RE: Trudeau’s Pride participation sets an international example, March 3-9, 2016
“Cautiously optimistic” was the rhetoric of some after the win of the Liberals this past fall in the federal election. From a human rights perspective, who couldn’t be hopeful of change in regime after Harper’s Conservatives?
Human rights were going to be politically regarded in ways where they wouldn’t be immediately dismissed due to their burden on an abstract economy.
That’s right, folks. We now have an elected government that will positively participate in human rights—as long as the advocation for these rights are politically strategic.
Toronto Pride released information about Trudeau’s plans to march in their Pride parade on Feb. 22. The timing of the tweet could not have been more opportune, as this came hours after Parliament’s collective condemnation of the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) movement against Israel and the occupation of Palestine.
A photograph of Trudeau smiling and making a heart shape with his hands, standing in front of a highly saturated, fuchsia backdrop was released with the statement. Could there be a more apt portrayal of pinkwashing?
Pinkwashing describes political or corporate strategies attempting to promote a product or entity through marketing it as queer-friendly. This allows for the entity—specifically Trudeau—to exploit the human rights movement in order to placate those concerned with a politician’s human rights record. While it could be argued Trudeau is merely being a stand-up ally to LGBTQ+ rights, the timing of the Twitter post screams “advantageous.”
Trudeau is not the first powerholder to participate in pinkwashing. Israel has been promoting itself as queer-friendly in order to increase the perception of the colonial state to be a modern democracy where queer tourists and migrants can safely enjoy contributing to the military occupation of Palestine.
Jasbir Puar, associate professor of women’s and gender studies at Rutger’s University, wrote: “Within global gay and lesbian organising circuits, to be gay friendly is to be modern, cosmopolitan, developed, first-world, global north, and, most significantly, democratic.”
This means that we, as white queer and trans people, have an obligation to look at more than just the face value of ourselves and our allies. Pride started centring human rights, and we need to re-adopt that tradition by being critical as to who we are including and who we are ignoring.
The white queer community needs to do a better job at judging the politics of the movement. Queer and trans settlers—alongside their allies—need to be aware of pinkwashing and the problems it inflicts on the global scheme of colonialism.
The structural problems of colonialism, homophobia, and transphobia intersect, and queer solidarity work needs to operate within a framework analyzing the colonial histories of North America/Turtle Island, as well as a global context in how colonialism has evolved in practice under the new name of “development.”
Otherwise, queerness will continue to be seen and felt as originating in and belonging to whiteness, where white people will feel obligated to assert their ideas of gender and sexuality, regardless of its fit in the cultural context.
This paradigm will continue to serve the needs of white settlers while ignoring cultural and historical contexts for other sexual and gender minorities that are already forced to navigate through white supremacist colonialism and its epistemology of gender norms.
