Darcy LEIGH Alternatif Politika, 2017, 9 (3): 343-360

AP
QUEER FEMINIST INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS:
UNEASY ALLIANCES, PRODUCTIVE TENSIONS

Darcy LEIGH *

ABSTRACT
This article examines the ‘uneasy alliance’ between Feminist
IR and Queer IR. The article focuses on three areas of tension
and continuity between the fields: (1) sexuality, sexual
deviance and gender variance; (2) the roles of liberalism in
gendered, sexualized and racialized violence; and (3) binaries
relating to sex, gender and sexuality. The article argues that it
is around tensions between Queer and Feminist IR that a
Queer Feminist IR can be productively articulated. In
particular, a Queer Feminist IR should: centre women and
femmes as well as sexuality and gender variance; disrupt of
binaries and fixed identities without losing the political
leverage that sometimes comes with them; and acknowledge
entanglements with the institutions Feminist and Queer IR
seek to transform while also resisting being neutralized by
assimilation.
Keywords: International Relations, Feminism, Queer,
Gender, Sexuality.

INTRODUCTION

In the last thirty years, Feminist International Relations (IR) has become a
well-established and widely recognised 1 field within the discipline of

*
Sussex Law School, University of Sussex, d.leigh@sussex.ac.uk

* Makale Geliş Tarihi: 27.05.2017

Makale Kabul Tarihi: 29.05.2017

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International Relations, while the growing field of Queer IR has much more
recently become recognised in this way 2. The successive emergence of these
disciplinary fields echoes shifting concerns in global politics more broadly from
what Rahul Rao (2014) calls “the Woman question” to “queer questions”. At
first glance, there are many affinities and continuities between these two varied
fields, just as there are between feminist and queer politics more broadly
(Marinucci, 2010). These affinities are so great that Feminist IR scholar Cynthia
Enloe calls Queer IR “an added string to the bow of feminist interrogation of
international politics” and suggests we “continue into the realms adjacent, the
realms mutually supportive” (Enloe, 2016). Not only does Queer IR often build
on or echo key intellectual and politics commitments of Feminist IR, but some
Feminist IR scholars support Queer IR scholarship institutionally, and even
undertake Queer IR research themselves. 3 In these ways, Queer IR may not exist
without Feminist IR and is in part a product of Feminist IR.

At the same time, however, tensions exist between Queer and Feminist IR,
just as they do between feminist and queer work more broadly (Marinucci,
2010). These tensions are so pronounced that Queer IR scholar Cynthia Weber
asks, in reply to Enloe, whether a “queer intellectual curiosity radically contest[s]
where some feminists draw their ontological limits… their epistemological
limits… and their methodological limits” (Weber, 2016c). Further, Melanie
Richter-Montpetit (2007) shows how a Queer IR analysis challenges feminist
investments in liberal war challenges the potential heteronormative,
assimilationist, militarist, corporate and/or carceral tendencies of some Feminist
IR scholarship.

What is the relationship between the fields of Queer and Feminist IR? How
can an exploration of this relationship inform a Queer Feminist IR? This article
examines the uneasy alliances between Queer and Feminist IR and the
challenges, imperatives and directions posed by that relationship for a Queer
Feminist IR. 4 The article examines three areas of continuity and tension between
Queer and Feminist IR in turn: (1) sexuality, sexual deviance and gender

1
For example: the Feminist Theory and Gender Studies section of the International Studies
Association has grown from 23 members in 1990 to 473 in 2016; the International Journal of
Feminist Politics has risen in ranking; and introductory IR textbooks now generally contain
sections on Feminist IR (Baylis, Smith and Owen, 2014; Brown, 2009).
2
Cynthia Weber’s book Queer International Relations (2016) was a pivotal moment for the
recognition of Queer IR scholarship by the wider discipline.
3
For example: Spike Peterson’s (1990, 2014) research in particular has been foundational to both
Feminist IR and Queer IR; anyone attending a Queer or Feminist IR panel at an IR conference
would notice the overlap of participants.
4
In doing so, the article builds on Rahul Rao’s (2014) exploration of the relationship between
“the woman question” and “queer questions” through literature and film, as well as Melanie
Richter-Montpetit’s (2007) formulation of a “queer transnational feminist” approach to “the
prisoner ‘abuse’ in Abu Ghraib.”

