The Postcolonial Predicament of Gay Rights in the Queen Boat Affair

The Queen Boat 52 is the most highly-publicized crackdown on same-sex practices in an Arab country. By examining the case, this paper intervenes into the recent debate on gay rights activism in Arab and Islamic countries and addresses the postcolonial predicament facing human rights activists on the question of intervention. The paper proposes to reconcile the tension between critiques of gay rights activism and the practical imperative to address state violations against same-sex practitioners. Because the state bases its persecution of homosexuals on the constitution of gay subjectivity, the paper argues that Egypt's postcolonial condition, like that of other Arab countries, necessitates a human rights framework that is based on a discourse and a set of strategies for attaining sexual rights that activists cannot not want to employ.