Radical Theory Creep

Abstract

In recent years, many radical/queer LGBT+ rights activists and scholars have identified pinkwashing as the act of characterizing western democracies as havens of individual rights on the grounds that they are progressive on the question of LGBT+ rights. In the process, pinkwashing demonizes as gross human rights abusers those countries—often Muslim countries—that do not have LGBT+ rights protections. There is a lot to be gained from this critique. However, in this chapter, I also suggest that this critique can sometimes slip into what I call Radical Theory Creep. This occurs when what begins as a perfectly pointed and systematic critique of one thing steadily loses its analytical rigor as the argument develops, usually as a result of it attempting to incorporate within itself a range of other strains of radical/queer critique. Consequently, each such discursive formation shores up a series of unsustainable conflations and binaries that, in turn, produce their own assimilationist injunctions.