Disrupting Queer Inclusion

Book excerpt: Canada likes to present itself as a paragon of gay rights. This book contends that Canada’s acceptance of gay rights, while being beneficial to some, obscures and abets multiple forms of oppression to the detriment and exclusion of some queer and trans bodies. Disrupting Queer Inclusion: Canadian Homonationalisms and the Politics of Belonging seeks to unsettle the assumption that inclusion equals justice. The contributors detail how the fight for acceptance engenders complicity in a system that fortifies white supremacy, furthers settler colonialism, advances neoliberalism, and props up imperialist mythologies. They do this by highlighting the uneven relationships produced by normative articulations of sexual citizenship in a wide range of contexts – in prisons, at Pride House, Pride marches, fetish fairs, and the feminist porn awards – as well as within the laws and regulations governing marriage, hate crimes, citizenship, blood donation, and refugee claims.