When discussing Palestinian solidarity in Western left-ish spaces, bad faith ‘gotcha’ arguments —that rely on simplified and isolated perspectives on LGBTQ+ and feminist issues without considering how these struggles are interconnected— are used to rationalize why Palestinians don’t deserve our support. This is Pinkwashing.
Pinkwashing refers to when a state or organization appeals to LGBTQ+ rights in order to deflect attention from its harmful practices.
These harmful, one-dimensional, and plain wrong arguments rooted in Islamophobia and anti-Arab sentiments make a scapegoat out of the patriarchal violence experienced by women and queers in the Middle East as a way to withhold their solidarity with victims of war crimes. Victims of which inevitably include Palestinian LGBTQ+ and femme identities.
The assumption that solidarity with an oppressed community is owed under conditions that serve your comfort is selfish and decenters the actual issue of why the need for solidarity exists in the first place. It assumes a generalized, monolithic perspective of a community you know nothing about, perpetuating racist and sexist stereotypes that do more harm to queer liberation and feminist causes than help them.
It’s no coincidence that the demand for reciprocated solidarity shows up more in white-dominated or patriarchal spaces. If not by white men, you see it from individuals who belong to one oppressed identity but maintain an upper hand in power or privilege within that community, giving them the ability to position themselves as victims when convenient while simultaneously being oppressive to their kind. Yes, I’m talking about white women weaponizing gender to silence non-white women, poor white people weaponizing class to silence poor non-whites, black and brown men weaponizing race to oppress black and brown women, white queers weaponizing queerness to oppress non-white queers, etc.
The entitlement to reciprocated solidarity is less visible within people with multiple intersecting identities because we know it does not help our liberation. In reality, even if it’s not ideal, we have no choice but to put our safety on the line and our differences aside because we need strength in numbers for the best chance at advancing our collective liberation.
Conditional solidarity is victim blaming at its core. Turning your backs on people who desperately need our voices because of your inability to critically examine the root cause of why most oppressed communities are not socially progressive — helps the oppressor. The oppressor that we all share and becomes more powerful the more divided we are.
Most importantly, let’s not forget that women and queer people in Gaza exist. Women and queer people in Muslim communities exist. Why are they exempt from your femme-queer solidarity? You’re exposing yourself for thinking that only certain types of women and queers deserve to be free.
Oh! And by the way, you can still be a gay girl boss and commit war crimes. And it’s not sexist or homophobic to demand a war crime-committing lesbian to fucking stop <3!
OKAY SO EVEN IF Palestine was hypothetically a hostile hellscape for femme and queers (keyword: hypothetical a.k.a. not reality)... Withholding your support to war crime victims in Gaza because ‘they don’t respect us there’ is like saying you don’t support the orcas sinking rich people’s boats because ‘the orcas will kill and eat you’.
You sound as silly as this Stern dude:
And why do we keep acting like the Western world is this supportive haven utopia for women and LGBTQ+ people??? Nothing about banning abortion or criminalizing trans folks screams feminist or queer liberation to me.
As someone who’s experienced life in both the Muslim community (a.k.a. my family and home country’s hegemony) and the so-called progressive West, I don’t feel that much more supported in Seattle than I do in Malaysia as a queer femme person. I don’t deny that there are specific things I do differently in response to the multifaceted nature of cultures, but that’s a story for another time.
For further reading to understand ‘Pinkwashing’ and learn why it is harmful to our interconnected struggles, check out this list of resources compiled by Jewish Voices for Peace.
And the next time someone who doesn’t know any better criticizes your solidarity with Palestine as a mismatch to your feminist and pro-LGBTQ+ values, tell them to stop Pinkwashing!