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variance in global politics; (2) the roles of liberalism in gendered, sexualized and
racialized violence; and (3) the naturalisation and violation of binaries relating to
sex, gender and sexuality. In each section, I explore how Queer IR is informed
by and builds on Feminist IR as well as how the two fields differ from and
disrupt each other. 5

I argue throughout that it is around tensions between the two fields that a
Queer Feminist IR can be productively articulated. I also argue that even while
Queer IR critiques liberal, institutional and assimilationist tendencies within
Feminist IR, Queer IR scholarship is also in part dependent on those tendencies.
At the same time, queer analyses can help us understand and strategically
mobilize this ambivalent relationship between the two fields. Finally, I return
repeatedly to the heterogeneity of both fields and, as such, to the closer affinities
between some strands of both fields than others. In particular, Queer and
Feminist IR align more easily and/or necessarily when they are informed by
intersectional, transnational, Black and decolonial feminist politics more broadly
(Richter-Montpetit, 2007: 38) and where they centre – or could/should centre –
transfeminist analyses (Rao, 2014).

1. FROM QUEER SUBJECTS AND EMBODIED SEXUALITIES TO

SEXUALIZED LOGICS AND PRACTICES

This section explores how Queer IR builds on Feminist IR in its focus on

the role of sexuality, sexual deviance and gender deviance in world politics.
First, I describe how some Queer IR scholars focus on non-normatively
sexualized or gendered subjects, or the ways that subjects performatively inhabit
non-normative sexualities. This Queer IR concern echoes the Feminist IR
question “where are the women?” (Enloe, 1989: 7) by asking “where are the
queers?”. This Queer IR concern also echoes intersectional feminist concerns by
asking “who are the queers?”, showing how sexual subjectivities are racialized
differently in global politics. Second, I explore how other Queer IR scholars
eschew this focus on queer subjects, focusing instead on sexualized and
sometimes queer logics of statecraft and world politics more broadly. This builds
on Feminist IR which similarly explores the logics of masculinity and femininity
in IR in addition to asking questions about men and women themselves. Overall,
while Queer IR scholarship sometimes critiques Feminist IR scholarship for

5
I do not dedicate the same amount or type of attention to both fields here. This is because I was
invited to contribute a specifically Queer IR perspective to this special issue and the issue already
contains several explorations of Feminist IR perspectives. That said, centring a Queer IR
perspective in this article does not imply that queer is ‘good’ and feminism is ‘bad’: rather, this
article explores how the fields can learn from/with each other.

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cissexist and heteronormative assumptions, this section primarily shows that

Queer IR can build on, extend, complement and ally with Feminist IR.

Sexualized and Queer Subjects

Cynthia Enloe’s question, “where are the women?” is foundational to

Feminist IR (Enloe, 1989: 7). Answering this seemingly simple question from an
IR perspective has complex implications for the study of world politics. As Enloe
illustrates, this question draws attention to the many and varied involvements of
women with the conventional objects of IR, such as war, security and the state
(Enloe, 1989: 7; see also Tickner, 2014; Zalewski, 2013). Often this means
drawing attention to power located in homes, workplaces and in interpersonal
relationships, in addition to the forms of power located in combat and foreign
policy. The question “where are the women?” also draws attention to the ways
in which women have been defined out of war, security and the state through a
focus on the activities and locations of men. That is, asking “where are the
women?” also makes visible that we may have been asking ‘where the men are?’
all along. As such, simply posing the question “where are the women?”, reveals
the way that women have been defined out of the very concept of ‘the
international’ and as such excluded from the study of international relations.

