We are pleased to have hosted the 21st session of our Political Economy Teach-In Series, “Gender, sex and genocide: the imperative of anti-imperialist solidarity”, on 25 March with Walaa Alqaisiya.
Dr Walaa Alqaisiya is a professor of Middle East Studies at Northwest University in the People’s Republic of China. She is the author of the book Decolonial Queering in Palestine (published with Routledge in 2023) and has been widely published in many renowned journals on the topics of decolonial and anti-imperialist theories, gender and sexuality and Palestine liberation.
The past fifteen months of genocide in Palestine have revealed a lot about the role of queer feminism in reinforcing US imperialism and Zionist settler colonialism. This teach-in sought to situate the colonial and imperialist functionality of sex/gender, explaining how feminism can serve Zionism. It explored the possibilities of Global South-led revolutionary theory and praxis, along with anti-imperialist feminism, on challenging what Qaisiya calls the occupation of gender/sex by genocidal means (the waste of gender/sex), centering Palestine and its struggle for liberation.
All our sessions are recorded, and you can access the previous ones on our website. The videos are in the original version, though we will be working to provide translated transcripts in Arabic, English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese to reach a wider audience.
Reading List
Explore below a curated selection of resources authored by Global South feminists. For a more comprehensive collection on this and other feminist topics, visit the South Feminist Knowledge Hub.
We welcome your contributions! If you know of other resources that should be included in this reading list, please submit them via this form or email us at knowledgehub@southfeministfutures.org.
English
Decolonial queering the politics of being queer in Palestine, Walaa Alqaisiya
This article analyses the work of Palestine’s most established queer rights organization, alQaws for Sexual and Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society, to reveal the political power of being queer in Palestine. It argues that an open, feminist, queer space such as alQaws is a productive site to think and practice decolonization.
This article takes the May 2021 uprising in Palestine, known as the Unity Intifada, as a prism to map old and new political geographies between coloniser and freedom-fighter, whose significance extends beyond the temporal limits of the May event.
The urgency of anti-imperialist feminism, Walaa Alqaisiya
“When LGBTQ and feminist-liberal values end up playing a central role in enabling a genocidal war, it is imperative to revisit and interrogate the meanings and nature of feminism in a more radical philosophical manner.”
Decolonial Queering in Palestine,Walaa Alqaisiya
This book provides a vivid account of the political valence of weaving queer into native positionality and the struggle for decolonisation in the settler colonial context of Palestine, referred to as decolonial queering. It discusses how processes of gender and sexuality that privilege hetero-colonising authority shaped and continue to define both the Israeli-Zionist conquest of Palestine and the Palestinian struggle for liberation, thus future imaginings of free Palestine.
This article looks at the politics of cooptation and weaponization of the Palestinian and Jawlani (Syrians in Jawlan/Golan) struggles for self-determination and liberation on the part of Syrian state officials as a way of justifying their mass human rights violations since the uprising in Syria
Nahla Abdo’s Captive Revolution seeks to break the silence on Palestinian women political detainees, providing a vital contribution to research on women, revolutions, national liberation and anti-colonial resistance.
In this collection, Arab and Arab American feminists enlist their intimate experiences to challenge simplistic and long-held assumptions about gender, sexuality, and commitments to feminism and justice-centered struggles among Arab communities.
“After a year of an ongoing genocide, ethnic cleansing, attempts of expansion by the Zionist settler-colonial project, and of our ongoing steadfast global revolt, we are delivering a message from Palestine, to the world, while words cannot convey the depths of our collective trauma or the radical resistance we embody.”
Queering the Map is a community-generated counter-mapping platform for digitally archiving LGBTQ2IA+ experience in relation to physical space. The platform provides an interface to collaboratively record the cartography of queer life—from park benches to the middle of the ocean—in order to preserve our histories and unfolding realities, which continue to be invalidated, contested, and erased.
Spanish
Why is Palestine a feminist cause?, Carolina Bracco
“The Israeli government’s cynical use of LGBTQI rights propaganda, through its outward image, seeks to hide the reality of its system of occupation and apartheid, exposing itself as a champion of freedom and diversity in a homophobic and misogynistic region. Palestinian LGBTQI activists have therefore called on international LGBTQI groups to stand up for the human rights of the Palestinian population as a whole.”
After a year of an ongoing genocide, ethnic cleansing, attempts of expansion by the Zionist settler-colonial project, and of our ongoing steadfast global revolt, we are delivering a message from Palestine, to the world, while words cannot convey the depths of our collective trauma or the radical resistance we embody.
Manifesto: A Liberatory Demand from Queers in Palestine
We write this as workers, students, farmers, parents – as Palestinians, as queer Palestinians. We write this not because our queerness exceptionalizes our positions but because, in the same way, we have been othered as queers, we are now facing patriarchal colonial tactics that seek to further alienate us as queer Palestinians. To gather our words and energies requires an enormous effort. We are sickened that amidst these moments of spectacular brutality and carnage projected onto Palestinian bodies, including rape, torture, mutilation, and maiming, we are diverted from grieving and organizing to make a demand.
Portuguese
Gender and Sexuality as War Weapons, Berenice Bento
About a month ago, while visiting Palestine, I witnessed the power that hegemonic Western discourses on gender and sexuality hold in both external and internal wars. On a summer afternoon by the Dead Sea, during a tour to the city of Masada, I was able to see and feel what I have been reading about homonationalism, colonial feminism, and pinkwashing. I understood that beyond bombs, walls, armies, and drones, there are discourses that function as weapons of war.
Beyond propaganda: pinkwashing as colonial violence, alQaws
This analysis paper explores a paradigm shift that alQaws has been exploring over the past decade of its grassroots community organizing, which centers the experiences of queer Palestinians.
No Pride Without Dignity, alQaws
This is the text version of an online resource published by alQaws during pride month in June 2021, following international discussion around queer liberation and Palestine. Gay Pride started as a riot led by queer and trans Black, Indigenous and People of Color activists in what is now known as the United States in the1960s. These activists rose up against decades of police brutality and persecution and claimed the streets as a site of liberation in the form of protest. The first ‘Pride’ was a riot and it was also an expression of community care and support that queer and trans activists had created as a result of their exclusion from society.
Arabic
From you and in you: Towards an atypical heritage, Moussa Saleh.
Unrelenting Resistance: alQaws Annual Report 2019, alQaws
الغسيل الوردي | Pinkwashing, Haki Nasawi حكي نسوي
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