Outing the Pakistani queer: Pride, paranoia and politics in US visual culture

Abstract

This article draws on the 26 June 2011 US embassy-sponsored Gay Pride parade in Islamabad, Pakistan alongside popular US visual cultural moments (2008–2012). I use visual culture to reread US intrigue in Pakistani queer subjects through specific images of terrorist/feminized masculinities – images that elucidate the conspicuous shifts in the technologies of power and sexuality in the context of contemporary Pakistani LGBT visibility. I move through popular US representations of Pakistan, Muslim masculinity and US LGBT visibility – all of which attempt to capture homoerotic desire (and dread) in the transnational landscape of sexuality-racial-gender politics and all of which, I argue, are embroiled in US national identity (and ‘security’). My analysis is two-pronged. First, I look closely and critically at the narrative and visual character of the knowledge the US has created around defining Pakistan and Pakistani (sexual) subjects. Second, I demonstrate that in Pakistan queer resistance is often produced and animated from below the state and articulated against US hegemonic practices of visibility and representation.