Abstract
By thinking beyond sexual identities and rights, and without assuming queer to be inherently and necessarily antinormative, this chapter considers queer states to be those that are excluded from the realm of normal statehood (that is, liberal/secular) and often deemed as sexually perverse. This move to uncouple queerdom from the liberal state is to draw queer anthropology’s attention to geopolitical deployments of sexuality in the transnational context, wherein “illiberal states” such as Iran are demonized and deemed as violators of LGBTQI rights. Taking up questions of queer geopolitics and transnational refugee regimes, the chapter suggests a queer anthropological approach that analyzes the state as a contradictory and transnational assemblage of multilayered institutions, people, and practices that unevenly map the geopolitics of sex and sexuality.