In a similar vein, much Queer IR scholarship seeks to locate queer, LGBT

or otherwise sexually deviant and gender variant subjects within IR and global
politics. This poses the question: ‘where are the queers?’. Much Queer IR
scholarship has explored, for example, the increasingly visibility and integration
of LGBT people in militaries (Agathangelous, Bassichis and Spira, 2008;
Bulmer, 2011, 2013; Richter-Monpetit, 2014). Queer IR scholars have also
explored how LGBT people face specific security problems (Amar, 2013; Hagen,
2016; Jauhola, 2013; McEvoy, 2015). Other Queer IR scholars consider LGBT
activism and particularly LGBT rights activism from an IR or international
perspective (e.g. Ayoub, and Paternotte, 2014; Ayoub, 2016).

Implicit in this project of making queers visible is a queer critique of the

ways that Feminist and mainstream IR have made queers invisible by focusing
on heterosexuality, assuming the subjects it studies are straight, or has otherwise
overlooked queer women and people. For example, Jamie Hagen’s (2016)
research on the UN reveals how gendered and feminist approaches in the
Women, Peace and Security agenda are heteronormative and cissexist. These
assumptions obscure or even condone practices that affect people who (or whose
practices) are not heterosexual or cisgender. In this way, Hagen argues that WPS
policies might protect heterosexual and cisgender women, while leaving queer
women and queer people in general unprotected.

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In asking ‘where are the queers?’ Queer IR scholars also raise the question
of ‘which queers?’. This Queer IR question is especially informed by
transnational, women of colour and Black feminist scholarship and activism, as
well as decolonial scholarship in Queer Studies such as Jasbir Puar’s (2007)
Terrorist Assemblages. Queer IR studies have shown that, while LGBT rights are
increasingly promoted by Western foreign policy, these policies promote the
rights of very specific – white, western, Christian and non-disabled - LGBT
people (e.g. Weber, 2016a). In this line, Queer IR suggests that some specific
LGBT people participate in colonial violence in the name of rights, against other
LGBT people, and racially darkened people in general (Leigh, Richter-Montpetit
and Weber, forthcoming).

If we return to Feminist IR here and ask again “where are the women?”,
we can also see that the figure of the queer in international relations is often
imagined as male. For example, all but one of the figures considered in Cynthia
Weber’s field-shaping text Queer International Relations are male or men (Weber,
2016a). From a feminist perspective, we can also see that women are sometimes
excluded from “queer”. For example, bisexual asylum seekers or lesbian asylum
seekers who have married men for security and/or had children, are not seen as
authentically homosexual and therefore worthy of asylum by Western
governments (Lewis, 2010).

Sexualized and Queer Logics and Practices

Because women and men are inseparable from (although not the same as)
ideas about masculinity and femininity, asking “where are the women?” also
opens up questions of gender in international relations much more broadly.
Feminist IR scholars have, in this vein, followed feminist scholars more
generally to show how logics of war, security, statehood and nationalism are
gendered (Yuval-Davis, 1997). For example, not only are Western soldiers
imagined as embodying hegemonic – tough, aggressive, protective – military
masculinity, but national identity and security policies themselves are similarly
gendered as hegemonically masculine (Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005; Cohn,
1987; Duncanson, 2013; Gentry and Sjoberg, 2015). Reading masculinity and
femininity into IR, Feminist IR scholars have also documented the imagined and
embodied roles of heterosexuality in IR. There is a (heterosexual) female ‘other’
to the (heterosexual) hegemonic masculinity of IR: together they reproduce
citizens, soldiers and nations, while aggressive masculinity and men protect
peaceful femininity and women (Elshtain, 1995).

