The Pulse Nightclub and The State of Our World

The most common interpretations of Omar Mateen's murder spree explained his actions in terms of his declared allegiance to ISIS and the homophobia presumed by that allegiance. The New York Times reported, "It was the worst act of terrorism on American soil since Sept. 11, 2001, and the deadliest attack on a gay target in the nation's history" (Alvarez and Pérez-Peña 2016). President Barack Obama seemed to endorse this interpretation as well, stating, "In the face of hatred and violence, we will love one another. . . . We will not give in to fear or turn against each other. Instead we will stand united as Americans to protect our people and defend our nation, and to take action against those who threaten us" (ibid.). Donald Trump used the occasion to argue that Muslims should be barred from entering the country's borders (ibid.). Hillary Clinton called for a "redoubling" of efforts to stop terrorism in the United States and abroad (ibid.). All the comments assumed not only the exceptional but also the foreign nature of homophobia within the United States.

The narrative of Mateen as a terrorist for ISIS was undermined by men who said that Mateen had messaged them via apps like Grindr and Jack'd as well as by another man who claimed to be Mateen's lover. According to the latter, what was advertised—by Mateen and others—as an attack in the name of the so-called Islamic State was in fact the result of a man rejected by potential and actual lovers at the Pulse. What was particularly interesting were the responses that did not condition his acts on whether he belonged to ISIS or whether in fact he was gay but on the social aggression that led him to kill the clubgoers. For instance, in his blog post Jack Halberstam (2016) wrote, "In other queer clubs, on other nights, other bodies have fallen victim to the toxic masculinities that imagine violence as the solution to shifts in the status quo that might shake up hierarchies of sex and gender. But on this night, in this club, the target of steroid-fueled, militaristic, narcissistic, deeply conflicted masculinity was a group of mostly Latino gay men."

Also, in his article about the killings, the novelist Justin Torres located that toxicity within the borders of the United States. As he stated, "Outside, there's a world that politicizes every aspect of your identity. There are preachers, of multiple faiths, mostly self-identified Christians, condemning you to hell. Outside, they call you an abomination. Outside, there is a news media that acts as if there are two sides to a debate over trans people using public bathrooms. Outside, there is a presidential candidate who has built a platform on erecting a wall between the United States and Mexico—and not only do people believe that crap is possible, they believe it is necessary. Outside, Puerto Rico is still a colony, being allowed to drown in debt, to suffer, without the right to file for bankruptcy, to protect itself. Outside, there are more than 100 bills targeting you, your choices, your people, pending in various states" (Torres 2016). Torres and Halberstam both account for the murders at the nightclub not by explaining them in terms of Mateen's pathologies or external terrorist threats but by locating them within social forces that are at work in this nation. By turning to the long history of toxic masculinities' relationships to homophobia, Halberstam disrupts the narrative that displaces homophobia onto Muslim communities and refutes the myth of American exceptionalism. And in contrast to the narrative that tried to suture Mateen's actions to his identifications with ISIS, Torres places the violence of that night within the everyday poisons of homophobia, racism, colonialism, and xenophobia.

For many of us, the horror of the killings was followed by the curious presumption that homophobia was a foreign entity. It was curious because many of us had seen this violence before, and we knew that it did not require an allegiance to ISIS in order to...