Puar & Masculinity
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I was intrigued by Puar's use of the term "homonationalism," since I found it similar to how "pinkwashing" operates in Western imperialist nations. To my understanding, homonationalism is the way in which Western countries like the United States equate their nationalism with LGBT rights, which complicates the role that queer people of colour play within this ideology. According to Puar, it posits "queerness as an exemplary or liberatory site devoid of nationalist impulses" (173). This is especially evident in how it played out in South Asian gay communities after 9/11, when people felt that their identification as a "queer liberal subject" was inherently at odds with how American society viewed them as having "attachments and associations to terrorist bodies" (Puar 174).
She also writes about the role of the turban, and how many Sikhs in the early 2000s were invested in making it clear to the American public that Sikh turbans and Muslim head coverings were not the same thing, through "assimilative but self-preservationist tactics" (Puar 166). In the eyes of the white settler, however, both are equally Other; they are "queered" in the sense that they both exist on the margins of acceptable white society. Important to Puar's theory is the act of "deturbaning," which includes hate crimes where turbans are forcibly grabbed/unraveled as well as instances of airport security where turbaned Sikhs are made to deturban while guards watch on (177, 167). She analyses the humiliation of this experience as a form of male submission intended to reinforce the domination of "American" masculinity, and claims that the unraveling of hair hints at "homosocial undertones" (Puar 167). This points at how the Sikh man was situated in an inherently queer position in the eyes of the white man, largely due to perceived deviations from colonial norms.