Similarly, Queer IR scholars look not just to the constitution or

embodiment of sexualised subjects, but also to the operation of sexualized logics
and practices more broadly. Queer IR scholars also go further than Feminist IR

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scholars by focussing not just on heterosexuality, but on the implications of this

focus for non-normative sexualities or genders, and on the presence of sexual
deviance or gender variance in global politics. Suspending the focus on queer (or
straight) bodies and people brings into view queer (and straight) logics and norms in
global politics. Here, Queer IR not only draws on Feminist IR scholarship that
examines gendered norms and logics but also draws on post-structuralist
feminism more which sees gender and subjectivity as performatively constituted
(Butler, 1990) and Foucaultian accounts of sexuality as produced in similar ways
(Foucault, 1978). For example, Weber’s Queer IR methodology asks how the
homosexual is “figured” in policies and practices (i.e. not just embodied by self-
identified homosexual subjects) and how this figuration is core to the
construction of states and sovereignty (Weber, 2016b, 2015).

For Queer IR scholars, paying attention to sexualised logics involves

making Feminist IR’s presumed heterosexuality explicit (Peterson, 1999) and
further showing that ideas about homosexuality are equally central to
international relations’ core concerns of sovereignty, nationhood, security and
state formation. For example, Weber’s scholarship on US-Caribbean relations
after the Cuban Revolution extends Feminist IR through Queer IR, arguing that
the Cuban Revolution was perceived as a crisis for US hegemony in the region,
and that this crisis included not only a masculinity crisis but also a
heterosexuality crisis (Weber, 1999). Similarly, Weber and I show that
figurations of gender and sexuality are central to conceptions of Western state
security (Leigh and Weber, forthcoming). This Queer IR work builds on Queer
Studies and transnational feminism more broadly and specifically on Indigenous
feminist (Simpson, 2014; Smith, 2005; Coulthard, 2016) and trans prison
abolitionist (Stanley and Smith, 2011) critiques of the entanglement of gender,
sexuality, statehood and sovereignty.

By examining sexualized logics rather than sexualised – and specifically

human – subjects, we might further ask “what” counts as queer in IR. Elizabeth
Povienelli describes how a creek in northern Australia has become a contested
figuration of security among Indigenous people, the Australian government and
the mining industry (Povinelli, 2015; Povinelli, 2016; see also the reading of
Povinelli in Leigh and Weber, forthcoming). According to some of the
Indigenous women who live near this creek, the creek used to be a girl, who
turned into a boy, who turned into a creek. This means, Povinelli suggests, that
some people might call Tjipel “transgender” or “butch”, particularly in the
“contemporary fields into which her legs extend” (Povinelli, 2015: 177). The
creek’s gender is part of the version of the creek that these Indigenous women
want to preserve, but Indigenous people must be careful about telling public
stories about sexuality or gender because Indigenous people are themselves

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figured as racially darkened undeveloped perverse security threats by the

Australian liberal state (Povinelli, 2015: 176). At the same time, Indigenous
people do need to tell stories about what are perceived to be their ‘traditional’
relationships to the creek in order to make claims to land are deemed legitimate
by the Australian state. This example demonstrates how Queer IR also raises
questions about how who or what counts as a sexualized figuration more
generally assumes a line between the ‘biological’ and the ‘geological’, how this
line designates proper objects and agents of global politics, and what worlds it
enables or works to extinguish in the IR imaginary.

Finally, tracing sexualized and queer formations of sexuality and gender in

this way further exposes the inseparability of sexuality and gender from race,
ability, and other axes of power and reinforces Queer IR’s commitment to
intersectional and transnational analysis and politics. For example, Melanie
Richter-Montpetit examination of rationalities of empire, gender and sexuality in
“the prisoner ‘abuse’ in Abu Ghraub” shows how white heteropatriarchal
colonialism functions in practice – and benefits some women at the expense of
others (Richter-Montpetit, 2007: 38). Similarly, Weber shows how sexualized
logics of international relations render racially darkened subjects sexually
“perverse” and white western subjects as sexually “normal” (Weber, 2016a).
Here, once again, Queer IR is informed by and allied with transnational, women
of colour and Black feminist scholarship and activism, decolonial scholarship in
Queer Studies – and those Feminist IR Scholars who are similarly aligned. Once
again, these intersectional commitments are often the basis on which Queer and
Feminist IR converge or diverge.

