POL338 Exam Prep

Thesis Q1

The idea of the "eternal homosexual" is fundamentally flawed, since sexual identities are not universal or non-historical; instead, they are contingent political constructs produced by specific regimes of sovereign power, structurally enforced through heterosexist nationalism, and violently managed by the heteropatriarchy of the settler state.

Weber (Q1)

• Figure of the homosexual created by sovereign political structures changes across time/contexts

  • The homosexual is not natural, it was created through society's efforts to define normal versus perverted

  • Sodomy was considered temporary, homosexual was defined as a permanent species

  • Homosexual was birthed in Western systems of power and knowledge

    • Sum: this author traces the change of sexual identities over time, from the "perverse" Victorian subject to the modern "LGBT rights holder," proving that these identities are shaped by power, not fixed or universal

Peterson (Q1)

• Critiques nationalism and state power by showing how heterosexism functions to produce and privilege certain gender and sexual identities while repressing others

  • Nationalism is problematic in its pursuit of sameness, which threatens those whose identities conflict with the projected image of a  homogenous national identity

  • Heterosexism requires the establishment of discrete/polarized identities and must deny non-heterosexual relationships of intimacy

    • The state enforces rigid sex/gender binaries to sustain structure, proving that normal sexual identities are politically created and not natural

Simpson (Q1)

• Settler states rely on gendered/patriarchal violence, targeting/erasing gendered and racialized groups to maintain power

  • Modern settler states’ (like Canada) sovereignty is male and heteropatriarchal built on the desire to kill

  • Canada requires the death and disappearance of Indigenous women to maintain sovereignty

  • High rate of violence against Indigenous women shows how gendered subjects are manufactured as vulnerable and expendable by the sovereign structure, proving no identity is permanently safe/protected

    • Power of settler states depends on dispossessing and controlling marginalized groups, showing how identity always exists

Thesis Q2

The Canadian officer's declaration advocating intervention to secure gay and women's rights should be rejected because it is built on: the historical civilizing mission discourse used to justify imperialism, a Eurocentric cisheternormative framework that masks geopolitical violence, and uses colonial legal rhetoric that genders states male and renders non-Western states "rapable" based on racial and sexual deviance.

Cynthia Enloe (Q2)

• Foreign policy is built on conventional, masculine assumptions that ignore the actual complexity/agency of diverse women

  • Making feminist sense of international politics requires a genuine curiosity that pays attention to women's roles in all area, even the ones that are deemed private/domestic by conventional (often male) foreign affairs experts

  • Conventional analyses overlook that women's advancements have been credited to enlightened men in power rather than women's own organizing/theorizing

  • Officer's claim reflects this flaws worldview where women are portrayed as object, even victims needing to be saved by a benevolent external power.

    • Interventionist policies are rooted in sexist assumptions that erase women's voices and reduce them to vulnerable subjects in the masculine international system to justify Western control

Weerawardhana (Q2)

• Critiques Western protectionism, arguing it stems from a cisheteronormative whitestream feminist lens that justifies violence abroad

  • Gender equality policy is largely developed by cisgender white women from the Global North, creating narrow frameworks

  • Officer uses this approach and is reflected in foreign policy that justifies military violence in foreign lands on the basis of protecting women and children, using masculine protectionism built on the patriarchy

  • Western countries use feminist language to disguise their power while being hypocritical and committing injustices at home like Canada's genocide of First Peoples.

    • Officer's statement relies on exclusionary cishet framework that perpetuates Western hegemony and violence under the guise of feminism rather than promoting decolonizing justice.

Teemu Ruskola (Q2)

• Colonial legal tradition enables Western intervention by gendering states as male and labeling non-Western states as sexually/racially deviant, therefore rape-able

  • International law treats states as legal persons and colonial invasions are described in terms of sex violence like rape

  • This rhetoric assigns normative masculinity to sovereign states and assigns non-Western states various deviant masculinities combined with civilizational and racial labels that render them rapable.

  • Framing allows the West to be seen as civilized, manly sovereign and the non-Western states as weak or deviant (China's isolationism), making intervention seem natural or justified.

    • West's supposed responsibility to protect is built on colonial, gendered, and sexualized ideas that legitimize Western aggression and subordination of states that are deemed effeminate.

Thesis Q3

Sovereignty depends on systems of gender, sexual, and racial oppression, creating unequal power distributions in IR by building colonial legitimacy through sexual repression and heteronormativity imposed on Indigenous peoples, linking sovereign authority to the masculine warrior protector ideal through militarism, and defining sovereignty around the figure of the sovereign man who exists by excluding queer and racialized others.

Manuela Picq (Q3)

• Colonial sovereignty relied on enforcing heteronormativity and sexual control to justify the dispossession of Indigenous peoples

  • Many Indigenous societies had fluid and diverse understandings of gender/sex before European colonization and Western LGBT frameworks

  • Colonial powers intentionally framed Indigenous sexualities as perverted to validate European violence against the non-Christian savage

  • Portraying Indigenous societies as sexually deviant, colonial powers legitimized their right to seize land and impose rule, linking sexual repression to state sovereignty

    • Demonstrates how the formal claim of state sovereignty is based on historical acts of sex/race oppression, showing how its legitimacy masks deeply rooted colonial power imbalances.

Richter-Montpetit (Q3)

• Argues that sovereignty is built around the political figure of the "sovereign man" who gains legitimacy by excluding queer, racialized, and gender non-conforming subjects

  • Sovereign man is not a natural, singular, universal figure but a construct created through exclusion

  • Ideal of the sovereign man opposes the perverse homosexual/other marginalized figures whose exclusion stabilizes the political order

  • These sexualized/racialized exclusions shape who is seen as dangerous, figures likes the terrorist/illegal migrant are created and seen as inherently dangerous, justifying security policies and global inequality

    • Sovereignty's legitimacy depends on a narrow/oppressive idea of the political subject, making power distributions deeply unequal.