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This paper focuses on the affective economies which materialize around race, sexuality and queerness in the British context to enable the production and mobilization of an exceptionalist discourse of gay-friendly and post-homophobic Britain (i.e., pinkwashing). The author investigates the discursive workings of pinkwashing coupled with the racialization of homophobia, through a critical reading of the BBC Two documentary Out There (2013a), written and narrated by British gay-identified writer, activist and artist, Stephen Fry. The documentary captures and is in fact captured within a global moment of human rights speculation in which some European nation-states have invested in affective discourses of queer futurities as a marker of their capacity for tolerance, in contrast to predominantly racialized subjects/communities within and outside of Europe, increasingly naturalized as always already homophobic (i.e., racializing homophobia). My reading of the documentary demonstrates the interconnection between pinkwashing and racialized homophobia as discursive inventions which depend on the mobilization of affects such as love, pride, terror, hate and (un)happiness, as currencies of governance. Far from being universal or abstract, I contend that British LGBTQ human rights speculative discourse draws on a highly racialized affective economy—which constructs racialized communities within Britain and racialized populations and states outside the West, as excessively homophobic, rendering pre-dominantly gay male British subjects (and homopatriarchy) as exceptional patriots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Born in Iran, Saghi Ghahraman, an Iranian poet, lives in exile in Canada currently. Ghahraman founded Gilgamishaan Books, and founded and operated the Exiled Writers Club for two years. Zhe has been running the Iranian Queer Organization (IRQO) since 2008. In this paper analyzing hir non-phallocentric, multilayered, and non-linear poetry, I contend that Ghahraman rewrites androcentric history within the public sphere of cyberspace, pushing back against the attempts to mute queer sexuality and desire within Iranian culture. My main goal here is to illustrate that Ghahraman gives voice to the historically unthinkable and unspeakable issue of veiled Iranian women's bodies and voices breaking the deafening silences concerning the multiplicity of gender identities and sexualities. In this way, not only does Ghahraman assert hirself and hir desire, but zhe also liberates others who have been subjected to this historical silencing and suppression of their voices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]