20–23 Jun 2023
Europe/London timezone

From Silence to Pride? A Queer Reading of the Swedish Armed Forces’ Pride Campaigns

23 Jun 2023, 13:15

Description

Military organizations increasingly communicate their acceptance of LGBTQI+ individuals through glossy visuals online. Yet, militaries are gendered institutions, in which the ideal soldier traditionally has been a straight able-bodied cis male. The article takes the Swedish Armed Forces (SAF) as its case, since the organization publishes digital media campaigns that suggest not only their protection of LGBTQI+ rights, but also their status as a ‘queer’ and equal force. Through a narrative analysis of SAF’s Pride effort materials; mainly digital media content but also online/offline autoethnographic excerpts from Stockholm Pride 2021 and 2022; I identify patterns and tensions in the organization’s work towards an integration of LGBTQI+ rights. Drawing from feminist and queer studies in particular, the findings illustrate how SAF’s Pride campaigns echo some heteronormative and homonationalist ideas of what it means to be LGTBQI+ in Sweden and beyond. The campaigns can be understood as visual interventions in international and domestic politics, in which LGBTQI+ rights reify the military as a citizenship-certifying institution. The article argues that we should analyze visual materials published by military actors and the emotiveness embedded in or attached to them, to better understand how narratives categorize identities, as insiders and/or outsiders to the state.

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