Overall, some Queer IR scholarship builds on Feminist IR scholarship

Queer IR scholars also build on Feminist IR scholarship on the roles of men,
women, femininity and masculinity in key objects of IR such as war, state
formation, nationhood and sovereignty, by showing that sexuality and
sexualized subjects are equally central. Also like some Feminist IR scholars,
Queer IR scholars explore how sexualised subjectivities are imagined or
embodied at intersections of multiple axes of power, including not only sexuality
and gender but race, religion and ability.

Thus far I have described a relationship between Feminist and Queer IR

that is largely continuous and complimentary, with Queer IR extending Feminist
IR’s concerns with power, gender and (hetero)sexuality over new terrain, asking
‘where are the queers’ and exploring queer and sexualized logics in international
relations. From this angle, Queer IR scholarship points to gaps in Feminist IR
scholarship which could be addressed without fundamentally challenging
Feminist IR. While this does not make Queer IR merely an “added string to the

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bow of feminist interrogation of international politics”, it could make Queer IR

“adjacent” and “mutually supportive” (Enloe, 2016).

The focus of Queer IR scholars on intersectionality, race, religion and

ability, however, points to a stronger affinity between Queer IR scholarship and
certain strands of Feminist IR scholarship – and tensions between Queer IR
scholarship and less intersectional strands of Feminist IR scholarship. Yet a
focus on sexuality and gender variance or on intersectionality and race alone
does not constitute Queer IR. As I explore further dimensions of Queer IR in the
following sections, tensions between the two fields become more pronounced.

2. LIBERAL, FEMINIST AND LGBT VIOLENCE

A critique of liberal theories and politics of subjecthood, including of liberal

feminism and liberal LGBT politics, is central to Queer IR scholarship. In this
section, I first consider Queer IR critiques of liberalism and particularly the role
of rights in liberal politics. I then describe how Queer IR questions feminist and
LGBT engagement with liberalism. In this section, I show how Queer IR
continues to build on Feminist IR, especially on those strands of Feminist IR
that are informed by post-structuralist and transnational feminism more broadly.
However Queer IR can also be seen to come into conflict with other strands of
Feminist IR around the embracement of liberal politics.

Critiques of liberalism, human rights and identity politics are central to

Queer IR as well as to Queer Studies and queer politics more generally (Brown,
2008; Conrad, 2014; Duggan, 2003). Like post-structuralism and Queer Studies,
Queer IR scholarship show that liberal politics and logics misrepresent the
world. Sexualized subjects are not, as they appear in liberal narratives fixed,
natural or universal (Butler, 1990). Instead, sexualized subjects are made to
appear fixed natural and universal – and it is this process of making to appear in
which Queer IR scholars are most interested. In this line, Queer IR scholars
challenge liberal narratives of human rights, human rights holders and identity
categories such as ‘women’ or ‘LGBT’ (Leigh, Richter-Montpetit and Weber,
forthcoming). While rights, rights holders and identities might be articulated as
universal and fixed in liberal narratives, and even as universally ‘good’, Queer IR
scholars show how these narratives misrepresent contingent and emergent
realities.

Further, Queer IR scholars show how liberal narratives of rights, rights

holders and identities have political implications and that, far from the ‘progress’
and ‘emancipation promised by liberalism, those implications are often violent
and neocolonial. Queer IR scholars draw on scholarship on the historical
emergence of liberalisms to show that liberalisms are historically and

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contemporarily entangled with empire (Leigh, 2014). Liberal narratives of

citizenship, rights and progress have justified and enacted colonization, war and
other violence. They continue to do so: with liberal narratives of progress,
freedom, civilization and rights justifying everything from the racist regulation of
Muslim women’s clothes to Western war. Here Queer IR once again draws on
broader decolonial, anti-racist and intersectional scholarship (e.g. Spivak, 1990).

