In Defence of an Unalienated Politic: a Critical Appraisal of the ‘No Outsiders’ Protests

The trope of the repressive Muslim, obstinately attached to their regressive world views, recalcitrant antagoniser modernity, has become a thoroughly familiar drama. Redundant spectacles abound: events often highly mediatised, substantiated by conservativism and liberalism alike, deployed as justification for policing, surveillance invasion. 2019 protests against ‘No Outsiders’ LGBT lessons held in Birmingham, England are one such spectacle. Foregoing dominant portrayal an event Muslim homophobia, I instead examine social processes that render exceptional British imaginary statecraft it subsequently enables. First, protests’ production spectacular is analysed through historical conditions Europe’s self-constitution Islam-as-Threat. It liberalism’s amnesiac frame, erases its imperial racist culpability, sexual exceptionalism undergirds spectacle can be understood. Second, reading ‘sideways’, argue, reveals how displacement homophobia onto Muslims continues tradition situating Others oppositional purported gendered freedoms. In this context, sex education deradicalisation pupils becomes normalised, even disavows racism. Thirdly, inclusion queer authentic voice emerging from cross-sections identity critiqued ‘non-performativity’. Rather than offering relational understanding queer, vulnerabilities, elides intersectional analysis homonationalism. conclude arguing ‘an unalienated politics’ vigilant co-optation, refusing treat queerness site injury. As such, we imagine ‘queer’ political position refuses capitulate hierarchisation human?