and, at times, episodes of violence. Many Serbians who hold anti-LGBTQ attitudes view non-heteronormative behavior wrong, backward, immoral, etc. The people who work in the field of LGBTQ activism must navigate through this anti-LGBTQ environment to accomplish their stated goals and objectives. Faced with nationalist opposition that ignores the legitimacy of LGBTQ rights, these activists tend to reach out to international actors for assistance. In doing so, activists may alienate the local populations. Activists must then negotiate between the domestic and the international. This thesis serves to examine LGBTQ activism and to understand the strategies that activists implement to achieve these goals and continue their work. Based on over five months of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with LGBTQ activists, I argue that activists take pragmatic approaches to their activism that may be critiqued as homonormative or even supported by homonationalist stances from international actors. My research draws from draws from literature on gender and nationalism, NGO-ization, homonormativity, homonationalism, and social movement theory in order to understand these complexities within these decisions. I claim that activists work with the resources available to them, and they position themselves in ways that they believe are most productive. I suggest we reexamine our critiques of activist initiatives in order to understand what goes behind activists’ decision making and to acknowledge the precarious situation in which they work. |
| Supervisor | Helms, Elissa Lynn |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2015/cooper_william.pdf |
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