Queer IR is therefore critical of Feminist IR when Feminist IR takes a

liberal approach and focuses on rights or identity, and resonates with those post-
structuralist strands of Feminist IR that similarly critique liberalism, rights and
identity politics. When some feminists seek inclusion for women in liberal states,
militaries and IGOs, or when they promote rights globally, Queer IR scholars
ask whether this desire and promotion enacts further colonization and violence,
benefitting white Euro-American middle class cis women at the expense of poor,
trans and racially darkened women (Richter Montpetit, 2007).

Similarly, Queer IR scholars have shown how the rights bearing LGBT
subject is figured as a universal (often white, male and non-disabled) subject.
Queer IR scholars have also shown how LGBT rights have been used as a
symbol of liberal progress, and a rationale for neo-colonial colonial relations
(Leigh, Richter-Montpetit and Weber, forthcoming). This is illustrated by Hilary
Clinton’s speech, “LGBT Rights are human rights” which echoes Clinton’s
speech “womens’s rights are human rights” (Clinton, 2011; see also Rao, 2014).
As Rao (2014) notes, as an international figure of feminism and female success
in state and international politics, Hilary Clinton embodies tensions between
Queer IR and liberal strands of Feminist IR.

For many Queer IR scholars and activists, particularly those concerned

with intersectional and anti-racist politics, this analysis of the violence of human
rights discourses means we must outright reject those discourses. This ‘anti-
assimilationist’ and ‘anti-normative’ position is common to Queer Studies and
queer activism more broadly. This position would mean an outright rejection of
liberal feminism, including liberal Feminist IR, along with demands for inclusion
in and the use of the tools of sovereignty, statehood, militaries and security.

Two points, however, complicate any straightforward rejection of liberal

Feminist IR by Queer IR scholars. First, some Queer IR scholars are joining a
small but increasing number of Queer Studies scholars in calling into question
the feasibility and desirability of maintaining this ‘anti’ position. As Queer
Studies scholars Robyn Weigman and Elizabeth Wilson put it, these scholars are
exploring the value of “suspending Queer’s aximomatic anti-normativity”
(Weigman and Wilson, 2015). For example, Richter-Montpetit, Weber and I
(forthcoming) draw on Weber’s (2016a) work to argue that:

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“while a Queer IR analysis shows how certain articulations of LGBT

rights and subjects may underpin and/or justify neo-imperial global
relations, it is also necessary to take seriously questions such as, what
would it mean for Clinton not to argue that gay rights are human
rights, and human rights are gay rights? What harm (and good) would
that (also) do in the world, by differently organizing international
relations through LGBT rights claims and their rejection?’”

Second and related, the post-structuralism that informs Queer IR

scholarship suggests that may be impossible to get “outside” of liberalism
(Walker, 1992; Foucault, 1978: 95; Butler, 1993: 21). Seeking inclusion is not
only an object of scholarship but also a scholarly practice when it comes to
gaining legitimacy, status and resources in universities and organisations (a
common practice in this line would be activity within the International Studies
Association). Some Queer IR scholars might oppose the assimilation of some
feminist IR scholars into mainstream IR in this way. Yet without this
‘assimilation’ and its associated institutional capital as well as the legitimization
of new realms of enquiry (e.g. the body) in IR, it is possible that queer IR would
not even exist. Queer IR is in some ways dependent on liberal Feminist IR, even
as Queer IR rejects liberal Feminist IR.

In these ways, Queer IR has an ambivalent relationship to Feminist IR,

particularly liberal Feminist IR and liberal feminism more broadly. Queer IR is
critical of and opposed to liberal Feminist IR, but is also partially indebted to
and potentially inextricable from liberal Feminist IR. In the next section, I
consider how a Queer Feminist IR might navigate such ambivalence.

3. BEYOND, WITH AND WITHIN BINARIES

Queer IR further builds on and departs from Feminist IR in its attention to

binaries of gender. 6 Queer IR scholars are concerned both with the naturalisation
of binary logics of sexuality in world politics, and with the ways that sexualized
subjects and practices exceed these politics (Weber, 2016a, 2016b; Richter-
Montpetit and Weber, 2017). In this way, Queer IR builds on Feminist IR which
has long been concerned with the binary relationship between masculinity and
femininity or men and women at the heart of international relations (see above).
Queer IR makes explicit the implicit binary between heterosexuality and
homosexuality already present in Feminist IR (Peterson, 1999; Hagan, 2016).
We might call this an omission in some Feminist IR scholarship, or we might
say it was the implicit object of that scholarship all along. Either way, Queer IR
scholars make visible the queer or homosexual ‘other’ to the heterosexual and
heterosexuality in world politics examined by Feminist IR scholarship.

6
See Cohen (1997) for a discussion of binaries and Queer Theory more broadly.

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Queer IR further multiplies the binaries that matter with regards to gender
and sexuality in global politics, centring not only the homosexual vs.
heterosexual binary, but the normal vs. perverse binary and the transgender vs.
cisgender binary. Queer IR research into the construction of the ‘normal’
homosexual, for example, shows that the homosexual is not always ‘other’ to
Western states and liberalism (Weber, 2016a). ‘Normal’ homosexuals (e.g.
LGBT rights holders, citizens and soldiers) can also stand-in for Western states
and liberalism with ‘perverse’ homosexuals standing in for those threats that
need civilizing and/or rescuing (Rao, 2012). Equally importantly Queer IR
research shows that the binary of cisgender vs. transgender creates cissexism and
violence against transgender people in world politics (Shepherd and Sjoberg,
2012).

However, Queer IR not only explores how these binaries are made to seem
natural, but also how they are and can be exceeded by queer international
subjects, policies, practices and analyses. That is, Queer IR scholars explore how
queer international subjects, policies, practices and analyses can inhabit
seemingly mutually exclusive opposed positions simultaneously (e.g. male
and/or female, homosexual and/or heterosexual, normal and/or perverse).
Importantly this is not a refusal of the binary, but the simultaneity of non-binary
logics (hence not just ‘and’ but also ‘or’). For example, Cynthia Weber’s (2015,
2016a) and Altman and Symons’ (2016) analyses of Conchita Wurst, the
Eurovision Song Contest winning drag queen, exemplify the and/or logics of
queer international relations. 7 European politicians and commentators do talk
about Conchita Wurst in binary terms, often accusing them of being either
perverse or normal. At the same time, however, Conchita Wurst figures herself
as normal and perverse (as well as male and female, racially darkened and white).
That is, this European figure is normal and/or perverse (Weber draws on Barthes
here). Over time, however, as Conchita Wurst becomes more established, she is
increasingly articulated in either/or terms – with the ambiguity stripped out of
her public profile.

Similarly, in a very different context, I have shown how activists seem to be

faced with ‘either/or’ political choices when it comes to engaging with state,
nationalist, sovereign and institutional logics (Leigh, 2014). Political theories and
political organisations, for example, tend to focus either on embracing states,
nations, sovereignty and institutions or rejecting them. This includes embracing
or rejecting all the ways that the state, nationalist, sovereign and institutional
logics are gendered and sexualised. Once again, however, in practice many
activists embrace and/or reject the state, nationalist, sovereign and institutional
logics.
7
Here Weber draws on Roland Barthes (1974).

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Importantly, the fact of and/or is not enough for Queer IR scholars:

precisely how this and/or manifests, how gender and sexuality manifest, and
what the political implications are, all matter as much as the and/or itself for
Queer IR scholars. As I show elsewhere, one instance of ‘and/or’ might be a
way of assimilating and neutralising anti-normative or anti-state threats, while
another might be an instance of subversion (Leigh, 2014). Of course, the same
instance could itself be reinforcing and subverting of heteropatriarchal
colonization simultaneously: another implication of Queer IR’s engagement
with Queer Studies more broadly is an avoidance of simple oppression vs.
resistance binaries.

Once again, Queer IR can be seen to build directly on, critique, and diverge
from Feminist IR in its approach to binaries. Here, again, Queer IR and
Feminist IR stand in uneasy alliance – Queer IR is in part continuous with post-
structuralist IR and post-structuralist-informed feminism, but Queer IR’s focus
on the and/or of sexuality is also often at odds with Feminist IR foci on the
either/or of gender.

This does not mean that the queer way is the ‘right’ way: blurring binaries
comes with its own set of risks, not least a loss of the lines of political action and
accountability offered by hard opposition. Nonetheless, a queer analytics of the
‘and/or’ can help articulate existent and potential relationships between
Feminist and Queer IR – not least when it comes to approaching the paradox of
Queer IR benefitting from institutional and assimilationist Feminist IR while
also challenging it. That is, we can see that that Feminist and Queer IR are and
could be further related in and/or ways.

4. UNEASY ALLIANCES, PRODUCTIVE TENSIONS

Queer IR owes an enormous debt to Feminist IR as well as to Feminist

scholarship and activism in general. Feminist IR has opened up questions about
who or what counts as the conventional objects of IR, bringing gender, bodies,
homes and more into the discipline. Feminist IR has also opened up questions of
the workings of power, gender and (some forms of) sexuality. Many feminist IR
scholars have also insisted that gender is inseparable from race and other axes of
power. Queer IR makes explicit heteronormative assumptions within Feminist
IR, insisting that Feminist IR analyses be expanded to include sexuality, sexual
deviance and gender variance. In these ways, Queer IR draws and builds on the
Feminist IR project. Queer IR arguably also contributes to the Feminist IR
project: suggesting that when Feminist IR scholars are concerned with women in
world politics, they should also be concerned with lesbian, bisexual and
transgender women.

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Yet this relationship is not always an easy one – not least because the terms
‘Feminist IR’ and ‘Queer IR’ hold together and in tension so many different
strands of feminist and queer politics. Queer IR draws on specific versions of
Feminist IR and feminism more generally (particularly those informed by post-
structuralist, decolonial, intersectional, Black, transnational, women of color,
and trans feminisms), and often rejects other versions of feminism (particularly
liberal and institutional feminisms). Following this rejection, Queer IR also calls
into question the ways in which Feminist IR has become integrated or
assimilated into ‘malestream’, mainstream, liberal and state-oriented IR, as well
as into liberal, carceral, corporate, militarised and institutional feminisms more
broadly.

Conversely, Feminist IR raises questions about the presence (or absence) of

misogyny, women, femmes and femininity in Queer IR (including transmysogy,
trans women, trans femmes and trans femininity). Much LGBT scholarship and
activism more broadly has conventionally been dominated by (white, non-
disabled, cissexual) gay men. Not only are there more spaces, organisations and
so-on for gay men, but gay men somehow come to stand-in for ‘L’, ‘B’ and ‘T’.
This might be the case, for example, when ‘LGBT’ participation in the military
more accurately means ‘G’ participation in the military. When Weber (2016a)
looks at representations of the queer in IR, for example, she finds these are
predominantly male. Feminism is essential here to ensure that Queer IR scholars
keep asking “where are the women?” (Enloe, 1989). Feminist IR raises questions
about Queer IR’s feminist commitments, including Queer IR’s commitments to
lesbian, bisexual and transgender women and femmes.

Queer and Feminist IR also have an uneasy alliance around their

respective statuses within the discipline of IR, which echo tensions between
queer and feminist politics more broadly. Feminist IR brings institutional and
disciplinary capital from which Queer IR benefits, even while opposing the
implications of that capital. Queer IR scholars bring a unique and/or analysis
not only to the study of world politics but to the ways that a Queer Feminist IR
can and should relate to Feminist IR, ‘malestream’ IR, and international politics
more broadly.

Queer Feminist International Relations must operate within/from these

tensions: expanding analysis far beyond ‘where are the [white, cis, heterosexual]
women?’ even while continuing to ask ‘where are the women and femmes?’;
making sex, sexuality and sexual deviance central without losing sight of gender;
disrupting binaries and fixed identities without losing the political leverage that
sometimes comes with them; and acknowledging entanglements with the
institutions Feminist and Queer IR seek to transform while also resisting being
neutralized by assimilation.
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